your melodies betray you as a virtuous enigma.
i swoon to your baritone authenticity.
we are well met, and the sky has shunned the thunderclap
to display the sun, when you are near me.

suspended in the ashen gloom of our rainbows
murked by the sundering of sunlight
by way of black comets and sad stones.
a withering of moon where you often live
till you stop doing that.

sleeping near the river of our quaint desires
all around the throng of invisible wings and tepid prayers.
we gather to the nexus of our fussy razorblades
and cleave a sliver of dust...
happy to have something
we can't even
see.

the rain is bald headed and mangled.
you can almost tease a feather from an iron snowflake
but your mondays have all the time in the world
to be mondays.

you chipped a nail on a crucifixion.
but keep your balloons in your symphony.
i see you walking with a cane in heaven
just for fun.

heaving stones at the sun
all the while quarantined from the average atom
of happiness... more of a swollen thing
in the hemisphere of dark whimsies.
a child of an unjust god.
sleeping on the window sill
with the silver moon blanket
of moonbeams.

tender mercies have no mockery
and i gather you have soul enough
to endure.

the stinging nettle dreams of buttercups and fireflies.
and ice is not a metaphor, but conjures fire
at the core of our blithering infernos.

nothing is more life.

just believe you believe
and slip through the clouds
like a raspberry goose.
sup from the thimble of your-
apparent heresies
and serve no purpose save
sunshine.

dupe the bell ringing " blank gong "
and smolder in the pew of forgotten churches
with no gone god.
more of a stasis of feathers
in an naked verb.... stumbling in the sky
of our very dear intentions.
you can be the devil if you want too...
but you can't be this beautiful
and deceive.

that's how i love you.

I broke the dark with my black mind...

it seemed the light had abandoned me
and all around, the world was Nil.
a more nothingness than anything
was ever Nothing to begin with...
and none of my yellow crayons
were not black.

it seemed the light had dispelled me
from the laughter that was once me
and gathered all my shadows
to the husk of my unsavory rust
and shackled the very moon
i clawed from my eyes
to better see the stars behind
to no avail.

it seemed tomorrow would surely come undone.
like a poor riddle for a stripe from a whip.

i broke the dark.... because the light had a black yes
and the gallows of my ascension
had no other purpose
save to hang stars
from a thread
in a hole...

i keep walking into jungles
and cumbersome puzzles.
I lack the thunder of the adventuresome
but have the lightning of a Buddha
that loves Nothing.

saw you in a memory and forgot myself.
that was a beautiful day.
the tomorrow of that moment
was a pearl.... and 24 hours away.
Love is what you cannot do alone.
there must be another
and a dream
and a
hope.

been dawnstar wrecking and eating moons.
swinging from the rafters
and sleeping through you.
i have a joy in my thorns
as sharp as a ' Yes '....
but nothing
so possible.

and that's my guess.

My love is like the last word in your mouth
When your mouth says " I love You ".
It's you. all the sundered things you cannot say
with the sun so high
and your mind so black.

i wanna make a move on you.
I wanna come up from behind
and embrace your grief.

i want more than the love
you were love enough... to shine through.
just to be a part of your inner devastation
so the healing may
have my face.... for Love's Reasons.

i wanna be in the one place
your pain is not a joke...
But a move...

I wanna to be closer,
because this far away
is not Human.

But Love
Is where Close
gets done.

Life wages on like an hour at a Time at War
With Emptiness. A brood apart from -
the usual suspects.  It folds space with it's teeth.
And carries on in lush meadows of perpetual.
happy as a dog up a bone tree.

there's not a ***
in the stew.
it's stew in a ***...
and that's the way
it always been,

we have scarcely more
than earplugs for a blindness
and all our numbered days
are slaughtered upon
the altar of oblivious -
as we squander our blight speck
of Eternity.

where Every minute lives.

I could change
if it didn't cost me my life.
I could bend to your will
and be perfectly out of my mind.
i could trade on my skin
for the surface you like.
and be ****** if i do -
and just your type.

it was like stitching the hem
of a catastrophe
and then - came -
a knock upon my door.
a strange thing
with a wonky compass.
a True North -
more Southern
than a lazy eye
and the tear
it wept
with.

just beneath the reason
you were there in the first place.
and exactly why
you left.

just yesterday, you smiled at me.
i caught a glimpse of your hair down
and a rampant
' Okay '.

you were ready to almost be
quite close
too happy.

and i can't help
but notice...

your carousel has fewer insane
horses.

