If my eyes are loaded guns than
I have to be very careful
who I look at
Destruction
is a luxury
I can afford

I will live forever
because I die everyday
I want it like that

Examining,
yielding to breaking
it means

I. Aprilis

You wished the summer for no one
moments of white wilderness
stars in the blood
sepaled bees scatter
drown each day as all lights
unmade pollen blossoming among
fistfuls of paper tasks
busied thought scrolls with the Seen
afternoon feathers multiply
white honey of Aries


II. Julius

Months as paper pass flitting
through the screens that
separate outdoors from in where
light pools on an ancient carpet and
summer lay broken in pieces
on the floor like
so much shattered vinyl
what happens to the trapped light then, as
it ages, it thickens
curdles in the stale drapes
staunches awareness of
time the moon
is slowly
drifting away
from Earth


III. Octus

Apples fall on the rotten dusty ground we
threw them, trapped in the speckled atmosphere of decades
that never rinses clean you swore
we could see Venus if
the clouds would sit right
Aphrodite in blue jeans a ladder
in darkness is still
a ladder


IV. Januarius

Color dissolves and
hibernates underground grey winds
stampede through the Roman Year
like the ghosts of unchained thoroughbreds
all the bees have drowned their honey
spread thin across the blackened sky   when
everything is upside down
stars become seeds

holy graffito of a swan
gorgeous, decapitated
limp bricks sag
behind it, hysterical hegira
plummeting in sync with the self
towards the elusive, dry glory of
death or forgiveness
this is the catechism of disbelief
Agnostic by default
sleeping on the side

being wrong is not a problem
it is an answer unto itself

“Tribal art,”
says Marcia
her wrinkled face
etched with a forgotten sort
of  kindness
“That’s what the archeologists
will say.”
Her consolation
to when
my sculpture
goes missing
and I think of
the archeologists
a thousand years from now
finding my piece
and thinking of it as such
some, as they age, grow bitter
like over ripe wine,
cousin Marcia,
grows sweeter
a walking keepsake in a moo-moo and house shoes

Time flips backward
Grandpa
I never met him
My mother’s green eyes well
when she speaks of him
“It’s time to hit the road!”
he’d say
and he’d go and
hit the road with a stick.
is this where I get
my sense of humor from?
the man had a monkey and
five kids and
a heart full of
meat, potatoes and
Chanukah candles

Flip forward
in the middle of
the 80’s
glowed, ***** and I
shared a room and belted out
Madonna songs
night and day
not even knowing yet
what a material girl really was
or if we’d ever be one
hope
took on a neon quality
that faded
like sharply lit days
of winter light
bent off snow
and sunk
into the hard frozen ground
never to be seen again

We come at night because
it’s the only time we are free
and it’s the only vulnerable time
the air is stale
darkness tries to rectify this
lack of light breathing into
my blasting radio
the only sound beyond
is small and usual
crickets and nocturnal things

Spying into vacant windows from forgotten roadside
they leave some lights on, most of them
or the television
relentlessly washing empty
electronic colors over post-midnight rooms
the shallow light sustains an outlandish stability
like a sadistic pop culture nightlight

On the yard junk cars and dead farm equipment
sit out to rust
just like the child obsessed with justice
stifled

The people here withdraw to sheltered houses
they stare at screens so long
they start to reflect their own blankness
deciding what they see
until every day’s a rerun

I’d like to visit this place sleeping
lying dormant in-between layers of dream
and hybrids of unconsciousness
enter homes through passive doors
locate every lost, unwritten diary
and read them all cover to cover
would I love or hate them more