Pt.1
In the clouds that hang aloft
Whose very presence
Is whimsical, soft
Virginity dented, blotted
In the bluest eye,
A hand of breeze ushers on and
Whispers “good-bye.”
The hands of time
Their blithe brushstrokes
On sandy bricks
Their faults provoke,
The brushstrokes, too, there, paint the sky,
Like skirts of red ‘round trunks they lie
Like leaf, like stone
Fall affords no cure for doubt
So like the golden dust, once leaves of green
Into the wind, both spitted out
Were spurned, their haughty wails of “why”
By the hand of breeze that ushers on
With calming whispers of “good-bye.”
Pt.2
There I am, from here I sit,
In cluster leaves on far tree tips.
The hand of breeze keeps me fast
In this fray, the winter’s blast,
Despite that I have braved the cold
The buds of Spring soon, too, unfold
For the young, the leaves will fall
And never will it had been
That it, or I, was there at all.
Pt.3
Wait for me at the garden’s edge
Among the hoods of waking life
Bound n’er so tightly
As a husband to a wife
Wait for me, and still so young
Indelible silence aft’ the ring that rung
I’ll wait for you in the lasting day
Departing me, that is my pledge
Here, alone, at the garden’s edge,
‘Till wilts the corridor
Of snow-capped hedge
And the hills have capped
The fair sun’s head.
Still sweet the air, in twilit vine,
Each rippen’d petal a fortunate sign
That she, oh, she,
Will dance with me at the garden’s edge
Where we both drink of the other’s wine.
Each day, a perfumed past,
That smell of the rose twine her hair
That left us both in the garden, bare,
The only shawl a blazing star.
Worry not, my garden rose,
The sun may die, but from one,
From us two,
Many flow’rs shall dot the sky
And under their lamps, the pallor hue
I’ll give the rose, gift to me, with many stars back to you.
Pt. 4
But soft! I hear
Amidst the cries that fall anon
From the blanket midnight sky
That you’re aloft and gone from me,
From the darkness, through the vines
And gone like the seconds of passing time
With haughty ******
The hands that twist
From night to night
Which, brazen, explode the starry high
The hands that usher, chant “change, but why?”
All that hisses from my lungs
Is one long solemn, final “good-bye.”

Search in the forest; you’ll find me there
Letting the trees
Speak my apologies
For those I could not, would not dare.

Along, along the broken trail
A single line
No one’s but mine
Familiar silence, mem’ries glint

Though that I have cast judgment
To never speak to you again
I would still lay you in the ferns
And hold, in mine, your lovely hand

But the trees speak my apologies
Behind the timbers of my teeth.
There you stand in the cast light of ease
Eden lapping at your ankles
Winged by thrilled and lucky leaves

Blind in light, your darkest mien
‘bove where I’ve fallen, disgraced, mean
In the ‘brace of ferns between
You see me as I am
Cloud-watching and quiet,
Needing to say more
But shame, shame is defiant.

Search in the forest; I won’t be there
For you are in the ferns, the breath of tress
A concluded jawline bitten down
Wayfarer of the broken road and scene
Turning an ear from the trees
Rest I and tight lips
Trodden away as they speak my apologies.

Deeply thrown to the maw of the earth
A gaze could own there all it’s worth
Never have extremes before been too depthless
And Transformed.
Light and darkness swallow one
As positivism is garbled and undone
Such a void of the ******, the saved
For neither have such slopes they braved
Or bedlam tamed.
Blesséd teeth of the darker cave
Lend me my voice, though starker, back
And echoed song sung,
Though lost in its ribs
Its to have in that chorus, black:
Harpish wings trickling bells and
Harmonious little sightless things
Loosed from dear Apollo’s light
Darkness scares Phoebus’ chariots
On which the fire-stallions ride.
In their flaming stead and ruthless might,
My frightful heels turned and taken flight.

A ****** countryside
Beneath the charcoal grey,
Whose bottom is alight
Shrouds the valley,
Blanketed in snow
Still and cool and quiet.
Gentle snowflakes kiss my cheek
Sitting fireside, with hominess
Warmed at the hearth of the sky
Hushed, the world, laying asleep
From holy halls, their lullabies
Smile, do the elements,
Their dream is what has become.
And so it is,
A dream, a dream,
Though I am awake
These little souls, their lanterns bright
Hold me to the end, across an endless earth
White in winter’s hollowness
I dream of you for all it’s worth.
Brave, must I, the motherly whitened path
And dream of distant you—
It keeps me warm, fireside
I thank the treasures, soul supplied.
My hearth is cold
With none to share
The brilliance of a chaste expanse
With none to help me stare.
I have a long way to that hearth
That I’ll call my own
The souls, the winter—Carry me home!
Soon, we’ll go
Your hand in mine,
Hearts akin,
Accoutrements of clothed embrace
We’ll go, so soon
Once I’ve stepped from this dream,
To have heated hearth of our own.
But now, I can’t
I follow the souls’ little lit lanterns
Through the valley in the snow,
I go alone,
In their solemn palms
As they carry my lost one home.

“Take it, take it,” to an ocean I beseech
A phial of hungry glass
“To some distant beach”
Holding within it
All the air from my lungs,
Every heart beat,
Baby teeth and hair
All the domestic days in the Delaware creek
And spare
Time
Rolling in the waves, frothing jaws
Now have the empty bottle
I pause, I curse
That some child of me will
Coddle
In the ever-ceaseless body
Full and empty
As the phial, this thing of matter
Sublime in depth
But empty in purpose
Containing all life
But with heartless curses,
Instilled of placidity
But throbbing with surge
Until, it too, the phial will purge
—Had I known its fate of woe
( A monument! And I let it go!)
—I would have weathered the inevitable
( A monument! And I let it go!)
—Then, at least, there’d be something to show
( A monument! And I let it go!)

The greatest eye, seeing as I see: infinity infinitely,
Passing and being amidst mere seconds, touching glassily
Fringes of the smallest universe of me,
The happier side of the sublime, distant fingers of distant peaks
Combing the edge of time.

I’ve stared at the stars too long, we saw them dance out of space
More dimensions than a singularity, for it opens up
As hearts do in each other placed.
From fixéd gaze and placidity, I stride in awe to you
We could feel one with acatelepsy

Have what some consider few, and few consider all
Intertwined by the darkness between the dying stars’
Existence, in that both skins a whole that glistens.
Of that place, I in constant drawn, that vacuity, that candoris

A promise that, regardless what season, my face feels apricity
And careless are the places as numinous are the lariots
Whether through Hell or usurping Pheobus’ chariot
Some hope may birth within the open dark
The treasured lunar retinue, a web of inspiration, generations to come;

That’s what keeps me hopeful here, a shy star in the void
Across it all, across life-lines I shall have,
Before you ever meet me, long since dissipated—
Come out to see me and play, or are you simply? Belated?
In that web, the growing ever-on, generative swan-songs,

And the one I wish on may befall a stellar death, my sky
Alighted by one less, a part of me to the cold and shiftless earth
That though the stars may fall, these hearts may flash chimerical
Etched limpid in the palimpsest of memory, they are, they will
Hearts of the little universe, consumptive and resilient

And kept ever on, there beyond Jupiter and his moons thereof
In which chaos finds itself bathed and bound by Love.

