I'll stand here and carve out a place
for myself in this dark mass, a womb in the wax
into which I can climb, warm it up
until it's fragrant of factory.

And inside I'll carve out a place
in my chest for this dark mass,
a wax in the womb to plug
the ache with an imitation of obscurity.

I'd gladly climb
back into your heart
and get drunk on your pulse
again--that
limitless
chamber.

I'd gladly climb
back between your rivers
and feel the power
of everything most ancient and
utterly new
behind, through,
and before me--
speaking
with rippling
mouths
and signs.

You're gone,
though.
Everything is back to
the way it was before.
The invisible seed
died and dissolved,
unimplanted.
It's all still there,
scattered, dissolute,
lonely.

I would give anything
to be fooled again
by that most true
illusion.

My hands are empty,
my words are empty,
my blood courses without destination,
my cells divide without promise,
my heart only waits for you
to come back with your drunkenness,
your truth.

here's a poem
that isn't about
what it's about.
here's a window in the sky
perfectly transparent,
and deceptive.
here's a face
that isn't a face,
a person
that isn't a person,
pain that isn't pain,
emotions
that aren't emotions,
feelings about something
that isn't what they're about,
physical sensations that
are not physical at all.
here's a jar that is empty,
and dangerously full,
open and inaccessible.
here's a dribble of water in its bottom,
corrosive as acid,
maddening as quicksilver.
here it is.
look around you--
everything's normal,
same as always.

Because this is what's normal,
remember?

Here in the tender grass
comes the eager step
of a fairy's foot.

The fairy's of the earth and air.
She can fly high
and she knows what's deep down.
But her favorite places
are the many paths--some known,
some unknown--on the earth's face
criss crossing with endless adventure.

Stand in the glade and wait
for the eager step
of a fairy's foot.

I'm always played out,
now, pulsing in my hard shell,
hungry hopeful thighs,
unstoppable but sometimes very slow
mind.

I've no one to
address these to, come to
the window and see.

Give me a reason
to let it all go, come and
make it make sense
and I swear I

have wings as wide as the world
to show you,
colorful,
penetrable,
hungry,
we will

rewrite the world

us two

kindness is the sky vault.
up high, stormless, all-seeing,
powerful, empty.
kindness is hidden here.
storms pass through it,
sun passes through it.
kindness is not of the storm.
it is still, and vast.

Most of these are just an ache.
Writing's fine, but there's got to be another way.
I'm battling my better instincts--sleep and strength,
for two--and it's got to stop.
Acceptance is always bittersweet--mainly bitter.
Yet it's the only peace, so why does it
feel unnatural,
unfamiliar?

is your dryer driving you mad,
dried up electric or gas?
are the walls melting all around you,
gooey with paper and damp in the mist?
has your garden been taken over by spiderwebs,
each one with a hopeful hungry orange
little being in the center, a thick closure
of soft sticky strands filling up those well planned paths?
have the flowers all fallen away, admitted defeat in august,
to be covered up by eternal mums or merely weeds?
Does the dust creep back into each corner
unjustifiably fast, so that all you can do is to watch with disgust?
Do the dishes grow heavier and more plentiful
with each passing meal?

Well, have I got a solution for you...

So cheap it's nearly free.

Just burn down your house,
wrap yourself up in rags,
and make your way to the temple.

Because I hear at the temple
they need someone to help clean.

If only you were for me and I were for you
we would break this shell of misery and take
over the sun and the moon.
Instead we're strangers, listening to each
other's thoughts, pressed together in a
polite intimacy.
I would give you what you want
if I had it.

It's quite simple: you are trapped.
And every trap is just like in the
story. Sit there for awhile and try
not to be too tormented. Don't let
the walls get you down--or the
moat and the crowd. Not even their
pennies and peanuts.

And just like in the story, once
you settle down, you'll find that
secret passageway.

Then the plot thickens.

Don't worry.
It's the same every time.

this moment is woven like an evil plan
I coursed around myself, tightening
until I was crowded out.

a nest of trophies, with nary a trophy within.

and my heart--or liver, whichever part
feels, is hung like a whole lot of oranges
in a string bag, getting banged around
so much that when you get them home and
see them you won't want them anymore.

and this poem fell out somewhere along the way,
unraveling long before it had even begun,
not quite an idea of an idea.

the nights are like bouncers, really.
impassive and large.
they stare at you, largely emotionless,
and you feel obliged to amuse them,
or impress them, or relieve what you imagine
must be their suffering.
You fixate on them, for that fixed time,
but really you don't matter and neither do I...
the night merely passes.

eventually you'll pass into the new day
and be subject to its messy laws,
woven around you in dark lines,
tightening and tightening--growing
into the next night, the nest of trophies
without trophies.

