i am lost and that is no wonder in the world.
we have our monsters
and the picture of our beautiful, is the sting . not the beast,
i need to sleep awhile... because the night is the night
and God weary.
i have no hands to grasp this completely
but i have you
to make terrible, my every concoction
of how it truly Is.

but here it comes.

i do not linger where you want.
i ***** and trump in the loam
of our distinguished withering
and amass a lump of false joy
for our trouble.

could you love me in my narrow caul ?

would you allow for the winters of our rubies
and still be sweet ?

can we sever
the ties that blind
and regard the sun
a friend ?
when so much
is the devil's orphan
and so little
the day's
moon ?

can we wait ?

Or are you such as I -
and can no longer be
Yes
when the short answer
is a Novel ?

that hasn't slept....

pray for blue lemons and you'll discover
the limits of your religion.
dance in a viper's den
and your wounds
will not remember the steps.
or the fool.

there
is no revenge
in heaven.
only apple cores
and gospels.

no wine,
only blood
you cannot
bleed.

and clouds.

we are night and day
the clever shadows in gingersnap rags
plotting  to brood in Bohemia
stamping kiwis
clicking our heels the way
twilight clinks in a glass of Bourbon
or typewriters chat chat chat
like iron tea leaves

perhaps

the heat
of your frigid beak
in the spark that froze you -
blasting the center mass
of a pearl of wisdom.

you shudder to think -
because stillness; distracts you.
you are samurai.

if the cherry blossom is a wandering stranger -
with a bounty. as well as your Emperor.

and the Crane, a loon.

keep your steam
in an irish mouth missing teeth
or the nostrils of a grey wolf.
keep your steam
in the the pit of an eye
bloodshot with green glints of blue
or in the red vein
that spiders the white flesh
of a soul's room,
like a bolt of blood lightning
in a window.

She shines like milk on a black cat and she shines like pumpkins
when the dusk is muggy with lung butter and applesauce.
she shines like horses
with perfect ******* that imprecisely
and long legs that absolutely
and my heart

from me.

in loose prisms of topsoil we fold-in
the dead skin and eggshells
we grind our bones into the marrow of our 'morrows
where The House is no longer standing
but the stones you kept for skipping;, now have wings
and your wrist is supple, casting out
above a lake with your Leprechaun palm,
your palm
roasting rough
in chestnut summer
while the nightfall stumbles
over bricks
and yellow is a fool
to a black mood.

a cheap quickening
of bleak starlight
and dogwoods, pining -
for a cliff
they could very
well fjord.

the speed of dark, crippling the watch

the second hand in my hand
and in my hand -
the Seconds.

II

just before.


III

we are together again where the Wednesday
sleeps -
on a pin,,,and little voices -
sing symmetries that have
no substance,
save our thirst
for blood
on the lips of
a lost cup...

or the songs
of a walnut.
it's melody,
an unclean spirit
bathing in
the tyranny
of love.

and the Nothing to it.

the brink of dawn clots the milky way
as stars demure and spike. they traipse in the umbra
of an echo rumbling in the drama-sphere, like ghost embers
and dim wicks after the laughing flame has gone missing
and only the tang of dragon's breath -
clings to the weave in the fiber
of Orion's Pelt.

the sky is where god cannot lie, and the heart is a witness

and when that's true
remember
i told you
so.

and repent.

once again we falter and return to our apocalypse
with our Bauhaus bread and lipid pools of dread
and we swallow the ink of the night sky, howling
discreetly with our mute trumpets in the flower bed.
but if you love me... how can it be too late ?
our sundial is the moon
but how can we ever forget there.
on time ?

the slow smoke gloats and motes of atoms matter
dappled in the dingy blue of wintry twilight, frozen swollen
with white ash sunlight and long shadows, noodling in the canopies
of our vast wilderness. in the back room.

my rocking chair grinds an arc on a single point beneath me.
i teeter on the minuscule reminiscence, much -  
as a wave teeters
on the moon's
whim.

i rejoice.

and deny.

i long for gone remedies, while pondering
what plagues my faith -
in the Mist...
what troubles the blight elan
of my ignorance.

and
at the door, i find you sleeping
on god's dime.

and i dream with
you.

i keep the squalor of our opulent hearts
in heavenly hovels, and i mushroom harps
in the damp lurch of our fever dream
monastic,

i combine the river with the sea
and swamp the ether of our delicate masquerade.
we don the ribbons of a hag
and scoff the ludicrous
of Sunday.

them be butterflies in the pastry
bedazzling the icing on the nape of your neck
and reeling me in
to the spire of your spine
with my lips, joyful and apart..
my crude lust, elegantly fawning
in the ripples of your wet ***
and narrowly avoiding'
a premature
Truth.

them be the kettles and the brine
yammering on about the pots and molasses.
the freak honey in the rock
of our solid moons -
as we recover from the act and act the part
of our chief deception
after the glow dissolves
and the *****
seltzers.

we awaken to the tossed sheets and the bare naked.

the poppies are selling moonlight on the street
as Hannibal is marching hares
through the Needle. again.
and again

no one laughing.

simply.  no one.


