There once was a cow and a goose
And the goose thought the cow was a moose
Cause he had dropped his glasses
In a pit of molasses
And he couldn't get them loose

Over me, the waxen sky can be called “aloof”
An up-high shelf throwing air like a clear bell
Under that, the frozen breeze, a foggy denseness
Exuberance.
I wonder at the opposition, between the two elements
Vernal blue widened by cloudlessness, attained caprice
A craft chiaroscuro-the blueness and the frost
The damp dryness, on my shoulders rests heavy
My clothes melding to the comfort-
My pant legs in rigid flapping-
Down here cold and loquacious, up there bold and still
Together-serene, a form-flitting audacity

The surgeon lives
With razor eyes
He’ll slice you down
To laughing size

The surgeon knows
The way to hell
He knows the way
As fortunes tell

The surgeon’s name
Is Holy Human
Hell as holy
As human can

In souls and bodies
The surgeon flies
Infecting minds
With pride and lies

Suffice to say
The surgeon’s host
Benefits least
When he does most

You spare what’s known
Of the red-eye wrath-
The human intolerance
The surgeon hath

I held myself as i was
Falling, and falling, and falling
Downward to blackness
Saying
"You have to pull through! " said I to me
"And can you? Can you? Can you get me through? "
Responded me.
"I can see you to your feet and help you stumble around
And I can lean you in the next direction-
To keep you from falling to the ground." stated I.
"That would be ever so helpful my self-like saint.
I can't move on my own,
I'm feeling rather faint! " said me.
Desperately
Stumbling in a world of tipsy turney light
I held me up, got me feeling alright
Then relieved
Me said to I "Without you, I'd be done! "
And found, with surprise, that we two were one.

Over yonder past stacks of wheat and hay
There lies the first pavements of a newly born city
Ever beautiful and frightening still
I am watching, standing like the American gothic
Wrought with overalls and a straw hat
I fork my hay, moving it to free the image
To free the image of this paved monolith
Flat like a laid down headstone
Indeed, a headstone to mother earth

Could it be?
That the Sahara has relocated?
It drinks the austere sun
Chipping life to its
Lowest form
Could it be?
That this is my affliction?
It is unclear-
But I would give greatly
For a drink of water

1                                  2                             ­ 3
I am the pawn              At first gait               Who I fight
Over I go                      I may go two            I must strafe
One by one                  But that move          Left or right
Is what I know              Is up to you             To be safe
I trudge the lawn          To seal the fate       (A lowly plight
But do it slow               Of those few            For a humble waif)
-----------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------
I am the rook                 Side to side
As much is said             Front to back
By the notches carved   I cross the board
In my stately head         For my attack
But flip and look,            In length my slide
A queen is bred             Does not lack
------------------------------------------------------------­----------------------
I am the knight              Two by three           The many views
A noble steed                Or three by two       Of my path are
Over the heads             One up, or down     Yours to choose.
Of comrades freed        Sideways through    I’ll leave a scar
A springing flight.          An L-shaped spree  Though my slews
The way I lead:              In ways not few.       Are not that far
-------------------------------------------------------------­---------------------
I am the bishop             A deep-set groove
Hand in hand                Alights my head
With royalty                   My path’s a straight
Is where I stand            Diagonal thread
In shape: closed tulip    A board-long move
In movement: grand      My opponents dread
-----------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------
I am the queen              I own the gamut    But don’t be rash
Tall with crown              Of every way         Remember, any
My ruinous pattern        And every length   Piece can clash
Makes all frown            You could play       Up against me
Wipe them clean!          I move with ut-      By inch or dash
Bring ‘em down!            ter death to pay    From routes aplenty
----------------------------------------------------------------­------------------
I am the king                 A cross on top
And also tall                  I stand by color
I cannot move               I am worth
That far at all                Your every dollar
My lacking fling             In ones, I hop
Is my downfall               In ways, I flower

I need to search the many bound books
To drag my mind over each page
Become a magnet for facts

I need to leave air, earth, fire, and water
In my wake, as things conquered

I need to create an orbit
-a trash realm for all orbits

I need to be saved from clutter, by
Use of clarity, from clarity by use of clutter

To relent, I need to get away
From the feeling
That my feelings are magicy, syrupy star-dust
Or aren’t, or should be

I need to remember the crunch of gravel,
The “thunk” of hollow rubber tires,
The creak of swings, a march in vacuum packed
Air

And when I feel that I need to rule over everything-

I need to return to needless days
Before time I realized
The importance, the pulsing of the endless need

When the fish is a fish
And the man is a man
The studious will say
The fish is a frying pan

Quoth the great Freud
“Sometimes...a cigar”
But the studious, annoyed,
Claim none ever are

When they’re taught that the fish
Is as good as a wish
They can make up their minds
To ignore every scar



Twas Shakespeare that set
By his own special brand
The pattern of work
For the studious hand

And as Carroll and Wilde,
Whitman and Marlowe,
Being similarly styled,
Would Assuredly know

That the birds and bees
Are all rats and fleas
When left to designs
That the studious sew

Walking on home
Amid the breeze,
Of provocative wind
Whipped through these
Colored and life-
Song singing trees
That grab celebrations,
And breathe peace

The leafless sing
In somber tones,
Empowering hymnes
Dimmed by ones
Who chatter green
And clap their fun
While whispering bushes
Gossip on

