it
calls from the drain
that i circle
hi-lite
and underline -- twice
just in case

There once was a poem
Of which was spoken
Then taken away
Never to be heard of again

Jowl pressed against
Oven rack
Eyes placid
as a holy cow
Breathing whispered line

Giving
Taking life

Incantatory orbs sworn
Coursing forming
transfixing
The torpid
Into tor
One last time

One more
Poem
Hers
And hers alone

Conjured up rungs of rack
Her impromptu ledger
Bowed
By the weight the weight
Of galloping mouthed axes
Running full speed past
The rush the crush

Into the margins

A clever trick!
Gone from us

Handful of whitened knuckles
Inside usurped fist ******
******* no more
Open to the magnificence

She had had
All there ever was to be
For a time

Hips calligraphic lithe alive
Serifs flare up immortal coil

Her mouth speaks to me
Between my legs
A language draped in ebony curtain
Unknown and inscrutable

Rising up
Mounting me

Her fingers splayed on my chest
enter me
Five pens
Now digging
Pecks taut
Flecks of red burst
Tattooed unspeakables writ

Her stare penetrates mine
Authoring my little demise

i can count on both hands
how many times i've actually felt alive

one of them
was when
we laid under the stars

we both became
something else
that which cannot be grasped

******* existence flush

your eyes
refracting nuclear lines
that hung before our spent bodies
so very mortal
evermore uncoiled

you held my hand
but it felt dead
fist of dread

All is a graveyard
We stumble about upon epochs
of reverberating death knells
Living like leaves
upon one solemn tree
Enriched by ancestral spell below

Fallen
Not yet

Organics ancienter
-unknown-
That black-indigo before the dawn
Ground up between bedrock
Churned into an oil

We go because they went before
And we too will go
Gone from this whirl

The skull calls all

Either respond
Or don't
It does not matter

The worm is autocrat
Its dictate: feed
Excreting the creed
Again again

There is death
Then there's the sleep of Fall
Death's second self
As Shakes' leaves once penned

But the reflection of this
In this our complicated globe flitting
Is death's third self
A selfish giver left to leave

A self that is
Because of what once was

A flourishing
Sped forth by inner-whorl of seed
An intimate meeting of bodies
Being being
And been

Odi et amo.
quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?
nescio,
sed fieri sentio et excrucior*

I hate and I love.
Perhaps you ask why I do this?
I do not know,
but I feel it happen and I am torn apart.

are origami paper
there are only so many folds
you can make
the rest must be left to silence
tapered existence taken
in stride
wan swan indigo eve seen and scene

face down
back of her head
before me

the part in her hair
almost
oracular
jagged line of white scalp
a lexicon i alone will never know

i palm it and push down
activating some strange fate

and with much trembling
i carve up into her

unknown rune
lit
spell of ruin
flushed
consumes our us
the crush begun

quickened flesh fiends the bone
and wipes the faces
we wear

inside the creases of us
lies bending curses that will purge
diagonals crisscross
ivy writhing
growing bolder

a swarm of form
shape-shifting tor

torn and torn and will
no more

And we
both become
transfigured
spent
two loosed beings again

observe ----
it hangs
from one single thread --

which in turn
hangs
from a further thread --
itself dangling

from the worn pincers of an old fool
recluse inside his comfy house of laughs
inside a room
where four taciturn gods stand
mute inanimate still solemn blank --

one of which
tilts its wilted head --
and with eyes absent
up inside his thinking thoughts
he sheds warm pools of dark stills --
unspeakable pictures spilled --
onto a being stuck
inside an existence
that has become
fully acknowledged as such

threadbare despair
despairing still  
and still
it remains
the simple bloom tumult
that wills and will

your face is flush
flowering the color Van Gogh
but beneath the bloom slouches
a thing defanged
grayed coiled
struck
by nothing anymore

she once had striking features
now
the skull calls
your teeth have become you

i want your words
to become one hand gripping
the swell below

I always become
Nostalgic
When I'm deep into the bowels
Of nature.

At first I thought
It was Camp Wildwood
Coming back to me --

Capture the Flag --
My crush and I, Sarah,
In the woods alone
Using inside-jokes and "strategy"
As a knife
For the tension
Swelling up inside of us
a forbidden bloom that never was --

But it isn't that.