your always striking camp with a riding crop... always off
on some quest that involved your deepest fears.
you tumble out of bed on a horse. and i, of course; head after you.
and long do i roam at the pleasure of your hasty retreat.
always on the go.

i fell asleep on the train and wandered off.
i came upon a sacred geometry, and dangled
from the corner of a sphere.
at the end of a rope
of light.

not yet a beam. more like a lock of hair
woven by genius and sublime elan.
i found myself naked on the plains of naked glory.
a speck on everlasting mysteries....
i plucked the bones of thin air
and the music was
mine.

just out of reach but embedded in my salt
like a memory. haunting my reach. and the flowers i have seen.
the yellow burns the red thing at the center of the world
in thrall of blossoms and sunset.
a joyful meringue of meadow and riot .
a song in the throat of the world.
hovering in my epiphany.
just beyond
my grasp.

we serve no dark when we embrace
and nothing cruel can stay. we are too alive to be beleaguered
by the horde of narrow minds, and cast out almighty odds
against; to gather up our perfect days, wallowing -
in the chasm of our bliss... entangled in soft moans
and well spent.

He arrived at the Bordello
at the end of a dirt road, off in the sticks
of Culver Whitney County.
Cluttered with kudzu and blue graffiti...
Windows boarded, and shutters shut.
A neon clam, dark and in poor taste
had fallen from it's perch
and now demented , lay
draped over a thorny bush...
misshapen by
the prevailing winds
of neglect...
along with shards of tinted glass,
scattered throughout
the abandoned plot.
He could almost hear
the catcalls and the rough flagons
boasting in the velvet dusk
of forgotten scandals.
as baroque chandeliers
hovered above
the rutting
and the
dice.

above the black soot on the red carpet, garnishing the parlor
of lost harlots and extraordinary tales of loneliness
coiled around a banister descending now -
from unattended chambers
to an empty riot of broken barstools
and brass spittoons.

With a pen, he sketched the facade
of this dilapidated madame
and he made sure to include
the moonshine barrel -
next to the dead carnival
of earthly delights. choking on vines
and termites.

he captured the ordinary macabre
of a lifeless magpie
at the foot of a flight of stairs
that led to a groaning burgundy;
crushed by time and abandon...
after the coal mine closed
and the Church moved
to Foley, next town over -
strapped to the bed
of a wide load truck
with just enough
rope
to hang a
serpent from
a star.

he drove
home without
the radio.
and slept
on
the hood
of his
car.

by
the side
of the
road.

sewing the breach in my well worn stockings
where the seam abandoned it's strata
and departed...  it's post, toenailed-
to the cross-stitch of an unraveling weave.
my mind blinks, to moisten the third eye
what been staring at the mundane, overlong...
to stimulate the *******
and hasten the vibration to a resonance
that opens a door  
upon reflection, to the outer dark
and all the bright lands
between the sea
and the murk of -
the cosmos.

to an
isthmus
at
the zenith
of
a sphere.

my socks are
mended
before i find
a spool of
thread.

before the
seam
and
the needle
ever

( met )

where a hole
wasn't

( there )

again

and not
yet.

i was disconnected from your umbrella,
as we strolled
like organist thumbs akimbo
over octaves of impenetrable silences
that lay as shells at our feet, unperturbed.
your free hand, bound to mine.
enslaved to the pendulum
of our quietous
tandem.

we note the long shadows swaying in the corona of emerging contrasts... we go arm in arm now...inhaling the fumes
of our unspoken truce. reveling in the sanctity of our bond
without losing a thread in our poncho
to a snag in the deluge.... or raindrop teeth.

we continue in our way.
conjoined in our congenial orbits.
disrobed from the
inside-out.
two columns of mute serenity...
stalled where the bridge
and the railing; conspire to frame the stream below
with the moment of our pregnant
pause.
as seen from ground zero in a cataract
of awe and epiphany.

the mist from stones dashing about like trout
draping our skin in flecks of Indra and glass spider eyes
laughing at all our jokes, before the punchline
finds your Abbot
to Costello.

we are drenched in a thousand specks of mirror.
with tide pools in our crows'feet... and all
the continuum of glory...

the unvarnished fathoms of our symbiosis
and the dignity of our invulnerable
Haj to the Mecca of our Peace.

II

i was disconnected from your umbrella
as you never believed in -
having one.

so i embrace precipitation
with all the ****** delight
of a pagan in the company
of His oracle.

your antlers
shedding skin
and divine.

my spirit
dwelling
in a
jar

full of fireflies.
for true.

i love the way you mostly go from garden to shack
tapping at the jagged slats of my ragged door....
loosely latched to the frame of my hovel.
your knuckles
rapping
on the knot in the grain
and the lichen blotch
above the likeness
of a cumulus cloud...
etched into the feeble barricade
of my luminous
tomb.

i let you in, after you wake me....
with your quiet
rain.

