there are so many places to hide,

in my home at 17th and South screaming death threats at my roommates laughing diabolically playing  videogames and Jeopardy cooking quinoa stretching canvas the dog going mad frothing lunging  spastic to get the monkeys or the wookies or whatever random commandments we issue forth  drunken while Schlock rampages the backdrop,

at my uncle's row house on 22nd and Wallace with my shoes off freezing skipping class to watch March  Madness unwrapping waxpaper hoagies grimacing with each sip of Cherrywine or creamsicle  soda reading chapters at my leisure,

in the stacks among fiberglass and eternal florescent lima-tiled and echo-prone red-eyed and white-faced  caked with asbestos and headphones exhuming ossified pages from layers of cosmic dust  presiding benevolent,

in University City disguised in nothing but a name infiltrating Penn club soccer getting caught after  scoring yet still invited to the pure ***** joy of hell and heaven house parties of ice luge jungle  juice kegstand coke politic networking,

at Drexel's nightlit astroturf with the Jamaicans rolling blunts on the sidelines playing soccer floating in  slo-mo through billows of purple till the early morning or basketball at Penn against goggle- eyed professors in kneepads and copious sweat,

in the shadow tunnels behind Franklin Field always late night loner overlooking rust belt rails abandoned  to an absent tempo till tomorrow never looking behind me in the fear that someone is there,

at Phillies Stadium on glorious summer Tuesdays for dollar dog night laden with algebra geometry and  physics purposely forgetting to apply ballistics to the majestic arc of a home run or in the frozen  subway steam selling F.U. T.O. t-shirts to Eagles fans gnashing when the Cowboys come to town,

at 17th and Sansom in the morning bounding from Little Pete's scrambled eggs toast and black coffee  studying in the Spring thinking All is Full of Love in my ears leaving fog pollen footprints on the  smoking cement blooming,

at the Shambhala Center with dharma lotus dripping from heels soaking rosewater insides thrumming to the  groan of meditation,

at the Art Museum Greco-fleshed and ponderous counting tourists running the Rocky steps staring into shoji screen tatame teahouses,

at the Lebanese place plunked boldly in Reading Terminal Market buying hummus bumping past the Polish  and Irish on my way to the Amish with their wheelwagons packed with pretzels and honey and  chocolate and tea,

at the motheaten thrift store on North Broad buried under sad accumulations of ramshackle clothing  clowning ridiculous in the dim squinting at coathangers through magnifying glasses and mudflat  leather hoping to salvage something insane,

in the brown catacombed warrens of gutted Subterranea trying unsuccessfully to ignore bearded medicine

men adorned with shaman shell necklaces hawking incense bootlegs and broken Zippos halting conversation to listen pensive to the displacement of air after each train hurtles by,

at 30th Street Station cathedral sitting dwarfed by columns Herculean in their ascent and golden light  thunderclap whirligig wings on high circling the luminous waiting sprawled nascent on stringwood pews,

at the Masonic Temple next to City Hall, pretending to be a tourist all the while hoping scouring for clues in the cryptic grand architect apocrypha to expose global conspiracies,

at the Trocadero Electric Factory TLA Khyber Unitarian Church dungeon breaking my neck to basso  perfecto glitch kick drums with a giant's foot stampeding breakbeat holographic mind-boggled  hole-in-the-skull intonations,

at the Medusa Lounge Tritone Bob and Barbara's Silk City et cetera with a pitcher a pounder of Pabst and a  shot of Jim Beam glowing in the dark at the foosball table disco ball bopstepping to hip hop and  jazz and accordions and piano and vinyl,

in gray Fishtown at Gino's recording rap holding pizza debates on the ethics of sampling anything by  David Axelrod rattling tambourines and smiles at the Russian shopgirl downstairs still chained to  soul record crackles of antiquity spiraling from windows above,

at Sam Doom's on 12th and Spring Garden crafting friendship in greenhouse egg crate foam closets  breaking to scrutinize cinema and celebrate Thanksgiving blessed by holy chef Kronick,

