a fragile mountain of tiny clothes,
piled griefly on the floor,
unused and
of no more use to this oncebrief family anymore.

we should set fire to it. no,
we should expire within it. no,
we should pick up knives and in our denial of it know
finality of pain.

yet something stays the hand—

something and:
that no matter how intense the hurt,
you were, however faintly, too upon this Earth.
with us of us in us
you must   remain.

God, let us pray never to forget that day.

remembering it most when
we move through this hideous volume of silence,
                 in a house;
of broken geometry,
moving forward everything recedes,
waiting for something to happen. anything but the pale
sameness.

yet something stays the hand—

your face then
your eyes opening again
breathe in

this hope,
worth all the ******* pain in the world,

my dear little girl
in Heaven.

across the grass, the highrise
becomes the horizon,
as i lie on my back in the park,
and the line that separated land from sky
runs now vertically on
through evening into the dark.

After autumn's leaves depart, the branches
hang like spiders after dark, impending
winter moons and ice: The night advances.
Silence echoes the silently standing
trees. Ravens sail upon the frosted breeze,
and the small burrow for the longest sleep.
A cold rain collects in puddles of unease,
The naked forest unobscures a deep
uncertainty about tomorrow,
And the foxes speak in quiet snowfall voices
of the days that were and will be hollow,
Lanterns light a carriage.              Doubt rejoices.
In the dusk black vegetation spreads like cracks
in glass. The carriage scratches tracks
into a muddy past.

a man leans as i leave
the office building—against it,
dark and young,
his face has emptied
of expression, and innocence
has fallen away like drying sand from a stone in the sun,
i do not look at him,
in passing,
out of respect, i tell myself,
but know: out of fear
of connection i do not speak to him.
next morning, he is not
there is only a mound of sand,
which, in my name,
the city workers and the wind sweep and carry away.

but does He please you?
asked the snake. nightfall in the
garden of eden

/1975/ My mother died,
And forever cold she burned: cremated
No ceremony, no final goodbye,
Her will leaving me uncompensated.
Alone but for her ashes in the urn,
Which sometimes buzzed like bees and wheezed like breath,
I kept it shut until the day I learned,
That she would be my burden even after death.
Now every day I lift that hideous lid,
Remove the tiny skeleton within,
And place screeching in its awful stead,
Held by the tail, still in its fleshy skin,
A freshly caught rat / Hungry ash covers,
The dead too devour their living lovers.

The idea had been growing in my brain,
Queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal,
They are all animals anyway,
Become a person like other people,
Organization is necessary,
All the animals come out at night,
There never has been any choice for me,
Wash all this **** off the streets. My body fights,
There is no escape. I am God's lonely man,
Headaches that stay and never go away,
Thank God for the rain. Wash the garbage and
cannot put it back together again,
One day there will be a knock on the door,
and it will be me. What hope is there for (me?)

we are astronauts,
alone,
among the stars seeking solace
in an infinite unknown.
we are suns.
we are daughters
of carbon—gravity-bound
to disposable celestial bodies
revolving against a cosmic background
radiation.
we are space stations.
we are planets,
populated sparsely.
if to each other we matter,
we matter only darkly.

celebrate your /
self / ish / nature : I / I / I
am ill-
usory.

summer heat
beating up from sticky asphalt
     has dissipated
autumn cools the world
bathing us in its solid shade
under an umbrella
     of breezy rustling colour:
as summer leaves
autumn leaves
arrive

The red waves of an azalean sea,
Foaming in crimson and pink and ruby,
Break on the soft green grass shore before me,
Behind them / Looming / Snow capped / Mount Fuji,
Oh, how much I wish right now to be,
Surrounded by these florid waters,
To swim into the painted scene and see,
To exist as colours—in eternity.

I have said all that's to be said,
And you have listened,
And I have listened,
To the end, gaining what?
Our words are co-absurd,
Inexpressive turds of information,
Dung heap of nonsense,
Good will with perfect enunciation,
But crawling with itch, twitch and head-nod,
In place of mutual understanding,
A babelmist of manners and small talk,
In which we are umbrella-less,
Soggy with positivity,
But it's for the best, I guess,
Have a good day, till tomorrow then?
Finally! Until, tomorrow, we say it all over again.