You read my books
but My -
lips

move.

II

sunset denudes the strident stars
and stark they come, above the worldly disarray
of my ordinary disposable comforts.
and the tinsel twilight
of my terminal misconception
of how to proceed with
a miracle.

and i love the way you mostly ignore my dilemma
and how thine is the kingdom of little mercies
that gather to my deconstruction
to ***** pavilions of  the unimagined
in the dismal eye
of my hurricane...
For to watch you at your craft
is be astounded
by my Isolation, dissolving -
into a figment
of my crippling
self doubt.

i love the way you mostly correct the mistakes
that leave a mark...
how you show me how the moon
is a hole
in a pitch dark
clock....

how you serve this hermit
a banquet of intimacy -
that never recedes from
my bare cupboard
nor my hearth.
the way you squander your riches
upon my barren spoils.
the way you ruin my dispossession
by laying claim to the crest
of my tsunami -
of crushing
disappointment in
wishing wells -

( with ventriloquists you can lip read in the dark... )

by the light
of a constant
collapse.
the star you caught
off guard with your
south paw.

III

( And )

i love the way, that i love the way - you
mostly save me
from the withering din
of long hours,
from clawing at the ripple
in my false pond...
where i skipped a stone
into the great red spot
of my private Jupiter.
twiddling your thumbs -
as you casually rescue
my derelict barge
from the Scylla and Charybdis
of my discontinuous
clarity.

( and the moment you arrive. )

i love the way you mostly
and all the ways -  
you always

how all the ways
you love
me...

come so naturally
to you.

where we come from is not a world. but an unsundered grace.
a sort of beatitude swelling from the solid light of the blithering truth
and the twitch of a ribbon in a ravens beak
as it dives into the yellow sun
in your palm

life is a holy suspicion that something is real...
and the resignation to know nothingness
as the dream that got away
with having you around.

to love.

the air is tremble lucid in the esophagus of my blasphemous ghost.
so in love, my angels blush as they suicide.
my devils shine my darker thoughts and nip my shadow's heel
even in broad daylight, while I'm besotted and immune
to the vigorous lie at the heart of the world
knowing full well, half less the very truth of how deep she is
but never ceasing to swoon in the thunderous caress
of her absolute beauty... that conundrum
dislodged from the invisible
and using her
name

to create you.

out of thin air... the troubled flesh of your actual love
is more than the measure of your grief and by no means
a means to an end
that was as inevitable as the woman
and the sliver of time she occupied
to dissemble my preconceived notions
of out of the blue.-
and Lightning.

On the tip of my lung
my very next breath and the star shaped wreck
of my impending joy.... the blur of my luck -
so golden in the dark...
and all the cloying karma of a rainbow
smoking *****
with a completely blind god
to see through....

with your eyes.

when you lead with your left
all you have left, is the right thing to do.
and even that can be arbitrary.

you may approach the bench
but the bench will press you -
against any falsehood

where the ornament is a winged siren
above the headlights.

you might get comfortable
boxing crows in a corn field, after dark -
but then, you could be an alabaster pearl
in the raven's tear. or some-such goblin
that feeds on sustained grief
and bought that house on the corner
of your mind's eye.

you might swear to eat the pentagram.
but can't even taste a straight line.
it boggles the googly calamity
in progress.

and i can still taste your open mind from here.

the days of the merry tale have retired, spellbound -
by the mediocrity of our tedious dreams.
we are now engorged with the truth.
and oblivious. we astound the yawning void
with our audacity to refrain
from giving a ****.

but the Mondays have rain so soft
it could melt an atom.

and those are the days we turn into Us.
and i forget what's wrong.

in the barn, where the wicker baskets gag on dust askew -
shimmering in disarray as the slanted rays of the sun
slip through the fissures of our ancient frame...
there are new gods now. and they caper through the wires
of our every day... we are consumed by consumption
and have no weariness to stay the rapids of our Idiocy.
we brook no fumes. but bind to the arrhythmia
of our plastic satori.
we conjure no love that is not dead to the world.
it's just dead to the world.

with a barn.

whereupon i found myself walking; i cannot say.
but a brave lad was i... with all the stubborn yolk
of a cauldron sunset... burnt into the world
branding the blackening blue with a last rage
against the dead stars.
i found my cigarettes were now chandeliers !
and most of my ghosts were departed.
up the unnatural spire...