It's not so bad. Just don't let those oranges
get pierced by all the tight black lines
and dribble out until your legs are sticky
and your heart (or liver) is dry
and as long as you don't let that happen
you'll be fine.

have the
emotional fertility
of an avalanche
waiting

dusty and small a
million times
over

In my purse there's a connection
to the universe.
I use it to contact you.
Come back,
I ask.
And you'll come back,
a shadow of your
shadow's shadow.
And we'll dance
in the bath,
splashing and
sad.
And they'll laugh.
As well they should.
For I might not have anything to say
but it's funny
anyway.

You thought it was the beginning
but it was the end.
and then it was the end again.
And then again.

And then you thought it was the end
but it was the beginning.
And so it went on,
pummeling and muddling
and the less sense you made
the more sense you made of it all.

Here is a box of
cocktails. Enjoy each
one fluttering
and composed of
ORIGINAL
ingredients--
yes, REAL!
So real you can even
taste
it. Let me cry
for you that
you never tasted
anything
else.

And there we'll all be
crying, the chorus
oh God, not that again
and people paid
to tear their heart out
(or hair, whatever)
and rend garments
while cameras
click

That wasn't me,
because I'm nothing
you just got a lot of
bows around a box of
nothing--

Ha!

If I ever seemed pretty
it was a matter of dust
and shadows.
Sleep will
grab me with
its fingers of trains
and buses and
roads that
lead to
somewhere more
nowhere than
before.
And there we'll
be murdered exquisitely
because what could be better
than to become pointless
in the puddles and the horse muck
torn down by feeble minded
gardeners and an immense sadness
that hungers, hungers, fangs and
horrible jaws and
tearing and
long past feeling
you've been
destroyed and
destroyed again
and again
and
again
and
long
past
feeling
you

still


are




desac-­
ra-

-ted

Let us love,
hope,
hear me.
Let us drink
and forget
everything
besides you
numb
to the world
around us.
Let us love,
whatever that means,
surrounded by old men
and their pennies
of despair
worth about
what rumors are worth
in the journals of
cowards who lust
for our pleasure which we
don't have for we stand
over beds, seeping and
bleeding strange
substances each
expressing part of the
universe as we
are part of the
story to which no one
else has access but us
in our bedrooms so
violated and
alone,
alone
alone.

If you disinfect it they will come,
awash with hope
and stung with bees and swollen and lush and false.

Fat as love we lie prone on the soil,
ready to be ****** by the universe, grand sun and all
elements so revered

And then, oh, it fails us
that universe and all its myths
its stories turn out to be tissue,
so many spindly webs and we
scatter surprised like August spiders hungry and full and
all we wanted to do was weave and wait
but the winds of fate are passing through
and it doesn't like the clinging
touch of our well constructed
reality
no matter how well it caught
our next bellyful
and our continuing survival.

Eventually we'll mourn, drunk and tearless
scabs dried up and scars set.
That's it.

Whatever it was
it wasn't for me.

You're for me,
your invisible clothes
are the most important thing
in this whole universe
and if they cling and if fate doesn't like them and if I agree
well we know what I can do with myself
and this god-awful poetry.

There's a secret somewhere near.
It's to do with the cities of the heart,
the intricate jungle of tiny weeds,
the ocean of miniature water pools.
It has to do with everything you've dreamed
might appear in the new person in your life
and then learned to wait for--forever.
It has to do with all the pain
you distract yourself from
with each destructive habit.
It has to do with those hints
of what pure life is about.
It has to do with all the ripples
after ecstasy.

What you really love
grows dark and fearsome
as all things have two sides
and for this, both are powerful.
Don't run away, stay
and open your heart
ever so slowly.

We're so busy.
We're so busy being tired.
We're so busy with our IV lines
of dull amusements
and distant passions.

We're so normal.
We're so tired of being normal.
Nobody's had a grand love affair
or great invention
while caught up in
all-absorbing boredom.
Not while we're all normal and tired
and tied to our IV lines.

My genius is as shriveled as a leech
clambering step by hungry step
down into the dark cellar
to wait forever in hopes of
a white soft dinner.
I hope yours is better.

