Amid wind and thunder, a coming storm,
a September coat rests silently upon my shoulders.
Leaves descend from the bending giants above me,
and still I sit here.

A flurry of passenger-filled cars sets the park spinning underneath me.
These people, they'll all be arriving somewhere soon, but, for now,
they flood my consciousness with homes decorated in aged photographs,
and still I sit here.

They're going there, those places that fill them whole,
with those people that lovingly adorn their company.
Though I don't accept it, I have people like that too,
and still I sit here.

My mind meanders the gravel path to a duck effortlessly afloat on the pond.
Doesn't she have somewhere to fly to too? To South? To warmth?
Maybe she enjoys the safety of my company, and so she contemplates herself,
and still I sit here.

Her wings involuntarily flutter from the assaulting gusts, until,
finally, she gives in. Her wings spread and beat against the water below her,
she's off toward clearer skies, not a thought on her mind, who could blame her,
and still I sit here.

As the sky opens up, drops and drenching, a chill sets inside me
starting with the ears and the fingers and the toes.
It creeps up my arms and legs, it violently spikes my brain
and still I sit here.

We all know where it finally stabs. Yes, you know it,
you've experienced it before. I howl uncontrollably in chorus with the breeze.
There's not a soul around, just the singing towers rooted around me,
and still I sit here.

At home my dinner awaits, it's steaming hot, it begs to be eaten,
but all this sutured heart can do is think about is that **** bird.
I should be going now, it's time to leave that soaked bench,
and still I sit here.

Bare feet chuckle in the snow
crunching around on foliage,
warmed by fire in the chest
but not close enough to deny
the primal image of this hunt.

Silence in the falling,
the action creates sound
and sends prey afoot,
bounding for shelter
beneath the sapped pines.

Dancing alone through gap camouflage
in rhythm with wind that sighs,
watching on in anticipation
for completion of lives
so horribly intertwined.

Summer would hate these winter woods,
freezing in the bones that creak
and whine as if stray dog
gnawed at them tenderly,
savoring every grind and salivation.

So chilled and trembling,
frost on the eyebrows and hooves.
Breath in clouds, solid snot on lip,
aching for sunlight to show
deepening footprints in the snow.

Pigeons are water-birds carved from stoicism.
When feet approach, they disperse, reconnect,
and continue, leaving me completely perplexed.

I can never tell the difference
between their calling of mate
and battle for territory.

Both actions are so absurdly similar.
I watch for days, chasing them
and their thirty-yard flights with my coffee in-hand.

I've traveled to the Rockies of Colorado
from the *****, Lower East Side of Manhattan
by rusted, dring-belled and horned bicycle.

Cool winds helped sail me across forest trails
and I slept, albeit briefly, on park bench ports;
they attract my current muses and, in turn, me.

These winter-jacketed birds tend to puff up and coo and dance
in front of one another defending their plumage,
their right to be, where they are, for what fills them whole.

One will stare at another, the other never looks back.
One will bump another, the other never touches back.
One will chase the Other and then gently caress its wings,

as if to stab, "Stay a while, partake in the sidewalk feast."
One wants in, the other out; they both want in
so I'll be headed home now.

Bubbling liquid in my veins
boiled to temperature my temples can no longer bear,
so the skin splits and flesh lays bare.
It destroys itself, what a clever defense mechanism.
What a putrid smell.
The world around me is smear-splattered in paint,
orange and incision crimson, the two blended so coarsely
that I groan and moan as I writhe on the floor,
cackling echoes down dead metal hallways,
smoothly polished so as not to rip hair off the scalp
of a man who decided, no, it's of necessity,
to press his skull onto the beam to cool himself,
to press his forehead so hard, in,
that his eyeballs begin to bloodshot
and ooze bulge tears out of the sockets,
forcing his desperate, drastic inhale to catch a grain
of stray sand that his teeth grind down on,
back and forth, hard, producing more pain,
imagined into reality as fire and red-hot coal
burn in his mind,
sparked by thought of the life force that flows
through him, and how it kills him to
never escape it. Dependent on something.
Let it die.