my gaze fell upon
an ascending
why?

and never came down.

the trouble i'm in
is no worse than
the worst thing.
but it hurts like
it ain't lettin' up
in your lifetime.
you sink to the bottom
just to breathe.
claw your way to the edge
of black steam.

you forget where you put the thing
you lost on purpose
and you can't recall remembering
everything about it.

in the air where the thimbles between us
hold a spoonful of spite... and the light has the skin
of a snake, like a very lonely drum.
it's polite to say thanks to the devil that you know
but you can't sleep with your eyes closed
in an open question....

so the automatic pain that eats your heart right out
just might be the bruise you were looking for
and the dimples in the sun, have all the darkness
of a missing kiss
and this has never been a life
without a love
killing it.

It's because you don't love me
That i get the chills.

You're one of those girls
That a woman
would ****.

But not like Time.
That's another thing -
Still.

And you've got my name.
While I got you
nothing.

II

And Nothing means more
Than a love that meant
Nothing.

And Nothing at all
Is why not ?

Or Something.

This kind of dead, lives.
It lives with the humiliation
you insist upon.
But now, you have to deal with me.
You have to acknowledge
that I Loved You.
And this will not be easy.
For you fantasized that I
Had been utterly defeated -
Or was low born as other men,
Too caught up in my groin, perhaps...
But weak, nevertheless.
Or that my shallows had no depth.
You were convinced -
That servitude was a symptom
Of my puppet disease.
But now...
I leave you at the mark upon my Soul.
The very envy of Cain.
Because I can die for something.
But yet remain.

You can only **** me once.

But I can leave you
deeper..,

I take it with a grain of salt
Our Heaven is exhausted.
And we oughta' be more careful
with our carelessness more often.
don't read me like a book
and I won't shelve my deeper feelings
And I'll promise you
No Promises
Love has no way of keeping.
We could be reasonable
or risible....
Both silent and indivisible.
But I can almost taste it
as we waste it.
Now Life's become
unlivable.

Our Heaven is exhausted...
and maybe... maybe...
Hell is too.

it's not like i ain't
been South
before.
more like i can't see
the stars
anymore.
More like a thing
i used to love
has locked
the One
door.
and left me
Out -
with all my
heart
pounding
amore.

or less
.
adrift on a sea of foam
near the rocks, flecked with bones
and private diaries...
with tiny keys
to huge locks
and the wreckage
of wayward souls
dashed against the lichen
and the lint from black fleece...
bobbing in the riptide
of a sand dune.

swallowed whole by the question
at the heart of my demise
and the sorrow
in a sunbeam
when it looks me
in the eye.

and weeps.

on my skin lay the words that can't be tamed
and all manner of beasts snarl in golden rickshaws
ferried up the mountain pass to my pyramid
floating on a cloud of lightning, woven by hand
in the heart of Darkness, beneath the canopy
of an old Oak...root bound in the soul of the void
but flourishing, my head wound feeds the branches
when i sleep underneath them, it seeps into earth
that has no form... and i have an insomniac's dream
in the middle of my awakening, by the sound
of your footsteps....
as you make your approach from the East
and bring with you the scrolls of lost tongues
and the the rye tales of the crow in winter...
with your eyes marked
by having solved the Mirror's riddle, in the dark.
and your sallow cheeks, flush with empathy and famine.
your course hair, descending like elven craft...
resting on your shoulders, as if draped over a banister
of an endless spiral...
I see you before the light strikes
my optic nerve.
Long before the sun
was born...

I crawl from the space -
that contains my shadow
and greet you at the foot of the stairs
where your tresses
caress moonbeams
and i smile
so deeply - even -
the stars in your palm, stall -
their ponderous orbits
to behold.

And I hear
what you have to say
about love and the virtue
of flesh enmeshed
with a Spirit
to untangle
Eternity,
and your voice is soothing
As i listen to the Truth on your lips
till you pause.
then i tell  You  " It is good to see you, as always...
and would you do me the honor
of sharing my blanket made of glacier skin
and stardust feathers stitched into the dewdrops
i harvest gently, Before dawn...
off the glistening shells
of iridescent beetles
and blue grass. with my eyelashes.
here beneath the Oak ?
It would please
Me.

and our head wounds feed the tree as we dream.
on the roots, we slumber into worlds without end
and i fire my maid for sweeping
the terrarium.

