There’s no fear in the place
I’m going to be in a few years,
In the time it takes to tune a piano,
In the decades of a dog’s wagging tail.
There’s nothing scary there.

When I’m as many years older
As there are seconds in a lightyear,
Or sound waves in wallpaper,
I’ll still be ****-a-doodle-doing perfectly
Dandy in a yellow-spotted bouncy way.

When I’ve said and written as many
Words as there are to say on an afternoon,
And when my heart’s as old and big
As orange and gold, as great as
A slide whistle going up, up, up, then,

I’ll see what I saw when I was
The size of a bright laugh:
That all the world, in its infantile grace,
(Even the places nearly shaded from sight)
Is bursting with unexplainable light.

Down in the forest,
Amid the creaking pines,
Are two rusty old silos.
We call them the tin cans.
A brave few will climb them
And balance on the walls
As sentries to those inside.
Encircled in old metal
There's a pow-wow going
Between the chieftan of North Can
And the princess of the South.
Bubbles drift as smoke from their mouths
And their round cheeks stretch in yawns
That betray the distant setting sun.
Our war is over, the chief declares,
But neither side has won.
That's true, the queen smirks back at him,
And neither ever can. What do we do?
He glistens with battle sweat and
His soldier's breath is heavy.
You and I will draw up a treaty,
He says, and war another day.
She acquiesces and signs her name
On a bit of leaf in invisible ink;
He does the same, and both recline
A moment against the flaking metal walls
While the topmost edge of the sun falls
Below the curve of the earth
And the dark branches of the trees
Cradle a baby night.
Up top a sentry calls dinnertime.

There stood Colossus gripping tightly
At his injured head and whimpering,
Hemorrhaged for centuries and crumbled
Down to the crying blocks below,
To the crying nation below.

There stood tragedy in her nightclothes,
Caught unaware and unprepared,
But still willing to give the boys a show.
There drifts the smoke and burned up men.
There falls the mighty God of Rhodes.

Hanging now is the thick dust that blinds,
Hanging now is Comedy’s tired head, weeping
From sadness and silence and the ****** dust.
In the roads, the people stand and scream,
In their homes, the people sit and mourn.

Televisions show the Colossus fall,
But the only sound is a news anchor, bawling.
The crushing concrete quenches some
Of the hungry fire, and unofficial officials
Dive into the carcass for survivors.

The Hudson washes down the morning
With debris; and somewhere far off
I am seven, looking at the walls,
Wondering why our class
Doesn’t get a TV.

It was quiet last night when
We handled it, Bo and me.
Jenny had risen late with a gun
And finally out and shot her
No good husband. We knew it was
Coming, Bo and me, (He was always running
Late with some glitter or make-up stain
On the white shirts she ironed for him
Every morning.)  like one of those
Summer storms that rumble
And shake and then arrive,
Sprinkle a moment and slip away
To intimidate some other town.
She was on her porch crying,
That once-used (overused) rifle clasped
In her slack grip. We knew she couldn't do it -
Couldn't pull the trigger twice in one day,
But she didn't know.
So we handled it, Bo and me. We
Reasoned that terrible gun away,
Reasoned that unspeakable emotion away,
The way we always have out here.
(With the town so far out and all.)
We dabbed her tears up with leftover
Lunch napkins and laid her down to sleep
(In my sister's bed, she's bloodstained the
Sheets.) and wait, and there she is now, officer.
Laying down.
Waiting.
(By the way, do you know what
Gets out bloodstains?)

Said the bee to the blossom,
"Didst thou mark thy lonely days
Before my tender feet
Lit upon thy lovely face?"

Said the blossom to the bee,
"No, not me. I did but wait -
And in the truest truth,
I waited not for thee."

Cried the bee to the blossom,
"Wherefore were thy waiting
Worth the aching hours
If not for bees' promise to flowers?"

Soothingly the blossom whispered,
"No promise was ever held for me,
Nor made to me by thee. Thy respite
Is but perchance from the aching of thy feet,"

At this the bee, indignant, buzzed;
But blossom's discourse continued thus:
"No, never did I wait for thee,
To close my petals against all but one bee
Should be the death of my race.
Still may it be said, I waited for he
Who bore thy thought, and thy grace;
May it be said I waited for whomever should land,
Knowing thus that it must be thee."

The flash of our general’s bayonet
Is brighter than ours, the blade
More piercing, sharpened every day
With a worn out whetstone.

The general’s cry is fiercer than ours,
******* and ferocious. His eyes
Reflect green back to us, as though
No light can penetrate them.

In the charge, no man outstrips the general.
The bullets that fell his men only graze
His flanks, as though a common soldier’s shots
Dare not strike at a higher rank.

He is first to take the hill, first to raise
His battle-muddled head over the ridge.
It is he who first spies the other side
And calls victory while the last men fall.

There is no sorrow like our general’s,
Sorrow that follows each man to his grave
And climbs on those broad shoulders
When the rites are given and dirt thrown on.

And we, though we may know his worth,
Question him for all that dirt - could we not
Have moved less earth? Had so many to die?