Dawn-walking together, Beagle and I,
In a city grey and a'slumber-still,
On fading scent-paths of yesternight,
Down'by presence' past, toward the what-will (what-will).

"Credit? Debit?" / "Mastercard."
Card goes in. Entering PIN.
BeepBeepBeepBeep. Remove card.
Processing—I listen
to the cold ambient music.
"Thank you, and have a nice day."
"You too." / The cashier sounds sick.
I have nothing more to say.
The same words repeated day
after day. a ritual
antipathetic display
of our common plastic soul–
lessness.

A thousand beetles scurry up a hill,
Above, a hundred foreign beetles wish them ill,
Their rifle sights through slits in concrete bunkers weave,
A spiderweb of fire.

Now grieve each carapace, dry and still,
As you aspire to one day k*ll
or die defending your concrete tomb upon the hill,
For your, as every, generation seeks,
Glory to the strong! Death to the weak!

we are lapses in
judgement, human and divine
accidents alive

cup of tea passed round and round,
two steeped plants grown in the ground,
take a drink, and taste and think,
liquid flowing down the pink
throat / sound of silence, silence of the sound
of retching and the wretched world
got drowned—curdled, and
unwound:
reality spun into a sink,
inability to blink,
plaster cracking veins, blue and green,
spores falling
beneath a peeling skin now seen
the consciousness of which our minds are but
receivers and a screen,
if I want to scream, I'll scream
if I want to end, I'll end
but on the flow will go forever and—
on my bike I ride
knowing I am not I but eye
which from up on high perceives
I and I and I
and round and round the spoked wheel spins
without / within
asking: Albert Hoffman never left,
so where has he been?

blackbird alighted on a branch,
frosted branch,
     deepest winter,
setting free the accumulated snow,
which fell,
     slow,
     like flour through a sifter,
and in one descending
flake,
     we are,
a universe apart,
reflecting briefly in the dark.

That gibberish he talked was city speak,
Gutter talk near the Tannhäuser Gate:
Memories, you're talking about memories,
Moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain,
All I could do is sit there and watch him
die. Slow thing and he fought it all the way,
Where do I come from? Where am I going?
Go to Hell or go to Heaven, I'm afraid,
That's a little outside my jurisdiction,
Fiery the angels fell / deep thunder rolled,
Ships on fire off shoulder of Orion,
More human than human is our motto,
I watched him die all night. To have feelings,
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.

coffee cup broken
pieces strewn across the floor
sharp words were spoken
now we are silent;       no more
(s)weeping;    sad ceramic gore

pain succumbs to numb
nests decay in the twilight of the fall
ing rain

Mud bath
Doc Martens
                        Back of head
Off the beaten path
                        Still beaten
But at least not dead
*******, they said
Don't understand what I did
But was
Drowning in the ground
One day they'll come around
To me

Doc Martens
                        Back of head
Off the beaten path
                        Still,
                        Beate­n
Dead.

buzzing flies / warm blood
carcass of a slain cow through
abattoir windows

root of all evil
a man | hanged in every home
                look in the mirror

we blossomed once
in the desert
two green weeds
seeking rootless pleasure
now flower bedded
horticultured—yet wistfully I miss
the *****
of cactus lips

chisel into rock
from no-form form: extracting
the sculpture within

Remember black winds of November nights,
rattle your bones, chill your marrow,
quiver time's arrow and rip the world's white
veil from a skeletal face. Throw
it. Watch it fold, caught on the cathedral,
high church of the ossified faithful,
whose whispered prayers will calcify us all.
Unveiled, the world is bones without a soul,
rattling as it grinds, creaking as it turns.
A flag flies / Calcium collects in urns.

Snow. Globe / Newspaper
:: tycoon revealed as nothing
but a boy, taken
from mother / Nature simple
as a sled burning: "Rosebud."