II

in the real winter where the wind bites
and the snow corrodes '
we stick a pin in the blizzard.
we set jewels in the crowning achievement
of our disaster.


III

paint black our lanterns

when we met
my cathedrals were full
and swollen with
light
the narrow
white yawn
of oblivion, curling
into a ball -
we kick
down the road
past Finnegan's Wake
Drive.
and the last Lamb
in a Lion's
mouth.

i saw you as a goddess that would forgive me
my crippled inertia
and afford me a palace of goodwill
in the hysteria
of change.

but how i lost you in an empty
confounds me.
it breaks for unicorns
and nothing is
sacred.

it beggars belief

but affection stains
the miracle
like infection feigns
the lyrical

and so goes the sparrow, for now...

so goes the Widdershins of our distant embrace
and the wrong star jaded
and marooned in our perpetual
default.

a mad zodiac, plastic in the vapid spool of Eternity

a somewhat always gone
at the very center
of our being
together.

" when you're spoken too, you're speaking... " she said
and the earth opened up and Silenced  me
like a gnat in chartreuse foam.
we live the wrinkle in time
that suddenly stops.
and believe the hurricanes
are not for us
to not
love.

we wed the whimper
of my goosebumps
to the bead of sweat
on your brow
and our sorrows
are Hallelujahs
swooning in the guttersnipe
of our sweet
descent.

the genuine artifice of our actual denial.

it's like we don't love
as we do the very thing
and soft blows
are not so much
when you think
how low...
and the devil
in the details
is your
tailor.

we cannot spoon
where the fork in erode
is a wellspring

my hands are tied but free
to be as feeble as sunlight in chains
where the dark is aloft and mostly
the shunned are anointed
by the cut.

what lingers in the pit has had a viper for breakfast
and the whole
hole

for now.

my body is no longer my body long
but a short grunt
of atmospheric
twine
entangled in the long con
of birth
and the shambles of our every
dream...
the semaphore
on a dead wind
of  a flat Sea.

to rival the catacombs of your placid menagerie.

higher than brick kites
we.

and some of the absolute
squanders the never fails
and the dead end
lives at the end
of the block
where you're
mental.

IT'S LIKE THE RAIN WON'T STOP
AND WHAT'S HAPPENING CAN'T STOP HAPPENING
IT'S RIGHT OVER HEAD
BUT I CAN'T SEE ****
FOR THE LIGHTNING
IT'S A LEAGUE
AWAY
BUT SO UP-CLOSE
IT'S FRIGHTENING

BUT  I LIVE WHAT I DREAD
AND EVERY
DAY
IS A NIGHT.
thing.

GIVE ME YEARS OF REGRET
AND I'LL RAISE YOU A LONG TIME DYING
I'LL MATCH YOUR ABSENT SMILE
WITH AN EQUALLY GONE
AND YOU CAN ****
ON THAT
CAUSE EVERY WAY YOU HURT ME
KEPT ME THERE
FOR TOO LONG
AND NOTHING HELD
US BACK
FROM THE HOLE
THAT YOU WANTED
AND THE DEEP
AS IT
GETS.

AND WHATEVER WE LOST....

sleep keeps the day at bay and something....
else.
it burns
to have eyes this dark -
too early...
but the moon
will suffice.

there's nothing more...
and nothing's
nice.

II

but not too nice.

III

it bleeds where the fingers grip
and the palm sutures
the have-Knot.

but i digress...

i undress the kit
of our entire garb
and shun the whittle
of our sharp bones
of contention
in favor
of a bright glum trumpet -
of our dumb
neglect.

IV

an endless kick
in the
yes.

again and again
the morning comes undone
and we march -
stuff-lunged into crunch
and mule love
blunder-bused  and lump-kin
but for always
a short ton
of long grief
tweaking the snip
of a dead sow's ear
to reap a jewel
from a dead
mind.

but here

i love you like a war in Spain
spiking the Punch and Judy/
a fugue grief on a tide of dark joy
slavering at the haunches
of a Pegasus.

Blindfolded.