Our general, beaten in victory, shuts his eyes.
His chest heaves, but he will not cry for fear
That we are right. He will not have it said
That great men were led to die by a coward
Who was afraid to shoot at death.

His breathing slows, his eyes open,
He orders us to march and not to shy
From death, for always some must die,
Though he cannot tell us why.

Hey, Achilles, what’s it like
To die from an arrow you didn’t see?
Hey, hey, happy stuttering Hercules
What’s it like to be mad and ****
The woman you love,
The children you love,
What’s it like to watch terror born
On the faces of helpless thousands
And be counted in those thousands
As defenseless? What’s it like,
Hercules, to be loved, to be a hero,
To be unstoppably strong and
Uncorrectable? (In the back of your head
There’s a voice) Pleading with
Wreckage in the making and
Begging your arms not to swing,
Your hands not to squeeze,
Your lungs to stop breathing
Long enough to faint and later wake
With sense and reason?
Do you ever want to die?
No, no. “Dying is for fools,” you say.

You are a legendary fool in paper armor,
Tilting at windmills and running from smiles;
You are happy, blind, and wounded
In the ruins of a diseased world.

Allow me for a moment to be selfish.
Though I ask much of you,
Still I ask this:
To whomever has the power,

Trade me for the world a trinket.
Trade me a life for every human soul.
Take every floating ship and sink it,
Break me into pieces or consume me whole.
Sweep up the universe like dust -
All the galaxies, black holes, nebulae.
Tear it down to a quivering mass of rust,
And if this is too low a price to pay,
I beg you tell me what monstrosity
Will earn the favor I request of you.
What black, loathsome atrocity
Need I commit? Whatever you ask, I’ll do

That she might breathe a minute longer
Than God saw fit to give her breath,
And now I make my final offer
To angels, demons, God, or Death:

Let her exist where I cannot touch her.
Let me know she lives.
If I shall never see her face
Or hear her laughter,
Let me be the one to suffer -
Take my offer -
Allow me for a moment to be selfish.
Though I ask much, still I ask this
To whomever has the power.

What are we, my dear?
Two songbirds tightperched
On a branch, livening the day?
I could say yes to that.

But you want to live by the sea,
So seagulls we'll be:
Wheeling and honking and diving
And coming home to shore.

But then, I never learned to swim.
So maybe two little scuttlecrabs
In broken bottle shells,
Holding claws and bubbling nonsense.

Still I have grander thoughts than these,
You and I as brightshining dreamthings
Houring our whiles away with magic
That is coldest when warmed
And floats farthest when the tide is out.

(Perhaps it is risky to indulge in dreams,
The fickleness of seconds ticking makes them
Sand under one's feet; but I have walked on sand,
And I have dreamed you,

And here you are.)

I have fancied myself to be a china doll
Alone on a shelf,
And waiting for some caring hand
To open my eyes and clean my dress -
But this at best is merely fancy
And at worst passes into pain.
I was not made to sit lonely
With my brain. Nor am I patient.
To stall with no hope of restarting
Is an unbearable weight, and waiting
With such vague notions of the someday-to-be
Is a foolish self-inflicted fate.

Oh patience, you unremarkable trait.
You have no care when even-handed Fate
Valiantly bestows opportunity.
You sit unmoving and insensate,
And merely wait and wait and wait
For Time's inexorable pendulum to swing
And the boredom of an afternoon to bring
Some visitor's hands, and perhaps some care.
(Though not too much, a doll's only a plaything.)

So no, I am no china doll rejecting -
Stupidly - the passing glances
Of strangers given to wild dances
And children given to clumsy hands,
No, I am no longer a fragile waiting dream
Hoping to visit some loving mind
And fulfill myself in a single eve,
Only to trickle the rest of my nights
As a empty-laughing lifeless little stream.

Enough of this!
I move, I leap, I sit no more.
What lay on the mantle lay now on the floor.
(And perchance the fall has cracked my face
Warding away some unforeseen gentle embrace
But) I shall find my own way into some arms,
Into some wild dance.

My partner will see these cracks and be
Far less afraid to drop me, throw me,
Lift me high and let me fall,
(So I may see the world around me
And - electrified at the sight -
Thank myself for wanting more)
Than a china doll
(Could ever have hoped for.)

It's my work.
It's a certified Personal
Original,
So why is my name marked
As a misspelling -
And why are you
Changing my wording?

Do you know why
I almost cannot write?
Every word is a window,
And every line a bright light inside;
The ending of a sentence
Is a lifting of the blinds:
Anyone can see in.

The ink on the page
(The actors on the stage
Of my mind) are arranged
According to my direction.
(I call action,
And only I.)
But my name is a misspelling
And you change the wording.

Somewhere in a villa
In Barcelona,
There's a Spanish guitar
And a smile that glints in moonlight.

The music is flowing like
Gabriela's flamenco skirt
While she dances and flickers
And scorches the floor.

They're cooking something up
Next door, something full of
Pepper and smelling of spice.
Smoke rises into the sky,
A refugee of fire.

