the sun belongs too
the night travels swift-like like
the heart beats:
scared

dont move, she said. he—
felt the cold loaded gun. they
d been betrayed:
cops.

do you remember
days of being young
the creaky swing
we pushed each other on
as the horizon
rising and falling like a scythe
sliced away
the moments of our lives

see me beneath the tree
slumbering peacefully
let me be let me be
blue sky inkwell of time
within i dip my quill
life is lines life is lines
lines is all it shall be
written deceitfully
set me free set me free

Duskland
Day's portending glow
divided by the room we're in
                           verted, lit from below
our shadows cast on ceilings loom
disfigured by the self-consuming gloom
of doom we ourselves evoked
in youth
Tooth for a tooth,
In short: revenge: the word we never spoke
As the hammer fell on his existence
Bludgeoning his dull, swollen resistance
Toward a ****** stillness
That, we hoped, would equal calm
But instead has led us
to the
Duskland

crepuscular predation
**** the waning sun
weakest of the herd of stars
its luminance is almost done

summer lingers on
september on and on and
gone /   chill of october dawn:
pink frost, dew, warm bed, me, you
          —till the alarm clock turns on.

early eve, an august day,
the shadow's long but
end of summer still far away,
the heat is less
than it was yesterday,
the sun is less by then-until-today,
but already I am burying it all away,
nightfall echoes,
people,     on their way home,
that's the way it all goes.
early eve, an August day,
a warm wind blows
life down the hallway of the choices we have made,
it used to be may and may it be
may again someday

The sun set over the Hamptons that night,
A golden egg cracked into the ocean,
We napped on the beach. Goose bumps. Wrapped tight,
Warm blanket. Waves. Shared ear buds. She sang
solely for us sitting so comfortably
on the precipice of forty. If only
we had known this would be the best day,
we could have begged the dripping sun to stay
afloat but then we would have always known
the sun will never rise as high or shine
as brightly as it did. Each day a slow
erosion of the New York coastline,
degradation of the mind. Please remember—
even when I don't—our summer in September.

the best has come and
gone—burned, never to return:
ashes in an urn.

The mountain grows much slower than your perception of the mountain growing taller, as the dynamics of the sea, which sculpts the earth beneath your feet, speaks—summoning the breeze: isn't it surreal, living on God's pottery wheel?

night wears a skin
of cold velvet
stippled with pores
through which illumination
prickles as the intergalactic whiskers
of Schrodinger's cat
catching the scent of gravity

let the gravestone say:
he was buried like was born,
crying and alive.

Every poet is a fake
eyewitness, peddler of make-believe hearsay,
A conveyor of love he never knew
in a city he never saw in a way to make you
feel the passion as if it were true,
He is an air-brusher of reality,
Thus a proselytizer of the Absurd:
That you can paint pictures with words;
That you can travel by verbs;
That you can conjure nouns by saying them;
That you can lead several lives within your only one.

Every poet is a fake
taxidermist, seller of second-hand stuffings
of souls that were never alive

Every poet is a fake
imperialist, would be explorer-***-colonizer
of the terra incognita of your mind

Every poet is a fake
poet

red sun red skin white
blanket white fingers touching
ghosts of dead trade winds

The tall young woman in a golden dress
spins a globe upon her desk and waits,
and waits till calloused finger comes to rest
upon an unknown wilderness. What spaces
lie yet undiscovered, like tabletops
to be uncovered / to be uncovered:
secret words within a foreign bookshop
under dust and under clutter—
Wiped clean! The tablecloth's pulled off! Now she
will be the first to glean their mysteries:
To see what no one else has ever seen,
To be where no one else has ever been.
Until nothing is obscured for her.
For hers is this world and she its explorer.

and if we never reach the stars
       (...earth to explorer v...)
her robot said
       (...fatal error [...] oxygen supply...)
what matters is we are
       (...no crewmen left alive...)
together, even if we're dead

I must precipitate their pain;
When I pass,
their faces close like shutters before the rain.

