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.

by my distracted count
there are more pictures
of naked women on the
internet, than there are
atoms in all the oceans
of the Earth.
note to self: buy stock
in tube socks and
Kleenex. Flaunt wealth.
but don't you ever
change.

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

all summer in your face
green yes, would suit you, but your brown
unwatered lawn eyes delicious-
a dry wind in a plain
state

your black hair rising
like a tornado on your scalp
a day at a time
marvelous.

you tease me and ****** my weakness
with all of your summer
my day sweats beneath you

my night and your music
commanding my heartbeat
to make adorable
prisons

for a mockingbird.

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

no one knows How to ride a bike.
we learn and discard. what once,
came hard -
now a faculty, disconnected
from the [  method.  ]
embedded in
the act.  beyond the rhombus of our reckoning !
and the calculus of initial conditions,
indeed;  waaaay back
when skill lacked
and the knack was absent.
with - only pure Will
Unpacked.

mastery forgets.

and we forget
That.

fed the birds.
fed the birds a
book about
my dead  
weight.
fed the
birds a heavy.
fed them from
my thin
hands. The words
that live.
The birds ate.
The birds ate words that
lived and always
lived
in
separate
houses. if...
and i mean if
and only if
they
could afford
it.
if these
clever pagans
ever had
a dime.
they found
it boring rich
folk to
death.

i fed the birds
my indigenous
nomads. they dined
in high style...
dined black and
fancy
on
shabby
addicts, as they
hopped
trains . i fed the birds
my
swarthy tribe.
and they supped.
i fed the birds
a monologue
with trains of
thought
the words i fed
them... the vagabonds...
hopped
trains.

of thought.

I fed
the birds.
i fed the birds just
outside.
i sat
and fed them
black light and Harmalade
fed them blackly
fed them with
piano keys;  the black
ones, the ones
that radiate
i fed

i watched them. watched
them fancy peck. and peck
and fancy
pluck.
i watched. they dined
on serene defeat
by technicality.
it was surreal
to watch a blackbird
pluck from black
keys - peck
a morsel of glum
from

the black rays, yes.

the black rays with
opposable thumbs
and a
lifeline. the only one i
know forbidding gypsies
with three eyes.
an open
palm.
a paranoid  
black radish
white dwarf star
with piano keys
for black rays
of

nimbus, yes

mine is the hand that bites the hand
that writes the book
it wants
to ban, that ain't
a fan

not at all. just an appendage. a pen dirge ? What ?

i  fed the flock lots

I fed
the black ones -
with dolls'
eyes...

tucked
under
wing.

i fed them, yes.

a book
about the size
of any welcome
malcontent.

i fed
them sorrows
and ellipses with
adjacent lawns.
wutherings in
stately manors, squatting
on either side
of memory
lane, like
a bourbon and
coke had
practically crawled
across shards
of hard
things to break,
with a drink
in your
hand

and crawled, well blended

down the hatch
of enormous, well appointed
gothic frogs, that -
were mostly refurbished toads
with odd columns.

i fed
the birds,
broke out the
Good
Chi
na

hang the tantrums !  

yes
One should expect
a rich metaphor to want to
watch you
eat it's every
word
or
by extension;
lick the toad with 15 rooms,
three stories, unfit for children
and a full staff
of Adjectives,
highly trained
to

short-sheet the Bedlam, and fluff the pillories.

one should sip the liqueur
off the floor, inside the huge
and tipsy
gorgon
and be thankful
for the dank
and

the solid gold flyswatters.

they're complementary. take one
as you leave out
thinking
" toads, eat flies.... so it follows...."
apropos of nothing, on the
' Good China ',

now in the belly of birds, well fed
an unwell.

a book about
my dead-weight's
dream
to eat fewer
flies and
more
steak.

to grow wings.

yes.

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....

however i choose
to abuse these loose reigns
to gain whatever gallops may overtake
to overrun the rampant jade
in summer's plum, my teeth in no shade
but the plump flesh
of a ****** day; brightly at heel
of my toes, bejeweled
in ocean spray
fresh cut lawns with diamond dew, disarranged
sprinkler cast before midday
to cheat the sun,  a sip or two -
and slake the thirst
of emeralds
i would soon delight
to cantor through.
to roam
with eyes too wide
to choose
a culdesac ... to dread-
or view. Perhaps
a glance at crates
and crude cadavers of a life
removed -
from every thing i worship twice !
while prancing, ever-prancing -
through
the manicure
that has ' no cure '
for Nature's way
of tending too the over-groped
and fussy plucked,
some Charter barks
you have to do; What Art dispels
what man has framed ?
what power drapes
the Land more true ? A dozen Elves ?
Prayer in school ?
what genius
never fails to ask -
the question that reveals the fruit ?
or listens .... to the loamy grass ?

a very
few, if any who -
would
do
the same; the
mortgage and a
landscape, paid;
' in-full.'  [ The first ]

with love, the glade ?