A little boy pads barefoot
By stucco walls and calls
Up for a taste of flame.
(Wishing all the same

That "Flame" was his name -
Or at least his color - like his brothers'.
They are hungry too,
Hungry to spark and burn and shine
And shame the still Silent.)

Somewhere near Barcelona,
A bull bellows and breaks
A rider,
For a while. But

The smoke still rises
(Refugee of fire.)
And climbs higher than clouds can dream,
And glides out and out past stars unseen.

Gabriela's folds still swing
To a speech spoken by stinging strings
(With a smile that gleams at the dark).

I know you've always considered me
A mechanical man -
And I'll admit
I do my share of clicking and whirring
I do have my own processes -
Alien to you -

But I have all the same ones
Too, and a beating heart within my
Clank-clattering flesh.

I watch
You, like a camera, like a scanner
Searching for a price tag. Bar codes
Are simple.
I like simple, but you must
Not think me mechanical for it.

When you see me,
I adore it, but often you
See preconceived pictures and

I'm terrible at this, you know, dreadful.
I should stop, there's no way to say -
No way to show that I am more than -
You know, that I am eyes and skin
And marrow, but more too, more than
Even you -

Nevermind, nevermind.

There's no way you'd think I'm
Human: I can't even speak.
I just click quietly to myself and bend
Toward you slightly with an injured creak.

The excavation of a dark cave
Revealed two jutting stones,
One hanging, one upward-bound,
That had merged together
In a pillar. Laughing, I turned to my friends
Who gazed lovingly at single gems -
Whose edges they could shear and dull,
Whose mass they yearned to strip away,
Lest the simple stone annul
The useless glimmer they coveted.
I turned from them and leaned against
The stalagmite and stalactite embracing,
And knew not to move or listen back
But rather stare in the direction I was facing.
In the joy and rush of claiming
The opulence they sought (to blind their friends)
They forgot me, and I let them go.
I have provisions enough to live until
They come to fetch me back,
And while I wait I'd like to be alone
With no company but these loving stones.

There’s an old saying
From some song
About a heart of gold
And a man who mined for it,

But I’ve always wondered
Whose chest he carved up
To get that golden heart,
Whose veins he tapped like maple trees
For the molten yellow blood,
Whose scabs he picked
For the coagulated ore.

I think I’d rather have the mine
Than the man who wrote that song.
Even dug out and hollowed it was still
The home of a 24 karat heart, a hard metal heart,
Precious for its softness.
Yes, even emptied I would want the mine
And the miner be ******.

Her trembling hands hover above
The beast. Timidly, her fingers
Brush its hard scales. She presses
A gentle touch to black, then to
White, startled at the coldness and
The responsiveness. It is an animal
Eager to learn a new trick,
Friendly to a new master,
But more paralyzing than a tiger.
It cries to her touch, but does not
Move: it is a poised cobra faced
With a charmer's flute, following
The graceful press of fingertips.
Sounding softly, then louder - a
Cheerful creature is easily led
From its silent cage. Each lively
Cry is compounded now with a
Stronger press. With the force of
Two hands, she reveals its form completely.
Not one beast, but a hive of hundreds,
Each sinuously crawling around her
Wrist - sliding up her sleeves -
Into her ears. Her body rocks, pent
Up in a storm of acceptance.
Bobbing and rising, nearly sinking
She tames the beast. In her
Moment of victory, there is silence.

Man is nature's child.
He is her firstborn, her best-
Loved. Man is in her good graces.
He doesn't know, he often surmises
That he is behind on the rent,
That he has over-spent his
Allowance. He does not see!
The purpose of man is to live;
The purpose of a giving tree is
To give. No coldness can take
Refuge in nature's heart, no
Spite can contort her lovely face.
The earth's an easy, forgiving place;
Made for men to live and love,
Made to house a lucky race.

In the cold creek water, I dipped my feet.
Out past the pasture where the cows
Congregated in mooing groups,
Out in those woods behind the farmhouse,
I sat and dangled my feet in the stream.
Grandmother kept jars of peaches there;
Under the current, they were preserved
Better than in the old broken fridge.

One foot burrowed into the mud,
To the little stones below the bed.
The other came up to the bank,
Out of the water, so I could put my head
On my knee. Half-in and half-out,
I rested my eyes to the songbirds' cries.

That was not a poetic forest, surely:
Neither dark nor deep, and I
(As a child) had no promises to keep,
No miles between me and sleep.

Besides, there was a tractor in the lane,
The engine chatting with the morning
Like an old man (smoking like one, too).
The scent of manure was heavy - hardly
The romantic stuff of poetry.

Yet I tip my hat to the tractor and the creek,
With its load of peach preserves.
Yet I chose to write this poem -
Perhaps as thanks for the daydreams,
Perhaps as an early eulogy.

That farm has no place today,
My mother's wild and gentle home.
When the old guard have passed away,
Inter it with their gentle bones.

Paper folding, tearing, shaping -
Tie a strip in a knot,
Make a star.
So much simpler than writing,
So much less rewarding.
And just distracting enough
To forget I am disappointing myself.