Dead inside, like a soft shell sun
drinking Lethe and ghosts
and frozen crumbs.
A polished gone.... where I used to be.
The Lack and the Fall
and the Irony.

gone missing are
the many things
and all the world
endures.
whatever rabbits
have been misplaced
will find a hole
in a mirror.

as of late, my every word
has been less
than sunshine.
and a glum
rumpus -
has flustered the
actual calm
of a dead space.
and the past
is the
first
thing...
to happen
after
that.

the brass tacks have hit the mat
encased in melting candle wax
from a candle on the floor
in the darkest room
in the house.

there might be a way to look at that
and not go mad
when you know what it means... you're -
Never prepared for That.



struck blind in the eye inside,
you could almost die
and you want too.
when a light goes out,
and you're plagued with doubt
and you don't do things...
because Why?
and Icebergs are known
to roam these waters
for real.

this is so
real.
this is so
real.

love is how you feel it.
love is what you do.
love is the reason to live
when love has abandoned 
you... it's so cruel the way it strikes
and the way it departs 
the way i never knew you
and i never thought
my soul would ever suffer
for Her Art 
i never had a clue 
till it was gone 
till everything right
went so terribly wrong
till i found myself on a ledge
in the dark
i saw the truth. 
and that's how i got this scar
it softens the blow no less
it tramples every
flower bed
it crushes everything like a god
love is the loneliness 
of the lucky ones

and no one ever tells you from the start
they just let you fall 
and watch your parachute 
be nothing but a rock 
on a rope,
but that's not even -
the joke

then it hits you like a ton of bricks
and just for kicks
it kicks you when your down
and your lost. and now 
your hard

All Because
Love never had
a heart.
never had skin the game
that you loss.
never apologized
for the hole in your life
that was left behind
when the light left you
for another man 
and a lie 

and you keep asking  why ?
and way down deep inside
you wish you knew
that love has lost it's mind
and never had a heart

till your love went blind
and you had your heart -
removed.

i walked all around the grounds
and found some angry worms and such.
i poked in the weeds and slept on a frozen log -
i chose to abandon a part of me
that was all for you.
but your **** candle lit darker things
of which i had plenty
truth.

just in case you didn't get me nuthin'
with Mercury in retrograde, and your lover
gone from the map.
it says " Here, there be Dragons "
and wither you go -
the pain will follow
like a burr
in a snowflake
on fire.

let me tell you
humiliation is a spice
in a dish served cold.
let me show you to my Parlor
of Yesterday's
fresh hells.

and tell our friends.
they'll all be there
denying.

the radio waves purr over the terrain.
something like Nevada, but with fewer curses.
there are bones exposed in the desert
that speak to the fact that there will always
be bones.

so we have to gather our things
and tremble.
or dash when lightning strike
shatters the moon
we made our wishes
by.

you were human again. i just sat there
and watched you.

i watched you forever and ever.

that moment was a coil in the undertow
made of light and perfect anguish... the mother of all loss
and the triumphant stride out of the dark !
you had mad curls in my eyes, bedazzled by your canny
arrival, all of a piece but not peaceful.... struggling with
the dark side of Beauty, as it pertains to your specific
emotional default.

you were splendid.

i can feel the light burning out -
a mile from it... smell the petunia's " Goodbye, and Luck too Ya "
i swear my mind is coming apart
to find something.... but there lies the truth
and it's ruthless for certain !

i feel like one of those houses you come too
and tell all your friends that it's haunted
and i dare you to stay there overnight
just climb through the broken windows
and pray for your life.

it's those home spun agonies
that rip through your heart like the wind through the trees
if the wind had a heart that loved another
then it follows that the trees
are cut down
all the way down
all the way
down.

I took the liberty of relieving you of your broken heart
and slept through the night.
you are my baroness, and i am the moonlit glade after dark
and the depth of available light.
true love is like watering
the fish.

people don't. but you do.

and you might.

Now, come along and get there from nearby.
I have a chapel for you to breathe in
and smoked walleye to nosh with fennel
and braised ivy, clutching the flanks of my house.
I can offer you a golden block of Amsterdam
stapled to Achilles' Heel, and a punch bowl
spiked with lavender nettles... and the kettle black
mocking the other black thing.

Now come along and get there, from nearby.
we need hardly talk at all, and i would have you serene -
in the fecund emporium of both our outrageous spittoons.
we give water to the effort we make.... we push rivers uphill.
and the both of us matter, as much as the least of us
do not.

we carry the weight of a sprint
like a gallon at rest.

i see from here, that you are sleeping as we speak.

dream this way.