oh what is this space between words and the emblem of speech, enchanted by the calamity
of opening my mouth to ask the very same thing?
oh how do i bloom so much with all my fairies Fae and all my moons New Earth
surging in the pixie ****** of what i can only assume is my purpose
among deader men than my living hell?
oh how i beg to be loved like a coin!
oh how i strive to slit the throat of a laughing troglodyte to let the sun shine
into the purpose of an idiot.
i consume what disbelieves the power of my weaknesses and secure a place in Valhalla
full of plush toys for Gypsies and waifs of every sadness
doing nothing but getting hit… by dead-end jobs
in the mouth of profound madness…
on this side of happy….
which incidentally, is the dark side of smiling
out of fear like an ape
with a word for a
man... without a god.

the street out there in the Streets, got those eyes
that mark you as you pass by. as you stroll through
the misbegotten voodoo of your mind worms
you just might have a David Lynch blooper reel
and a Cosmic ray of uncertainty in a bottle
barking the stolid Oak of your Delirium
so the rain cannot penetrate the pith of your Delusions.
i am the king of a sofa and a much squalid.
parked in the dank blip of a valley in a heartbeat
cancelled out by the hum of a Be.
and I cannot
Be,

but the parasols of my inner lightning, speak.
they march from fingertips from the ether of my solid Noise.
i am granted, underneath... full access to the torrent
of the everlasting sting... and all the chambers of the heart
where joy outlasts every living thing.
and i snag my hammer on a good nail, and clip barnacles.
vexed in the extreme, and my humility
invisible. and the cackling ingots of snow
caught in the spine of my mouth, singing to a gaslight
in February.
how i summon the snakes, the Saints won't say.
but they are happy to see your thorns
sinking into my Happy
Place.

When my Calling is Calling
And I fail to answer
The Phonemes…

I’m depressed.

And of course, I must be.
Driven North of my South
By harpies
Draped in flags.
My constant Dystopia
More Terrarium
Than a home for
My bees.

And more Hive
Than any Home
For
A Dream.

A plush junket
Of close calls-
Where rice patties
Wane.
Because Prophets
Fail like crops.
And The News
Is just a new Nothing
In Imaginary
Palms…

Phantom
mad.


II


But when my Calling is Calling-
And Negotiations have collapsed.-
As foretold by Introspection
And served on a platter
Of Absolute Narcissism
Chained to an Unspoken Woe
In my Achilles Heel-

My Falderal, fumbling
For Unfaltering.s.

I almost digress.

III


I clamor to the forefront
Of Myself; maladjusted
To Sun spokes.
Privately
Waning.
A Tempered Steel
In a molten
Kaleidoscope-
Hoping
Love hath a Plan
That a Hell
Dismissed.

Or a Poem
Made sense
Of It...

Sisyphus.

For Thee I have sworn to render from the sovereign sun
a soul's worth; burnished by oblivion's tongue
and stars uncursed ... a bounty of beloved life; once spun
then unmade, and cunningly reversed. a song sung.
a belle play. a bell
rung.

For Thee, I measure the Night's dark, by hand - and
Love by mouth... I come
to heap sweetness upon the waters -
of your thighs, and glide bidden to the hilt of your Delta
like the mighty Mississippi to a blind oyster... for there; I cloister -
in the Secret Gardens of your Restlessness like an untamed
priest.

with an ordained
kiss.

you can keep going indefinitely…
but you will stop.
any whiff of scandal is romantic.
and every liberty, slavery
to unclean thought.
your clubbed foot is your
half-sister… but your genius
is married to mania.
all boy with too many parabolas
to be a man of any
treacle heart.
your Annabella wants money
and you can’t live
without it.
but you can’t live
enough.

and Doubt
doubts
It,

on my quest, i come upon the shores of long night.
i can smell the butter and the iron blood
of my Shogan. fat and lean in the smoke of my misadventure.
i draw my sword with a crayon
and a pearl from a cut.

i cannot move when the rice is sleeping.
i cannot drink when the Sake is broken.
i cannot hold a vulnerable flute
and be nothing.

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.

dreams are the fish in god's pond
on a hook... we reel in whatever we want
and we look
at the sky
like a blue open palm
at the end of night's wrist...
there's a nail for a Sun
and it shines like a cold yellow love
that perhaps
has a reason to love you as much
as it can
but leaves you the moon
to shed a light
where your last dark fell
and a kiss to remind you
how sweet
this hell...

there's an empty peach in stone fruit
and then there's You.
a bespoke onion in a pearl....
it has no ill that a shell understands
but bleeds through it's terrible clench
on the things that might mean
nothing....

like the pearl.

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

the happy sea of heartbreak is no happy sea at all.
but yes...  it's well content to be broken
as wave after wave blooms in your palm
and something is a canyon where your trailer home
is not where your heart remembers you.
but condemns your love.