Tiny moving parts,
A spirit of synchronicity
That I had ruminated on:
How it starts,
And they stop
Wrought of genius
And simplicity
The dawn and fall of humankind
All seated on a wrist
Swinging forward and behind
In whose fate
The hands so twist.
Dusting charcoal from glitt’ring grin
Mocking in a single prayer
Each second, loud
And growing gayer
Penitence for that second’s sin
For blank, so empty
The vessel sat
Covered, not covering,
In the grayish-black
Wasted time in unused power
The watch but looks away
Meager, sour
Persistent still
‘Till wakened by the rested hour
Where dawn illumes
The hideous sight: a failure
A void in Dis’ sweet hall
God’s hand stained in graphite
And no grace upon creation
Did any of it fall.

Love
As it stands:
Over our heads
Enraptures the frail heart
With incipient dread.
What is to be
In a world without thee,
But a standalone,
A reflection,
Of what was and will be?
One cannot love,
As that adage goes.
Unless, first, inner peace
Quells ignorant woes
As any person happy alone
Can tell you and knows.
But the pangs of hypocrisy
From the word itself
--Excuse my incredulity—
Love springs alive
Only when L stands with O-V-E.
What’s more, Love’s a test
Aesthetic selfishness
A prolonged adventure
To feel good in this skin.
Even when we feel
Love
We do not tolerate
Thoughts of two.
See, only one “I”
In “I love you,”
I’m at the center
Of “you’re my love,”
And “you make me feel…”
The fact one could lie to the love of their life
Makes me reel.
So a multithought-gasp-is love!
And rife with paradox
Inconsistent and vitalized.
How can I be so cynical
To break apart rosy airs
And leave only a shocking nothing?
Dear friend, there’s something in
Love
Let’s break it down into its funny little parts
L’s for libido
O ******
V is for vice and
E ******.
A nice little formula
For the fawny neurotic
Take it with you and shout and play
Let it be a comfort
On St. Valentine’s Day.

Come to me, Lady of Summer,
Hold me fast with blossom’d arm
Kiss me like a lover
And whisper floral words like I’ve known no other
You’ve given me the strength I seek
To grow my spirits vernal
To flee my love, all for naught
No union e’r eternal
And yet you linger to torture me
Witness me mortify
To shrivel up in your callousness
Let to air to fin’ly die.
With each passing
Of every hour
Your embrace grows cold’r still
Still am I to find the vitals
Which you try to ****
You’ll succeed because I let you
I long to feel your touch
And pray to false gods, the gods of hope
That you will feel as such
When that lonely woman comes
The Lady of the Snow
And blesses me aptly
She’ll show me you were just a phantom
Without I am truly happy
Yet she will leave
They always do
And abandon my love once more
You come again, my love anew
Yet again I’ll grieve
Resultant of my petty wish
That I’m your only lover
Though disenchantment is my blessing
To see beneath the lie
I’ve always wanted to enjoy your grace
Yet void of sky awaits me nigh
No normal man would grovel
And incense your waning passion
As I do
AS I do
As I will always do
For you abandon me
And give my gifts to better men
To those I call normal
And leave me leveled like
Foot of crushed hill
So now I retreat
Into my head, my hand
My eyes I blind, my mouth grows dumber
I spurn thee
I love thee
Oh, Lady of the Summer

Monosyllables to polysyllabic concerns:
A pittance for pity resenting the night
All is well, or not.
I am the same, though less than gratified;
I am your sexlessness and wandering bestfriend
Faithfully attent to the lovers’ fight
Between the hopes longer than a day,
And the stilted, crude truth
All wonderfully thumping behind plaster and stone
In that I can make my predictions,
Perhaps because I’m a part of that love
I’ve heard it before and watched it float off into space
A repeat has no better outcome,
But we’ll always be wondering their fissures
And openness, when I abandoned care too late;
Where was apathy when I needed it most?

So this is what they call anomie?
A grayness,
A blank,
All things devoid of beauty?
When the eternal arms,
Have left me to my own devices,
To toil in deaden land
To paint futile pictures?
I’m wading through waves, through fires
Surely to send a man to delirium,
And as though it never came to pass
I sip unsweetened tea.
What rips men apart,
What fetters pull him in twain,
Simply move me with sway
And don’t move me at all.
Tears rush like the flume
Admonishments thrown
And I can only sigh in frustration
At all this petty emotion.
For man fills his stage with characters,
And bleeds ink all within his works
Aspiring to his own audience, the god he is,
I simply abuse this alchemy
To bide my time till death.
Call meaning what you will,
Fill your life with love,
Fill your life with gold,
with God,
with spite,
with studies,
with yourself.
I cannot,
I do not,
I know not these simple pleasures
Perpetually I am not full,
For there exists where faith should be
A deep impartial hole
If I could be normal,
If I could be normal,
If I could love,
If I could believe,
I’d turn away from it,
And choose to stare uselessly into my faithless hole,
All things beat on, as they be,
And this conviction, be it ever so keen,
That existence and living are useless things,
I’d still see what believers still see
That being the world as beauty,
I’d only see it with a more grayish hue
(Without the pretension to know what is true!)
And see the sense it lacks to see
And commit myself to this anomie.

Such to break surface, the framed glassy pool reflects
With me, upright, the still-life foregrounded as its own
Pale imitation. But I see it, there, between my vague eyes
And evaporating pores populating a single empty window
Devoid, a full of life—or so I am to believe.

That tree is happy, incomplete and passive, wayside,
It contemplates its own dream, nostalgia is its willful present
In the moment, there are but ripples in which the tree smiles
Happy to know it is here, it is alive, it is me—just as my fading
Bliss is real in the glass. I am happy for the tree: being of difference.

What never can be, it shall, in spite of metaphor
To be like is to be, but too pure be is to abhor.

It turns, a rebel, from the pool: no fiction of cast nor questioning;
That plastic Narcissus cannot hear the Echo of a captured face:
Where Exit signs sigh in their own irony trapped, here, there,
It is by its own imitation it must comfort the erraticies—
Sadly, she weeps uttering the same mantra on her lips,
But by design, she has curses on her brow, anger at her mimicry
Which hides her from the dream she lives, still weighted by
Wonder, still holding onto God. She sees nothing but the calling back.
Is but the voice of a Lover, of trapped souls in a tenement window,

She can only hear herself talking infinitely
Presence to the water, commune her ‘I’ unto me.