Fill up a mason jar
Like a galaxy
And the screen is still blank
Reprovingly.
I am giving nothing
And expending energy
But it's such a marvelous way
To waste time.

Later I'll probably
Throw out the universe
Or maybe pour it on someone's desk
As a surprise.
It's a small inconvenience
But maybe they'll wonder
How long it took to put the stars together.
(And never know they hold
Little chunks of unsung songs
And unwritten poems.)

I want to be under a
Sienna sky - some burnt-umber
Monstrosity, devoid of clouds,
Still and still moving over the
Acrimonious skyline of
Molten orange windows and
Hot dry concrete. I want the
Silent sound of the subway under
My feet, the rattle and shake -
The bass drum beat. I want a
Hundred saggy women and lean men
Shaking their fists at soda cans
To walk by me. Someone I can
Help, someone I understand;

What a terribly needy creature
Is man! How can the planet
Withstand it, this desire for
Windows of fire and walls of burnt umber?
How can it not shatter for want
Of sienna skies?

If all my words were mating calls,
And all my poems merely
The slapping of the waves by
A whale's fins to garner some attention,
If the purpose of all my work
Was only echolocation,
What answer can I make
When a listener surfaces
From the deep, calm and
Implacable, a beautiful inevitability?
What can I say when the man
I dove for comes to me
And says, Here I am,
You can stop calling now,
I will not leave.
What then, when I hold
Coleridge's flower in my hands?
What can I do now - I who have
Pressed my pen to the grindstone
For the purpose of finding him -
Now when all I know to do
Never needs doing again?

"But he loves you!"
She counters with this.
"Remember when he drove
So far in that ***** car,
With no a/c to see you on
Father's Day?"

I did not send him far away;
He sent himself.
If he has to drive the distance
From his hermitage to my home
It is no service to me.

And I remember - in more
Recent times - I could not
Buy dinner, and he bragged
About his new volvo.
Mother's had no "a/c" for
Three years and he bought you,

His tidy little family, one of those
Sturdy residences in Tennessee.
Meanwhile, my patience is
Cracking and peeling, not

Unlike the century-old walls
Of Mother's Alabama house.
I sleep under worry and eat
Only the taste of my mouth,

While you are safe and loved
In his good graces. Do not try
To teach me the value of
His company. I sought it once,

And snapped back in pain.
I see the trap, I will not fall again.
Let him have his fun with you,
And leave me in peace. Come back

When he has bitten your soft hands
And left you naked in the October wind.

Never as much as before -
And clumsy fingers prove
What that curled thing in my chest
Knows is as little of love
As I am morning dew:

A night thing ill-suited,
And hard for daft old Cupid
To see (so dated his eyes
Fail him even in good light).

I would have said so many many things
More than simply goodbyegoodnight
But there isn't anything to anything -
Lost my turn, went back to start,
And you will oscillate forever
In some secret dewy part
Of the thing that curls in my chest.

There's something in the face of a man
Who has spent his life doing
Not what was required of him,
Nor what he loved,
But what he felt forced to do
By some inexorable pressure inside his head and chest
That would splash him on the walls
If he did not bow to its will and power.

There is something that writers might call Beauty,
If they had to put a word to it,
But Beauty is present from the cradle,
Or it is a sudden bloom as a man matures.
It is handsomeness. It is a standard, accepted value.
No, there is a hardness around the eyes
Of a man who is determined to be
What he must be, or else die.
His eyes are not beautiful.

There is something attractive, though,
Something that must be watched -
Like a solar eclipse -
Because it is rare and pleasant
And unpleasant too.

There is something there that will not be ignored,
Planted firmly as if to say, "This is the face
Of not a person,
But a personality.
This is not a man,
This is the constant, untiring, unflinching
Action of a man."

It is a thing that shouts "I must!"
And at the same time echoes the pleasure of doing,
The joy of not straining under that maxim,
But thriving - it is enough to tide him over
When he is helpless and hopeless and old.
There is something in his face
That has done what it set out to do,
And everything else is just time ticking by
Until it can be done again.

"My Pen is a Keyboard"
Was a ditty I did
When I was a kid
Feeling out the corners of my mind,
But there is a boy -
His Keyboard is a Pen -
And now I prefer to feel out the corners
Of his.

Sometimes he is Neruda:
He writes the saddest lines;
And sometimes Frost:
Penning a the sun on the back of the deer
As it splashes through grass dew;
Sometimes Eliot trudging through
The damp streets and
Sloughing off the day onto paper...

Sometimes Millay -
I think sometimes Millay -
I hope -
Forswearing death
And clinging to love, though
It rests on the point of
The second hand of God's clock -

But I am there.

And so long as I am there he is there
Writing his poetry without words
To be read without sight.
So long as he is there I am there
To be a reader with closed eyes,
And feel the corners of his tired mind;

And to say:
Love, it won't always be night.
We are here and I will sing you hope
As long as I can. It will be alright.
Love, it won't always be night.