I feel for him, that man surrounded
by inescapable, bloodthirsty anger.
He festers. A blanket cradling
a damp patch of moss
left soaking in the corner of the garage,
left to be cleaned another day.
On that day a world is washed away,
and even he burns infernos.

Wrinkled hands
will chatter hymns
on a bustled sidewalk
where the blind
can nearly eye
an escalating steam,
the burning energy
from indiscernible means
and still the echoed singing
is sung song too far gone.

“No thing to some thing.”
She omitted the return.
He was waiting for it,
oh so patiently.

Echoes wander round
while deep into my knees
the splintered bony compact
from moonlight-late retreats
and chewy marrow screaming
from in between your teeth.
We chant a near return,
a spine-tingling scene
of empty pews contemplating
Friday chapel peace.

A dirtless ditch,
you tongue the plains
and stretch numb arms
in sleeves of ink.

Eroding stone
and carmine vines  
claw into shoulders
and dry eyes.

Please heed my words
escape artist.
I would not lie
on withered leaves.

With rope and wall
you cannot climb
so high to fall
and deaden nerves.

Hands tingle now,
needles alive
like clouds and slate
that built the skies.

Throat thresh and whine
at coal-charred mouth
while legs do shine
angelic fright.

Wolves prowl the grounds
to kiss the cheeks
of those they yearn
to eat but twice.

A need for none
is apex sin
that Love does not,
with ease, forgive.

Look up to sky
with smirk alight,
and stretch your arms
so wide.

A stray dog's brow
shows only strength.
There is much hope
for you.

Shut our door,
they want our light,
don’t let them in —
mosquitoes.

Our ears will buzz
and we won’t rest,
through bite and itch
the moon will pass.
With neon glow
under our skins,
our dreams of us
will fade like stars.
You’ll slap me twice
for all my faults
and say, “There goes
another one,”
as we both lie
behind covers
and restless plays
the scapegoat.

We’ll blindly rap
'till sun peeks up
and wince at greet,
“Good morning.”

Welcome to the feast,
sit at my table and do not regret
anything that will not be eaten today,
for this is our sacrificial slaughter
that must call out favor
to the Gods' fervor.

We dine without thought of
slave or beast. We, lords
of the second coming,
pass judgement upon those
who tread so softly at our heels
that a whisper of thanks escapes
from their chaffed lips and yet it cannot
be heard even in our pious silence.
They dance for us in cages that
arrogantly stretch from floor-to-ceiling
for their owners,
wrapped in ribbons of ruby and gold
and tops of blackened steel.
The bars hold the imprisoned steady
as they stand tall, true, and unapologetic
to their purpose.

They call for us,
and we, you and I,
as Gods,
must answer them.

Easy, my love,
I prefer easy love.

I'll find it in a place where the women swoon
over my desire-frosted blue eyes and granite jaw. It's not you,
it's a need that I must fulfill and it piles higher and higher within
my body, my soul, needing to express itself in soft moans which rise
louder and louder at runner's pace, those looks of longing and lust that begin
over whiskey in a smoke-filled bar, that end amid our scattered bedsheets as her and I
pass a bottle of red back and forth, listening to our soft-spent breathing, our gazeless stares at the walls
of the empty, windowless room, knowing never to see one another ever again, never again on a night like this.

Sadly, it's all I want now,
but above all, I want for nothing.
Gone away, my easy love.

A cliff of weathered stone and moss
with tamped dirt approaching edge
smiles down on cool sea below.

Sun rising on the eastern coast
wears shoes for diving,
a gainer off into the light breeze.

She stands with arms through her coat sleeves
watching with one open hand inviting Fate.
Photography is the death of living the moment.

Sun nimbly on the trapeze,
lose trust and surely
she will be thrown.