I've swum these waters
and the waves know my butterfly- stroke
but not my cocoon.
i've stretched as far over -
a crashing wave,
as may a Starling, over a worm
in a lipid pool
of an unagitated eye.
where an apple
might .

and that is all.

and all is
like.

all and all
we prat fall on small carpets -
half-lit by sunshine
and half - benighted
we bruise easily,
and as often
as a Jack O"lantern's
Smile
we pitch dark for a new Sit-Com
but never let them
see us let them fret
and never let them
see us
yet.

Yet.

The ancestral diet of Stars, being Other Stars
has left no scars, save open black and yawning vast.
No retrograde Oblivion... only galactic swirls
and elastic Space between worlds. that never last.

and Eternity.

my modernity nips and pleats my yellow teeth
after long whitening by paste and bristle. i chew the gristle
of the dead sow
and club the weaning pups of Cerberus
with an eyelash and a long blink.
i tread the narrows, flatly -
and conquer the quizzical  conundrums
by simply asking.  
My Rocket Science... laughing
at your grecian urn
to paint the herrings red.

i'm out of my depth.

but yes means 'yes' and we ' no' it.

if Nothing else.

Encased in slow gold, and older than clocks -
the rot sets, and the 'shrooms
bloom lots
stuck to the heel of our trot
across the fog clot
and how lovely
are we now
so frightened ?
how precious
are the things
we dismember
for holding ?
and how loved
are the things
we love
perhaps ?

when i am king
you will be strange
and my better angels will laugh
at me, but i will behead
the little piggies.
too gorgeous
to be besmirched
i will unearth your drama
and disown you.

i'll throw flying carpets
at mundane rugs
and shrug an Atlus
at Promethean
worlds
where
i have disfigured
the swan and the mallard
but not the lake.
taking care
to give you nothing
but the very best nothing
my Karma
can mock
and a dime for
your trouble

and be
gone.

for a price.

i have dreams in my waking gate
and seldom say the other thing they be.
The Mare in the Night
rearing up from the dun earth
and sallow plot. the unkempt spot.
but -
i have my desert and my understanding.
and they are the same *****
suckling the pup tent
of my yurt
on my plateau...
tacked to a tundra
where giants walk
with tree trunks in there eyes
hurling bitter Fall at smug Summers...
and trampling the yippie!
of succulent
Spring.

but again... the worst can go more wrong
if the right thing to do
is to die
trying.

and to return -
is to speak a lost word
where we
found
it
on the
lips of a
mute

with a microphone.

Through and through the hollow
i must go. till the breach is a chasm to swallow
and the fall complete and looming.
Through and through, i follow
but don't know. till it fills me with a spasm of sparrows
and the all and all is succinct and brooding.
chintz in the blank stare
and glint in the dark
where i assume the shape of things to numb
and feel diluted.
my solution is not the void, but it's sister.
a cookie in my callous
nailed to a stormfront
behind me.

where the hole is the whole
through to you.

torrid love
gnawing at the withers of my reason for a horse.
my kingdom for a kindness
now in flames
and my youth a dream, teetering on the north
of my age, and the edge
of my
night,

the night i found in love.

from the belly of a wave
in the heart of a maze
i ascend

having slain
a thousand crow
to feather my black
thing

and take ingenious
wing
before the searing
nay
of the sun
annuls

melting the fledgling

and keeping
the sky.

from below, i know above

and go home.

I took an arrow to the knee
and cringed, deflated and  amused.
It was the knee i kept for bending
that i very seldom used.
It was the joint, disjoint from prayer
the earth had hardly ever known.
it was the crease i used for leaping
that i folded into poems.
I took an arrow to the knee
now my adventures venture less
and now my dragons are alofty
and my slayer
dispossessed

where am I ?

i walk among  long long strands of green mist fingers
and stroke the miracle. my hands desire
the tresses of heather and timid juice
of plump mornings
and i gather footsteps to a door in the world
that leads to another.

like a prayer in a moist skull.

to sleep i may, but not the dark vessel
of mine eyes, over stormy seas of placenta and albatross
tossed from the palm of  a rough hewn, Five-Headed Crane
raking five beaks across a canvass of my wounded fires -
and my brazen black honey, trembling on the lip
of mis-fortunate birth...,
in the cataract of
a fine hat
on a fat
rebel.

my public spaces engineered
to come from the inside

the wastelands are beautiful

as you gawk
at the red
sun

a bead of red plasma,
flowing from an
open vein

in a mind shaft.

with a bad back
and no front.

but a lasting gasp....

while falling asleep inside you
i came again. i arrived sterling in slumber
and silver in solace.
i was hereafter and unburdened.
nearer the furnace of lost moons
and more beautiful
than love's fool.