While I am free to glide about the room, the panoramic view
Of two minds’ madness, I, too, feel a pool on which my beloved Self
Reveals to me the seconds it took to create,
The voices which, vague, came as mine
And I stole away quietly, to believe me a tree, and to go ahead and dream.

Pretend pretend-pine at a ponytail
And feel this kicking heart
Stronger than the last
Stranger to sit in view of class.
Ah! Comfort in obscurity
Nestled in the corner, darked
but to glass and passing time.
In there, my head, the songs begin
Of lips of Siren, no fear of wrong
I’ll stay righted to and from
Capreae, and meet the mind and face
Of elegance not reflected in the water.
If this lens be infinite
The aethers usher out a sigh
Second only in my own.
But cursed coldness and mock clairvoyance
Had lit a blonde in my vanity
And cast out front in my vicinity—
Oh! Woe to shrugs of dependency!—
Somewhere blown leaves turn to seedlings
As to this aspect I am kneeling,
Fair fall will turn to spring.

Lashes emerge from one fair ear
Casting her gaze, perhaps back here—
A cough and noise what could it be
What disturbance is at of me?
Oh, now I feel the dreaded “L”
Whatever that could mean
Which only its binate twin could quell—
Two gentle abysses pass in their cursory
And all conflagrated, two passions at ends!
Now begins the heavy labor of siding
In both and achieving neither.

Dream a dream in leather-bound
Sheets as white as wedding gowns
Trace endless streets as riverrun
On alleys, veins back and down

Cigarette mornings, sun’s crown is passed
Onward! To destinations!
Calmly, into nothing goes on the last
And ever on so fast.

Steam does lift off the shadows cast
Off the blinding sky, perfect, pale-skin white
From my empty room Troy-maiden appeared
Verse tattooed on belly white, limbs so lithe.

Ere long, the throbbing thing, the pen
Passed and rent the soul to send
My crafted love in the sallow morn
The devils therefrom that are born

Knows not best torture  me
With outright attacks and battery
But that time and brooding are
Whips and chains—evoke his dignity
All it took to collapse his frame.

That sound, like vengeance, bitter and whining!
The unseen terrors ‘midst an unstirring throng
Come weaving between my fingers, books, ears.
Why, oh, why does it target me?
A bee, a stinging assumption of the most
Prevailing type, a thing—if ever there was—
Most hated by the modern man:
A loafer inspiring fear, inspiring action
But to act would draw the cool judgment
Of my peers—a ****, a twitch, a sound—none move.
This distance, for it does not bother you!
No hesitation to act progressively when charity
Is abundantly “there” but the coffers deign to open
And the kitchens are dry, and the powers are artifice
To shove the matter—illusory—to the great blue wayside.
Away, away thing! Do not plunge your itinerancy
In the soft of my skin—I do not want you here,
Remove yourself from my sweet drink,
Remove yourself from my food, remove
Your presence—transparently, I don’t have to think
About you if you…just…leave!

And it did—ha! Hell spawn! Parasite! But such a lonely
Planet finds its orbit just as drifting rocks find theirs,
Even if it unaccommodating, in the outer wears,
To sylvan marches—take thy there!
And it has, poor little creature, buzzing through the miens aslare
Spacey, empty, sans (attention), but sans care.
None will bat an eye as its well-meant body,
Interpellated annoyance, genetic condemnation,
Vermilion-paints on the walls of Hell,
Floats, broken, between uncaring faces, looking for
That thing called home, arms warm from its
Present-roam—uncared for Other on lithe little wings
Glass beats at the speed of sound, beat heard
Against the sky’s blue scrim, glass rippling, incensed
So quick, movement becomes oneness and still.
Who could not love you when you’re world’s ignominy?
These ******* are but foul, they can not love you
Steeled by the constant repressive ire
For that which is so homeless—what is spurned in steely pines
And flown away, far, far from the mind,
Ceases to be in the cosmos free, trapped by hate
And invisibility, objectively all, subjectively none.

Piercing winds, fast and with malice
Whisk away, playfully, the revolutions,
The songs and smoky thoughts
Which I saw smoldering right in front of me,
I see them rising in the night
At the ceiling
In dull streetlight
Mere abstractions, soft and white,
But roar the horn
Of guilty pasts
To their image the smoke holds fast
What soured scorn and blackened mien
Reject my constant repentant whine
And I travail, until I sleep
Their jeers and anger
I choose to keep.
And worthy, still I lay in bed
To even look into a dome ahead
Finite, bleak, and hopeless that
I find only appropriate.
And so close,
I grasp its bars
And wince ghosts whip and slash
At my wrists which I hold out
And tell them “harder” ‘tween teeth gnashed.
The day light comes,
And illumes my worth
By my feet spelled out in the dirt
And just and fair, to dirt I pair
That’s why my eyes
Are fixed there
All I gaze on, vibrance to ashen waste  
Ask the smoke
The he and she, I corrupted chaste.
So my neck can take nine tails
My head is bowed in penitence
Yet, there is no flogger
But my own guilt,
My crimes, like flowers,
From proper minds wilt.
I’ll keep these eyes downcast,
Where they belong
And move without progression
For I’ve done wrong
And with the ground I stay
To payback what debts that vanish
To pay them everyday.

1.
Ah, yes. I do remember—in the annuls of the setting sun
Which gazed upon us cloister’d couple
Just as then when this begun—
How lovely you looked to me
When I first stooped to take your hand:
The air was pink from rushing blossoms
Blown as though caught where waves meet sand
Out o’er the horizon’s sea
Of lapis stones and perfect lilies,
Our marble vessel stood calm afloat
As Time she ceased her constant chatter
Our love, on eternity, she thusly wrote.
2.
A promise kept where we abide
I see the spell on you ascribed
As though not a minute since then had died
Our eyes are locked
As is my reverence
Wedded in both hand and Time
Union’d there upon the hill
One constant spirit, forever ‘twine
My hand in yours,
Your eyes in mine
And all the day a vernal eve.
3.
Forever faithful, ‘till we’re parting dust
N’er a band, nor jem’s allure
Compel me from this meeting just
And we’re betrothed
As one amorous, fixed stone
You’re my bride of marble pure
I, your husband, and yours alone.
4.
The snow must fall, but never does
Nor do hands of some final hour
The face of parting averts his glower,
And no such sadness entreats us here,
You only cry the tears of rain,
In concert so do I,
Even our sentiments commune where they ought,
And strain, does not
Our open home, where the live rest peaceful:
Espoused to none but plots and vine
Widowed from both bride and Time,
Pining for that permanence, the comfort of our kind.
For they the living, asleep and buried,
Rejoice at such, our fates prolonged,
For what it is: the stuff of dreams.
From thence, ‘till now, it tarried
And, just as then, you beam.
5.
Your blankened eyes are filled with me,
Not soiled by another sight
Beneath this alter of pallid stone
All I see is placid white:
My eyes filled with thee.
Many a-year may have passed
But we’re indifferent to present, future, past
And though our company is but the dead
They can watch us
Forever, watch us wed.
6.
That august sun, such reverie
Upon it portents I could read
A neverending waxen love
Into that permanence of history wove
That could proclaim, our sentiments same,
Into pink winds, through homes of the dead
The fused seasons through which we tread
Dismissing the failings of human emotion,
Embosoming a steady climb,
Thus envisaging the statue’s notion
That Eros decreed so few would find
Love protected by  Terminus
Its constellation we cusp.
7.
That craft’d on love, transcending this
Oceans of present, future, past
Our ship it sails on maxim, not mast,
A message to all the staring world:
Only a love like ours may last.

