After wide-set earthen towers mask
the highway runoff, campers come off lofty
horses, signal boorishness to breeze. Sat alone
where rolling orange will tease
the peace from perfect dark - the hint of dread
forgoing litness to expose a martial bode -

the low-slung limbs of stern bring
trained to-wrist like faithful,
catching glimpses of what common good
afforded us naff hazes like the present
sickle answer, whale-bone grief and prescient
danger. Fix a poultice,
love’s soft landing seldom not
for treasures come.
Revive the brazen lungs

in boasts of rushes, random-lit,
forestalling sodden semblances of wit
from Sunday’s arsenal -
right-matched to cleaner absences
than your limited souls could ever pare.

She’s felt - a fabric after our own hearts,
a loan from common waltzes,
taciturn in downshifts of this archen land -
of course - of hand, a slight
anomaly for watchers to observe.
Each roadblock touches nerve.

Captured at last. My quiverful
did shake your ransom loose—vain price
of novel circumstance, rebounding
up the mudhills of the past,
up mires that swallow shoes and grief
us for a thimbleful of how
it really felt. You dealt your doings'
deal, wound up a scattered reel
of torments: roses on the vine
that fell on thorny wrists to leech
the somedays from your spreading wings.
Bare respite in the hands of kings
who deign to manage what good things
go wrong: one laughed and out went song.
Two stood and shook out lies. Three spoke
and gouged out others' views of yours
as empty summer eyes. Recapped
in major ways to generally fawn,
yet flip a nonsense-script
to hammer bad words home and sire
a signal-damning tome to scratch
ancestors' heads (as we would do
if we could meet them)—Mysteries
to greet them, burdens on the sleeve
of he who dared dig mud: I linger.  
What I free will sting or sear
or singe, but noise is what one makes
when stranded on the fringe.

Over-exhaust of some inferno: liars
case to hedge the raging cost against
the dead man's deepest loss. The bleeding-in
of light, the color play blanked out to cosmic
white, unchecked derivatives bleach every shore.
It's clean: suspend the dream mid-action,
suffer closeness (main event) —two lives' derision
in the backlight of the spent
trash in their grip. Burning for space
to **** in, burdened by what they consumed—
deny they ever made it, even as it grows
from out their hand. They'll wander for
a land to burn, crouched lighters shielding
from cold fans the doubts and duties
of the clean non-lethal air.
"I'd rather die than care," the smokers
claim, and rally 'round the spot.
Brisk trade in little leaves extortion,
quarters dropped in slots—the little lives
of pocket-things, borne true to clouds
away, your stack, your papers in
the fray. Advance your cheap diversion,
spread the caustic fire. ****-crushing
embers ***** desire in lieu
of one more hit, and those who knew it
never left unlit.

Rude-awakened, bare, I plunged
the mine for errors—yelled revisions
up the shaft, felt echoes drift.
Stifled gold-myths for anchors: pig-iron
chained to answers. Asked "which way?"
and felt novel paths fade to gray,
gut-checked at gates Now Boarding,
urgency-alive, departure day.  

For-Shame walks hard his two-block beat:
the love against his feet, the bleach
behind his eyes. The toll is lucid blood:
much thinner, quick-twitch coded,
primed to run. Canaries, fathoms down,
sing longing to the mask
that votes for trade—sweeps laurel off
the heads of state, befouls the learners'
****-grounds. What truth might Satan

still confound? Denounced and parceled,
grifters spend our last resort
up paper-trails that track too short—
force every sense through that
accursed mask.
To breathe, perchance, to ask.

Now that you’ve been sold, what thing
will bring you back to us?
Arches of waver-lust, departuregrams
inform those on the freeway lam
and send us crashing gates and exit maps
as transit days dump rain
and what we know we’re in for gets too big.