we'll have to linger on, because
nobody makes blueberry muffins
out of a box
the way you
do.

a late harvest in Brigadoon
plucked from good earth
by strong hands
hauling
uphill, until
a gentle
*****
rewards
a stiff
back; easing
a grateful
burden
that levitates
famine

[ bushels ]

now
ziggarats
in a root
cellar

a Sumerian skyline
of parsnips and rhubarb
with fennel minarets

where Gilgamesh slept
in a pantry of pagan loot
underneath a corner room
at the very back
of a round
house.

where four seasons bunk with an almanac

mason jars of pickled beets
breathing their own blood
hanging gardens from the ceiling
of the Underworld
like fliers of missing children
on telephone poles

i go outside and wander off

you stay home

now that we are nearly one
let us consume the other
and be tranquil in our spine
and darlings, ever darlings.
let us chime invincible
upon the  purposeful earth
and lounge in the quake
of it.

now that we are nearly one
let us pursue the rarity of our union
to the depths of our actual love
and be made perfect in the flaw
of god's kingdom, where man has raged
against itself, and joined the devils
of their inner dread.
let us coerce the seasons to a bliss
and reign above all unjoy
to be together, at odds
with the evening
of our mean
palace.

let us love the other more than we understand
and stand under the canopy of sleepless
love... forever.

in the park where squirrels peep and gibber
and the grass is brown, where the green died brownley...
there's a mark
on the world -
where we never fetched turtles
or lay languid in the shade,
but a place removed
and a day
wasted.

i see your charms as a heap of bleed.

and i forgive you all I give for ...

but i mark this place.

i brand it and sear my name
in the flesh
of our fresh regret, and stammer
in the sunshine
of our irredeemable
suns

the suns
that moons mock
and orbits abandon
to get on with the business
of sleeping through
a dream.

and you approve.

and i remain
unsleeped.

like a withered fruit
unpeached.

Are you not what i always wanted ?
if so, i am thankless and crib death mysterious.
i am ****** and clarity
if you are not to be
what's mine.

you are confounding compounded. a rough in the smooth crime.
a jinx in my saving grace... and a loon.

if it be so, that we cannot connect
then let me set my sparrows to arrowheads
and fell the beasties of my wayward
skylarking -
so they may know a noble death in mid-flight
where the downward
and the Midnight are -
eyes, still chirping absurd love
at your dissonance
with cold
blessings.

but give me this.

keep my hands in your robbery.
intertwine my fingers to lay prints
on whatever you stole from god.
let me share the fall
and the fault
so that we may yet share
a single living
Sting.

elsewise,
the ruin and the peck
is only your wound
chirping
and my song is mute
as a victim
in a flock
of ill.

or a grain of hope
in a scarecrow's
eye.

when we met, it was tipsy tuesday and donnie had swollen fingers
and nate sank into his plaid frock and dropped his shadow
on the patio like a heavy slug, and the flies
cavorted in the vortex of our subtext
as the night skies spat stars
at our foreheads.

you were beautiful;  too beautiful then.

i was smitten, i was tossed on stormy seas, unsick.
i was healed. the world spun filth and dull glamour
but your face hurled fireworks
and my mind leaned into my heart
and i knew i loved you.
whoever you turned out
to be.

i babbled and groped, as the inertia
of falling, filled my sails
and I was purposefully adrift -
in your brown-black eyes;
as a dog fetched a frisbee
for an illiterate.

and i think i bit my lip a bit.

I saw you for the first time.
for the last time
in my life
and was never
the same.

my heart, now more precise.

you had fierce speech
underneath your sweet speak
and long hair.
i had you in my soul's yurt
on a plain of windswept pavilions
with free horses and costly
remoteness.
i was ' there ' less
and more somewhere else
alone with the perfect you
reading my lips
as they tremored
delight of it.

i babbled speechless.

i remember you tossing your locks
at my cage. and i was set free.

please add me to your wishlist
and complete me.

To be kind
would be wise.
what harm is it
to lead with
human
sugar
and becalm
the turbulence
that is two
in a room.
to open with a gentle
respect for the Other
and borrow a smile
from a humble
place in your nexus.
to begin with a kiss
where a ' welcome ' would suffice
and outshine the habit
of your bitter tongue
by the luminous of a Love
for granted -
but never taken
unless
given
?

nothing is foreseen
like the past... it outlasts the future
and no one lives long enough
to know for sure.
and then there's amnesia.
a suite of empty rooms
you
came from -
and all

all
the invisible deeds
of your god
with a margin of error
the width of your
conviction.
a mote of bobbing
apples, made of
smoke.
around a castle
with a rook
made of
bones.