You know, it's not nice
Being a fairytale with
A ***** little twist,
I mean, that chick thinks
Diamonds hurt falling from
Your lips.

She has no idea.

High school was always mewing
Quietly at the window
As the window filled with rain;
High school had matted fur,
It purred and gazed attentively.

High school was constant prodding,
Poking, miniscule thefts of attention
Piled into mountains.
High school was false and sweet -
Saccharine and lemon-sour.

My friends:
The lost, the needy, the distressed,
The empty, the hungry
With open mouths stuttering
Repeatable predictable rhythms.

My friends:
The quiet, the wise, the brave,
The knights of an emaciated kingdom -
Boys with wooden swords
Defending me from the world.

High school was always shallow water,
Too loud laughter, music blasting:
A cacophony of nothing, three feet deep.
Dancing on the head of a drunken giant
Who for too long had been asleep.

I heard a woman today
Through her subtitles.
She was on a documentary
About the dangers of
Holy conflict.

She said to the world,
Eyes storming with warning paleness,
"If they" the selfish, unholy Palestines,
"Had taken my son,
I would have destroyed the world."
She was as old as my
(Frailer, softer)
grandmother.
(Who has never heard a gunshot
Or seen a temple burning
Or beheld a crushed glass message
On a cold German night.)

On an old porch she sat,
Wrapped in moth-worn
Fabric thinner than my shirt
Without a shiver of fear
Or doubt,
And stated this cold fact.
She would have destroyed the world.

Later in the thinly white day
Her son visits her, bringing cigarettes.
"For later," he insists, but
She makes use of one immediately,
Gripping with the firmness of
A woman who needs nothing more
Than a son and a cigarette.

His face and the tip light at the same time.
The fire (in his eyes) burns discordantly.
"You know I don't like the
Smell of your cigarettes."
He snatches it from her
And sends it to a dusty grave with his heel.

Ungrateful *******!
I was standing now,
Shouting him down through my
Emotionless flat-screen television.
A thousand miles away
And every heartbeat breaking with
That worn and aged face
That betrayed nothing.

What pain must contempt be
From one who is in her eyes
More precious than the world?
The stupid, unthinking, unwitting
Cruelty of it strangles me.

But then she smiles with knowing eyes,
And waits a few more heartbeats than I can bear,
To say,
"Just one more?"
The worthless (world-worthy?) son,
Prideful and ashamed,
Scratches his temple and
Shakes his head.
"No," he says,

And hands her another.

Up to our feet and let's leave the world:

My darling there are too many too much
And too few; my sweet, feet down
On the ground and let's go.

Into a cabin a fortress, into the whiling
Of quiet hours and smiling at
Birdsinging noise from the sun world
Through the window — into us, my love.

Into us and we and none else
(For a dreamtime if not forever)
Dipping our feet into no need no care;
And only no one shall find us there
When we retreat, the world out of our hair.
And we shall come back to dark outside
Sunshining and birdsinging.

We bracing us until rainclouds shout
"Downpour, deluge!" into our ears;
Then up to our feet, my darling my sweet,
And again into leaving.

One of these summer-drenched days
I'm gonna think up a new world,
Pack up my thoughts,
And take up residence in a dream.

I'll choose a place where
Words are like water,
Women are like daggers,
And men cling tighter than spanish moss.

There I'll settle, beneath cobblestones,
Forever tinkering away in my mind:
Greasing the gears to make the dream
Smooth, like a river stone.

She folds her arms inside her robe
And decides to go to bed
For the tenth time.
She closes her eyes and sighs
And turns around,

But the tricky cooling night slides
Through her graying hair -
Whistles through.
It sings a song to keep her near,
Keep her crying.

She sits back down on the porch swing,
Feet in the air, tiny again.
She's afraid, but
She knows it isn't going anywhere.
She wonders why.

A melody from tomorrow breaks the clouds,
And she looks to the horizon.
The sun is rising;
A bird awakes and flies to the power lines.
The night is dying.

She muses to herself that, in the light,
The willows' weeping looks like
Content sighing.
The grass she cut down yesterday
Is still climbing.

Man goes on his  mismatchmaking way
All befuddled and besillied
By the sullied streets trashseeded
And growing up skyscrapers
Like mammoth trees to eat up all the sun.

He wonders why the days get shorter,
Even the summersinging days get shorter;
And the sky gets duller all scraped clean
With clouds in the gutters hugging sparrows,
And crows learning every day to cross the street.

He walks his life away.
He wanders and wonders his life away -
Never reaching out of his compoundcomplex street,
Until some Eliot composes love poetry to him;
And even then he widewonders why.

I have been ill the way the sun is ill
In the black empty of nowhere
With a thousand fragments floating,
(Adoring in rings and ovals)
And no light but its own
Lonesick stare reflected from a thousand
Dull copying fragments; and it presumes
It is the loneliest of the universe's
Togetherlonely children.

I have been ill the way chalk is ill
On the blackboard staring out at
Uncomprehending faces, and then
In one let'smoveon wipe
Cleared from existence;
And some did not finish their notes.