Hurry to racing pits,
a bit of shelter huddled under heatlamps
pecked with pigeon dust & and odd late chills
that cracked the April. Plucky in
the clothing bone, we shiver, bide,
relent from marking make-up time
on coldwire sheets

We fold
and put work in our purse all wrong.
Some smarmy song New Yorks us, whinging on
where rent wars rage. Code-shifting blocks
of solace to the kept while crushing
others under debt - a glacial chill,
a respite, magnet phones left smartless,
calling on our wits
to ride those twists
through money-makers’ gauntlet.

Out of harm’s way, donning gowns
and Never’s hand-me-downs from
Stalling Leisure, Merry Ways - cinch up
and see what stays, what juice
the cosmic strain can free
when anger walls re-tighten down
to shape, or ****, without a sound.

Winter muffles whys—builds camps
to cover lies, and sing, and pray,
and rank-and-file amazement
underneath the grave. For whom? For hymns
to cheer the worker tasked with robbing
coffins—refund for the nauseous
ever-trope. The price to cope
may mount, but saints will light your way
to greed-bared aisles, and holy phantages
watch you in your motel,
and smile, and gather shells that held
self worth (picked dry—your kids don't need
them anymore). Now deck the wedding:
brides of clever ruse and grooms-to-be
lined up in civic mass, one shotgun
glance away from trumpet's vengeful blast.

The banter runs in squares. Hot air
condensing stories on the things you like,
inquiring where they’re from? A lush
entanglement of architectures
pulled from hungry jaws, unsated,
set to gnashing blindfully
at light, like worms?
Rejoice in proper terms!
Renounce those shameless fights
with others and yourself, best soldiers for
this no doubt war
appealing to the combat tribes
to both consider lives
and shoot them from the fences.
Ampleness, bedecked in hero standard,
tacks our motto to his brim -
“Why Can’t You Be Like Him?”
A just extolment of desire
(trod lightly otherwise),
steps to our eagle-eyes.
We’re living.
Pry the fenders off the lies
that carted us to chaos
heedless what it spurned -
what gardens have we watered?
Labors that upturned the noses
of the rulers bidding silence in their undertow -
what power, then, to stir below.

Reach us while we're still amazing,
as so few of stillness-walkers do
(just faking grip of earth
with hard-wired feet, electric,
snapped to grid: grant "likes"
to highest bid, repeat). Engagement
or abandon, līves that roll and fall
and blow adrift in 60-cycle retail hum.
What's going on is numb –
inspires the put-upon,
unmasked as passers past:
"Nothing calls, so leave me to my task."

Abide deceitful ethers
billowing "enough" to over-borne–
role split, forlorn, obsessed with it,
sweet nothings on the shore bring balm
from outer seas – drop-carton
double-loss-mistakes on parchment,
human cost reviled, regaled
at every party: "How I suffer!"
"And I more!" construct such heavy bores
on blocks to stall our moving forward.
Fair days shrug to leverage
signals from the road, enhancing
(as the mode dictates) each fixture
of this humble set: more tools than hands
can carry, more consigned to ceiling-
debt. Seek less and see: mores never met.

The prime I’m in (cold file) grinds down
the onslaught of the surf. Wet hands
coerce her tidal politic:
a love-sick shire of common knots,
revolting, wretch assured.

   Unleash the phantoms of
the wistful world at bay
from that optimal day when climbed I up
the risers, capped to fortune,
palme-d'essence, mindful hitch.
You stitched the barrier
between your absence and my glitch -
upheld the cases made for fiery rhythms
of romance, as echoes clattered in the apse
of quiet towns’ pastoral grasp.

   I’m sitting shameless in
the offing of a while. Unseated:
will my offspring smile
at sunny landings on
the peaceful shores of joy?
Can such be relished by a boy?
Or will his chains hold strong
and anchor back to relapsed wrong?
Can such be relished by a song
and her soprano? played piano
for the crowd, but filling one’s forever,
wonder-loud?

Spry distractions loaf on lithe intent,
men waking, wishing, trying,
b’lieving, doing, buying -inging time rather than be-,
results in salt-work, sprawling like the C
in coldness: callous spray
that dampens your New Canvas Day.