The Earth
is all i know,
would do
for nothing,
all...  Spite all -
we do.
however we blockade
or stake
the acreage
we have papers prove-
belong to every
dispossessed
with keys to doors
that lead to
rooms -
that seldom have the sun
inside the red Redwood
the old thing died
too raise your roof
under god's blue
sky.

To shelter
men from other
men,
who covet what
you keep in
them.

a 1000 yrs of Life, undone  
to build our vapid
ornaments.
a forgery
of hearths; and hardly worth
the vasty parlors
lost.

we parcel, carve
and auction
off
our petty Lots of
*******...

the empty ones we polish
while our homeless
remain home-
less

the echoes of a simpler time
too weak to even haunt them.

our shame intact, we slash
and burn, for coffers have
no conscience.

our charity is scarcely more than earplugs
for a blindness; a band-aid for an Apathy
a thimble and
a wine list
etched inside the hollow
just below the milk of kindness
that soured
in a palsy hand
that brought a drop
and spilled it.


However
I have chosen more
than fiberglass and
fountains
my habit is to wander off
the beaten path
to mountains.
To slopes
of avid avalanche
and quiet shouts
of Silence -
that echo and return
as if to soothe
my withers'
finally...

an
ache
to meadowlark and leap
for leagues without a harness
without
a gate to keep
the lush pavilions
at a distance

nothing
to contain
the gift
and no one
there to
name
it.

nothing but the wind to kiss
and no books to
explain
it.

pour your aneurysm into my palm and i will love you so hard
be glad. this love is nothing more than tremendous, however
you might have Doric columns, where i have Ficus
but you're a ***** stone, a-swarm with ivy
a mind reading astronaut
i ought


and a
cat.

in the mink pith of our dismal mints and our Charlatan  hearse fights
in the twice dark vice of our daffodils
you linger effervescent  in the marmalade  plans
of mice and gin.
you march men into your womb like pixie dust and Ebola.
there, in the devious whiskers of your manticore
i have found you naked and bereft of kin.
an oodle of gimp where the soul
had been, and the gas lights off the marsh
unclean.

the vivid hork of your dead albatross, pondering the hink of your discontinued love.

the size of you now from way back here my dear
you may not know but let me tell you... how you fill the pavilions with your ether whiskers
and your sumptuous mask. the all night habit of your ring finger's habit.
the flinch of your dashing rabbits.
you might be breathing something from monte carlo.
but your flames flamingo. yooouuuu don't even know the half... but the whole thing reeks of pablum
and bamboo shoots. illustrious pulp. you are not the virtue that you want
as much the virtue that you lack. the size of you now
from way back here, is merely the reticule of god's ******
with the rubber-room bullets and the nice lighting.
you have wind chimes in your wrinkles again.
are you that much gone from nod
as you might seem steam
on a roof of a low owl
atop giant
mouse ?

our withering is changing. we have new lungs and the sour mercy of our discotheque is no longer
earth shattering. new bells that'll ring, ping the sonar of thus far, and right now. our iguana
is bothered but our cactus is out of practice, so we malice the wrong people. brown scotch
botched in the locust plume of our nothingness.
all in the night jar.
we palm the coin of many realms but snooker the genie into 4 wishes for kicks.
we split the bucket list and enlist strange agents to embroil the liturgy of our silence
with the umbrage of our slumbers.
where rumbles the blunder of our measured steps
as we stumble through the rapscallions of our private thoughts in the after hours.
we empower our oblivion
by kissing on the mouth.

this is how we keepsake sacred, but escape velocity by way of quiet... this loud.

enthroned above the kingdom of desire
hardly born... a chestnut of wane fire
stealing metronomes from garden gnomes
shunning the gimme
of asking for nothing.

your breaks mend
iris slivers sleep in dungarees
of dross and stale glass

sick lemurs. dancing  in the Cherokee  of sublime Dementia

dueling rhapsodies of function

utterly bereft
of form ....
  
unformed.

