in the weeds where the dark bees
believe in dark dreams; savoring the frostbitten
nostalgia of wet mittens and smokestacks
hacking hearth-smog and dingy bitters
against clouds from a nameless
grudge... spawn from downcast holly.
where red berries
gasp for yellow
in the crotch of a wooden Fluegelhorn
sprouting from the branch
of a hedge without
Lips.

But a mouth full of snow.

II

in the weeds where the dark bees
believe in atoms of uncorrupted joy and pollen.
where they collude with silent majorities
and swindle sunlight for a spawnsong
anchored to the beak of a kestrel...
shrieking the maniacal disquiet
of a perfect moment.

rattling the hinges -

adored.

without
a key.

she's standing by a beautiful girl
with eyes that cannot sleep. she perambulates
her east berlin. but can't seem to sink
like a stone. she has her vapors
in a long box of shallow
smoke.

she's having the dream about impractical gods again.
suckling plums from dark trees, swaying in the bathosphere
of just enough Wednesday.

exquisitely alone.

Basking in the dolphin sun, frothy pearls of laughter abide.
Children at play... and blue thunder sky blotting out the void.
All around, a great swarm of beatitude, unhinged from the workaday.
A grand tumult of sugar, cast upon the waters of Now.

We eat with our hands.... all dreams.

And have all dreams, somehow.

CHAPTER ONE: "Down Here, Every Thang Is I Level. "

they skate, when the lights bark -
like hard rabbits, harboring no hope
and too much dope.
and fatherless.
so follow this preamble
to its conclusion,
and ponder it.

the streets don't front. but the lost ghosts -
are on to Us...


CHAPTER TWO: " How Ghettoes Eat Cheese To Build Prisons "

It was next week when i knew
i would be too black to ride my bike.
so i stole a car from night's garage
and that's when i was stereotyped
and tiptoed into footnotes of my struggle
a neer-do-well. but held my bells close .
to sing a song, i couldn't sing
myself.


CHAPTER THREE : " Shouldn't You ? "

I have no words for this.

i was not awake
when this happened.
so it had
to happen...

and that's how it works.

It's called Life...

For
no
Reason.

You're either
used to
it.

or Not
Dead.

and that's where
poetry comes
from.

Sooooo ~~~

You are alive
or else
you wouldn't have
the option
to die for
nothing.

the crown was heavy like an oil lamp bolted to a block of black marble, strapped to the surface of a neutron star
with a strand of hair from a severed head of Guinness
and all promises.
the king stared out into the palms of his hands
and cast his eyes upon the kingdom of misrule.
contemplating the arc of His royal arroz. mindful,
that for every grain of truth, a sack of arrowheads.
And for every bag of rice, a happy surf.

He lifts the embargo and now openly trades bards with competing Theaters of War and Peace. Boldly poaching inspired contradictions and holding court with renown arguments to the contrary; always feasting at a long, narrow table in an oblong chamber
of proprietary stars.

He lifts His Eldorado, and now
his back hurts.
Having never learned
to Bend The Knee
At the hinge of
His stride.

And now it's off to bed and goodnight.

Like a tendril of Avalon, coiled around an indifferent chivalry
our quests are jaded, and our gods Chimera.
We are all of us marching over horizons, but only the ones
the width of our eyes.
And merrily we surge into the shimmering fictions
of our most noble pariah.
as the devil sells candy to rock salt, for fun and profit.
but we know

He's just showing off.

But he's not lying.

i was born on a Someday.
and You are the only one
that knows.

it gives me
chills.

it gives me answers
to questions, i have yet
to imagine.

it gives me You.

Agatha Abernathy slapped clay on a wheel and spun with her bare hands all manner of things to hold in your mind. She slept through thunderstorms as if a storm front were a blanket. There was no such thing as too many cats; and marmalade was a condiment.

Agatha had nothing to say.... And nothing to keep to Herself.

Can't Push A Cloud With Your Hands

you can't walk out that door
and expect me
to stop loving you.

it doesn't end.
it just kills me.
endlessly.

you can't
push
a cloud
with your
hands.

even when you're
not into
me...

Love's Entropy...

Cleaved from the breast of a hydrophobic stone; I found solace
in disremembering. I stowed away on a barge of flotsam.
Carried the weight of my teeming delirium
all the way, to my tiresome revolt.

Like a Gunga Din... with a bucket
full of wishes. And a bucket
of holes.

I only slept when the dreams stopped.

As foretold.

I'd much rather wish you well than wish you luck.
love turns up dead but for some of Us... it's just Us.

II

Try as I might, the azaleas are doomed.
I slip through pumice and overripe plums
to only always, very nearly -
as I somewhat almost always....
however seldom
or merely.

III

Love is how you get from here to there
without killing a god.

while chewing on the sandwich i was given
i failed to notice the ruffage and the soil of my glamour
only the ludicrous measure of my apathy and passion.
only the girl of my memes and the maladaptive gnomes
of my moveable feast.

i saw through the aerosols and the Hindi.

i ate nothing but net.
i slept with a barstool and a comet.
and asked you " Why? ".

and said, Less.

just a sliver of cool whip-thin
and some sumptuous appraisal of our unbelievable
Love.