This is what we do when we do nothing.
let me tell you. but let me love you too.
I am gone where stench clings. And i can't be me
And You are no one,
save the ridicule
that lust cannot fathom
and the beauty of you
as I usually do
is undone.

This is what we do when we do nothing.
We flip houses like coins,
we go nowhere at light speed
and I love you much
as you let me go.

and I go where my want
is not wanted.

Valentine's Day is how the mifflewarts expunge your good happy.
It dwells in the innermost fleem.
It has no fortunate rodentia, but scampers oblong
into  a sideways dream.
Lip-bitten. Our kites collapse in come-aparts to go *****.
prone upon the earth of our dim Ding*
when the Clock was gargling
Always.

some fool on a hill, tripping over jupiter spoons
scooping a notion from a wishing well.. foggy and hermit
with a small eye and big dreams drumming on a skintight cloud
klip-sprung from a soft enamel, floating in an iron lung
with too many stars to choose from.

and less than that.

you must if you must. if you must.
if you must not, then you will
because you are in love
and nothing
is what nothingness calls
love
and the habit of our industry
effete.
and we have two
Left.

to dance with.

you got the fever.
i heard the rumors.
you in-cyst
I’m the tumor.
we got legs.
we got spiders
we got thumbtacks
we got *****.
we got a dead Poseidon.
and just enough Chalk
to trace a sun.

and we ain’t talkin’.
and we ain’t not.
we got sidewalks
that hate walks.
we got pinwheels
we got hurt.
and that’s peculiar.
cause i feel nothing.
And I Know
that i know exactly
how that feels
for some reason.

and it shows.

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.

A wet Spring slept on the porch
Like a damp **** full of Bees
From Atlantis.
A smudge of bacon
in the velvet air of early morn
and couldn’t sleep anyway.
Lightning; you know
the kind that cracks the spine of your bookworm.
with pendulous Thunder and Furious -
Antlers.

My broken robe draped over the wind
Like a baritone glissando sans a piroette
as i plant my hushpuppies in the other stillness
beneath the breeze… like a petulant
peace, ticking like a
Balm.

I sip my coffee
to no applause

with all the symphonies drained from the pool
it was high time to embark on a pointless quest
and be good at it. a trickster god hiding a strip of meat
from your impotent beak. you in your white vest
stark where the sun has bleached your horrors
as the new star startles the dark omens of your open pores
and more's the pity... the void has come to it's senses
to forfeit you in a game of pawns
thrashing about in infinite malaise... conjuring misfortune
till the dams burst and the siege begins.
it was high noon when the hollow yawned at your purpose
and your wings scorned the sky,

you miss how the comets laughed,
but can't seem to remember why.

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.

Hello, little pins in my paw.
How is all my Life, the rain ?
She's apart from me.
But letting go, is not a part
of Me.
And that is
pain.

my darling one.
if you can hear me...
slack the rope.
I don't know how
these miracles work.
but i know how
to work
for nothing.

and that is
Hope.
At least I hope
so.

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.

nothing rapturous but the weight
her life affords me, as i lift it
without effort, to a place above
the dormant and the gifted.

nothing wholesome as the tongue
she proffers sweetly to my lips
that find her luminous aplomb
ignites a wriggle of my hips

nothing dangerous but the shapes
her limber form unfolds and frees
a team effort to escape
the dullard limits of our knees

nothing as intimate as the truth
her words wring deftly, warm and young
and we vanish into slumber
with all love done

with the battle joined and my intimacy jaded and clack froth
i merge my pavilions with my valleys, gliding on a ragged stallion
with a wreath in it’s withers… a’gallop in the arbitrary dawn
of my hellscape. relentless as Hope.

like juniper and venison, we intertwine in the hillocks of our faraway eyes
like two marbles adjusting to the stride of an elephant
hoisting the world into all charm and calamity
without a care in the World

On Its Back.

I can't go where you go and be there at the same time.
I can only ***** for Angels that cannot sing
and even then, I must tell them lies
to keep them from my sin,

the fox and the hound go merrily to their graves.
but the hunt continues...
the sun bloats the blue like an untamed thing
and all I got is a worry stone
to pitch at you.

II

long gone are the days of easy peace and rapture.
but the love in my veins is no cancer... more like a smooth raven
pricking my thumbs as I try to grasp
your haven. chiding my spiral into dementia
as my eggs break from my efforts
to save them.

you nest in my always, like forever in my ' not now'.

I can't overcome what I cannot refuse.
you're my heart's loss... and something else
I have to lose.

And I will always lose it
Somehow.

Somehow.

we made love on grass with toes
dangling in rich cream
to better churn the milk
of human kindness.

then we stopped.

she has that lightning
might be clinging to your shoes
and you high step back
to her frightening moods
as they swing from the chandeliers
in your hell
where the light was always false
but the girl
can't tell.

get A Life, and you get hurt
like All The Other
Toys.
get some sleep, and it's worst
than All The Other
Joys.
'Cause the Nightmares keep You -
nailed to Your Loss.
and what's gone is gone.
but you burn
and you
burn

till you're lost...

the dog is sleeping in the filth
but is happy. but not " Happy," Happy.
it dreams a dog's dream
and sniffs the rear end
of a front.
it smells the lie in the corner
of a round room
like a man that loves
a girl.

and assumes.

forward is the only way -
to return ...
it bends the reason to it's will.
it bargains the rude truth
and the simple one.