I am ill with the grandiose
Ill-used illness, swirling my tongue
Against my own abscesses
And crying oh God it hurts
When they might have healed
But for my own foolish
Probing painful wanting.

I thought to write of you,
But you are inexpressible.
I thought to write to you,
But I am a habitual liar
And I cannot be sure
My words would go without
A little extra sculpting
On their way to the keyboard.
So I have written an apology.

I will always be a little too
Undiluted. Strong coffee, maybe
Is a flattering comparison
But really it can be
So much like skunk spray.
Point is, I go too far
Often. (Constantly.)

When I am listing your virtues
And mooning on your beauty
This is a pardonable sin
But then... Pendulums must return.
And so for the nights I have cried
For no reason, or worse:
For stupid reasons,
I apologize.

Doubtless you will be hushing me
We all have our faults
And though not faultless I am
Beautiful in your eyes.

But still I must apologize.
I do not know if I can tame myself,
Or if I could,
How much melancholy
Would drag happiness with it.

I am afraid to try and see.

Balance is what I need to be
Calm, but passion breeds
The strongest beauty -
And if I am not unhappy,
Can I still be mad with joy?
I do not know, and I'm sorry,
But I cannot say I wish to see.

the pianerpaintist
artist with a soft smile for sunwinged birds
even if he says they're duller than crows
ravens clamor in his desk drawers,
(but finches at the windows)
he knows

cliche or not there's beauty in a rose
or a skyscraperline on the horizon
something shiny and alive
and easy to keep eyes on
when you're sitting on a bathroom floor
with yourself
trying to be born with Eels in your ears
and all the world asleep or dying
or shuddering with you

i wish the world was girl+(boy+city)
no care of cliches or crows
but it can't be, he knows

i know

Almost all of the photographers I've met
Think love is born from beauty, and
To that end that press
Some model's laughing face
Onto another model's handsome shoulder
Money falls against money
In those pictures.

Most photographers I know
Think peace is the only thing
Worth showing anyone -
A snapshot of hills
With maybe a leaning tree
Or a brook running down the valley -
Green against green in a sick world.

But there is one picture-taker
Who goes the world over in search of love
And finds it in huts and jails and scummy apartments,
Who sees that true peace is a falsehood
And a dream to be achieved
Only long after he is gone;
Only when his pictures become scenes
For wealthy and untroubled eyes
And his whisper is taken up as song.

One air-conditioned summer evening,
When the waking lamplights
Buzzed and sighed to life and
Yellowed the cooling stones
In the street beside our home,
You asked me a foolish question.
"Do we have a lasting relationship?"
No.
No, my love, we have nothing
Of the sort. No roses or chocolates
Or love-letters have ever outlasted
The final rasping, dusty cull that must
All mortal, fleeting things befall.
No whispered words, like golden
Birds on the morning wires can
Ever aspire to live beyond their
Breath. Each serenade fades with
Death. So shall our love,
When we go to worms, be gone.
But do not cry, my whispered love,
For though I cannot hold you past
The expiration of my arms,
You, too, will be the dullest dust:
Insensitive to my absent charms.

The first winter wind is early
Swirling 'gainst my cheek
Licking me
Like a popsicle
All the way down the street.

Better it would have been
To forgo my coat.
(Though the wind is bitter, I am too warm.)
But sequestered in one pocket

Is a case
That will fit in no other place,
Containing one hundred hand-written windows
Open to view the landscapes in my head.
(Hidden so as not to give away the surprise.)

And look, love, here have I placed
My feet beneath me on your doorstep,
Have rung the bell, have turned my face -
The porch captivates me; I look 'round the door.

Beneath my roving eyes,
My too warm pocket hides a prize.
It is yours.

Oh, my (yes) love,
The (hello) sun rising
In the tiniest square above
Sleepy us
Is (good morning) lovely;
Greeting your (kiss me) cheeks
In my (always) arms.

Your (just now) eyes
Were perfect lit in
Early yellow shine.
The (let me show you) sun is fine
On your (I need you) face.
In my holding place
I will fold and lock
Away this (one dawn) moment,
This (I love you dawning on me) trace.

Your (maybe?) hands quest
On my (definitely!) skin.
You take (closer?) breaths
To draw (yes, please) me in,
And my (here I am) sigh will
Fall on your (there you are) ears
Oh most always, my (yes!) love.

Her silver watch glints at me
So smugly, and cherry red bracelets
Shake from the proximity to
Those hands. Hands that move
Like jack rabbits on hot
Asphalt, like bubbles popping
In grease: she's snapping those
Sticks up and down, in and out.
Wrists and fingers are all the
Rhythm and rhyme I need.
She keeps time effortlessly.
The snap, the tap, the beat
Deep-seated in her soul, the music
Buzzing in her unhearing ears
Swallows me whole. I'm just
A shell caught in the tide
Of her swells and the trough
Bottoms out when she
Stops, slamming her hand to make the
Steel rim POP. Like a witch-
Doctor she casts a spell and
Though now she is gone,
I am bound still.