Reading at the bar
Drinking at the library
         —Henry Chinaski

the lure of success
glitters under the spotlight,
you step—
                    trap door:
                                       death.

treble treble bass
fish swims, her gills opening;
                scales upon her face

crazy moth crashes
against the bright hot light bulb
until it's ashes

heart beating // beating
wings lift me and flight begins
bare feet above ground
the world receding / the world
beginning [...] to appear small.

of what's a house built,
tatami mats without
figures, ghosts within walls,
haunted by the absence
of anyone of substance who calls,
ozu, can you hear me? in
these rooms of noh occupants,
transients staying only a night,
staging a performance for no audience,
except me, turning slowly to dust,
late spring in tokyo twilight,
floating weeds in an empty house,
by a projector's light.

birds coagulate;
thin, becoming avian mist:
                  dissipating wind

follow your dreams
     to where?
to the land of make-believe
     how long should i stay there?
forever, my friend
think positively, and you can
     make sleep the end?
indeed, and—
     dreaming, i can live anything!
yes, but:   we'll call it death then.

Give a man a book,
He'll burn it for a day.
Give a man a typewriter:
His mind will burn forever.

summer air shimmers
sheets of melted glass flowing
through caverns of leaves

I am leaves of tea,
Steeping till the water's cold,
Bitterness alone.

That feeling—
Night running between tree trunks,
Bark scraping your cheeks—
Before smashing face-first into:
Goosebumps,
   Neck snapped,
      The blood leaks,
That feeling is freedom—
Before you awake unfeeling your body,
Legs useless, mouth drooling dumb,
Welcome! You're one of us now,
The obedient numb.
I can! replaced by May I?
Physical stagnation, ornamental degradation
of the soul: the will dies always
Alone.

gravity is—
but what does it, matter?

I saw us again in Galway,
And again it felt as if you weren't dead,
You were young,
And I was younger than today,
You had your journalist's notebook and pen,
And so many things to say,
You looked ahead,
I melted away,
Past the crowd of gathering wolves,
Through the cinnamon rain,
To the narrow road winding through the hills,
Like a fleeing possum's tail,
Never still,
A pulsing membrane,
A hospital bed,
A naked, dying flame,
The road you chose to take,
Red with sweet precipitation and pain,
I still remember when you told me you were ill,
I want to die, you said,
What I wouldn't give to know once more your head,
Where your thoughts used to play,
The way your body swayed,
When you saw life's ugliness but refused to look away,
For your spirit I yen,
Faintly remembered by the markings of your pen,
In notebooks in an attic,
Living words floating above dead eyes,
Shrouded by the spice of time,
I desire to wipe it away,
But I'm so terrified of what I might find,
In dreams, I still see your face,
What if in wakefulness, I find an emptiness in its place

I am huddled in the coroner,
a little beast within a man,
And when at night he studies bodies,
I come out,
now and again.

They built the rhinoceros because God
foretold of coming war in which they'd need
sanctuary from the evil unthawed
beasts Earth's burning would hellishly unleash.
They built him of steel and electronics,
infused with a human intelligence,
and huddled raw within like unmade bricks
within a kiln, until their God dispensed
His justice: No escape / the heat turned on
They baked / the devil-beasts of *****

I've got more scars than memories
but they heal just the same
I've walked too far without looking back
to find my way home again

scientism, n.
belief that god is special
relativity

winter fir
–ing of a thawing musket
crows scatter

fat drips
      fire, sausage crackles—flames
      hiss of steam

rain spears the surface
     each ripple becomes a tale
of diminishing

hawk stops atop a hornbeam
in an urban copse
leaves falling
how must everything to the hawk seem
a dream in a dream i have seen
him i have been
circling and soaring and
—the snap of a shutting laptop.
spell broken,
hawk on beating wings passing away,
passing she asks, how've you been?
i have been well, i say
i have been well, i say

my face is hollow
grated like jail, rusted and
overgrown with vines
blooming bloodflowers which burst
dripping endlessly inward

when already in his mind
he'd dusted himself off like a rooster
run down the hotel stairs
gotten on the train
to quickly
escape from her
to where the black pepper grows

she, snuggling up to
him with both eyes firmly closed
had already built with them
a house
smelling of dinner
and fresh children
to which he'd just come running
up the stairs

(in reality
he and she had slept
together for the first time
and lying
keep silent about this precisely
in two foreign
mutually unknown
languages)

when in winter winter clouds pour water
on the street leading your house unto mine
water freezes cars become an altar
streetlights light the hoods hoods reflect the shrine
to us together in this cold cold world
hand in hand in gloves, a boy and his girl

what if people had hearts,
and cared for one another deeply,
everyone doing his part
to improve his neighbour's condition completely,
without reward or remuneration,
only love for the entire human population?

what if cows had wings,
and buzzed above abattoirs like bees,
*******—as nectar—the skins
off the bodies of humans, fallen to their knees,
in repentance and commiseration
with the suffering of all living things?

of course it's dense;
poetry is self-defence
against common sense.