Pixels splat and reek of pure demise,
wine trauma met with whys
fires livid earth from foil-pressed crumbs
from which your towers rise. You miss
the point of -ing;
the shape you’re in’s an -e-d thing
writ past because of practice;
timed it slow, fixed solemn bets
all rife with catty pugil,
ribbons placed on “I-got-tīme-in” *******
that gleam too brightly
for the lover’s open eye. Youriyese
in grace, ingratiated by devices
(rueful caries)
shelter you from toil’s ten-thousand days.
You see them, they see you whilst print-ing,
comb-ing over, feel-ing joy anew: such sugar lines
the bottom
of a borrowed cup of time.

White hues direct-ing -ingots in a line
totally gold
and pin “pathetic” on your chest,
their best not forged in -ing or be-
(like they would want you to be) -lieve,
but rather hey! and halt!
The hollow points of discord,
blood of victims be- -in’ salt.

He'll scratch at starts of fretting words—
tease fracture, prime the battle grounds
for pride obtained. His fans file in
to bleachers, cheering on his crumbling
look, delayed desi·re. Miniscule
diversions check the "up"
he squared, and see no timeless evil:
passion plagued by livings. Lev'rages
her fighting stance to balance
danger there, and carve out if we care.

She breaches past and pores
over the staid solution, masons
filling out their bricks with what
was worn away. Her dreams combative
to his growing-light—once tossed
his turn, he slashed through living
wood—severed the Marchness from it.
Zeroes stall, embedded in
a leaf, awaiting green. Conquers
repetitive, from coast to kingdom
come. What emptiness is won?

Crash unbridled gates. Grind organs
through the rosy calm of tolerance.
See misfits shuck the beasts
in bed with bliss. Type up and tack
to this new daily mess the bounds
of what went by 'neath private barroom
skies; no looming spy will fix you
flint to burn the friendly waters,
flicker honor out to disarrange
and scold some rhyme too bold
for comfort-answers, dumb-fit, fumble-
grounded in some sliver too uncouth.
Tape pageless trees for truth;
blog-sift the spheres, watch darkness' evil
ears upend and train the tuner on
the lips extolling groundwork kisses
(sparkful dominance upstaged
by passion turned to stone:
reserves gone sour, hour unknown.)
Mist-choked misnomers
acting onerous and blinking out of phase:
de-stage the structure. Anchor down who stays,
who pulls the latest polls. While blind-spots
clutch white lace like arguments,
make space to process what flies past
as ****** rats stay the course,
a maze in grace.

Tasked today with thorning
thistled favor over reigns,
we drained the shot that scored
the weak on board
and shattered crystal pain.
Who drops us off white rockets
pulled from earth like swede from stone
to jet to planes above?
The fuel we love, abundant every turn:
advice in our good ands. Disseminating
buts like rice, exceptions
unto every goal,
obscuring each clear picture
in the way. Re-light
and curse the days

you fight it, pining, elbows up,
some cheap romance whose pages
wear you thin. You render
heartache on the blow -
skid-crushing, woeful throes
of counterpoint dispatched to swallow
lightness from the shore.
Wise up

and ask for more.
Be stronger - shed your brightness
on the bay. Delay those saturated
hoodwinks. Gamble on discreetless
balconies where broke your fall
from order. Signal wholeness
of your cause, re-bolster lack of laws
with blinding arrows to your neck -
revise, rehone the wherewithal
to do what’s due: respect.

Healing hold begone. Bring on
the pain that clings to eager, stringing
hopes along a chain of darkness.
Nigh upon the rise, we tear
his tune apart, stir humming in
his heart. His anxious hands below
conduct wry tests of letting go
of each unbidden grime and razor
down marks left behind. Some level
showmanship empowers routes
to air—exhausted climbing there,
he taps his recourse from the mouth—
unruly words, unforged, surmount
what flickers onto lives of rain-slicked
hurry. Words depart and see
him fade away—horizons to
replace the outer frame of what
we knew he saw: some rhyme, some scheme,
some law. Some deluge infiltrates him
now, brings up the level, groating
all in dirt. Uncertain who
sees next assault, we unleash bullets,
pepper wisdom to a fault.

