yesterday's raindrop
blown today from the oak tree
awakens me

Stick your knife into my crown,
Slice down to the chin,
Dig your fingers in,
And unwrap the skull within.
Stretch and dry this ****** leather,
Draping it over a conical framework of bone,
Ends glued together or sewn,
Next: sever
The skull from the spine,
Polish to a shine,
And ***** into the base of your lamp,
Plug in: electron flow illuminating my mind,
Aglow with ideas
Of a submission radiantly divine

leaves accumulate
on the wet windshield / wipers
off: my car idles
by the local corner store
we had candy / you wanted
more.

On snow, his padded footfalls echo low
Heart beats: haste, fear
As none but its reverberations know
The ancient horror lurking near
A flash! Before the darkness rushes in
Not night but something deeper
Tentacles binding from within
Swift minions of a speaker
Whose very voice is sin
Whispering, listen, listen, in the language of the wind
Across what remains of summer's leaves
A murmured knowledge of the fate of thieves
And as the stolen idol drops
And the ancient one appears
His eyes begin to bleed
Discongealing the accumulation of his fears

If I grew wings
would you stab them
with pins
and add me
to your collection?

If I grew fins
would your interest
in me
culminate in a classroom
dissection?

If I grew muscle
would a vivisection
suffice
or would you first crush my strength
within an iron vise?

[If I were a house, I am not a house / No more.] am I in order (like bricks being a wall) but disordered, like a pile (of bricks after the fall) / All whom I'd within me are already passed//past my vacant chaos grows now [only g( )***: blades of broken wi( )dows, which sadly did not last.]

if stars, night, if sun, day,
but if the sun's a star,
is night day, is day night,
are we dead or are we light?

i ironed mi shirt
wanted to straighten out
mi life
           lies crumpled on the floor
mi life
           is nothing more
than a pile,
           creased       sore         linen,
gittin mi **** together
this year and youre in
it  too
                      this pile of me n iou.

imagination cannot be contained
with your fingertip
trace the border of the trees against the sky
now see the clouds behind
and make them mountains in your mind

i forgot my phone
i feel lost: because i lost
my identity

Flay me, shroud my body
in Saran wrap, for others to see
what you mean to me: a relief
map of live suffering,
writhing organs in a plastic bag,
a human soup to drag
behind you, sensitive to everything you do,
overflowing with formless worship,
pink, raw and dreaming
of a vicious kinship:
Open yourself and slip my parts in,
we can exist, two hideous beasts
within a single beautiful skin.

life is time borrowed
a wheat field softer than fur
flows,          under the scythe

cruel arithmetic
(the world) less (the world less you)
equals zero

slow, wasteful minutes:
begone!—but why? they shape us
void time trims the self

Introspection
The art of finding within
What you cannot live without

Lithuania! My homeland! You are like vigour.
How invaluable you are, only he can figure,
Who has lost you. Today your beauty wholly I view
And seeing, describe it, because I long after you.

Holy ******, who guards Luminous Czestochowa
And shines in the Gate of Dawn! You, who watches over
Strongheld Novogrudok and its faithful populace!
As once you healed me, a child, so miraculous
(When into your care from my despondent mother bid
I lifted my already departed eyelid,
And soon could make my way on foot to your temple's door,
Having gone to offer thanks to God for a life restored),
So too you shall restore us to our homeland's womb.
Meanwhile, may you convey my soul from its longing's gloom
To those aforrested hills, those evergreen meadows,
Stretched wide across the space where the azure Neman flows;
To those vast fields, painted in varicoloured grain-dye,
A landscape gilded with wheat, silver-plated with rye,
Where the runch is amber, and the buckwheat white as snow,
Where like a maiden's blush the red clover overgrows,
And all's interwoven, as if by a ribbon, green
balk, within which a wild pear tree can sometimes be seen.

we are made of railroads
atoms upon tracks
traveling predetermined routes
arriving at predictable acts
we are machines of computation
numbers within mass
solving existential equations
about leaping off the overpass

The city questions
        the virtue of animals
Islamabad

an idea blows
across a global garden
cities shake like leaves

It was a rainy day when I heard,
"It was a sunny day when I saw
[ed her in half],
said the magician:
"It was a cloudy day when I felt
[sawed in half],
she said,
only half believing what I was hearing
through the pouring rain,
sensing,
for the first time,
the world was not OK.

I've an egg inside me
that's in the process of—
cracking /
What hatches, we'll see.
I'll offer it my love,
and it shall be lovely,
eating me from inside,
until it can—
no longer hide.

woodland / hissing stream,
it's cold / horses exhale steam,
you
slumber underdawn,
you stir—the sun—the rattle of spurs:
once upon the land was pure
once upon the land was pure

a melody in
        to another flows
a third
            divine counterpoint

july reaching's still to august,
whose days in general be more modest,
and september blowths the future cool,
june's present's past's hot-headed fool.

What if all that counts is a kiss,
hugs are fallacies and a good word
conspiracy to make us miss
the obvious: lips on lips?