Heathens -
in heaven's lobby
flock
to barter
for Magic 'Shrooms
with pop rocks... and pancakes
and leaf-green brownies.
new to the scene;
the Son of Man
holds a motley court,
then wanders off
to fetch Picasso - Lassoed
from his cups, his Love that must Love
his genius... doubtless,
cloud-scrawling
huge pendulous *******
in Elysium; for no one at all.
better Pablo
should tend bars      that set mobs free
than one god's toddler, with long odds
against Bacchus - should ever
small-talk-speak
to the godless
or worse...
preach.

" Better Sins to love.. " The Spaniard once taught...
A Lover's Urge is born in forms of weakness.... adorned in all Might -
bathed in blessed contradiction,
a Lingam for a Yoni's dream of stiff drinks
and pliable men, with strong arms.
a blue fiction  on Calvary -
nailed to the softest
cross.

Between thieves,
an honor, double
parked

with bucket seats brimming with moonlight,
and her knickers
tossed.

Picasso asks for absinthe
to be sent
post haste
and polished off -
by all
his better angels he had guillotined
with dull snails,
and fallen  
harps

ones -  he stole,  to de-tune
a flat fifth of Cuttysark
for a deaf
****,  [but no mute ]
a portrait, ****
and is soon
bought...

lust
sleeps then -
with both Eyes;  
Locked on
One of
God's.

like a deer
in a Head-light's
Gospel...
now, a Minotaur on the
Autobahn -
stalking
it.


II

Heathens
in heaven's lobby
recite ' Howl '
as Ginsberg, walks over hot coals
and spicy psalms; glowing wanton
in white grass; with a very
cherry ****.
And a wise throng, cobbles...
****** -
they rob
Peter of his  toga,
leaving nothing wrong.
but no less ' On '
they laugh hard;  and wake the dead
asking  them for new songs
to set    their false alarms
in lofty Tic' Tocks  
of Eternity's
clock.
Bible on a snooze bar
for at least that long
or  someone
knocks.

As if  "Hello."  
Spoke the Whole World into Being -
And " Goodbye."
misspoke, and
trailed
off...

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.

you cannot finish need.
it fiends in wretched globes of dwarf
swelling to tremendous  steam
a Bacchanal of vineyard borscht
a moonlit morsel of demolished dreams...
we serve at the pleasure of the absurd
gilding shadows with clay confetti
and the nictitating membranes of blue crocodiles.
and blank verse.

felling the Yggdrasil, by all means; you maraud the larder
in the night kitchen; nicking blackbird-pies and pinky-russet salamanders
[ the loose farthing ] and the hard liquor... all gone now
your potato sack, rakishly slung from the shoulders of an Atlas, entitled ' Promised Land; betrayed '.

a new map shrugging off old kings from dead valleys
revealing the hour of your worthless estate,
in-lieu of the boundaries of your lost holdings. unhappily -
you inherit the unripe peach
in a hound's mouth.
you slouch rough,  slowly
to your beast
of a couch:

there, to remain unholy and due South.

there, to remain unknowing
by all account.

bathing in pools of soft earth
there ain't no poem you can choose
to forgive birth, you re-live first
the anthems of our ruse.
we begin to lose... then win a cloud
of pensive and twice removed
puns.

the sun is an enfant.
and the moon is the other-
one.

it is the light of candles in the window
the vaporous dawn
glowing
and not yet the sun
it is
the skin of shadow
wavering in teacups in india
the 'Bushel-of-Rice' king
smiling
at two suns.
it is the secret
of doors that have no other side
and the mystery of
rooms that lead
to them.
it is
a small thing
more vast
than

why ?

and the
need of
.

plead your case. the silence that follows will deafen your prayers... it will eat your rain.
tread where smoke has layed eggs in a nest of flames.
use your thoughts nimbly, and thereby, climb the ladder madly

humbly gone by love, my love.
humbly gone
by love.


these are not the words in my mouth. they are god's frogs. a soft plague of cecil b. demille with ampibians and barbedwire. these are not the fickle neptunes in dischord. you are not the last unicorn. only the basilisk in my zodiac. my marvelous queen.

these are not the feathers of a proud crane. but a wrecking ball reassembling a dandelion with a leather whip and a chair. they tumble from my limbic intimacy with your private lies. i bring genuine venom to cure blindness; but i leave an antidote under my tongue should your kisses beg to be a fool.

i won't say what this is.

i have bruises where your name left a dent in my kevlar.

a loop of spume immune to fumes of eastern tombs
a burnin‭'; ‬ a  mad flash of candied wrath
and junebug randy newman‭; ‬
what rumbles jest in vestments yet
to loom a knit or pearl two...‭ ‬a ****** crest
of ***** wrecks and rubber necks‭
to view you...‭
‬a nop of lopsy,‭ ‬
fever pitched in thicket rich begonia‭;
‬and roman roads
too golden
kicks
from hydro
in
your hedge
row.