Pair of mad eyes under imposing brows;
Staring me down white and blue,
(And I can see the muscles in his neck
Straining under the power of his voice.)

Staring me down and singing
Three thousand hundred million ideas
Into my head with one defiant expression.

Two mad-wide eyes blue and white,
Mouth working ‘round words like
Projectiles aimed at my heart -
Striking down the walls Misunderstanding built
Over years and years and

His hands wrapped around the guitar
Years and years
So perfectly, striking it so lovingly -
Music staring into him staring into me
And me staring back.

There is something in the spasms
Of a raccoon, crushed on one side
By the force of a tire - bucking back
And forth on pavement:
head tail head tailheadtail
head tail head tailheadtail -
There is something in this
That will not leave me. I have
Never seen a man die,
But I think I have.

There is something in the quiet
As I watch my mother try
To run over a snake by the
House, the tires going
back and forth and
back and forth and
There is something in the moment
When it escapes. I have
Never seen an execution reprieved,
But I think I have.

There is something in a little bird
Who wraps his wings around him
To keep warm and finds no warmth;
Only the clutching cold
and silence
and stillness.
There is something terribly hollow
In his tiny song. I will
Never hear a man so broken
In my lingering life.

In a land of fools, I have walked
The halls of learning.
I have seen the brawny shoulders
Of boys with bulls' brains,
And the pixie-thin arms of
Girls who yield their value
With a cheap laugh and hungry teeth.

I have seen the mudcaked hands
Of striving, fighting fools.
I have seen the victory march
As it dissipates slowly into silence.
Yet it may be said that I know
Nothing of "life," for here is only
Pantomime - and poorly done.

For the fools and I are equals
In the pockets of the world.
Kept like a gold dollar to be
Spent on a child's trinket and
Forgotten in a merchant's purse.
We are like the apples in an orchard,
Waiting safe behind walls,
Only to fall and be eaten.

Do you have everything you need?
Pillows, comforters, cuddly cotton puppy?
Good! Would you like a story? No,
I suppose not, haha. You know
Every one of them already; the twists and turns,
The lessons in the endings are things
You strove to teach me, after all.

Well. It has been a long day, and while our
Time waking has been fun, even the brightest
Sun has its evening horizon to
Tuck around its ears. Let me handle
The grown-up worries in the dark.
Goodnight, sleep well. I love you.
Tomorrow is a big day for us.

But if, my cherished darling, Helios
Is sluggish and sleepy from a night
Of ambrosia and untroubled lightning-
Lit skies, have no fear. I will still be
Here to greet you when you rise,
Here to warm you pancakes and
Wrap you in fluffy cotton smiles.

And some sneaky day - just when
I think that we (like Shakespeare and Shelley
On a library shelf) are near but still
Quite far away (separated by a book or two) -
You will greet me at a long night's end;
You will be unchanged, and though my
Looks will fade, my friend, you will
Recognize me (soft and warm, ah) and we
Will share pancakes and
Smiles in a slow morning.

Here it is: a
Filthy carrion-mouthed creature.
I've found it. Bent and clutching
With cruel claws - it reaches
For one thing; one pure thing
It must never touch. A
Slimy skeletal monster.

I had rather die than give
Ground to it whatsoever - and yet
It only gains power as it weakens.
More of a ghoul, more of a goblin,
More fitting for some nightmare. It is
Cut from the white marble,
Cut from the loving stone.
It is a desire that even without
Action is still putrid sin alone.

Now I know what
The haunted sailor sees
(Who has through sea-soaked ears
Perceived a siren's song, even long
Ago.) I know what the great mountains
Know that have been split and
Carved and made to weep away
Beneath rivers. The creature is
Deep in me, I have found it -

I myself have seen the artist at work:
Carving it with my own hands,
Carving it of my own terrible heart.
Abomination though it is
It cannot be denied. Reaching for
One pure thing, I throw all else
Aside, clutching and grasping and stretching,
Why does the thought set me retching?
I have known what great mountains know:

That I am less than skin and bone,
That I am carved of sin alone.
No apology can be made, no
Forgiveness shown,
For I am a perfect hideous beast of
Marble precision - descending as a gargoyle -
Descending as an emissary of
Implacable, howling, roaring, screaming, hungry Love.

What foul God made man?
What terrible Adam has eaten of this fruit?
The juices of knowledge run down my throat.
The flavors of ripping
And slicing color my tongue. Man
Was meant to clutch and grasp -
To rasp from bleeding throats,
"One thing, that one pure thing!"

But hope is a fool's schematic,
And the true workman's tools are
A scalpel, a skillet, possession -
No, attainment - of that thing, that thing!
It drives me to become
Immortal terror wrapped in flight,
Immoral desire in a night blanket.

How many ribs can you count?
(You who I have chosen to show.)
I am growing thinner.
Not much longer until I have it,
(I'm sorry, so sorry.)
That thing, that perfect thing,
(But I must, I must, I must-)
Whose name is written in
Fire on my monstrous bones.