in the company of Emily all over or in Kohn's Antiques salvaging for consanguinity and quirky heirlooms  discussing mortality and cancer and celestial funk chord blues as a cosmological constant and  communism and Cuba over mango brown rice plantains baking oatmeal chocolate chip cookies,

in a Coca Cola truck riding shotgun hot as hell hungover below the raging Kensington El at 6 AM nodding soft to the teamsters' curses the snagglesouled destitute crawling forth poisoned from sheet-metal shanty cardboard box projects this is not desolate,

at the impound lot yet again accusing tow trucks of false pretext paying up sheepish swearing I'll have my  revenge,

in the afterhour streets practicing trashcan kung fu and cinder block shotput shouting sauvage operatic at  tattooed bike messenger tribesmen pitstopped at the food trucks,

in the embrace of those I don't love the names sometimes rush at me drowned and I pray to myself for  asylum,

in the ciphers I host always at least 8 emcee lyric clerics summoning elemental until every pore ruptures  and their eyes erupt furious forever the profound voice of dreadlocked Will still haunting stray  bullet shuffles six years later,

in the caldera of Center City with everyone craning our skulls skyward past the stepped skyscrapers  beaming ear-to-ear welcoming acid sun rain melting maddeningly to reconstitute as concrete  rubber steel glass glowing nymphs,

in Philadelphia where every angle is accounted for and every megawatt careers into every throbbing wall where  Art is a mirror universe for every event ever volleyed through the neurons of History,

in Philadelphia of so many places to hide I am altogether as a funnel cloud frenetic roiling imbuing every corner sanctum sanctorum with jackhammer electromagnetism quivering current realizing stupefied I have failed so utterly wonderful human for in seeking to hide I have found

in Philadelphia

1302

I think that the Root of the Wind is Water—
It would not sound so deep
Were it a Firmamental Product—
Airs no Oceans keep—
Mediterranean intonations—
To a Current’s Ear—
There is a maritime conviction
In the Atmosphere—

If any duck in any brook,
Fluttering the water
For your crumb,
Seemed the helpless daughter

Of a mother
Regretful that she bore her;
Or of another,
Barren, and longing for her;

What of the dove,
Or thrush, or any singing mysteries?
What of the trees
And intonations of the trees?

What of the night
That lights and dims the stars?
Do you know, Hans Christian,
Now that you see the night?

There was sunshine coming off of her
Blues and cream dripping from her lips down the crease of her smile
Pooling in the corners of those cheeks
Neon and tangible
The warmth irradiating from the swirls of her fingers
Southern hues
Her intonations dancing between the half moons between her index and middle fingers
Her skin shines
Mississippi mud runs clear over the rivers that dance beneath her collarbone
You can hear it flutter with the clouds
Her heartbeat
It stills the fields she runs through
There was sunshine coming off of her
Whispering strawberry sweetness
Tingeing the souls we carry on our feet.

redefining awkward definiens
endorsing victorious evening
clamoring hawk-like intonations
conjecturing additional goals
optimizing ambient network
winning illinoisan night

trapping hacked-up events
warping æsthetic remnants
resuming inaudible overture
rallying auric-state net-work
defying anti-punk technophobia
eliminating cavalier homies!

minding icelandic anniversary
winging ersatz excuses
kicking ecstatic nerves
denying lackadaisical event
questioning upper echelons
brûlant en calice

pull back the thin veneer
of pretense that obfuscates
this holiday season
profuse excuses of joy and peace
are hollow and brittle and leave
bitter proof of our lackluster compassion

expose the specter
of greed
dormant in capitalism
vestiges of a dying culture
the refuse of an apathetic
American people numb
to the trauma inflicted
by megalomaniacal leaders
consent given implicitly
in the complacency of obedient conformity