It
hates the
way you
love
the answer...
when there
is none.

and there is
none.

sprouting from the damp earth
we trod from the muck into the sun
and were glad in it.
we found there, the space to waste time in
and more space to explore with our riveting lives
boiling in the womb of all wombs.
we stride to the heavens undisclosed to religion.
and on approach , we find gods in teapots
steeping the illusions we crave
over hot coals on a sinking
barge.

we are happy as we will the suffering to continue.
but as a flock of flaming gulls
we singe the night sky and the ocean below.
they both burn as we commit to our purpose.
each a sovereign fool
and an angel
shackled to a
spot -

on the Sun.

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...

as the last laugh is at last and then
the sparrows that we conjure with
are singing till the earth is dead
but only in our tiny heads.
we come upon a road to cross
a path to trot, if so, if not.
a chance to choose how slow we're lost
and far too many
machines

in our
hearts

that never stop.

I'm about to be done

swirling down the drain.

And I'll march

to a Harpy's tune

to better fetch

the limits of my ungrateful

ruin.



Yes.

I am dust driven and water mad

but you are the ghost

with most sad.

The thunder in a snowflake

bleeding the landscape

for a farthing.

A pound for a pound

in an ounce of grief. Now That is the Curse.

The worst word in the ear

of a deaf mute

at the Opera

of your

Sin.

my hand on your hip like a golden fleece
humming jurisdiction and swaying
to the rhythm of your gate-
too proud to wallflower.
my palm-
where the heat of you
commands my grasp,
and nothing is
so keen
as the thought of our
next encounter
with a private
moment
unmoored from harbingers
of impending
isolation.
stuck to the forefront
of an absolute
ravishing.

whirling the dervish plums
of our plucky
resurrections
to stammer free of our bonds
into happier
*******.

thoroughly
in love
where out love
is In.

and no wonder.

now that i cannot choose… i choose a choice.
an abbreviated me has long been not enough.
my inner Kafka, a lag of butterfly thoughts.
i seem to drift obedient to the wave
of my honest lust.
but return always, to something
i cannot touch.

I am a cold piece
of me…. and my friends
are not friendly.
eager to **** my want
as I want more
than a lasting oblivion.

they omit my dream.

but i am all the while
some other beautiful
thing.

dying out loud.

nothing drags a frame of reference out of bed
like a fresh start on a pike.
you strap your business-end to a playful lark
and stave off the broken moons
as you Tetris the Possible
like an unknown god.

I hoist my genre by rote;
my tropes charmed and dangerous…
for the pen is mightier than the fjord
of our most opulent shadows.

My Etch-a-Sketch memories diverge
like Christmas geese
flocking to a pagan potluck
as cellular as a private moment with
a Neilson rating of zero.
I tune in when a gadfly lands on the nose of a spite,
and make a poet’s face.
I sleep like a baby on
the Titanic-
but my average epiphany
bobs for apples
in a bucket
of Northern Stars
too keen on wisdom
for a dullard’s
petard.

at first glance, every blank stare
like a horde of eyes
with pitchforks
and torch songs
made of
why?

there's always more. but to neutralize the green tea
you must have the cup half empty
where the full stop goes on
and on.
where the worst things gather moss
and you trace the heel of a boot
to your skull
back to the kick
of a mule.

the stars are like guess
and the space between questions
like now.

the very very thing that conjured you
is a motive candle
with no crime.

just a scene in a black room

and a numb
ampersand
where
it's

gone.

to look through you
i had to see Me
for myself.
i had to look
for the first time
at my heart.

and nowhere else.

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.

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.

a raw deal on a hot plate.
sizzling with all the swagger
of a fair shake.
a glib fraud.
masquerading as  a state
of grace.
and perhaps an apple pie
resting on the window sill
of your gullible house.

a fib in a wig of ice cold stars.

let whatever you do
be the blood in the rainbow
and swear that you'll never go back
to Chicago...
let the radiant darkness
inside you continue
till it rains light upon you
in waves like I do
i'll be ****** if I do -
not display my emotions
i'd be shipwrecked
in the *******
of a dead stare
at a life full of love
that was gone.

gone.

gone.

Our kisses are the descendants
of our affection, Cousin to our grief.
and the midday sun through a thicket.
Our embrace like braille for a ******.
he may not be blind, but he cannot see
any reason
to not please you.
Love is the first fire we ever knew.
we chased our comets and slept in thistle clouds -
barking at the afternoon.
we sleep in a van, parked in the palm
of an Unknown God.
and joy is the kingdom
of tickets.