A poor dead house
simpering in the gallows
of a just regret.
an uncoupling of a sun
from it's moon.
leaning in the southern north
of a belligerent east.

the paint is failing.

and the windows face oblivion...
but the staircase
leads to heresies
so beautiful, the march hare screams -
and all whimsy folds.

the old things youthen
in the marsh of our misgivings
and the rooms are bare
save one hope

choking the stars
for a god.

every song
one note.

all the poetry in the world is fading,
a jumble of eloquent tucked into spools
of neglected reverie.
i thumb through the caustic champions
of my inner mythos
and find no Hercules.
only goats and knives.... swimming
in almost love.

Summer is a dull grain of sunlight.

but the horizon is far enough away to be a promise
for Now.
I seek it like i must be there to live more alively.
but cannot die for it as much as i want.
these are the symptoms of breathing.
breathing in the vacuum
of our choosing.
the urge is the force
that cannot live without your descent.
because hell is a place
made for you.

in a lurch, on a perch of impossible spring
i confessed to a winter
that sent you
to me

i could do
with much less
than the nothing
you bring
if you loved all the blood
that i let you
drink

if you
killed  me, more gently
than leaving
me be...

or
forgot
how to
come back
from
nowhere,
it
seems...

that a
beautiful curse
on my
head
is your thing

and an eye
less  evil
is only
an
eye
i can't
see.

you are not attached
to a dead weight.

you are heavy.

II


if it bleeds
then it must love.
and the hours swarming the continuum
have no time for the minutes
of your day, you are too full of loss.
uncoupled from  the shelter
of nonexistence.
you grieve in
real time.

you are too beautiful to mean nothing

but can't recall.

again and again, the world renews the spike in the palm
and north winds bear down upon the inky black
where dead stars illuminate the zodiac of our inner defeat.
an upturned display of seedless fruit against a backdrop
of discrete harm... and the south wind scratching at the twinkle
of a last act. a mirage of poppies and golden wheat
from which the bread of our maker is baked into the glamor
of so much solitude in a galaxy
in your house.

i love you and the world
is less a world
without you.
i'm in the emptiness that dwells
between souls that
have never met.
I am the thirst and
the wellspring.

like an -
endless pang
and a bottomless pond
with a stone skirt.
i am devoted
and ever-so
imperfect.

i love you
and the forgiveness
i plead
is not for me,
it's for the hell
i put you through,
so soon after
we met.
i am the one thing at the bottom
of a wrong church
bloated and
godless...

with only Love
obvious.

and Shame's
oddity -

flawless.

windmills grind
a breeze into a wisp
as wrung dust, floats
in dust moats of cumulus rust
like the  fatigue of a sixth sense
in a world of five comas
and a hunch.

a world of long shadows
with a brief harrumph
of brass

from a blood-yellow sun
and a bruised
lamp.

the catheter of a ******
and a pearl's
edge.

apple on my head
arrow in my mouth...

and a goose egg.

You can be polite. Or you can tell all the Julia’s in the world the things you think about when they’re talking to You.  You could just…  Start. Talking.  It would be delicious and taboo and all that, and maybe a little awkward for all the Julia’s but the mainest thing… It would be impossible to ever. give. a ****. ever. again. You Know This. You Know It Like you Know how many bottles of champagne it takes to even Begin to be enough champagne. This skill is highly prized. And you can DO this. You can do this Sophia. Right here. Right now. You can - tch. You’re not even listening to me, are you?  That is awesome.
    I can see it all now… one, two maybe five Julia’s all yapping away in a Vera **** pincer formation and then….! You open your mouth. The stars fall. The Julia’s are like “ What the-? “ and you, Sophia… Drowning the Gallery. Using all the colors you discovered on your expeditions. A Rainbow made of Lions. I can see it. And you can DO this. You can do this Sophia Conasta. Right here. Right now. You can even begin with a… You’re not even listening to me, are you? My God! you’re beautiful.
Like a bomb that uses a fork because ground zero was no place be Un-Civilized. In fact. Ground Zero wasn’t even a Place until you got there. And let your Self, drop! I mean to say…. You can be polite. Or. You can be Sophia being sophia. period. There’s a lot of tuxedos at this Event, have you noticed that? When did they come back? And why lord! do they all look terrible?
    How long have I been gone? What the hell is Julia talking about now? That’s Leonard Maxwell and his assistant, April Alcott.  She burns money to watch it burn-Ironically, but she’s not sure if she’s doing it right because if it Meant Anything in the first place, she would be first to have no clue what it meant. So now she nails it, but never gets a prize. She bought a lot of my dark stuff from 5 yrs ago that paid for the flat in Portland. What the hell is she wearing? A rhinestone baby Jesus tongue stud? I love these parties. I hate these parties. I’m Sophia Conasta. Celebrated Artist whose Body of Work has astonished the Hoi Polloi of the Art World, and totally lost right now.
     What is Julia’s problem? Did she lose a Horse? Again? Somehow?Or Something? Open Bars Are Go! I’ll just weave my way over to the Gayest Cabal and Julia will be scraped off like a Barnacle* By GUCCI, and then I’ll be clearly Minus One Julia. That can only be a good thing. And - Open Bar. Breathe, Drink
Genius.