Debride such stolen earth. Unclasp
his locket, see what he called home.
The fire is limitless. All passions
foam and soil and solve the fear
of prime depletion. What deletion
from the rolls means not the loss
of souls?

Nothing’s burning. What went wrong?
No one desires the simple song
you croak out for crumb suppers, ‘cos
it doesn’t make them think of feasts.
Release the guise of competition -
like you’d ever win these heats.

Behold who placed: staid mottoes
wearing proper faces wrapped
in proper chains.
Observe their seats in proper chairs:
the owners of their stake
never relinquishing the bloodline’s hold,
impenetrable walls between the well-born
and the cold.

Who likes us? Weakness does:
tremblers demanding ones like you
to save their damsel hide. The saved abide
all laws convenient to them;
for the rest, they cut a deal,
and you’re not in it.
Be afraid of that. They ratchet up
that fire finesse and do
damage control: what dare we salvage?
Wayward cities? Idle souls?

Compress them in a tank of rigid steel
mixed by the craven powers.
I’ve got mine - don’t call it ours
(although I speak for all of you.)
We’re through if you don’t show up
at my dinners, check in hand
in sleeve in shirt in suit
on fire -
when I’m done, sweep up your soot.

A cold caress feels skin intact:
protection altaring misgivings–
messages flown down on rails.
Cool heads prevail, endure this visit,
egged to double-burn the wax,
dishonored: chided for syntax.
They shift their tremors out of park,
engaging flywheels, sign on lines–
error that binds the river gray
to bones in titles, floating loans
to scant subscribers who to signal sync:
clique here and link to strength
in number. Textbooks waver not–
no units cover aberrations.
Shred such practice with a blade.
Hold in abeyance hit parades–
insist the linguist's hand decline
our ending: dative frosts
that stagger out from what is lost.

And through this pity plays the Modest
Grim Quartet to crowds that haven't
listened yet–presumed to rise up
faithful by the sword, but buried
under long receipts and bills
for dull retreats, hearts centered in
the sou·r stacking wrong. We wrench
a living from what's left of laters
severed, but so long.

Defend? Why would I deign to it?
I fend off fences best—
the only fight from which I never
really want to rest.
Cold incompleteness comforts me
at levels yet unknown
to my posterity—most fitting for
the last to take the throne.
Does it end here? Do all the madful fights
for balance ‘midst the wind
fought by your fathers end here,
or will something else begin?

Beginnings happen daily from
those younger still than you—
further along, Spinner of Song,
in what they want to do.
Where are you? Is this why you hide?
Hide from your struggling heart?
Hide from the chances fiction
you denied ever to start?
Know you from story? Person?
Motivation? Roles? Beliefs?
What about production? Making something
happen? Glory? Grief?

One thing is sure—you know from heartache.
Dare I say it’s made a mark—
if not on yourself, on those who’d
only shoo you from the dark,
wishing they could ease the pain
the cruel tidings still allow:
the monster kills at every turn.
His name is Now.

Color’s dervish, wanton rays
bark big waves out to little eyes -
surmise that they could live so bright,
or cut their burden down in middle flight
with Pantone Answer. Limber fantasies
hung dainty on the wire, we blast
a spectrum: chilling op-eds,
townless crier making hay
from sunny days’ hot take.

Alarm us! Twist like windy satchels
full of Great Divide
between the Haves and Left-Behind.
And as the bank vanishes wage,
we colors come of age
in numbers borne to rap
the sounding toll upon its steady head
and leave for dead his monuments
to Avarice, Big Dollar pulled in tow -
it’s too much meat, you know.
Too sufferful for show
when corny love could fit the bill:
high-mounting, climbing still.