It seems like we've forgotten what
we should be doing together.

ship
sank
silently
in
a
silent
sea

hungry flowers bloom at night
wide and ripe as milk.

When you seek me out
and I say it's not happening
don't act out
of the passion of apathy.
What we long for
isn't what we have.
Don't let's find
the virility in sadness.
Not that there's
much risk of that...

You and I already
keep around enough baubles
to keep away the
loneliness.

Don't let's make
each other more
of the same.

turn the lights on
to this body in this night
flushed with anger
and eyes staring
into nonsense like
fog lights brightly blind
into which we dropped
a spirit deep
as into a bottomless well
and it fell into the darkness
yet can't be entirely lost
and stares back
out of the absurdity
the disordered emotions
and disproportionate flesh
around you one cat is awakened and
quietly crying, light on the white tiles
so you stand before your reflection
and trace *******
down the line of your center,
which in your fancy
seems a means of escape
but the inside will
never open up and be seen
or touched and you
can never quite give up

It's all
wide
awake.

That which you love
is right by your side,
every side.

And you
just have to find
the convoluted path
to that closest point.

It all depends on
releasing those painful thoughts
that come from sharp, straight
paths
too obvious to last.
And doing it as a habit so you don't keep getting lost
in the nearness that
seems so far.

It takes time but it's not
hard.

Being sleep deprived
is a lot like being drunk.
2. It's generally better
not to sleep with someone
who sells drugs.
3. If you don't want to have ***
say so early
and often.
4. It's vitally important
that his head is not too small.
5. Teeth too.
6. Frenzy and impatience are either fantastic
or not good at all.
7. Don't be too accepting and tolerant.
This will be mistaken as keen interest.
8. Some people are nice but not interesting.
They will not become interesting later.
9. If you're mainly looking for ***
have *** right away.
It's not going to make more sense
with time.
10. Some people have voracious, intriguing minds,
simply because they are enthusiastic about everything--
they enjoy but only endlessly consume.
11. I am not meant to play tennis.
12. Nor do I want to.
13. The long deprived are not looking for friends.
14. I am capable of incredible
self and shared delusion.
15. It's hard to say for sure what a messy home
represents, but it's not going to be anything good.
16. Don't be too accepting and tolerant.
I may mistake my own acceptance
for keen interest.
17. Don't overlook a multitude
of small dishonesties.
18. There is such a thing
as too much of a good thing...
and too little.
19. Don't encourage small feelings
if you would not want them
when, **** like, they have grown enormous
and tenaciously rooted
for little enough
reason.

You don't mind the lines quite.
You mind the times nobody saw your eyes without lines.
You mind the lovers you didn't have
and you mind some kinds you did.
You mind that worry lines came first and stayed.
You don't mind the age,
quite,
you mind the time that
merely passed.
You mind the friends that moved
far away and further, forgetting.
You mind the conversations never had.
You mind the days and nights passed without remark.
You mind the waiting gone unanswered, year after year.
You mind that your body didn't stretch out with adventure,
but with disuse.
You mind that quiet was a better choice than disaster.

You mind that you will change now
before you got to be yourself then.

Now you can take comfort that as the flaws slowly change
from flaws of youth to flaws of age
it will be a long time before anyone notices
because no one is paying attention to the little details

not any one of them.

When he's gone
the bed needs another blanket to be warm.
Often even a heating pad on his side.

I could just set up two heating pads
and without us, the bed would make more sense.

Better than two crap machines.
And more clean.

I'd write a poem for the drunk and insane.
The bitter and banged up.
If only I had something helpful to say.
Day comes some days as an enormous searchlight.
Exposing everything and showing nothing.
We'd like to think there's connection in pain
but mainly within it some wither and others assault.
So we just carry on under the glare.
Keeping an appropriate distance.
And carry the memory of night's emptiness to protect us.

Wow.

(Wow what?)

Just Wow.

Too many times now.

So many snaking paths arching and winding to this very door.

And what're you crying for?

Facing the grandest, vastest yawn,

what can one say but Wow?

And how.

The world gives so little that

eventually even the greediest must

count as his greatest treasure light seen glinting in the specks of dust.

The prickly rose does not flower,
and hides its thorns under artificial
innocence.

I ran wild in ecstasy through the night, leaping, tumbling, swinging;
but when I woke up, it was as if from a nightmare.

You are my axis,
from the root of the earth,
through my heart,
to the star field,
and back.