I cast the first things that happened to Us.
and kept the windy trinkets that mark things as for real -
to better be happy and something other than
a wish on a stick... and a mattress.

and Life is Laughing...

let's exchange mercy, and be done with these tiresome discords...
to better suss the remedy to our distemper, and quell the shrieking
mule of our workaday demise.
let's be more than friends
let us summon the quilt of all our charms
to feather our bed of nails... and together, lurch into breezy
aplomb. let's become one.

the kind of one that nothingness looks up too.

Asleep through all the nightmares i've been keeping.
Seems like a drug that I had a handle on
was slipping... I kept a bird in a cage
to evoke the sky to save me.
i had wings enough but nothing so much
as anything happening',
only the worst happiness
and a crap rapture.

II

" New York, can I call you? "
I'm sleeping through the windswept plains
with my filigree tucked in my boots
and all things strange, a whisper
in my Lager.. just a mumble
in the  dust
of my last
confession.

and a marvel

the song on the farm is the same. death sounds like morning.
harvesting hens and sawdust... we feed the little ones and bask in the sun. ice adjacent. our overalls polished by plight and random
creekbeds... wholesome and defiled by happy acts
of willful, and a smidgen of pure
hats.

south of my mouth, i find silent ravings.
i brave the decay, screaming your name into my apostrophe.
claiming your shadow like a pony in an auction
of epiphanies.

i sleep through the worst of it..... because Love.

Because Love.

the antibiotics are presenting diminishing returns.
so the festering is still angry, and the sun like a mortal wound
in the Sky. or maybe the fever of my dream is not so real.
just a spoke in a wheel of disingenuine misfortune.
like a cupcake on the moon.

i told myself to leave me alone
in twelve languages.

i got the hint.

not very much my pet yet...
but all eyes on the kingdom... we are well met.
no doubt a shout out for the fates at hand
palming the Tarot in our favor.... and yes i savor this
delightedly,

and pledge me, forever.

i was nowhere in particular. and found you.
my eyes dove over the pearls of your beatitude -
strumming hordes of honeybees for their fickle sting
while humming 'neath the sun
the most ordinary things,

i have never embalmed a living thing like snow.
i have hardly ever known a thing
for what it was....
however -
open my
eyes.

i dropped a spoon in a wishing well, for lack of a stone.
i've had tea and trumpets, with Gabriel.... rouge wine in goblets of discrete fire. and if memory serves....
i came upon a mirror and stole a song from it.
as i recall, i tossed a yellow pumpkin
into the heart of the midnight sun.

without lessons.

but not
without
some...

hesitation

i crept out of my skin and forged a broken wing
from the thigh bone of a thunderclap. i spoke to myself.
but kept my secrets.

i slept in the barn again, last night.
it didn't **** me.

and only never
tried too.

Atticus Fife plundered his tomes and fondled his books with his milky eye. A shade of grey has crept into his blue, and The Help is more helpful as of late. He shuffles, having lost his gait, but never does he wander off... Atticus Fife glissandos over the parchments and leather-bound lungs. He inhales the Past; elated. His limp eyes galloping over the deserts of his un-simple mind, past the creekbeds of his revery, and the unspoken Hopes of his Frailty.

Atticus Fife, leads a very fine Life... Like a Destiny.

Or a lamb to the Doubt.

Happily.

Want me to go with you
where the rain don't shine
and the sun's a moon?

No. I'm cool right here.

thought i might Not
be fooled.
i have a habit of shunning derelict thoughts -
and got my Heart to Think Of.
but You drive a dark bargain,
And I remember those -
for the False Gods d'Arte!
i refused them the Temple
of my Best Guess -
and drove a Bloodstream into my Heart.
Instead...
but you can keep on
Stopping
to Stop.

But nah.... I'm cool right here.

Judith Broom had a knick-knack drawer like everybody else. She absentmindedly tossed her keys there too, amid the random screws to lost things, and spent tubes of glue. Love letters got snagged in there, along with stale coupons and inexplicable dust. It was dust like glass and horsehair. Judith Broom rummaged with her bare hands to the very back of her knick-knack drawer, groping for a shape she remembered. She conjured a sphere that fit the palm of her hand, and the Talisman hummed like a newborn sun in her undergarments. She took nothing for granted.

And nothing could harm it.

can't blame rainbows for everything.
so sleep in a barn. you'll wake up refreshed
and far from sleep. you'll have straw in your hair -
and all manner of parasols.
you'll have intuition.... and exactly no -
Idea.

just where did all the underworlds
find a map to mine? how did they come to fold space
and suffer no glimpse of heaven; only dead-on
into my living hell... placing a crease
in my placid infernos?

how did all the stars know i had no right to despair?
while i had every opportunity to love their corpses
and never looked up.