And where drops the feet, a mild scintillation
Springs in the splash of the puddle here
And there and ‘yond the lawn
Reaching for the vindication
Of gun wrappers, ‘butts, and other
Brazen trash on the damp mulch.
Yet, these rains cry down with passion
Found not but in the ***** of home
—From very far away
—And very much alone
This seed of refuse, fertility yet sown
Sprouts the vine of rebellious fruits
Sneaking serpentine to the edge of the blazing sun
Embracing the split-wood and claiming
The hedge-proper its own.
And though you can’t cry
The world does it for you
Its tears made a forest so much higher
Than I; in meadows pert
You’ll show me a locket
Trodden in dirt, I’ll show you a flower that grew in the hurt
And grows to the top, the burgeon-trees lead
From one, little piece of trash
From one refuse seed.

This early winter has already slipped from the macadam,
Bloats the creek I see
From the perch of rusted manhole covers
Their tunnels rush with concrete.

It falls over the v-shaped Two-Log dam,
It whispers to me
I’ve come close to
Nothing, to nothing, to nothingness,

I’ve heard the babbling, the incomprehensible echo
Of my own voice
In the abyss of being, that, if I spoke
It taunted back, in a voice
Rife
With truth.

Redemption of solidity has me now,
This is where I grew up:
Along the same creek, along the flow and course of man
Crossing the winter’s water has proven
Test, trial, and victory
Every time. I never noticed it.

Apathy is a vague blur in the saccade of the last few years,
Self-destructed by the fault of feeling.
I am more human now, returning to the shores of limitation,
Of the piercing history
Still young, but wizened, hard, a court
At which I stood and begged for my head.

I have but my name now, and nothing to return to
But the temporary homes with temporary people.

If I said I don’t care, I was wrong. They were my temple,
But the god of me, the god of them, the god of sheer youthful joy
Has been overtaken by grapevines, by ivy

And I still proclaim victory, still proclaim
I won the fight of isolation.

From the frozen bed of silt and winter
I pull concrete chips from the bridge
They destroyed ten years prior, where once I stood
And added my sorrows to the ebon stream, carrying it
To the end of it, where end met end,
And continued on end-to-end.

But I have seen nothing and no end it quite like it,
For every shore has its mirror,
And beyond it is my voice, I cast out,
Calling back,
As it was.

At the swell of music I can fell the intersection of screaming of voices
They, like me, have been waiting for years
The plentitude of the thousands’ cadences
Are for the hunted, are the hunted
United, we stand in. This is unworthy, unworthy
Bestilled, we are here, standing like statues
Quietly, unquestioningly, indebted to ourselves
They said that, they said that: the mother voice
The mother’s voice
Oh, in the change of meter, she laughs and coos the answers
Your answers: we’re eying,
I’m the umpteenth man. Always. To ask,
Uncontented by the simplicity of the question, or the answer
Struggling for its complications, so, at least,
It can be done, it’s yet complete.
Wish against wishes, a silence doesn’t care
Then again, neither does the noise. Neither does the music.
If it were but love that made the moon rise, the moon rises
The ******* moon rises, it would be sorry night
A sorry state of affairs. Rest knowingly, and endure
The calamities of waning stars, twilight, and the coming day,
Marvel in the complexity of speech, and twine my fingers,
We’ll make it through.

If neoliberalism has taught me anything
It’s that Love is a close, slow, and cold war
Of poisoned wells, proxy wars, and intel—
Know thy enemy, keep them closer than allies.
So close this necessary rivalry
That no olive branch can pass between
That, even in times of peace,
The light-bearing serpents
Post guard near the vaults of one’s purity
Unsure whether grain or gold
Actually lines the walls of ones coffers,
And the thousand envious myrmidons
Kept along the edges of their body’s territory
And skirt the embassy within.
Is there room in the hearth
For pacifists like me?
Or are all the rooms quartered by troops?
It’s sad to say, only the words of the cynic
Could truck and barter
Their way through the bronze gates,
What small inlets there may be,
As master seeking the slave
And slave, the master’s whips
Is a true sign of loyalty to Monogamy’s crown.
What Love couldn’t be said to be
The sadomasochism of
The corporate merger,
Or annexation
Or competitive market of ideas?
***, in the time of Smith or Hobbes,
Is exactly what we need—
Egoism allwheres,
Like so much embroidery
The love of ones life
Veils *******, a swallowing, a utility
And undoes the altruism,
Anything but all-true-ism,
In favor of the fetishism of control,
Flashed like semaphores in storm-beaten nights
To any ship passing
Seeking port and safe passage,
Exchange fire, those shapes and pleas,
Turned warnings to threats,
Sinking, sinking deeper
Into each other’s arms.
In all their plotting, do they hear
Andres-Salome, Ree, and Nietzsche
Laughing about in unburdened skin
Laughing to let the summer in,
On cart-drawn pleasures
And rustic, old-world habits
That rub dirt in the wound
Of the flesh’s censures
By the cruel absence of the lash
And the ostracon.

The fatter rains are beneath the canopy, but deafened
Come the flowers whom I’d sing mournful songs,
Our latter-day hymns of Benjamin Gibberd
So, I say to them all as they to the earth, twinges of falsehood
In loved embraces to the earth they bind themselves
(But the quiet soothes of incurable ills).
Their voices become intolerable candors of intolerable people
That echo between the ash and locust who seem to melt darker.

This empty way comes in sudden inspiration, a heart
Ready to fill with blood again, to beat love and passion
Into nature’s core and I stand in its middle, crushed
By endless gallons of living things; but, I need not surprise
Or overwork myself since the airs taken for granted
That I put on or breath, settle in my lungs
Pressing heavy with every love that could have been
Or every natal anxiety come to plume.