Ducks upon the surface of a lake
Of man-made run off
What great ripples they make
Diving under, flapping their wings
Without asking I wonder
Why for ducks water is water
Glacial or sewer-bound
Backswamp or uptown reservoir
It's not maker but mark which matters
So why is this distinction so profound to me?
Why Nature's acts
     Do I endeavour to explain
Whereas for man's
     I seek firstly to lay blame?

at this rate we die
beheaded by the second hand
nervous tick of hours

I was born too late
to make it to work on time.
Tick-toxicity.

like water to ice
passion freezes into nice
words / hard hearts / love cracks.

drums, as if; like quarterthump-thump
to the walking bassline, note after
note noted sax notes excavated some
-one -where -how 'lin screamin solo is hurt
in melody exploded (ain't got one)
pieces in a key of perpetual change
mode devours mood on sheets of sound
kind of giant blue steps taking miles by train
the future's improvised     and inwardbound.

sorry, say the strong
to the weak ones they despise
empathy is lies

Rip the saintly halo
From above your hallowed brow
To see how it obscured
A deep satanic vow
As through your skull are sprouted
                   Two twisted bony horns:
A rose no more disgracing
A beautiful stem of thorns

Gravity died,
Or so it seemed to us, who were to die,
All loose objects vortical,
Yet static,
                 car spinning,
side over side, the policeman said,
No one could've survived,
Radial blur
All in the rearview
Thud of impact, Thud of stillness
No screams till the spinning wheel ceased
and then only one,
                                 melting like snow upon asphalt.

I told her: I know of such a place,
where the cats all come to die.
I asked her: do you want to see it?
She answered: no.
I told her: it's clean and it's important.
I told her: it's bright and it's first.
I asked her: do you want to see it?
She answered: no.
She said it in such a way
that I had to turn away from her.
Ever since then
I am slowly
approaching the exit.

In the beginning the sky was cold butter,
hard and riddled with kernels of corn,
which, as the world heated, popped:
And thus the clouds were born.

72 floors up
through sheets of pristine glass, cold
as cut from glacier,
the neon city lights are fire,
burning a receding horizon to ash,
swirling snow static,
legs dangling, lips draped with bubblegum,
fingertips depressing keys,
bit by bit arriving at the erasure
of the virtual,
a corporation of thieves.
she executes; post-execution
she breathes.

He brought spiders to the schoolyard
      to crush them
He attended Julliard
      to learn Bach's partitas for violin
He pays women to undress for him
      and beats them
Knowing culture is a game
      we play
The boy and the man are the same
      composition
Performed in various ways
      the notes stubbornly remain
What's born cannot be changed
      one musical phrase
Nurture is Nature's
Dais

decay is a song
     of varicoloured leaves
sung in winter's tongue
     to summer as she grieves

i have a time machine
in my head
a perk
of being human
and not yet being dead
called the default mode network
made by evolution
or by god
it tethers me to my self
in space
and engenders a temporal circumvolution
of my present place
in time
mostly the revolution's fine
but
sometimes
while in the past
i think of all my selfs that didn't last
or that never came to be
and feel a sadness
which presently cannot pass
of all the good that could
but isn't me
which the doctors call depression
and i
my own war of the austrian succession
in which the pain
of each ****** campaign
finally resolves in stalemate
of the brain
of memory and—
it's time to take the pills again:
SNRI
which stands for i no longer want to die
for now
for my dmn takes me away
to a future of everything that could still be
all the possibilities
for death for guilt for shame
is it insane
to forecast each day
a rain
of every way
to fail, and in failing stain
the sky which looms across tomorrow
or at least tomorrow as imagined
by the brain
in permanent gloom
or anxiety, the doctor's say
or weak besieged khartoum
the mahdi pounding on the walls
and we huddled starving in the dark
waiting every day for the end, violently
delayed but inevitable anyway, a massacre
of all
bodies laid one upon the other until they form a hill
their shadow paints me cold—
time for another pill:
SNRI
i no longer want to die
my time machine
my i
my perk of being human
of living and of having not yet died
time for another pill:
time travel
makes
me
ill

the wind beats the stalks
bent, they do not break; they rise
grass lives; the wind dies

ants protest the rain
in vain / water flows / terrain
specked with ant remains

her face framed—by
e, she said—
      the train window—
                   as it pulls away

I hold the tool. I am the blade. I drive
myself into the fertile ground. I dig
potatoes out. They were buried alive,
but in darkness they thrive. Now the old pig
will feast. When he grows fat I will slay him
to feed me and kin. I don't like killing
but when necessary it's not a sin.
I shall live another year, God willing.
I have long been on the land. I am old
but my sun is not yet setting in the
sky. When I was a child I was told once by
my father you become earth when you die.
If so, I hope my children carve my chest
with blade. I hope I'll yield a fruitful harvest.