Feed to me a current so that I may have an adversary

It’ll help carry the bones home when our wars are done

Remembering how we’d dislodged our lives

Torn them clean from the earth

Stolen to ***** cairns too tall to climb

Even for nimble us

Allow me then to stack my bricks up against yours

Measure if you must

They can topple continuously 

Mine were bound to from birth

Build with them a wall against which I can press

In my very own war

Crumble the pieces into a fine powder

To be blown out of hand and spun
 into a wind-turned eye

Call it salt and litter our croplands with it

It is standard procedure

That nothing lives long enough to learn how to mock itself

Watch it slip from your hands 

Watch the line slip from mine

No chance of less slack on my own volition 

Better a contained current in some watery recess
Than a fought one upended in thundering torrents
Better to quell the urge to hurl oneself toward it 

Than to hold taut a line tied to a drowning stone

And the ships were fogbound for three days
Their hulls split smiling wide by the spray of the channel
We're hovering with them in the dimness of a drunk sun crawling under
A dusk devoid of color
Welcome rainclouds follow countless bouts of bleakness
Slate-gray miasma of refinery exhaust swirls
Mingling skyward with the overcast scene and all it's gulls and cranes
Cawing in the dampness toward their roosts under jetties
Those frayed hurricane tarps on dilapidated rooftops
Laid creased and faded by morose Texas suns
Epitaphs blotting dismal landscapes of copper and olive
And smashed concrete begging to be reclaimed by nature
As all of it is when the seasons heave
Our interim footnotes disguised by the power of purpose
The notion that one day our role will be to make life better for each other
(Oh, how we loathe being found out)
Instead of grimacing, sage-like, naked and angelic in our blindness by the mirror
While each shred of truth oscillates into blue ruin and we shake, shake, shake
Mesmerized by houses where we once lived and stories we must have led in them
In varied and skewed alternate realities, and in dreams we once had
Some of which paint homage to our own grim summers here
Some in which where my roads leading home were less obfuscated
Instead being laid out like the chemtrail creases drawn solemn on our brows
(We won't notice them until our thirties)
This far south, everything is the ageless vacuum we've known since conception
Thusly we're bound to the irony of it all by dull tradition and the will to break it
Among all other shams bred real by the ambitions of confused white men
Their warring remains reigning evident within my crooked heart
Under whichever corner of earthen floor it may be buried
Your guess is as good as anyone's

One eye lined a rippling void in our favor
Two lights aimed to dither coherence astray
A spark may be one
A pyre, another
Two methods by which we may aptly narrate
These volumes which artifice rendered impassive
Some lifetimes ago
As if carved out of stone
Upon faces that masons could not replicate

We taxed ourselves harsh by indulging old spirits
But graver the crime was to give them a name
The deepest transgression of all, incorporeal
Our memories in the end gave us away
Yes, nostalgia seeps in through the gaps in our logic
To shepherd the currents beneath those blue waves
As if tides could be altered by such visitation
And oceans stood frozen with forces concealed by
Some gravities borne of celestial weight

Reluctant to wake and depart Colorado
My surrogate mother
Our canvas to paint
Expressions whipped dry by the skirt of her leather
And eardrums wrung pierced by the crags and the scree
If I leave now this portal may vanish forever
I could leave my sins here in the chill of the Springs
Release them down mineshaft chutes long since abandoned
In futile attempts to abscond the unclean
And rise to leave haunts of offenses unstated
To come crawling back from the dead
Southbound with me

Hold out, I was told
With arms to receive
You'll make sure to keep your hands steady for me
I'm soaked to the core with my soul and voice breaking
With eyes for your heart and its formless cascade
And my pail with dozens of holes to redeem
An abundance of squalls brewed behind both those seams
The light crosses your path
And you won't look away
When I question by which laws such mirrors are made

And it all seems so cruel that we're drawn here to suffer
To be teased and transfixed by what glimmers remain
I can drum up what strengths I have left to ignite you
I'll shout even louder when you forget your name
I'll relearn every way that I've known how to love you
But we're taught to process what we cannot maintain
Yes, our hearts are irreparably torn in this way