As flies, I am not ready to make vines spring or reek up the woods
And my feet take the flight, take the prayer—I’ve only ever
Prayed to myself, anyway—this tilled earth of my hand,
What will come of me someday, grows out moss
In fibres of a self-conceit remaining in sorrow and censure
Youth and in pleasure, run until my foot gives way in the mud.

I lay sinking at the rude audience of tongues and tangles
And the open world, far too distant to really hear the speeches
They’ve heard far too many times. Perhaps I’ve saddened them
They do not respond to the resigned gurgle of the mud
But, there are tears in the woods, too marked up like pistils
Of much-quitted innocence given no reason to act
No comfort are they, nor am I to them
The only true comfort now, is the weight of the world
And the wind on my back.

A man I knew once
Of nobility and pitiless prose
Forked tongue, a mind who blunted those of ferrous wits
A soul nurtured by the forest ewe
Adverting stimuli, in solemnity he sits
A flicker of passion in his throat arose
Promptly licked by that silent promise
Condemned to obscurity, like firm soil he is composed
Ardent and sullen like any cracked timber,
He remains fixed, as the dead in peaceful slumber.
All and none, brothers of the pupil akin
The zenith of event, he has already been there
Visions of splendor, grandiose pulchritude, and ruin
Of his that mine eyes seek do not they dare
Of mine his eyes have never been so cursed
Blank but fruitful what glory he has seen
Of things beyond all mortal belief is he so well versed
Encased in lye and pewter flesh,
No hands were laid upon that sconce
Preserved in ****** garment, immune to life’s thresh
Did not he ignore a man, but rather lack response?
Him lacking had no name, but the case of which him befell
I called, ‘tis true, beckoned him here
And not a nod in my direction
Yet to beseech a brook at the chine of a knell
A thoughtless benediction
But deluded I, spent drunk immersion in this life
Drowned by rushing torrents and temporal maelstrom
A reward of prolix strife
My thoughts composed of endless lies, theories
Countless deeds of fitful right and wrong
Yet he, so pure, have thought nothing like myself
No speech to taint his canvas
Nay, he’s different, of this I’m sure
He’s not diseased, he’s not impure
For it is I, of adamant ardour,
Who should seek his mindful cure.

The day will exhaust itself if it keeps running away;
Shadows may fetch its hills as they fetch the floors—
There is all the grime of family life portraiting
Seamy corners perfumed with stale smoke
Blackened as it comes with twilight,
Narrated by cracked smiles and “some’re” teeth
Stories of the happy winds, the simple views
Pits of bromide comforts and steely prides
And all around resilience to spiting one’s face.
Even as the sky waxes intense the pink of waning day
I find no hope in the west, but a weight pressing
On the very outcropping of my birth—
These modern monks, these pretty babes
Calmly lie in for the new day; it is behind the mountain.
It is from there the stars themselves unfold
From their translucent dirt and the last beautiful word
Of home is heard, something like country tears
And watching myself grow too fast for my liking,
The stars are not ready for counting,
They’ve lost that allure
Puffballs glow on the hill, lost souls on the grazing lands
Finding, at once, where the winds of change will take them
Everywhere, nowhere, freed and sobbing and mocking the
Birds and the flowers all praising themselves natural,
Taking my lungs’ air to the milky distance
As it starts to run and on and so on…

“For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of Kings.”

The smell of fresh grasses lefts stifled underfoot,
A thousand tiny voices, wheaten, bug, or no,
Can call up to the elderly trees, whose white palms
Gave surrender only moments ago to this wandering eye.
To think, I am but that hole of many in a chain
Of lattices made only by their breakage,
For I relinquish myself to the spirit or biology
Two gods my life’s work has been to destroy.

The sun comes through that shattered mat of life
A fallen crest, defining the morose bedding of
Victim and trap, so that I may hear it speaking;
Strung up and dragging on its gaunt, breathless rot
It claims a stupid animal lived in this body once,
Relinquished itself by flight to the unwavering, silky
Thread of beautiful frailness, or motionless spectra,
Thus, it deserves to lose what it did not want
Since it did not flee life, it did not flee death.

I wanted to study it more, enchanted by the hollowness
Until water came onto my brow, fell onto my passive lips
Uttering, till then, a prayer to fly from here,
Till my eyes color over and I’ve finally escaped.
But, this motif, I see, is overplayed, too trite
For secular gods who prefer the wiles of game
We, the peak of human life, I the most sufferable of them
I, the most thirsting of my image, tend to consume.
If it were boredom, then plagues would sweep hot winds
Everywhere; thus, it is not, it is the constant reminder,
We are but nothing, but flesh to die, unwitting flies
To the spider’s web.

To strangers
He’s honesty
To friends
He vaunts
Gliding with speech of bawdry
Making brand new old haunts
And she’s the trickster
Sleight of hand on herself
Making everyone her best friend
Leaving room for no one else
It’s a habit, a curse
Which sunk deep early on
A sultry cadence, with hushed lips,
Most still sing along.
And to this moment, and many thereafter,
The song is less song
Like breathing but apter
No longer putting on airs
I watch and I listen
To a gaunt anemia
Passing on my tongue
To the liars
Whom I know I’ve stung.
See how fiercely engaged
They are in their tricks
Yet condemning those abreast
As “lying *****.”
I watch like birds
They hum, the tweet
When falling from their hands
All those loose leaves
And quills at the ready
Their account of their lives
Too boring by action
Behind those marbled busts
And epochal fictions
Lies the rest of a person
Who is still languishing but
Singing along

[Let this be a gift, my lover not met]
Let this be a gift, my lover not met
This shaky sonnet of weak, boyish hands
With eyes that gaze and trembling mind beset
I live up the dream, stupidly make plans
Await as your gentle brown hair flits by
Marvel the saccharine scent of your air
Contrite by the mind bewitching my eye
Guilty for my presence in yours, unfair
Your lithe little hands in my crumby own
And cute red lips pursed with naïveté
Pouring out poetry like pregnant tomes
And you’re wisdom abundant, be it may
Be you different with quirk, an odd one please
And I’ll always be the one who n’er flees.

Walk me dutiful into love
Open my doorways, deliberate
Clear off the boughs
And the stars above
Walk me, dutiful, into love.

Pallor hearts of cosmic flame
Rush wax quickly, safe to say,
But, this, the tepid can warn no hand
Where Eros pierce and finger cove’
Rush me, dutiful, into love.

Yet, what ether of open mist
Can hide desire, away, steal a kiss
My, my how sane and cold in time
Do boundaries, up, the passion bind
What drives the lines, my heart it drove
Oh, walk me, reckless, into love!