.

as i descend into the mad sun
i visit blue brothels and calm green seas.
i rip cables out of butterflies
to suture my wounds.
i change my course,
to my Fate.

As Must 
we all.

II

i've learned a great many things
about dead ends... they always start
where you live.
they bend the moon to your aspect.
the red death to a - 
false hope.
with a real
hope.

and as much despair.

III

gather where ye may, the very laurels 
of your heart. But, be neither spendthrift with your anguish -
nor copiously disarmed.
have your adventures where a god - 
can pardon you...
For having less faith
than an abandoned
thought of You.

go only to return.
and burn your memoirs in the attic
to **** the dream.

leave no fingerprints in the vacuum.
wash your hands of the spiral -
and feel what
It Means.

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.

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.

My America is slipping from my heresy.
It has no bluejay and blunders 'tween the hook in the sky
and the rod in my hand
jiggling for dumb stars
that have it all
but the fish
I don't believe in.

I have silver bullets for a beast in me
but can;t seem to love something'
while I'm suspended
in moonshine.
like mud punching
through a solid heart
and what means more
cannot be a curse
in my palm.

Only forever has a price
that consumes the merchant
and only the famished
feast upon the dust
of a soft
regret.

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.

morning came very early... like a graduate class.
it dispelled the notion of a snowflake's last Will and Testament
gilding the nettles, where the berries were plump and deep virility
nesting in the fearsome spines of an Urchin
of such Symmetry, that your medallions
become clay; and your Heart is restored
to fullest Rage... where a lark Once donned the Umbral Crown
of a yellow Sun.... Now morning came early in the dark
stealing your revisions from the very skull
of your Mind's Meme. from the skull you etch your herds
Of Bison... some figure with a spear
plunging deeply into the
'Side Joke.

You are Purchased
for a thimble of blood from a white Turnip !
and returned to the Parties, gargling rainbows and leprosy...
chafing the Beauty of a grog of distilled amnesias in a perfect Assumption... grooming our prayers for higher education
via fresh Hells and chipping away, always away, at the ****** Windows !
shards of a slightly opened view to a backyard
over a sink in your feelings, where you cup your hands
and splash a bracing revelation from a cool spring
Sprung from a pipe that runs Under the House, in the Dirt's dirt....
There in the gut of where
You call your Self
by Your
Name...

like a lamb in a lion's mouth
sharing the spoils of sacrifice
as well the lethality
of a Conviction's breach. you groom the best oblivions
running a comb through your Beached Whale.
all the blubber for your candles lit !
to better gloom the room's dark harmony, with all the Irony
Intact. but never the reason
you seldom
spat at Kites -
until the Wind bit your nose
in December...
because you never found a scarf
to match the disappointment in your
imagined eyes
as seen through the crease of your profile,
squinting at pixies
and marsh fires.... loving you in spite of you
is the every day horror of discrete epiphanies
that lead only to a grave of fireflies
and stray orphans from a clutch
of messenger pigeons... painted to look like wisps -
of no more than a grain of shadow...
with feathers so soft they perish
as you tremble your touch... groping the fragile wings
of a robot's grip on soaring metaphors... a frantic sort of hazy.
connections where the frost burns
your navel -
while basking in the
Furnace.

like a peach in a lightning bolt... fermenting in Plato's Cave
bargaining the Mahjong for the Google Map -
to your very next departure.
" Living the Glimpse " is what they call it,
back at Rocco's Bar.
you never drink for free but never pay for the miles you weep
with the tears you keep.
you make a Living Wage... and part with your loot.
and the bourbon back.
limestone heartaches merely caverns
where you least expect to see your Self
cavorting in the dark
with the
Truth.