A heart is a war, a heart is a shutter
One stream of light is allowed to escape
Far into your chambers a ceiling is painted
Mosaic by name, but truer to form:
An electrical storm we ourselves engineered to
Perpetuate evils eluded before
In the grimness of what lies behind the mind's door
When we met as two fangs in the jaw of a serpent
And you were the flares arcing up towards the sky
And I was the lens overawed by your light
Yes, I was what bent you with colors diffracted
Now I am that glass which your mildew begrimes
Color me flyblown, or color me blind
Marred are the edges around this old glass
The ink inundates and the horn is all hollow
Latched is our gate when the causeways collapse
Besieged now in my ocean of ink
Scanning the night sky for sign of a flare
No whisper, no shutter, no lingering there

I’ll see you all in heaven soon
We’ll all be wearing blue
Underneath, as naked as ever
The way we always intended

I’m thinking, this is where we part ways
Off to practice being ourselves
Astral planes of each our own
Gathering gemstone truths in silence

Ninety-nine percent
Similar brain chemistry as before
But where is the cusp
Where we stop recognizing each other
When overwhelming time
and knowing
in knowing
Becomes a gap too vast to trek
We’ll meet there, anyway
In spite of all the space between
To gawk at each other’s beards and wrinkles
Only when we’re lost like so
Will we have arrived in heaven

But it should be the same as before
If not better, always better
Nothing lateral or linear
But outward, upward, onward
Forward thinking
Ghastly traps that rope us in
It’s better this way, it has to be
Screams raving logic

I’m thinking, this is when we shake our heads
This is when we bolt and run
Into each other again with only
Honest intentions
We’re each other’s salvation
Backlit by bonfires
We’re all someone’s Messiah

On days where clocks of ours lay stricken
Suspended between parallels, again
I’ll see you all in heaven there
Without the faintest murmur
Of ill-intended anything

Wild-eyed optimism
“Younger-than thou” seizure throngs
Celebrate the carving out of
misunderstandings from history books
Party’s done, now go away
Small prices paid for playing host

Space capsule offspring bent
on defiling human fibre
Who, whining loudly in unison
To have it their own way
The better way of course is theirs
Never never worry
It’ll make you grow too old

Our shoes are still piled high in the corner
As we ourselves are in bed
Clumsy and cute but with collective resignation
Our clothes in artlessly incriminating puddles
Divided floorbound like playing cards
The crude magic of arousal
Tricks us into losing them, one by one
With no respite and no mercy
Until we're robbed blind enough  
To then borrow whatever remains

Exiting the void without

Sinking noiselessly into my third skin

The daylight behind, a trailing blur

What happens in the night makes less sense



First suit donned when in groggy waking light

Momentary protests at the dawn

Fumbles with our old mechanics 

Still creaking from the evening’s slumber 



Second when, in flash-bang charge

The workman’s curse sets cast its truths

En route to jobs and errands laden

so heavily without grit or grin

Sea legs now acquired 

Us, with our souls bound by order

So eager for the day to end

Hours lost and hours spent 



And when the clocks call for quittin’ 

Sudden surge of tired smiles

Play light the facts that choke our freedoms

Setting out now to town to celebrate them with friends



None for me though, I’m a goner

What happens in the night makes less sense

A step towards home is both backwards and on

Leaned back to indulge a simpler sigh


I’m always leaning back on something

Crutches groan and boulders shudder

Captured moments deep in pockets 

Whatever helps the day roll by

Bending in the breeze
Little satellite martyrs
Silently earthbound

Hourglass suspended
Whispering in the driveway
Effervescent glow

Business of birds
Curious inclination
Feathered dinosaurs

White oak sentinels
Unknowingly contribute
Soon to all be bare

Distant voices hum
Neighbors are running errands
Inaudible tasks

Visceral lenses
Golden season takes its course
Contrived wordlessly

Brown figure stalking
intently towards a front door
the UPS guy!