Thatchen ardor incense the air
And leave me homeless, with luck threadbare
If my stars and hearts be flying doves
Away the fly or give a shove
At least I know I walked in love.
And know where I may fit.

O, cry morning,      sun breaks again

In that history of banalities
Are written, I finished the cigarette
Before the coffee, twirling wind

O, sigh morning      as inverted

Could carry me to the rock wall, thinning grey,
Of the house where egos, bruised, seek guidance
The black bird builds a decoy nest

O, shy morning.         churlishly answering questions never

Asked before, “nah-uh, nah-uh, nah-uh,”
(A ****** is heard, of most[ly] fowl)
Spoken mostly to the fact:
It is what it is. Acceptance

O, belie morning.          builds a brutalist window, round by row

The they that walks whistles low with nebulous intent
To remind itself to forget
Abysm is a stranger in your city streets.

O, blithe morning.          Such cringing in place

Of those sleeping hours, parsing the drop-ceiling’s
Calligraphy: kings be draped in robes of flesh
To depose the anarchists in cerebral lands,


O, yes, my morning.                     a lechery for the heart,

That religion of my given path
Or its surrogate, the lawful rebels
Writing on every city row, so willing but rough,

My guest, O, my morning,                         such a pity!

Restless and genuflect, the they does not find itself
Swayed by the largess of absence
Craning neck eastward toward the perfect morning,
Ever on the cusp of the perfect twilight.

The wind that roars and shatters the night
Kills solace, this, and peace, that
What little balm is here for me
Is torn away
By the Wind.
Metal twists and whines out loud
These walls are bowing in
To entrap me like a seed
Encloséd hard
By the Wind.
Impassioned, is this wind-wracked night
Full of sadness, love, and spite
The wound inflicted long ago
Made gangrenous
By the Wind.
I see chains that shake and choke
Where their sleep is unpleasant
Bound by hands that do not touch
And laughed at
By the Wind.
There, those chains in brunette hair
And blue eyes and silver tongue
Turned away and turned back
Vivid life enforced on me
By the Wind.
Closer and closer the wind pushed walls
The farther you are away
The tightness, oh solitude
Your cadence carried
By the Wind.
The wind, the wind dissects the very earth
I split, it splits by loss of harrowing trial
The chasm it makes, pure anger bursts forth
I feel the distance as it grows,
An adult wound, mile by mile
We’ll soon be foreign people
Breathing foreign airs
So be it! I say, just let me rest,
You just keep walking from my mind
Blown back again, festering,
Blown back again
By the Wind.

Other in the rustic scene, being of not-here, being of dream
You may have all I can give, so long I don’t have to see you live

The charities are open,
The coffers are full,
The kitchens abounding
But the food is dull.

Approach me, my hand unfurls—yes, take the flow’r, this my pearl
But, ha, you’re gone—one less woe—ease, mine to know.

Oh, Luna
Carrier
Take my serenade
If this earthly love escapes
Then loving doors forbade!
Come, send my plea
Whilst I trace her constellation
And you, both
Hidden from mine eyes
Trace her hand, her heart, her eyes
To the other’s harmonization
If but for one night
Pity me, or give my heart
To her
The one, I know it true,
That you and I, Moon,
Both smile upon.
She whose eyes
Like lunar seas
So deep that hide such mystery
Whose hair enwraps my world
Like many-a brown meridian
From top to bottom
With energy
From end to world’s end.
Whose shadowy nature
Like paradox
Alights with creamy luminescence
To outshine her companion stars
And rears my gaze Heavenward
And implores my footfall north
To cross infinity on cadence and tune
Wishing to be where she stands
Her sublunary perilune.
Oh, I’m mad, I’m mad
Poor, Moon my only ear
For you are not the woman
Whom I wish, this song, to hear
And yet I dream
Beneath the Moon
Which I hope she dreams into
That this dream
Beneath the moon
Is one she dreams of too.

Five years from my end of days and, shall there,
Does a verse go on tell me—was it beautiful
Like breaking windows, battered wind chimes?
I groaned to hear when history cried
That hum in Death, the silent ode, a sallow sound

Made, was your time, to sole destroy,
But, I promised your parade I would not shake
My fist to the sky—for somewhere, you would be.
Yes, absolving dreams—committing them to fade
But, yes, they fell like the snow: all around—

In the present, the past comes ‘round—ah!
My suffering is ever turning, the edges running raw.
But, I promised, I would forget—your only wish
Was n’er to be a memory, never to use apologies as
Laurels for my victory—I can’t be happy alone.

I wrote this for you some years before, long before
We were children, long before both we were born.
You danced like light, effervesced in contradiction
A love that was you-I and a bead restful in my hand
We suffered separation ‘till life, and bore flesh along.

Five years from my end of days, gold can’t travel
Nor chameleon, needless to say I knew this was one
Our parent from thence I came, to you, to me, i-you returns,
Last one last thing in darkness burns: I to see recurrently
I knew before we were ever born, all those years ago,

A dazzling iteration of extinct, mellifluous joy, that
Though on pyrrhic terms is all in all a mystery,
When five days pass we will be each other, I sleep up
And set my lips for nihility and awe, kissing at the azure bare
To float as a dream to your stars that constellate there.

One plough amongst many runs ‘cross
An infertile campus
The threat of first frost
Following in her tow
To reap one something
From the settled bed of salt.
Combing seeds in the sod,
The anchor in her womb
Drags—soon, so soon,
The distance won’t widen, the burden will stop
Her knees will buckle in debt and chance
Will lock her where she falls
Her failure will sprout and flower.
The falling sweat flashed years before
To the juice beading in single drops
A vain nectar of her other’s field,
Biding her, come, eat of appearance;
Her crop was brown, but budding,
She left her crop to die.
Unprepared for the neglected miles
She toiled in the changing leaves
And, of course, the gilded fellow
Him, the established man
Could draw her in: with gleaming ivies
Red, tight, yellow, sweet
A wine of the eyes that sits on the vine
Families of prodigality smiles with brimming bags
Baskets pregnant in promise,
Those happy mouths full of praise and food.
For there, she followed
That procession, honest, in the borrowed garden.

Death would not deign to visit me
Not with salute or fatal formality
I’ve written letters, invitations to dine
Perhaps to dance after some wine.
He has yet to entreat a call
I fear he may not come at all.
Given credit, I’m one apt to hide,
I do not tread were he abides.
Occasionally,
He responds to me
In manners and way
Peculiar for this time of day
With presage cryptic, but meaning well
That I cannot hear a personal bell
Like that of towers
When it tolls between the hours,
That his design
(this life of mine)
Will come a calm, inaudible chime
But only in my due time.
Until he comes, for him I suffer
From his disappointments I may grow tougher.
That, my friend, the worst of hells
And it seems Death, from what I tell,
Is doing his job and doing it well.