Arrest the cold diversions from
your living-time and feel the sun
whenever possible; the harbingers
of war will tremble color-ward
and drop the gun.

Lovers' wanton "where" strings out
a mystery on chainmail airs. Outlandish signals
redirect off-stage some dull producers, sever tries
to hoist the classics, sullen, tied to water-
casting, free from gambled whims,
all spades & spires shuffle outward
dizzy after pain. Roll credits, feign the after-flash
of fertile come-across, impeaches fickle
livelihood to roam less traveled.
Put upon, this dust snuffs out
no finer match. Alight and stay
up-catching to the grim-wire news
that feeds us all three limbs from shades
of justice: error anchors līve
with words & buffer on their bread.
Await the wrath instead. Oustated
ample questionry upsold
to counter-rhythm: eat the fee
and freebase wrong to wit—
too long to carry it, too short
to carve an inkling out of sorts.

What do you deserve? Let's match
it up with what you had the nerve
to break. Concessions? Some poor sap's
fair shake?

No carefree drop-by-drop
of days taps your forgiveness-Morse.
They fall upon discourse, always
needing to know, exploiting loiter-
bones to cleave "now" from the crack
(two shades of never coming back).

None freer than the light you saw
when first you shook—still you won't dance
or cost, consume or hitch-hike. Backseat
to some error-formed device:
white lighting rolls the dice. Can we
upstand the boldness of his claim?
No doubt he felt ashamed—
that phantom, teasing wrinkles up
what we worked for.
(Why won't he visit more?)

Write down the weighted score:
your mild applause, their terror cries, and split
the difference with the outer set.
Catastrophe's the safest bet.

Sea pulse asurge, your pores brace for influx:
the scrub of sixteen salts whose rigid karma
scrapes us down. So sound the signals
(likely sales) from shoehorned sleeper
towns. Their patron wasn't long for earth;
a grid (what genius!) takes a bow,
puts slideshow on, and all we hear is how.

When sunlight stirs again we'll chisel
feeble errors, chip a bullet
out of stone. We'll see which skulkers
have a six at home, and toast
the night in sheetery. When devils
drain the foosty runoff of
your prim report to primal center,
sweep up white-horse myths bleached out
of paved-gray lots. Submerge in steam
of favor, frenzied in unseen replies
(no sharper catching eyes as coffees,
tipped to spoon in drowse-A.M.s
from furtive nights) -- Behold (unsold to rights)
uncensored action, living truth!
Untempted nine-percenters,
go-betweens for stunning tens
ground out of poison  pens.
Abrade with noise what was to clean our lens.

Here’s my hefty, over-lumbered
case to put you in:
suggestions on a pin
to ***** your dogma,
error’s commas captivating
run-ons with their length
prolonged for lack of strength
unseen in staying parts -
your wants is off the charts!
But needs are nadirs; we all stoop
to let them talk us into something.
Independence (*** thing) wrecks your time
and chews your peace apart.
Your heart beats out
a chapter shorter now each night -
the longing makes it right
and lubs the biggest dub of all -
recordings of the ball,
the master moldering in some storage tomb
alone for adding rooms
onto the house you’ll owe forever for.
Why snore you with my secret?
Loud man come, inventing orders -
hupping-to shreds being into blue.
Who showed me out of there?
Who whisked without a care
and smashed the batter of your special batch:
for sure, at times, a catch,
but else an error, comma,
asterisk,
rappelling down your robe of risk?

One was weightless, wasting time on set.
Two was chimers, champing at the bed—
And three, all three, laid hands on me
for theirs were turning red.
I can’t for fight it—
rhyme-based sigilance that beams the base to Mars.
Just try to capture fractured upspeak strains in jars.
I too.
The will wants you:
this presence over bards,

their high-***** armaments stack bombs,
out-chamber trespass calm.
Wild regions, inner-sanctum being,
ship-wrecked, godless, toe-by-sack,
reel catchless rigs on fish-day markets—
error blamed on ***. I bet
******* is off-limits
(0 for contemplating clues!)
Toes clench erratic in their shoes
and press on over trenchant want.