will we refuse to acknowledge
the stains on our hands this Christmas
red liquid misting our faces
bloodlust and endless war
there’s no
rhyme or reason
to these
sycophantic intonations
deafening these words of treason
in vain attempts to assuage guilt
with endless iterations
of false hopes and puny gods in
brainless trying to defy reality

we belie our true intentions
our self-serving obsessions
and inane consumption
hazes of the mundane  
in suburban graves

if the greatest gift is giving itself
we won’t find solace in the holy temples
of strip malls shopping centers
and corporate retail palaces
a Friday as black as our fractured hearts
witness the death of humanity
choking out all we were
grateful for the day before

what you used to do with those fingers
i look for them in pictures
and wonder if it's you sitting in the background
is it you behind the jenga tower
is it you behind that camera lens
yes, I used to say your name in
many intonations, many lungfuls not wasted
but they are wasted now, every time
is it you behind those blocks in that
black sweater, yes I remember you
from so long ago when
you used to say
i love you brooke

So, speak of infinite love and
roll your umber eyes. It goes so
well with the way you roll your r's,
as you teach me your Castilian
intonations. Just don't fall
in that category of immersed lost
Latin loves, of mine, sunk in
wet memory.

Ah, the murk of them, an amalgam.

Each giving to a melting ***,
and me, a liquid molten fraction
of strange tensile strength
and half gold-like luster. An alloy
of allies, do I see them as? Why,
yes, of course.

Now you come. Please stand out
from the mix. Show me your
purity.

Be solid gold.

I know you like my pronunciation.
I need to know now, yours.
Mi Amor

We are apart, and yet when your voice sounds on the telephone, we are not. In those opening seconds a play of inflections and intonations remind each other of this bond between us. As our words fan out across the mostly inconsequential things of a day past or, if it is early morning, a day to come, that binding loosens and we divest ourselves: to feel comfortable. It is so often difficult, but last night, as I stood between the reed beds beneath Constable’s great skies and you sat with our son on his birthday, there was a kind graciousness between us – and I hold it to me now. After our goodbyes I stopped and thought of this birthdate, of this boy of ours, then years past. I see a photo. The candled cake lit and he is leaning over the table about to blow to secure his wish. There I am, my face wind-burnished from a fortnight of walking the cliffs, daily throwing my ideas from the heights to soar like gliders, and returning safely to be launched and soar again, and higher or for longer. Just now I am holding the past dear, and my days are threaded through with memories of the onset of autumn. I dream of an autumn time free from the beginnings of things that one day we might share together; to go out to pick blackberries and return to our small home, and as we drink tea, watch the late afternoon light flicker and flow through the trees to pattern the carpet at our feet.

Last night
as I sat in
the ancient temple
atop the mountain,
my people surrounding
           me, generations
upon generations,
  voices ascending
       in the wispy and
            earthbound solidarity
                 of ancient prayers,
I felt the words
               rise up
around me, protecting, loving
their intonations
           tingling inside
the doorways
         of my brain
expanding the limits
through glass
and sacred ceilings,
       up unto the stars
celestial understandings
pushing through
my crumbling
walls to break
through barriers
         from the thickness
of night
reaching out
      into purity, a beckoning
             of light
and the words, the singsong tones
passed down from the ancients    
like candlelit incantations
         grew soft, invisible wings    
             that touched my cheek
                   the silky presence of
               the grounded power            
             of my ancestors
welling up in the
         dark caverns within
and as we sang
of new beginnings
         and listened with one heart
to the call of the shofar,
        that ram's horn of blessings,
                            my knotted
loops of longing
resonated in musical notes
strands of the primordial
               in the deep forest
echoes
             of my being
linking my soul's cry
to all the people
           of my book
in a long swirling line
              down to the river,
the desert, the oceans
a tight braided chord
of solidarity, of lineage, of blood
the flesh and bones of heritage
pumping crimson freedom
Yes,
somewhere,
          in even the most
                broken chords
                   of heartstrings
                tiny wings
beat                    
        hope