The only thing I learned
In this ocean of stars
Is that I can drown anywhere

My writing desk
My chair
A slap to the face
Fingers running through my hair
I will words
Which refuse to appear
I will
That which I will always fear
That only the quill knows how to be sincere
Unbuttoned shirt
A battered sternum
Under the hurt
The heart
Blooms the poisonous laburnum
Beating like a drum
I insert the quill
Holding in
Until it's had its fill of yellow ink
I do not think but write
Numbed but the words appear alright
I repeat until the flowers pass their bloom
And blackened fill the room
My throat is dry
My writing desk is wet
By my laburnum blood and sweat
Time to rest
To sew up my open chest
To sleep and in the morning feel again
Anatomical garden
Quill pen

leaves wait for the wind
     to blow before they rustle
before they—
     fall

blood dries, bones break; sweat
and tears like rainwater flow
into the sewer

light shines through
moving leaves
like rays
of grated cheese

like bubbles
rising through water
gas
escaping,   oneafteranother
up, lighter than—
we are
empty  as  canned laughter
upwardly  mobile,
hope-filled
rising till realising, we  are:
like bubbles rising
in a (corked)  water (bottle)
world

spring succeeds chill air
old lindens leaf out and bloom
birdcall and tisane

our land of the free
mason dixon
lines of *******
cowboys and aliens
crossing the southern border
lands streaming on twitch
live and coming to you from the L.A.
end times
with your host
the ghost of this debt's
gotta come due sometime,
sunshine,
if that don't **** us
first come, first serve

Despite all my rage
I am still just four minutes
of silence
                          —John Cage

another day, another lotion,
sighed, “much rather be making potions.”

tedium, boredom, boil and bubble,
add a spice, then add it double,
stir it well and let it settle,
in a kettle,
made of metal.

what's your fancy, what's your trouble?
basin clogged with dwarven stubble?

make one balm,
you've made them all!
concoct a cream, a cream?—a cream!
one more grog burn,
swear I'll scream!

tedium, boredom, boil and bubble,
add a spice, then add it double,
stir it well and let it settle,
in a kettle,
made of metal.

give me dragons, give me daggers,
give me jewels with emerald feathers!
give me—“what?
what's this, right now?
of course I know exactly how!”

roots to find, true essence to distill,
adventure?
no, but pays the bills.

We've sailed cerulean seas to pastel shores,
Known only to the glorious few,
We have disembarked, ready to explore,
As our lone ship waits slumbering in view
of the glorious bay. Light paints daybreak
across the sky. We see the rising sun
through imagined jungle—and hesitate:
The image lingers, but it must be done,
Eyes close. Toward the interior we turn
remembering, and hoping to return.

once under a rainy day
we met, huddling beneath the cover
of a mushroom to keep dry,
now the sun has long since chased the clouds away,
yet here we stay,
together: i still love her,
and shall until the fungus of our love
is dry

this morning
as i collect the thoughts
we scattered late last night,
i wonder, or perhaps i start to doubt:
why do we always fight?
when did our light—
go out.

the house sits quiet as you sleep,
these days, we're silent even when we shout,
but we had times
of such uncommon clarity—

i weep,
upward following the sweep
of steam rising from my cup of tea,
our love dispersing

Love is a gangrenous limb,
Mangled and raw,
Never healing, love is a metonym,
Fatal ifn't offed     with a hacksaw.

i am futility,
a history of waves
     broken upon the shore,
for i have friendship
     yet i desire something more.

A spiralling ascent
Along the world's edge
Sweatdrops fall
To a below without sunlight
Boot dust
Llamas labour under supply packs
Hoof beat lantern dance
Shadows cast on the cliff face
Distorted we loom
Above the mute fog of humanity
Summitous
Awash in the final dawn
The old Inca smiling sprouts his knife
Ancient tapestral landscape
Exhales into us
Curvously infolding
The old Inca holds out his hands
The knife cuts horizontally
Reality opens like a book upon a tabletop
There, he says,
Pointing to the infinite space between where the sky in the past met the land
Timespace lies like a discarded washcloth
And we see dimly through the mists—
There, he says,
Pizarro could not follow us,
And we see dimly through the mists—
The neon lights of
Neoqusqo

we are [living in] a stimulation,
floating bubbles dripping pleasure,
inflated by self-adoration,
pop—
ping: keyword:
excess   leisure

the warm west wind blows
frost-bitten spring leaves away
white clouds replace grey

I am the empty space between the highways,
Abandoned strip of indirection,
Subsisting on passers-by's throw-away
food and emotions / Civic midsection /
I am a buffer / I lead nowhere and
no roads leads to me / I am the empty
nest of a bird long flown to the wetlands /
I am everyone's, cared for by the city,
I am where the bodies are buried
sometimes / I am where teenagers get high,
The lake of grass from which Charon ferries
you and your people to the other side,
I am where tall grasses sway at midnight,
Snowplowsand. Cars pass. Hourglass headlights.

Summer's gone
Falling
            leaves upon the lawn
Summers gone
Falling,
            leaves upon the lawn
            a memory

The game is old
The tokens made of ice
From under folds of hooded cloaks
Flash the eyes of mice
But every thousand years
A human player appears
And in his hands
Our fate
               hangs
Like drops of blood
               on yellowed murine fangs
For it is said
By those long dead
That on the day he loses
We all melt away
We all melt away

From the eleventh floor
the world looks small
and possible

The cars
     black and white
     parked perpendicular
          to the curb
     parallel
          to each other
are keys
     ebony and ivory
    
I reach out
through the window
and play the street like a piano