I can't see you,
but I can feel you;
like balance, you are always there
yet often I have to find you again.

Throughout the day
I am many animals:
leaping, cavorting, laughing,
hiding, crafting, contemplating...
There are times when I stop transforming
and I am either a shadow or a light,
a husk or a seed.

I don't know why it isn't easier.
But I can feel that axis,
that right place.
That place where the chaff
falls away
and I remember that I am alive.

You are my axis,
from the root of the earth,
through my heart,
to the star field,
and back.

As I lie past midnight
I watch fireflies signal urgently
green-white in the night
"I am here
have *** with me."

And think
of human courtship cries.
On Craigslist,
tentative men want to cuddle
and yuppies want to dine
(and much else besides).
At the milonga,
passion turns to counting steps
for some
(vice versa for others).
In parties, humor reigns.
Not always well.
Coquetry is a competition
and need is a sin...
except when it isn't.
(Someone somewhere's writing a poem
to keep hidden, yet irrationally
hoping to convince.)

I don't have a point.
Only that in our most simple instinct
we are so complicated.
And that despite our disenchantment, still,
it never ends.

I've found the edge of the night.

As it turns out it's a lot like the middle.

Only more tired.

And you're not there.

Only the satisfaction of your absence is here.

Infinite absences

make the night so peaceful.

It's hard to read
even a simple poem.
It waits
like a net--
full of wide gaps,
dangling strands.
It's meant
to be spare
but it's so
easy to sail
through the holes
and miss it completely;
only to have
some vague memory of words.

Sometimes you turn and think
I should have paid closer attention
but the moment won't come back
and the holes remain
even from behind
just so wide
as in all consciousness.

You weren't there,
but this morning was a love song
for us.

The sky grew from black to blue,
birds awakened and sang
just as they have, year after year
for hundreds of years.

I uncurled my arm and rested it against your left side.
You did the same in your sleep, your arm clumsily unfurled over my torso.
We were each
equally warm.

The sky lightened
though the sun was still hidden.
The trees were then visible
waving and turning their
acacia fingers and flickers
and bowing and touching.

One bird sang on
of his empire.

You grunted and rolled awake,
and looked at me with a crooked, sleepy eye.
"Still up?"

Another night
swaddling stone.

In vain
I seek a face.

My chest aches
carrying the weight.

A siren wails.

I clutch the stone to me.
We are much alike.

A closed heart
can't be turned to light.

Your promise of joy
and release
means nothing to me.

If I set it down
my arms are empty.

night passes slowly,
the air conditioner hums and burbles.

he turns in bed
and the mattress wobbles.

from each point endless threads
span out in all directions.

I am not lost,
I have a wealth of choices.

my heavy, tense, vibrating heart
can soften and slow down.

each strand seems
like a feeble wisp

but eons are built
on this.

these paths
are enough.

the bed is still
and he sleeps.

the hum sings and gurgles
like a wise, rattling drone.

from here my freedom is infinite
yet each choice is the same.

peace comes only
when I accept it.

I’d like to write a little poem without words
like a very small flower located somewhere between
a meadow and the side of a mountain
opening silently, for no one at all,
certainly not you.

But undoubtedly a strange little rodent
would eat it.

Whatever goes on between us,
no matter how small and subtle,
I am afraid you might miss it
completely.

That would be a loss,
no matter how small and subtle,
for even in the heart and mind
we can watch the force of nature at work
and it is as much a rapture
as to watch great storms unfold,
and then to turn and watch one slender strand of grass
shaking, weaving in the winds.

It's not you,
it's just my longing I've been talking to.

You are peaceable and still
while I clutch my guts, and imagine myself
to be gravely injured.

I'm just hungry, hungry for a long time.

There's a little something there, in the light
between your quiet and my groaning thoughts

but how small it is, how insignificant,
compared to all my frustration, my stale desire,
an ocean, complete with sunken
cities, ancient,
strange creatures,
vast emptiness,
crevices of boiling stone...

why don’t I pound away at this sadness.
I’ve got nothing else to do but sleep.
somewhere in between the crumbling stones
won’t I find it,
something worth having.
a face that sees,
a mouth that gives
a body that knows.
eyes that turn the lights on.

not another
stumbling shambling
upright stick figure
of a smart man, right
now and usually,
words saying,
face being,
mouth speaking,
body leaning,
eyes to see
where to go.