Bo Boggs sat on a Pappy Crush Soda crate, smokin' a roach in a graveyard. The headstone read " Here lies Pinnochio Earle... Face Up. Take Care Where You Sit. " . Bo could see the Landry hog farm, over the tombstone and his mind was fishing for some cosmic corollary as he stared into Space grippin' a cold one. The summer breeze came at Summer's End, bringing with it, a hint of Fall, and far off barbeque. Bo Boggs sat on a Pappy Crush Soda crate in the bossom of a garden of stone. listening to Bluebirds forget the music they had never rehearsed in the first place. And he almost laughed.

Then he wrote that down.

the music of the rats in the alcohol
has no tune. all the wet creaking suspended in caramel
caressing a cube of ice. the clinking pause.... all work together
to defeat what it is.  an uncharted scar....

we sell the individual curses of our seldom mirth
for little more than concepts and pure dirt.
we achieve what we believe.... and if we believe contrary
to a most excellent truth ; we conjure all the lies
worth dying for.... but never hardly move.

i built parentheses out of chicken-wire
and homespun. and groped my way into Hell's Fiction -
brandishing a brand new self- deception
and a quart of crude oil for my feet of clay.
My mission was too unEarth the heavens in my employ
and surrender to blue skies, despite all Woe's Emissions.
to preach a Gospel to a stone.... and forgive my ever wavering
faith in my position.

and i only managed to Love someone.

and That was
my Heart's
decision.

let sleep be sleep...  but never one sleep, the other.
trade on your windmills and millstones..
or sink.

upon awakening recall. or don't.

Live in one...

or sleep.

but Think.

in my periwinkle dawn, i soak my toes in moss.
and the moon's wrinkles. cherishing
soft and belligerent; against the tide
the scuttle of diamonds -
of more humble gems.
in my chamber of Untold Sleep
lies a blithering beguiled !
and all my love in shambles
on a plate.

have i come from the most unlikely scar ?
have i slumbered past all reckoning ? curled up, into a yawn ?
have i dreams enough to mask my impending bloom ?
so that'd be all my plot; to fill my plate ?
or encompass the symmetry
of my wound,,,, ?

the merit of our blasted kingdoms must lie in our pink mirage.
the hazy spectacle of our hope, like a living steam....
there it must rest, at the root of some tumultuous foam.
anchored to the fog like the shimmer of a lake
to a rear-view mirror.

separate from the swiss cheese tinderbox
in my deerskin hip fob... a white clot of cotton
and pistachio shells... milky with salt dust
and blind empty, like an open mouth.

separate from these. from the iron stalks of snow-melt
and the brittle tympani of my unescorted star.
from the compromise and the motives.... apart -
from all the art of my powerlessness.... [ and ] the polite dark -
of my open palm. like an open mouth.

I ***** for a river stone to whisper oceans too...
with a rope, and a loop. and a hole.

and always wanted too...

not again so much... but less not repeating. that is the rain.
now that i've come to the country of frogs and mariah carey
i can finally soak in the curious blunder
and marinade a sonnet full of paper thorns.
i could almost touch you,

underneath the moon's fingernails
you will find all the evidence you need
to pin the crime of passion, that is the world -
at the doorstep of the Purity
that wrought the flesh
and all Sol's avenues above us in the blue !
above the very tiny crowns
in the snow.

now that my days over boil with teeming
and nothing loves me so.... I must love You.
i must not restrain my whimsy, but rather
conjure amaranths from dead soil. Happy yet deflated -
i must come from Somewhere I have been ....  

or all places.

or else, be in the clutches
of less Beauty.

where am I from ?
My parents cannot say.
my memories cannot resolve,
and my poems
cannot display.
i am rupture and wink.
like a butterfly and a wyrm.
but nothing so much
as beautiful
as an empty
return.

how the air tastes is not what the air tastes like.
my lungs are not deceived.
i live where the grim is gorgeous
and the sun a fiend.
where the moon has vendetta
when a grievance would do.
and nowhere am i constant
but i constantly
true.

i've been endothermic and marginal. stung by cryptic bees
with wheezing stings that haunt the glacier of the private mind.
i have hijacked my quota of dismal and pawned the scope of my grasp for a bird in the hand, in a coma.

under the spell of too many gods... a stone will bleed.
and countless feathers abandon the whole of the Sky
to barter for trinkets underground.
as every living doll cannot die... your prayers.
and all the world, sacred -
to a fault.

it's when the very Night itself feels illegal
and yet you trespass every hour of your truancy ...
free to roam the prison of your freedom
as if born to inertia without wings.
without therapy.

Do Not Go. Stay.

stay and be mine to suffer bliss and earthly delights
stay and indulge me in complete You.
stay and be thorough. rummage through my things
and tell me you love me, while leaning in
for our first kiss.

yes.

with my fairy tales exhausted. i had my wits about me.
like huffing glue on real problems.
the sticky-wickets and whatnot.... that gather through me.
like a trojan-horsehair medallion -
at the end of a rope. Or a ray
of  " No ".

A Spot of Bother that May Be Scotch -
Or Maybe Not... but the rot boggles.
the way decay and Seasons agree on everything.
how you can't stop writing letters
to imaginary patrons
and lost mice.

' awake '  is a maze
in a deeper sleep
and i wonder...

then i wonder
some more.