Dance, my Sun,
bliss will come
to those who run.

Embrace her fate
or likely it
will dissipate.

There's ***** on the train ride home
and I'm sitting next to it.
It's not on purpose, of course.
Mind you though, I cannot say,
for sure, that it isn't mine.

Putrid, 2am wetness
rises into my nostrils.
From floor, this airborne form
lacks the blacked-out, bile-wine color,
but the stench more than makes up for it.

I'm in and out of consciousness.
"I'm just tired," I swear to the ticket-ticker,
"and my memory mind haunts me."
That's why I truly do not know
whose what this belongs to.

I should bag it and take it home.
With cooled hand on warm, glass cup,
gulp it down and let it simmer.
Chunked broth, swished bitter,
headached pieces puddled on the floor.

I'm not home yet, I've got an hour to go.
Seat reeks, I smell. Hands tremble and a girl laughs.
The train begins moving and I without it.
Can you taste the sickness?
I still do, my mouth fills out with it.

The mind is cruel when heart is careless
And when they both act they choir in sadness
So into the past they both go hurling
Without thought of time or sleep or madness

But when one acts its action is burning
As all modes of way keep my marble turning
and thinking and rubbed the cloth of cold dress
That night that fire that feeling the yearning

And down so goes and with it tonight
No more is wanting is needing toward flight
Its scent it drips from golden pines pining
What heart could be careless with mind so cruel?
You fool.

There will be
no scheme, no rhyme, and no reason.

There will be
no rules to abide by
during the production of the artwork
intended to be presented
on the Calling Day,
when all and every
who are to proceed with the ceremony
have guns pointed at their backs
and saber-long thorns dropped,
point-first,
on the tips of their toes.

There will be
no way to tell the difference
between the lines stenciled on the walls,
which wrap from corner-to-ceiling
in spiraled diagonals,
and the blood on the carpet
sprayed out from bullet holes in the flora
that knelt below the windowsill.

There will be
no murmurs of triumph on the Calling Day,
just thoughts escaping the stratosphere
from those who will witness
the living unconsciousness.

Prayers will be
seen scattered
upon the surfaces of stars.
Our lives burnt outward
though our overcast skies,
projected up and up and up,
imprinted as shades
on that day,
the Calling Day.

All cats,
curious and lazy,
are cleft-lipped.
All humans
are a posteriori-lly
dependent and nosy.

I see white paint.
Well, not really "see,"
intend,
maybe,
and a wall appears,
is,
my wall
dissolves and doves
fly away
into death,
broken necks.
Another wall.

And so on.

Worded arrowheads
are fastened to shafts.
They rain down on
our Love-fed ears.

Bowstring at ready
pulled back high-sky,
They strike down all
who lived this earth.

My soul, infringed,
asked, "How can this be,
with heart shut tight
from melancholy?"

Closed cold, a shield,
I thought could withstand
the force of a blow
guided not by your hand.

The force of a blow
guided not by your hand.
In time the sands
will salt our land.

Your words will crop
my sagging skin
and feed the ground
with hollow chest.

Death for the young
never-held as best,
but for this earth
a heart at rest.

But for this earth,
put Death to rest.
The price of youth,
pays for the best.

When the winds die down
and the light through the trees
throws ghosts against the walls
of your cul-de-sac room,
if you could, please conjure
an absent smiling me.

My cherry-chewed gums
from salted taffy sweets
will swiftly scuttle back
beneath your bed sheets
to nibble at your coming
and splayed, white teeth.

And the bees will continue
burrowing their hives
in my rotting flower box
late into the fall
because they can't let go.

I don’t wish to be strong.
Falling, wind gust knock me over
nothing more honorable
humble
than that of grass
bending, adapting
enduring season after season
never-ceasing browns, yellows, brilliant greens
stones lie upon it
but,
weaving the way
through solid center,
breaking it so
using thoughts of water,
thought.
Never lost,
reaching for sun, for life.
How can something
so lowly,
so plain,
so overlooked,
be something
so beautiful?