it didn’t seem to hurt before he came here,
a scarecrow waiting for his clothes
and I put them on him—clothes I’d saved
all that time.
Dress up clothes
for ideal roles.
Clothes don’t make the man.
Buttons don’t make the heart.
A mask doesn’t make a face.
And he doesn’t know the play he’s in,
a play about sadness
to pound away at it
only when everyone else is asleep
like an aspiring escapee
so nobody else knows
how much I’d give
to not be here
to be in the flat plains past these feelings
running in the sun
nothing on and nothing around
and nobody
just completely free
and forgotten
and forgetting.

each strand of desire
woven in the air loom
into a gauzy nest
hidden in the air

there to tell you
how powerful
is each element unseen

each future, each word
each possibility, each touch

and all those desires
hints of which were conceived
long ago, tendrils opening
with powerful wills, stretching outward
along time

do these twine into your air space
or just see you from far away,
harmoniously twirling
in the wind

step, step on the path
back to simplicity, nothingness
you have nothing to give that is yours
take a simple set of actions
that foster clarity and simplicity
and accept the confounding chaos
with a simple heart,
a simple presence,
simple acceptance.

wind in the trees sounds like a door opening
in the garden, someone is touching plates over and over
dry plates with hands that are only a tiny bit sweaty,
so each time they rub and have to give up their grip
and someone else has a tambourine between the tall buildings
and is shaking it, and shaking it fast
they said that I can see through to death
and I said I know, you told me that just yesterday
then they said you are an actress
here are your papers
the play opens tomorrow night
and the plate and the tambourine went quiet
but the door is still opening

I have an incoherent proposal for you.
It is incoherent because I lack both the courage and clarity.

Anyway, as you know this world is riddled with
brailles and imaginary synaesthesic hints over all that seems
to be what it is.

Yes, all that *******.

So here I stand before you.

Punctured and drawn, pulpy and inelegant.
Wry, silly and dire. Cultivated and ridiculous.

It’s.

Scratch that.

In the mind

you have said emotions

we are

not lines.

nope.

Sky wire.

Erm

If

None of what I say is true.

Look past me and see what’s real.

And that.

I’m hoping you want that,

to touch the electric, liquid-ish paths

and vector strings.

If.

I’m a non-bundle of emotions
lately—not sleep though—

and it’s not you.

Just desperate for

not someone.

Just desperate to
get past selfhood
with somebody else
to keep it interesting

and it makes as much sense as anything

so I don’t want to talk ******* but
would you, as a complicated instrument,
like to get outside ourselves
and not play
but be wildly serious?

Sitting still, this is how I am. Just a little bit drunk on fear.
Sitting on the plank. Legs dangling. Ship heaves up and down,
I swing up and down, holding on, trying to trick myself into the sense
that this is a kind of stability. I say to myself, “I’m on the plank,
off the ship, looking down.” But where I really am is over a very
wet abyss—a universe unbreathably foreign, full of seemingly familiar
monsters. Just dangling. Nothing to keep me out but the grip of my thighs and
my relatively small hands. And the ocean whispers deceptively, “This is where
you belong.” And there is that always suicidal pull, “Yes—embrace me.
Press around me and show me every dark, silent strangeness.”

The ocean is the more real. It holds all those thoughts for which I ache,
holds all that I am missing in /my /self most ancient. And
in there /you turn around and /see me for real.

No. That’s not it. It’s something else entirely.

Something deep down there.

Let’s make one thing clear:
I am not here.
I will be nothing to you,
whether you decide or do I.
And no matter what hints and whirls in my brain
I have nothing to say,
just gestures that begin to extend then fizzle and fail.
And I am a reminder only
of what I once almost was,
this body suggestive
only, not actually meaning, offering,
or capable.
Mind and body both.
So don’t even think.
Don’t think it or anything else
to do with me.
You can just go away
if you’re even here.
I’m not.
And I won’t.
You can take that to the bank.
Laughing.
He who laughs first laughs lasts.

In my invisibility
I will enjoy it
defiantly
as if it was something that I wanted
which it wasn’t
but I’ll find it that way anyway.

And you can’t take my solace away from me
casually,
as if you were interested in what was underneath,
but then you weren’t,
anyway.

I would do better to forget you
before I come to know you.
I don’t know if you cause me pain
or make me remember pain again.
Am I humiliated, or do I merely fear humiliation.
Or is it my fear that is humiliating.
Do you uncover or cover me up.
Is it my falsehood or my truth that I hate.