The Rainbow’s charm plumed out from the shelf
Our magician enchanting—we wait.
The stillness abates past displays of sterility
Confessions of illusions, heard in deaf regard
O, can’t we but wonder the aether controlled
How does he alone know the runes and ways?
To roundly take rein of the reinless?
His knowing eyes shy away, incantations mouthed
Avert and in despair, from proud throngs
Skeptical, but feigned, in awful disbelief.
Collectively, a sharp breath drawn
We anticipated the magic belief wove in us
Awe suspended: a mystery like clouds:
The cosmic-soul, no hero afflicted by the wastrel, man.
Another time, we resolve on this
The typical coldest day in summer.

A quiet revolution
Flashed its little white flames across the distant hill,
Its pockmarked mirror throwing
From its sudden arrest
The furry, the passion, the tumult
Back.

They burn, foreseeably fade
Such its pastiche make-up, a portrait
Of lonely little people, effaced by a vague hope
Faintly the earthen hues in which he melts.

Do I dare look with him, with her,
Towards that jutting alcove upon which
Its determined optimism finds its end
Recurrently?
I run my finger along the surrogate river line:
A whole, telling narrative—
Makes me question the lack of detail, the crude
Blotches casting shadows, deforming
Reforming, waylay the blankness
I swear, is put upon.

Hands, it says, I say,
Were once in one, drawn together as drawn in twain:
Instantaneous, as a second thought—
The cold bound them together,
Blue is transfixed on the exhaustion of intensity
They burn frigidly against
Cast from the Eden of their own hearts
Their, the single one, intensity
Leaving them bled out and scattering into the world,
Helpless to the waves of idle chatter,
Helpless to directions, east-to-west,
Helpless to the fantasies of mauve peaks abroad
Goading the stars to glimmer filthily
The feeling whose glimmer thusly ceased
If only circumstantially.

They become one with the road, recovery
Surely falls fat fruitily, under cover
Of evergreen arms, protecting ‘till then, pagan sprites,
Make due—
If you cannot hear the sound of the city far off
If you, faithless, in the endless road
You will understand when one with the earth
The forest promised emptily,
As my gaze just handed them off
To nonexistence.

Take breath of the almighty pearly city!
It holds its own hand, all they could drink in
Drunk off their own
Drunk off blithe luck—to be drawn into the world
Blurring with careless craft into the other;
Toast to our contrast!

I raise an invisible glass with diffidence—do they hear the music?
Do they dance in the eyes that hurt their hearts
Do they wonder of the other? Of what was sacrificed
To inspire quiet contemplation?
I’m witness as this reluctant martyr
Contemplates their eternity, bereft of salvation,
The other may, in the tip of the brush, alighted with red
Soaked, flecked like whiskers
With collusion and abandonment, still call out.

But, the spectacle can only fade; their gates were closed
And I am, sudden, brought to the other pockmarked mirror,
The rude proscenium, marring and barring
Those hands from ever touching.

Never should this have been the foundation
For the house of faith.
And out into the world, I tread,
On to see it tomorrow, cast in similar light.

We are here
Flames of the oil burn
Red as Passion
Then Black as the midnight
Lighted with the incandescence
In some town home’s
Low light.

We’re alight, aflame
In the hearth of heart
A huge void, nebula
We stars, are apart
While different nights flicker all the same
As planets return from whence they came

Illuminated by the spice of ***
A pact, a covenant with the sun
Burning in a blackened scrim
As though in the void, nebula
Another revolution
Arching to begin

These giants flicker, the souls of my world
These stars I call my friends
To repellant forces we’re linked in defiance
In tenacity
In camaraderie
The laws of physics
Defy US!

By its dictates we can’t know when
That what begins
Must surely end…
But we burn like stars
In the midnight air
And in my scope
And in my sky
Nothing but blackness, infinity there
As long as the earth
And all its stars exist together
I know I can't know
What does not last forever.

Water can go anywhere and I’d like to say
Where it wants to go. It screams through
A tea ***, or through the stone-sized hole
In the glass. If I shut-off from the way it
Picks up dirt in the grout, the vibrations
From downstairs will scatter it nowhere.
TV you aren’t watching becomes likes
Gossip; and below is an advertisement for
White crosses on the highway not too far
From me. This is one of many nights I
Couldn’t be bothered in, even by a calling
Star. The breath of missed time between
Us speaks to someone long gone, besides,
It won’t move me with electricity constantly
In my ears. If it happens to fall, I’ll wish on
It, in spite of facts I’m committed to for
Something slow and radical, like contentment.
Now, that’s empty and ponder-worthy, as rain
Falling from space, ready to mindless move
Across the kitchen, graciously squeezed from stone.

1?
2?
3?
4?
5?
6?
7?
8?
9?
10?
11?
12.

Fog billows over to company, drear,
Of the sad wide river, armadas of mud
Charged to go forward yet locked as they appear,
Where I am in constant motion, confined to constriction.
Noon is never as bleak as it is now
Growing ever darker
With bags beneath its eyes
And the shining sun a novelty
A flag of finitude the morning star flies.
Take up the banner since this land is conquered
Emblazoned in every miserable seam,
The mark of tragic mien.
And if this is my greeting into the world,
Surely it’s my way out,
Awakened and forced to the blurry line
Between the oughts and desires against
From here to dreams, then permanence
No other want plagues them, also, like this.
Then I’m in the company I can call my kin
Who shall greet me as I greet the day:
Et panem meum, et fratrem.

Hills ablaze
In the western sky
Smoke, it coils
Through the atmosphere
Leaving the eastern half
Charred and black
Of what the twilight could not sear.
It burns with ardor,
That western hill
The trees are tongues
And burning still
With kindling sun
Departing there.
The western coals
Can only stare
Coming hence, a blackenedness
Whose colors echo
Back and forth
From ebon South
To eerie North
There it seeks
To call it: “mine”
From black to purple
Blue—yellow
From there an angry Clementine
For sunk beneath
The faint embers
Did go indignance of the red.
The last to go
A calming blue
It leaves so peaceful
A daylight dead.