You Beam Down to Look Up.

most of your amulets are barnacles
but you Sea just fine.

roving the volume of an Emptiness
with flint and a raincloud
by design.

preaching to a Flame about
an Iceberg god
that never Fell a Tree
to set ablaze.

you are never seen again if you catch the bus...

and nothing else happens
anyways.

a star is born in a petri dish, and a speck of dun earth
is dislodged from the nova... the old men weep
for their lost kites. as their knees creak and their windmills
collude to disillusion.
And there be angels farming knots -
of Rust and Myth... they sing the tune that dies laughing
in the face of Life.
As the void dispels the rumor of the center that cannot hold.
and the center consumes the void
with a Point.

like rats without bulls  
or comets without gospels.
perhaps rabbits without April
or Now, without seldom... the fog joins the choir
invisible. Joins the clutch
of our quatraine, to meter the miseries
of our adulations. like tears without worlds.
we are struck in the nerve
of our god's left eye
and are left to seek our ventures
where they best
Lie.

the morning had no coffee. just had 98 degrees by 10 am
and a barn on the lean in the distance.
where time never cuts the grass and nothing happens.
dirt roads pray for death or slow traffic. and clouds like smoke
from a bellicose pipe… on the lips of a medicine man
who became a woman when a cloud called him “ medicine man “
while the peyote was barking without dogs, was unleashed
to prairie in the marsh where the bogs agog
with summer candy in its peat moss.
no dowsing rod to spare a child the ridicule of finding god’s pond
with a stick obeying a cop.
the morning had no mirrors. just broken glass and aspartame
and very minor miracles. no part of a red sea. only dust mites
and last night’s *****. the trucks won’t stop complaining
about the radio. because you have no radio.
and when you sing on those long trips to the corner store…
your truck is like “ what the ****? “
and “ this guy must hate trucks….” and all sundry regalia of suffering
from a hole in the muffler and a tone-deaf pilgrim
on half a tank of sunshine and vermouth.

with a dent
in a twist.

Sleep has been a sluggish pixie and the moon a constant Patheon
Of Twilight Sirens. I am lulled into molasses eyes and am never sane.
Only a  ghost in my sheleton. A malingering cocoon
in the shape of a perpetual Snow White Crane.
I garden the grove of Midnights inner thy
and valiantly persist. I lay siege where I lay down my arms to suffer peace - as merely a mirage of luminous Tchotchkes and stolen kisses from Abyssal Lips.

Under wrong stars, I roam the Halls of UnTime. I go on my way where looming is sprinting into stagnations embrace
with all the vigor of Hermes. Floating in the hall is like surfing a dark gods wave. An undulating fog
of prodigious oblique.  in haste.
I am a Time Machine that writes poetry
and may never finish my Tea.
Earl Grey.

With the Soul of a
Frozen Agog.

as you slept i crept through you
slower than stealth
holding it's
breath.

i knocked over
a lamp
but
i caught
it

found your heart
right where
you left
it.

in
my
hands.

go ahead. keep your gospel. but be not faint
in the hallows;  inconstant. stretch the fathoms
of your fathoming to the outskirts of fell grace...
and stub your toe on a perfectly hideous
god.

keep your trinkets in narrow crustaceans,
but sleep - where your damnation is a coin
and a bed.
deepen your sorrow where the joy is spent
and the sky, a crisp skin on a desiccated
blue.
be thankful for the hell you keep
but ascend the zenith
of your every
harm
to find your
proof.

be droll as the wet fools cavort in the pit. but -
keep your feathers adorned
and your feasts mobile.
glow and be done with it
if you dare...

but keep your heart spoken
for the night.

Life drinks Love
like a hound
at a bowl of brackish water,
it soars more deeply
than the common wings
that a bird takes for granted
and a bee believes

Life drinks Love like a hailstorm
knows a rose.
It pummels the best of Us
for a season
and forgets how we
lonesome.

after all.

.

you are so beautiful it burns
like a fat cat in my lap.
engorged on primal steam
like an extinct whale.
you are the only thing
that matters as much
as this.
And This is a seed
I cannot
breathe.

But you...

you are so beautiful
i fail to be plain.
i dress my work
in unkempt seizures
of unrequited love.
but i know one thing
that makes no sense....

but perfect sense to me.

it tells me nothing
is as beautiful
as telling you

and meaning it.