You see us floating down the Frontenac,
the after-fades all black.
Stone pixel bliss on ‘tainment tracks
and fortune—not aesthetic—
keeps a wave and jeers us from the sea.
Fall flat and let us be,
us, living evidence of free.
Your time, its trepidations:
arrows sailing ever lee-
ward to your sail.
Now come and post the cosmic bail.

Players in the hit parade
abound like orphans—eat the glow
of while-you're-seated pills that start
the fading of a heart. Their covert
deposition talks you down—hawks
warlord-wisdom, spits betrayals
of what you built. So if you have
to plea, reveal your guilt two inches
from their eyes.

Good jest replies
in callbacks: "When you get to be
more special, let us know." So folds
their show of reason, leaving you
to lurk upstage upholding tasks
divorced from charm: false shopping,
twisting arms. Outsourced.

In faith a word
casts end-of-game, denies
them helpful shame,
applauds their global reach
like red-tide beaches. Lights up;
stir the waxing i·re, fixed-width,
non-perspiring, livid.
Stunned in passing,
angels catch collapsing tenets
cached in rivals' mark: clipped off
and quiet, buried in the dark.

I dream a dream of skill,
I gather pictures of best practice
(methods best enacted off the couch.)
I house,
crisp corners, soaring beams and posts
where gawkers marvel, ‘cos
the high is feeling good. I see
the woods
and watch the owners.
(What good grip they have! enough to claim
what they could never care for-
let the lessers sing their lives!)
I drive a drive
not fast enough for fastness-makers,
flaunting logos, polished chrome,
I drive a loan.

None say it, none will ever hear
these soft confessions to
the “here” I hold right now
in its un-good. I slip
a “should” on, halfway,
dumping it for snacks and cons -
I run for miles
to lose it on the lawn.

And as I break, I pause to
watch a bit to see how not to fail.
I land in jail. The wardens
never speak to me,
the only copy of the key
described in stories, but
they’ve scattered every page.
And every day I fail
to reconstruct it out of naught,
I age.

Wakeful zero, peerless March,
longbow that bears the seasons’ arch,
when mist and windstorms pelt the blank slates
of cold-stupored trees.
Do I wake up yet? Dare I to unfreeze?
they ponder, short of language,
brains abuzz in taproots, dormant xylem
filling phylum with a flash
of namefulness past gray despair—
who grows? What draws them there,
gathered before they sprouted
in the epoch mire of waste that feeds them,
nurture dense distraction from
the trod-upon.
Stay put! They rest
a lot upon your back,
from holding nests to lightning’s crack—

yet time forgets you.
Hashtagged, color-marked you’re not,
a name once only March forgot
now baffles subjects of
a sheltered, sweaty throne.
Good thing you hold your own
whate’er they call you.

               Naming stirs
you from the sleep you keep,
six thousand nicknames ere
you rest again. And man,
forget you as he may, looks to
your silent cue to stay, or migrate to
some panicked place you never knew.
What came before was rough—
you’ll grow through people, too.

Origin abides the damning cost that martyrs tree-***** life.
Moon-temple tides hoist stonewall pride: inverted vacuum of
a sun requited into love. What bids the youth perform
is puffed-up chests that pick up checks,
collaborate in pulsing rooms, and stall
the patient slumber of some judgment
buried in the wall. Out cry
the mounting omens: skulls still undecided
forced to build the boundaries,
carve "abstain" into their lucid twist
of providence–for "reasons".
Willows mark her sacred route. High-*****
to arms right spent: white gridlock on
the prison bay, uplifting cells
as down disaster plays. Outlandish others
disinfect her role from sanctioned sects,
outshine desired effects–
demented rays, fulfilling her
apostate fame. The vetting blows up
earmarked patients, wounds beset
in value, offer non-regret
to widows standing down.
Rich pressure-towns to offer fleeting fare
from homes that proffered care from bones–
intractable, a loan.