There was magic at work there, some protecting veil
I felt beyond the mobile cab, gestalt, with its felt-angelic wings
Anew, I felt safe on that bend and wind of 322.
The needle at ¾ heading back the country road
From the quiet haven of West Chester, PA, towards here:
Oh, in awed—amazed the simplicity, we both looking
Back on the other: one loquacious and I speechless,
And simple was the history—a thousand stories and I
I picked mine!—Its grantedness between the golden parallels
My incipience of joy cutting through the last dust of the silos
The thronging corn and coral-bugs celebrating me
Or is it with me, that much too.
If I had never been down yon, I feel as though I’d know your
Serpentine nostalgia all along the miles’ track
As kept as if my birthright.
Beauteous a gateway to the Juniata-home, though miles
Away from here and subject to an absent roam.
Its waves may roil ‘gainst my native door,
‘Tis this your patchwork sister on which we humans drew
That equates paths, that pining name, that road 322.
And, oh, as before I knew of thou distant eyes
Despairingly all recollections of home in the Gallery
Of Autumn fruit: plucked, transient, and rotting.
This music! Music can’t help—I hear highschool in the chords
Playing in the lyrics, transformed by my design
As meaningful, self-serving words and they all burned
And brand to home if I, if I ever can again.
But where would I go, where do wizened lines end?
Written in sullen, maddened road maps, words to that history
All my own—does it write in the river, end in the mouth?
Or the Appalachian Eden, taken on the river’s vein
To my little fall of man, a threshold barred by flaming swords
That of hate and of command, miles fatten as years accrue
Go distant past the western sun,
Down,
Down,
PA-322.

I may tend to the soil.

At 21, growing flowers with my cries for help
Feels criminal, ridiculous. Those ******* children,
On their mute petals flourish jealously
In more lush and verbal company,
But their speak fades out as color and as light
The last of the sounds is celebration and surprise.

Of course, I am tied to this soil, watching waves
And waves of new life rise in clouds of pollen,
Migrating and impatient; New things seem to form,
Divisions where there is only space barring austere tongues
Their desired juices, but I command Myself, abstain,
And keep the teeth and silence like fences
Made of mockery, ridicule, and other forms of self-control.

And yet, the time of false gods effervesces in a comforting dream
When I feign sleep, vines creeping up while I regret their invitation
Standing amongst them, beautifully crafted shapes, lacking color.
I admonish quietly, I suggest furtively, I command passively
And amongst plenty of others, I am one open eye, a slit for lamentations
And they are the doomed recanters of permanence, forever happy
Forever in death, there is no time to wither.

Thereupon the graveyard hill
The moonlight, the **** arrest me still
The forms that clasp my hands and will
Stood there as I stared into the dark.

Frightful, there, as I wasted merely
Watch Sol retreat, my beloved dearly
Left me to the crest of moon, so dreary
Whilst came the eve and her baleful art.

What emerged there I could not tell
Some ghastly mist wash’d ‘pon the knell
I knew I stood where haunts do dwell
And awaited my life, me, to thusly part.

In the dark of mind, of eyes
The visions growled with bitter despise
They laughed and mocked my bitter cries
Which rang in the frost’d dark.

From shifting tombs I heard a blast
And saw there distant the teeth that gnash
But stayed so far as my vision cast
And retreated from time to their glassy plots.

Left there was no hellish waste
But dazzling auroras in its place
So the earth mirror’d constellated grace
Here on ground, or aether was I not.

The sleepy moon produced a harp
And bid the winds to sing their part
To lift me from, to effulging stars
While forms spectate in intended spots.

The chiming bells and blissful psalms
Were to me some transcendent alms
And left their glitter in my eyes’ palms
Which refused the word, remained as thought.

Therein I saw my wrongs turned right
That evil in the dark is born of the light
And infernal black is at first white
That what I’ve feared was sun-taught.

I ran, then, from the graveyard hill
Whilst ‘cross the valley the dawn did spill
Crassly, the sun, the shades’ home fill
Leaving me blind just as at the start.

Set, did I, my pen to make
The beauties witnesses, tho’ too late
The ebon innocuous still to this date
I lost them, lost them as I stare into the light as tho’ the dark.

I’ve had small rains beat on my glasses before
And they have been worse, from the inside, and quieter
And much less poetic;
At least, there is wind to lick me dry here
At least, there are petals fat with sweet water
At least, there are stars on the corners of my eyes
At least, it rains outside me now.
If it floods in on the pavement,
And my glasses fog up when I go back in,
At least the soothing patter was wanting me,
And didn’t care if I spoke or not.
I chose to remain quiet and let storms pass
When they’ve formed high above these
Mixing, curious hands because all that keeps me dry
I’ve left inside of wooden clocks
Around the mossy roof of fallen beams
The welling pool where stupid ducks land
Does nothing for thirst, but divines the oils
A laxness of my limbs and skin glisters like a monitor
No longer need to be told to go anywhere,
I see great whales of rains bold against the surface
Draining in a vortex a pierced reminder
I’ve washed my hands too much, an urge to break mountains
To level ocean floors, for love, for pity, for awe—
All taught and told with a whole dry face.
There is no hero but the hero of undoing
And I’ve not learned enough of comfort
Between the walls that crush moment after moment
And all I can call home, is a kind of dance in the rain
Adrift from the music and all on my own.

The daytime has come
But the daylight has no sun
Only a bright moon

The night has fallen
But the darkness has no moon
Only a dim sun

Horizon is blessed
By some dread revelation
Sun exists in moon

I cannot feign the hate have men
For Winter’s barrenness
Dull and brown are hill and fen
But, oh, I cherish this.
How grey, empty the winter sky
Bitterly watching the Springtime die.
But bare, the wash, as painter’s pallet
And canvas cleaned anew
It lacks obstruction and blots of paint
From plumes of trees up high;
It opens up, so beautifully
Without undue or blotchy dye.
What’s more creative, liberating
Than perceptions’ application
Upon the canvas of winter portraits
Of open sky ruminations?

Does she believe in a half-built home?
Or its hole in the ground?
I’ve taken the roam
A wide roof I claim to my own
And how much I miss the walls
The studs that creak and waver
To savor the freedom of the breeze.
Life plays on the palm fronds
Not much hope can hang on either.

I know I think the best
When surfing across the internet
Or scanning a page for class
Some forum
To shift my ******* towards,

Whether to impress, or to forget.
It’s all the same.
I do not laugh at the right time
And end up in breakdowns
When I’m confronted with the actor that is also me.

Call it fraudulence if you will,
It’s a means to ends of the perfect relationship
I’ve fictionalized in my head.

I’ve fallen in love with falling love
And get off to just holding hands and feeling wanted.

Does memory bless me the inspiration to write down in verse
Some alternative that proves, I know,
Useless
In the long run?

Are the psychologists right?
Am I destined to die by my own hand?
My own pen?
By cause of my own disposition?

Thoughts of suicide, depression, endless solipsism pervade
My little godless world.
Poetry solidifies it.

*******. ******* whose rejection is undeserving of my hatred
Whose own life is the object of my own stupid, adolescent, immature mode
Of healing, whose subjectivity, whose humanness
Is of its own design and accord—I do not own you
You are as you are: not mine, but your own.

And I hate you because you do not oblige me as I think you should
You do as you ought, as you do—

Is this what it feels like?

Where is there happiness if not for in the end?