It's the genes inside of me
Ancient ones
Deep Prehistoric spindles lit
Crimson tooth claws laws
Of an order
With no defined border
Knuckles whitened ***** firing
Mounting and
Muscling out the moral

i'm so tired
of wanting to become something --
grand designs
doing pirouettes in my little head --

i just
need
more time
to think things through

plastic tines
stab at forks
in the road

silly you!
trying to stop the decision-making process
like a child
with a rhyme

speaking of the devil,
for a limited time only,
**** the walking dread
that paces at the foot of your being
like a thing in need --
how? thought you'd never ask ---
i'll get to that, in due time

-- i will say this though: it's not with an ax
or bow
or some moralized TV show
nope

nothing like that

the need to be
to be --
that

is the imperative --
timeless
tasks tasked with go-forth --

we feed on it --
always pressing forward
always-already doing things,
going places, lurching concern,
consuming steps steps steps

listen

progress is
a stone alone inside my pocket
-- watch it
bloom tumultuous
into a decision to be undone ----

I am
The backward startle
Flesh made text

Know this:
All will be retraced till
All that remains is
a waiting cursor --
Blinking blinking
Blank page staring
Into your you --
The mess undressed, ****** --
Don't unfuck it --
Allow it --
Let it ******* for a time

Then go hardly softly into the night
With steps alighting
Bold events of past doings lit
Given another chance

The was made present
A specter sent
To turn the insides of your bones
Into channels --
Canals of then-time (makes sense)

Get to know the script
Then flip it
Budge its molecular structure
See its words squirm
Make its serifs recoil
And strike at your command

Crazy? Yes
Impossible? Perhaps
But your verse must be heard
The play goes on and on and on
Until you decide
To interrupt it

i saw a crane the other day.
it was foraging in the brook.

two thin lines
stepping stepping
stopping
observing

it almost looks human
the way it moves
thoughtful, careful, hesitant even
negotiating its footing

gooney majestic grace
unfurling ballet -- for me -- amid
babbling brooks and nature's hooks

i cried
i wept like a child

---- no, i didn't

i didn't cry
i didn't weep
but i wanted to
i wanted to cry
i felt like i should have

i wanted
to cry

i should have been able to feel
to have feelings

night drew in
abrupt
i didn't see it coming
lost in thoughtlessness' pauses
retracing the cursive of it all
left with
blank pages bound, blinking cursor

i killed two mosquitoes

then left

i kicked a stone
down the path

i have ******
i have felt
but i have never
(not once)
been in love

not "well, maybe once"
nope
never
have i

been in love

been in love
it rolls off the tongue
with a force of its own
a cascade of eddies
flit about the edges

a past tense
slave to the future

been in love
a remembered caress
a needle
a sledgehammer
either way
it does not stammer
it babbles on
a brook a crook

we consent
not to its content but its
unmistakable steps
we bend
to its
innocence

the way it moves consumes

it is, i think, in a sense
what makes us want it
so much
it is what steals the breath

air replaced with
babbling
over tome of stone

i have gladly
taken a scalpel
to its made bed
revealing bones alone

did you know that
in your periphery -- right now -- stands a
worriesgoneyayperfection that
turns to dust if
you look at it?

serrated blame
pressed down against skim
Shame
thought I caught glimpse
of me
as blame angled in

The hunt for something realer

took a walk up the street
just to see if I could still feel

my molecules
Squirm shift like the seraphim
to become to become
but all I transcend is
day into knifed

so now I grip a different angel
cold aloof primal
uncompromising wing
Slips in

Existence
Is a tired pill
That I no longer take
It takes me

I'm the sad sad puddle
That you step over
Out of place
Always reflecting about
Reflecting - Never doing
****** by a blank cerulean sky
That once read coulda

Looking back on it,
Even the corpse
That I have yet to become
Is bored to **** with my life.

I dissolve
When I'm in the thick of nature
It turns my brain off (for once)

Smells cast spells
Sounds surround
I am finally in it

I feel
Sparse

Whittled down
To bone and breath

Arabesque complexity nixed
And I am
OK with that

My worries
Go extinct

Remember this very moment
when an is
became a was -- spectral flits --
The past slipping in and around you --
And you were totally in it

Almost

I give zero ***** anymore.
I have no more ***** to give.
I'm totally absolutely incontrovertibly
fresh out of *****.
My supply of *****
is completely out -- see??
[cupboard door swings open
Only to reveal
a fuckless cupboard]

Even the **** Store is out of *****.
I called them just now,
The guy on the phone said he was
Fresh out --
He told me:
The production and manufacturing
Of ***** has been outsourced
To Shenzhen China,
And the workers are striking
Because they are getting paid
Fifteen cents an hour to produce
6 ***** a second --
Which is inhumane and just wrong.

I asked him why they didn't pay better --
He said, ***** if I know! Like I said,
I'm fresh out of ***** to give
So who gives a ****?

Deep down
I crave the sacred
Now that everything is
Just a dust mote limping along
The curvature of a light beam
in this dilapidated house

I've winked
At everything but the kitchen-sink --
Although, I do have my eye on it

Cynic
Know-it-all that knows he knows
Nothing
Conflicted

I wish I knew subtlety

Mona Lisa's quarter-smirk
Makes my emojis feel
Sorta slutty --
like they try too hard ya know?