a droop of noon in cool remove
from gypsum dim sum laude.‭
‬a drowning witch on boney creeks
of needles and salami.‭ ‬
untongued.‭ ‬a pool of fringe
rhymes with orange,‭ ‬
yes a door-hinge,‭ ‬
off it's moorings...‭ ‬
off it's Meds

death beds
for trampolines
in petrified forests...‭
a nop of lopsy,‭ ‬frogging Gatsby,‭
‬greatly famished to the Nines‭;
‬an olden toll of wish fits‭
then nothing
comes.

and that's
Life.

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

They sell sandwiches and little nightmares with vanity inside.
i glide to a booth and schmooze the next wet group of compromised -
And Charlotte's web
of insular jokes,
snare me from outside my comfort zone...
and i own the green eggs and ham of our sepia tone in the septic lake
of our laughing groan.
We enjoy the view.
I drink to be We and Apart from you.
But the kegs dredge.
They plunder the blunderbuss of our best shot. With Silencer.
We crowd loudly in the Big Easy of our modern strife.
We scrape with dull Lives,
save those with sharp Eyes that see spigots
as unseen Blithe !
We gather in the Hemisphere of our Wanton Anonymity,
as divulged mirrors
in a House
of Cards....

All of my Best Jokes
are Friends
With hearts....
and Then
some...

The
cyclones are cellophane
saran raptures, and
gale forced smiles in the rain    
that comes after a dead-end starts
with a grave intuition.

Out of the blue,
a sky you knew would be safe
as sun-strokes-
of genius,
proof
that love had
a heart...
you found
mars

That's you
wishing where stars
don't fall
they just hang
in the black hole
dark...

the way you have your way
i might as well choke on Atlantis
and yield to the twilight pitchfork
of your tongue. an amaranth.
whose nectar
is some
doom.

glue my misery
to the slippery
*****
of lost meaning....
all the while
meaning to do so -
a
farsight
more so
than knot
cope.
but
somehow, jellyfish blinder
than up close...
and
not quite
seeing
what matters
most.

just the sting.

As i tip-toe through the violence of our steamed peaches
i'm at least speechless. a weak link-ness
in your valley. a thorn ! -
of unreasonable size. you vie for the deep regions
of our shallow demise,..
for thine is the kingdom of no Mercy !
yours is the thing that screws -
where the knot is trixy.
we forgot how our terrors nursed the oblivion of our kisses.
we forgot how to lie.

as i tip-toe through the two lips, like low hanging fruit to wax eloquent by...
i delight in speeches. in the thunderous hush of fairy wings in a hurricane
as i blend margaritas on the back porch of our squalor....
with a terrible blender. i'll toss in
the splinters of our tyranny.... how we waged war on innocent fallacies !
how we gathered our storms in the basement.
tripping over land mines
in the shape of human hearts.
YOU had your nerve.
and I had us both
blind.

as i tip-toe through the violence of our steamed peaches
i'm at least speechless, but yes !  i'm most ******.
for mine is the kingdom that has no sun
but on Thursdays we have these banquets that starve you to death -
Right in front of Everybody !
you might get to talk about sport
but you're more game to wander off
from the insipid herd
to gather moss from dark pavilions.
you might nurse the ****
of **** all !!!!

but you'll  be ****** if she's not there
to see it !

we have gardens that have no center. wild things in us.  

believe.

this whiskey is hate tea; jangling wraith and numb teeth
a trump of sea kelp, engorged on itself -
a fleet of reasons to go madly
if nothing else.

this drop is a bit of pretty.

and all's well.

if you **** me with your robots that chant tempests in pottery barns
you might look the fool who vanquished a perfect slave
free to disobey your stupid self hatred.

if you had the use of both lungs, and clung to fathoms of shallow harm
no harm but love's arm
clasping embraceful of your
lost god, would come
to you

if this were the writ that hit veins in your extravagant cairns
stick to your guns; adhere to the wound

damage done.

loving you relentless, maladaptive to dem bones.

I'd like it if your orange were more blue.
If your red more green
and your eyes more less than moons
that break waves against me.
I glue glaciers to sun
to cool your Spring's mischief
and never am i happy to remove
from my stillness
between Us.

I am unjoyed
in the twine of our lost joy.
Made unkind in the rasp
of our sour glee.

I glue glaciers to the sun
to cool the misadventures
of our dire hope.
I noose the rope and sing
as you go beautiful
away

from me.