Comprehension dawns on your cheeks:
Rosy, like the sun behind a cloud.
Yes, yes, now you see: I will be your cloud!
Let me engulf you! Do not be afraid,
I am a fragment of Love.
I am lungs without your breath, empty
Veins without your death . I am eternity in
Silence - but together! Let us be so! Let me
Engulf you. (We will be the perfect creature.)

Please, do  not run. Stay and let
Us be bleeding, mangled memories together -
Let us rot together, let us fall
Into each other with the help of worms.
Do not run, you mustn't, you are half of
The pure thing. Oh my near-perfect love,
I must, I must.

Coming home drunk
(As I only rarely do)
One night, I heard a man
Talking to no one like a reliable friend,
Muttering about having his feelings hurt
And I knew who he was (or at least a kind of who:
Born with no opinions but strong opposition,
Always told, “Hey, you want a revolution?
Roll your own,” and laughed off,
Passed between people and ideas and loyalties
Like a stolen beer.)

I felt the need to be elsewhere, but the street
Dispassionately pressed him and me
Between two buildings.
I didn’t want to catch his eye,
But he caught mine,
I couldn’t look away from his face,
Twisting like he wanted to say
Something else, and then
There came a stillness.

I stared at him.
I’ll admit it, but
He was just so ragged and tough, like
A cardboard box
With bullets inside,
And okay, maybe I was a little scared.
(I was paralyzed, stuck in his eyes
Like the rooms of castles
Where no foot has tread,
Where ghosts sigh and whisper;
And outside there are signs
Saying “danger: do not climb
You will fall”)

Then something broke.
He looked away,
And whispered in a crumbling voice
“You are no one, I am alone,”
And then I knew he was.

If Our mad dances slow to dirges
And the dark barges in on the stars,
If yours and mine is Ours no more
And shy, pale-faced reminders sigh
Behind the back door a-nights, then
I shan’t write another word for you,
Nor for me, nor Us, nor anyone.

If Our wild eyes and frisky paws
Are stilled into purposeful tools,
And Our twittering, jabbering jaws
Lock up in the great presence of fools,
Then I will shut up my heart’s blood
Inside some useless pen. I will forget
What We were - what you have been.

I will charge myself with this heaviest
Of oaths: when We are no more alight
And the stars still shine,
And the flowers blossom,
And new babies are born,
And the pointless world still shakes with joy,
Then I shall write no more.

For when We are not, what happiness
Is there more than a choked off laugh
In a silent void?

Something scaly is biting me.
Cursed and worthless,
Under the surface,
It’s been gnawing for eternity.
Killed and killing,
Self-fulfilling.

And you say
If I’d only speak up,
But I lost my voice.
And you know
I’m hurting on the outside,
Inside there’s just void.
I don’t know how to
Be anything but
Quiet.

These days,
Something’s running away -
Something I had a grip on
In my childhood.
Tomorrow,
Something will come again -
Something belonging to a friend -
And then leave me
Too soon.

Something iron is biting me,
Over the clouds,
Unheard and loud.
It’s been chewing on uncertainty,
Shaken and shaking,
Unmistakable.

And you whisper
If I’d only speak up,
If I’d open my mouth,
But you should know by now:
Leave it open
The flies get in,
Buzzing and silent,
Impure and violent.
They leave me unsure.

These days,
Someone’s breaking up
On the radio,
On the internet.
My fingers wrap around
Yellow hair -
It isn’t fair -
I don’t know how to be
Anything but
Quiet.

I don’t know how to be
A breaker of silence.
I’ll go to sleep;
Wake me up
When the conversation’s
Started again.
I’ll take a nap;
Wake me up
When the world’s not
Listening.

Something’s clawing me
In my shoulder blades;
Someone’s calling me,
But the burden is heavy:
Can’t set it down, I can’t
Pick it up again.
Sorry, my friend
You’ll just have to wait.

Before today I lived
Lukewarm and alone,
Softly sighing at broken bones
And bruised hopes.

Before today I was
The fallen horse
Screaming at legs
That wouldn't carry me.

Before now I drained slowly away
Like a punctured egg on Easter,
Until some smiling imbecile
Blew my guts out into a bowl
And that was that.

Before today I might have been better,
But I was not whole.

You say "Do you love me?"
You want "yes,"
But not love. You say
"I love love love you
soooo much!~"
But not forever,
Not even for long.
Wrong is not in your
Vocabulary for self-reference
And I'm not about to teach you
That "love" is as small as
A bird
On a cold day and as quiet
As the space an ever-stretching
Universe can fill by the
End of "forever."

It gets in -
In the cracks,
In the holes,
But it doesn't flow.
It doesn't drain
When you split apart.
Love is not a girl who can
Wrap herself around a new boy
After a good cry. Love is a softer
Message than candy and flowers,
Less than hanging on him for
Hours and dressing up
To undress later.

"Love" isn't a texted
Proclamation of desire.
It's not what you want.
You want "yes" and
"Like" and "Tomorrow is fine,
Let's go at six."
You want what you have
To be enough.

I have enough without
Fooling myself,
I have enough without your
Kind of help,
Your brand of "love."