^.^

Heaven:
Rainbow-colored
toothbrush mustaches
And
Killer drones friended by elm trees

Dissimulation is
my religion
Because
it just explains things,
It walks back the big crutch
It makes gods into amoebas

All. I. have. are. words.
******* scribbles.
Stillborn syntactical limbs of whim
Severed at the moment of send

Yet still
I deliver and hold them
Close to me
They are my ex-press
A last confession straight to the quick

The world doesn't spin it screams
We just Van Gogh it with
Slurry nite nite sleep tight's

God, what I would *give

my greatest fear used to be:
that I'll carve bodies
in pixel, and
unknowingly
plagiarize another's crime scene.
now? I fear that I am plagiarism --
the usual (as usual) --
my body a bruised copy of a copy
on a blah metal slab
toe tagged: *the yooosh

Just a second ago
I cut my own risks
And watched myself slip around
In a pool of acquiescence

crumpets and tea,
taken with grinning powdered wigs
go scrumptiously well with a Mozart piece played in the tired drawing room;

Tchaikovsky's Fifth
would have the subject alone
in the vestibule,
ear against the ballroom double doors of ornate mahogany,
muffled and muted and just being;

Philip Glass
Is
The oppressed past lit --
A futuristic glance
over one's shoulder
Regifting an overrated present

We met for coffee; well,
I had coffee and she had tea.
Her pics didn't do her justice --
Chin prim
Lips cursive
Skin that swam under mine,
Making the porcelain creamer cup blush.

She claimed
she had a quarter million members
That followed her.
it's good money she reasoned,
But not gloating;
More matter-of-factly.
Off the cuff,
I asked for her stage name.
She explained that she blocked NY
For work and family reasons,
Assuming I had asked so to
Watch her perform later
(Which isn't altogether untrue).

She measured every utterance,
Teleprompters behind eyelids
Feeding her perfectly crafted lines.

I use the Golden Ratio when I webcam
She said, as she sipped her tea.
I consider it an art -- or
At least that is what I tell myself.
I asked her to elaborate.
She said she was somewhat conflicted
About whether or not it was immoral.
But she was so even
With her response,
Almost as if it were compelled
By a formality
That was now checked off her list.

Her body language taciturn
Asleep, idle, screen-saved
Waiting waiting

Curve and line
Coffined for now to slake desires anon -
Her numbers in slumber, confined
Waiting to be crunched,
Flatlines Animated by pitchblack revelry
With one click

Turning them.

She said she liked to watch others
ya know, To see how they move.
She would even watch it at work,
Open in one of her browser tabs.
She took notes.

Lines triangulated
Liminal spaces given, hidden.

Digital lipstick smears
Tattooing amygdalas firing --
Allow them to slip in
Only to slip out of them
With an X.

We talked for an hour
And then left the café.
She asked me over.
I said not tonight --
The words coming out
As if willed by something
Outside of myself.

She walked off into the dark
And I kicked myself for saying no.

Her curves beholden to math --
Gyration of hip and waist,
Arms tendrils configuring, cavorting,
Slave to an inner-whorl
twirled and twirling --
One single objective truth, now
A convergence of secreting plurality
Into beauty and beauty and

That night I ****** off thinking of her
And came so hard
I pulled something in my back.

In between sleep and waking life
I transcended
Something.. I felt

Turned.

Bat on window sill
Still as the unflinching
Lidless abyss --
Then a quarter turn of its head --
Its beady eye catching streetlight --
Careening it off into a nonplussed
Night of nights.

It's mine.
Observe
The way it careens light --
Taking, then
Jettisoning it --
Slickfastwhirrs stammer about its orbit.

And I
Try to capture it; it being, of course,
The thing illuminating
The space between eyes flitting,
Flipping through entire books of you
with one look --

And with a flick of the wrist
I produce
A pixel of muscle
over might

If I may.

It's silly, really
I know.
But it's mine, all mine.

We unfriend so easily --
mice clicking

Memories --
Just a bunch of ******* memes --
Nicely, slickly

I traverse these curses
like a standoffish simile
writing i still luv u, k? to metaphors torn
between your reality and

mine.

The simple pirouette of "less is more"
Is itself a palimpsest
When you are you.
My deep divers fail to resurface. Truth.

Instead of being alongside you --
Apart yet with you --
I am stupidly fixed on
being all the way inside you --

Bodies twisted and twisting,
as your thighs ride into hips, and
mine into necks,
gaunt, spent, hung.

Visions are paired with -im's.
The eyes are
mouths of syntax maxed.
Ya know?
Yes of course you do --
The I's and We's are all elbows-n-knees,
Their voodoo looks are nooks
That hush the crannies. Look,
Don't you lecture me with your
Dictionary of dearth kept tableside
Like a biblical sigh
I know I know -- so there!
Crouching
Disavowaled owls eyes wide
shut up.
Yes yes, I know that
If I'm not careful,
These words will be
The life of me.