It seems to me
everything is strong.
My arms, branches, branching,
reaching for that same sun.
Please.
Please,
just don’t let me be stone.

Black and White
create no boundaries,
just blurs of grey, of fighting,
of shade aspiring to color, well,
aspiring to be it,
enveloped in the folds
of canvases without brush
or artist,
and hands
stiff-stuck glued to table.
Constricted
within so much space
are snakes as serpents,
not vice-versa,
pulling prey apart
vilely, peacefully.

Yes, they do that, no?
I swear they do.
I’d bet my life on it.

Two rats locked up
that write the time
and play all day
and you love them.

A meter cubed
is their whole life.
You peer inside
and you love them.

Their dirtied floor
marks thirty more
grey days of waste
and you love them.

But once in a while
you'll take them out,
they'll climb about
and you love them.

Across your pants
and up your sleeve
to sniff your ear
and you love them.

A sudden move,
they scare with ease.
They **** and ****.
You grab their necks.

You put them back
and curse their feet
that beg retreat
and crawl and scratch.

And from afar
you hear them squeak
and claw the cage
and you love them.

Just keep them there
all safe and sound.
To you, they'll pray,
and you'll love them.

In the city, stars fade
no, burn out,
like streetlamps buzzing a grey
tangled mess of love,
lost in decision of whether to be
a guide
or depths,
where evil emanates,
tears fall through space
crashing, colliding
with metal, only to explode
in sparks of illustrious ice.
The wind, gentle, waning
smiling down,
all-the-way-down
wait,
smirking,
yes, he smirks.
Blessing holy water
in prisms, colors, seconds,
cries for life,
upon unknowing
lovers in the night.

Us, you and I
in rhythm
we dance
toe-tapping
in language
so intricate
and laughing
carefree
or carefully
at complexities
of simple
nothingness


only to feel
there is
somethingness
after all
of this
is hope
or not
or is
not
nothing
but something

I've been gone
a long, long time.
I can't even
recognize
reflected eyes,
in and of that
god-awful lake.
Distant glaze.

They're blue.
Been so long
that time's flown
over our heads
down into
what was before,
below our bench
that sat above
the edge of Was,
our lake away.

Words, rough cut
of meat along
the bank. Etched
into the dirt
by my deep, deep
breaths. Heavy wolf
at my side, never
fed, never enough.
Claws me, my
abdomen deep,
gnaws the words
in the ground,
but his mouth
will never be
wide enough
for them or me.

Sorry poor baby,
I'll pray for you too.

A ***** sent into the ground
and a water bottle spills over
with the energy of a page read
in distressed silence after hours.

The truth is that no man
or woman
waits for no one when being
sent off to a deserted plane
on a 6am flight, eve
of the new year.

It’s comical to believe
that things follow one
another in the day-to-day
reality and trenches of
day-in day-out, kiss-another
to get one’s fill and float.

He waits and she waits,
but it’s him and her with
“and” being the operative.
"And," leading the way
in the wait for what
must make sense.

And sensing the ground
in flight keeps you up,
late into the night
contemplating the “and,”
and the “but,”
and the games we play
with language.

Lamb and sheep
lay side by side
and goes
the earth below.

Awake at rise
of sun and skies
because
they do not know.

That men do fight
and **** and thrive
on blood
of other men.

Of food and life,
of grief and strive,
no yield
nor without bend.

Through hills and lakes
the nocturnes sound
and still
knowledge eludes.

Or do they lie,
not with their mouths,
because
they know the Truth.

For they will live,
and we will die;
Cattle,
their keep alive.

And so they sleep,
stories they tell
themselves
in bleat and baa.

They do not speak
of what they can’t,
how true
can sophists be.

For with the sheep
and lamb we lie,
we lie
to keep alive.