When I gave up
Not a bell rang out.
And Lightning was withheld
By all accounts
From every corner of the sky.
And Thunder
had no
mouth.
No Siren sang.
There never came
A wailing throng.
When I gave up
A Shadow passed. And shook -
my hand.
And moved
Along.

i can see from here, the lush petunias
of your mustard seed pavilion.
i may walk to your elaborate fountains
and make my wish.... but never
feel them.

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.

There's a house where the world
has stopped dialing...
But a rotary phone, that
has my number.
and plunders my unavailable
daily.

We blink like opening a mystery.
But we never  brush the canvas
of any inspiration.
we gather in the fields of our golden jokes
and each the other are about
how nothing is the same that now
we see what eyes deny
jellyfish
and cotton
swabs.

but there's trees and eggs.
it's nothing how we remember
love and hate.
slow things are voices to recall.
but the matter of their wisdom
is bleach and peaches.
and perhaps a flightless
squab.

II

to endure is to be a living thing.
and to love is to die more
willingly.

but nothing procures the reality
like a dream.... and we cluster
precisely where we diffuse
Unkindly.

III

Let us walk where the treasures march
in impoverished enmity. but know
the different things that sanity
conspires to reveal.
we can be madcap and foreign
to our native selves -
but never once be alien
to what it means
in hell.

IV

heaven is a kind of grace that forgets you.
and trees and eggs
are something else
entirely

despite you.

in my waking i slept heavily
and marched into the spiral
severing the path
from my step
as only an angel
may deny you .

there, my eyes were feet.

been in winter
and the miles sought after the edge of faith
and the white murk of the Mystery
was everywhere, trojan in a snowflake
and the long beards were crisp
as ice threads of some silk
from some worm
on every chin.

in the pool we sleep.
we let the deep speak
and retreat into our shallows
with our last breathing
as deep a weaving as a bird's nest
in a dead
eye.

where is where ?
and why are you there, leaving ?
why are you wrong for me ? when the right thing -
is more than our ***.
more
than
love
?

why ?

itching to be real.... the sum of my days
plot the course of my misery, like every man.
i join the circus of our low thoughts
and boost demons to a plateau
of grim love.

i am pecking the flesh
off a skeleton key. wiser than my jokes
but foolish just the same.
i reveal my numb skull
but hide the virtue
of my heart's
want.

docile in the kingdom of pure love
i announce the primacy
of death's door.
i forge ahead
to slip crippled angels
new wings...
to mock the inane gravity
of being a Man....

and with a woman's dream
i conquer the  world.
but
never have to say
what it means.

at all.

My lungs ***** at the air
As i plunge from sleep into the upper dream of waking life.
I shed the formality of my shallow coma
For the desperate climes of my striving ,
And surge the beach of lonesome
Brigadoons... Combing the frothy litter
Languishing along a stretch of forbidden
Waves...

I assume the sand castles are unassailable
And write letters for a bottle
In my mind.
And cork the
loss.

when you spoke too me, I was one of those Pluto people
looking for my glasses without glasses, and the world was smaller than
the sound of your voice, telling me to listen
and the sky was blue, but nothing.
I had to run to the hills of my giants and scrape paint off the cave walls
to find what was underneath the peach fuzz of our upset
Art.

I never questioned how I got there. I only craved abandon and the morsels bestowed lost men. They are meager things...
I crushed the butterflies your lips resurrected -
and had no peace in my dreams save the waking from them -
for the haunting was complete, and I was lost and you
were suddenly gone.

Too bad for me. We can all agree that the world is false
and the god's cruel... but you don't.
I remember now... You said " Life is like a Spool of Dread -
if you let it knit your eyelids shut..."
I slept through everything about you
and regret so
much.

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
?

I

not
every day
of the week
has a name.
several do without;
and last
forever.

as some
are

Mondays.

II

Let me be clear.
You have no soul.
You are
one.

III

I am thinking of a number.
Divide it by two
and you will know
what i think
of something
else...

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.

I go where all my going -
goes. And seldom
circle back.

II

I feel like Black, tastes like the Moon -
Tastes like the heel of my bread
Tastes like my hands...
Thrown up in the
Air.

I have no love, save the prerequisite doom
that your lips prove
a less dangerous
ploy.

And from this height
I might regard you
As a Goddess
to dispel.

But nothing goads  -
a comet, from it's entropy
like a private
Hell.

or a public distortion
Of the Truth...

we tell.