Going indoors now
But not because I want to
My *** is asleep

Caught on the softest azure cloud
Ruminant noises drifting
Buzzes of no consequence
Call for attention nonetheless
Arrived today on my doorstep
The humming mental spaces found
Lifted in airy somber cloud
It won’t be cruel, I think
this time


No need for alarm
To quake the fabric of this place
These walls don’t move
Fractured boundaries broken still
Past visits from the same blue menace
Fears bottled for future virility
Nightmarish mysteries a veil


Won’t be wary now
To be kept warm by apparitions
Events transpired underwater
When I lived underwater and
Not only ankle-deep
It’s all better now
To compare is to regret

Turncoat faith in work, in the old world
What value in your toils
Futile swear-words and broken shards of glass
Caught in your eye, put ‘em there yourself
But you knew no better

The world was an ugly, dismal place
But it was all okay for you
so charged to task and back
Every single day
Like any of it meant anything

But rise up the old world did
Intrepid race to innovate your
Father’s and father’s flaws
At once
All worth a ****
“It’s all worth a ****!”
Voices ringing in your cradles
Grandad Uncle Sam
a suit-coat conviction urging
GO
Wield for us the changing tides
Gotta believe in something anyway
Why not yourselves?

Adventist gene pool satire
Odd sciences in, only the ones
that God ordained to be
Capitalized
Identical regretful mug
You all wear it

Balding crowns on white oaks bend
With hues of copper, autumn red
Cascading tears of summer’s end
Around the head of winding trail

Swiveled sights, to west I think
To higher road, the longer route
Of upward path and downward leaf
And acorn kicked by toe of boot

Off quarry’s precipice I stared
And stalked my way down switchback’s sway
A clearing under open sky
Suspended time in humid air

Dreary miles above the trees
Snatched up my thoughts from where I kneeled
A marble laid by thorough hand
Miasma swirls in charcoal field

Though it behooves me to confide
In scenes of dreamscapes carved in wood
The pendulum of modern life
Beckons me onward as it should

Keep your peace, keep it near
Hang it beneath your eyes
and in your deepest of pockets
Ending of breaths
When you’re out teetering
On the edges of all things
of which you’ve grown so fond
a Balcony, front porch, car window
Whispering names to the abyss
Seeking her face in a crowd
and curves in gentle tufts of smoke

Haunted by the voice in the dark
In the corners
Though it is all your own
Multitudes of chatter
Speaking all at once
Cannot ousting the quiet
Boisterous rings of silence  
Hangs heavy in the air
Drowning all, muffling words
Numbs every sense

But I have left myself here
to be drowned
This dismal, tangled world of
Decaying empty spaces, wasted
Where nothing is the way it should be
And no one is the wiser
Such is the universe I’ve made
Where I laugh about being mad
and you helped too
Everyone chipped in

Forced cogs tinkered to
We manufactured our weariness, you and I
Cut from the same cloth evenly

Burst seams on our paper-slim Bedouin souls
Footpaths crossed by happenstance
But it was called a different name

Dampness from corners of eyes torn
From mediocrity to mediocrity
We hung ourselves from pendulums
We aged heavy as boulders do
And the voice of our clock drowned hours into static
Like the half-assed shoves of breath
That carried our wishes downwind in the summer

Our clock was a mirror then
With all those spinning parts
I only saw my own arms moving
Saw them heaving so
A mechanical Atlas, bearing upward the load
Salvation gained by loosening grip on it all

These haunts, these woes resurface
These selves of mine so cleverly buried
But never very deep

Only within the cloud of our story
And all the pretty little words that comprise it
And whichever inflection chosen
One voice at a time
Like painting with a single color

Such fury with which our inner oceans are churned
By myriad lives unspent in the illusory realms of duty
Ancient whispers under fissuring heathen altars deafened
With one blurred arm in the locusts' swarm
We shudder to bury the Old Gods
Their reticence echoing volumes into this new Armageddon