Rushing through
The errant pins
Of needling trees
The peaking fins
Of rampant weeds
To where and when
I’ll keep in mind
Till home again

Curdled in its darkly *****
Cries its tears, so sorrowful tune
The age so tangled in its ruinous mane
Skin as pale as the horrid moon

A chromescape of blacks and whites
Silvers and grays
Still and quiet as the gaze of death
Suffocated, dehydrated daze
A blurry maze

This drouth of life
Its unbearable home
Prowler, creature, beast of strife
The past engraved in its grayful eyes
An everlasting ex-humanity

Crawling, scratching
Screaming for the living water
Howling the pains of a thousand wounds
Praying in vain for hope and rapture
And the soothing soon

I smell the marsh froth.
Cindery campfires saw off at woodheaps.
The scent struck off into April.
I wear my soles like black parades
Slipshod over the mind, and farscape
Reproachful.  Reproachless.
In awe of the covered expanse.
It is hard to believe how cold, or how joyous
Is the thin shuddering warp
Which is coerced, without taste
In the depraved, saddened nutshell.

Will the dunces think of sticks and stones
And holler psalms of broken bones
When the cataclysms to be wrought
Is on all our race of dunces brought?
It’s not the bash of holy fail
But it’s the lifting of the veil

It befits, at length, the mortal brood
Which believes, as will, for sake of solitude
Stamping hooves with sing-song hearts
Scoffs and sighs through which joy darts
Is not the worth of regal crowns
Cast aside when a gift to clowns?

Is not the great-guard off his rails?
Nuanced, the lifting of the veil

And nuance itself, a pearl before
Swine who rut, in a squealing abhor
The smoothness of it, the spotless gleam
Or the idea of perfect the perfect deem?
All the while, swines they wail
That the green is fake in the saintly vale

For rutting they seem not be concerned,
Amid brazen wiles of burning and yearned
A heedless pit tails a brambled row,
For the virile seeds of what the puerile grow
And what of the openness of the seeds?
For a vine that tangles, or one that feeds?

The burly winds, coursing through the trees
In the barren atmosphere, on the frosty grounds
Every inch a plethora of snow
The leaves have fallen and gone, the oaks
Are now bouquets of sticks
They reach to the cloudy depths of a January sky
The sweet earth is frozen and hard
The winds are now a river
Fresh and frostbitten
Drowning the world
All of this a freezing symphony

Such a sweet simplicity
That drowns my brain in milk and honey
And rests it in a distant place
Leaving my body behind
Like a bird flying from a newly opened cage
And all the world drifting off my shoulders
As a sigh escapes me
And echoes in the endless twilight

To dream the depths of a thousand
Worlds
And amidst the hope and rage there
Swirls
Some sunlight awakened and fog that
Curls
In and out of the fading night
- - - -
With screams of pain and sorrows
Kept
I did awaken to there that
Crept
Upon my skin broke forth cold
Sweat
In and out of the nightmare's fright
- - - -
And as for the demons I hadn't to
Bother
That I'd left in my bed, thank heavenly
Father
And I flushed out my head, brought me to
Fruit and water
In and out of the morning light

The summer seems a moving picture in your mind
Days stretched out like lifetimes, fields of memories inscribed
-In the tree bark
-In the uplifting smooth air
And the sun
It is the sun that beats your downcast eyes
You revisit memory lane time and time again
Reading the memory inscribed on your
Walking path-remember?
When Johnny stuck his tongue to a frozen playground pole?
Or Kyle's crush on Katie in the 5th grade?
And such things strike as children's laughter
The times when childhood flowed like water,
A fountain of youth those years
Of which you have had your share
And the memories blossom fruitfully
Although, now, you drink from a trickle
And now the days are shorter-
But you sometimes pretend, you are
Only gone away for a short while

Like steam in a dark room, there's a feeling inside
A feeling that feels like it's trying to hide
A feeling that's awkward in the back of the room
A feeling that breaks and sticks in shards in my gloom
A feeling that feels like the darkened clouds in the sky
A feeling that's black like coal in my eye
There's a dent in my mind, like the feeling in its womb
There's a feeling inside, like steam in a dark room

Horizons of smoke
The burdening
The woeful well.
Dropping ideas like rainwater;
Like poison tokens
Or burning embers
To a pool of kerosene.
Like feeding a dragon
Hungry and deep throated.
No darkness could stop it
No world of light hearted notions
Or light in long tunnels.
Those things don't matter now.
Swallowing weights-
Heavy lids-
Propped with fear.
Hair's on end-
Trying to flee-
Thwarted by attachment.
A din of quiet:
Vital quiet
Ear shattering quiet
The sound of nails on slate
The sound of wailing life
A quiet that kills.
A sudden look back,
And there flies the children of that well!
Tattooing your mind like
Spilt black paint!
Splattered, disorderly!
Grabbing you, carrying you
While you clench for anything to hold onto!
There is no handle
There is no reaching hand
There is only you.
You, and this pit of ink,
And your poison ideas!
Forming a brush to shape the ink.
Unlocking chambers
Unlocking your true nightmares.

the blank face of
this page
stares back at me

mockingly,
void and vast

such a wide, wide
universe...
a blank boundless
waste...

I wrote this if only
for the chance possibility
to save the wasted
space

I can say flarkle
I can say spleet
I can even embarkle
On magonical deets

Don’t know what I’m on?
Can’t tell what I’ve said?
Haven’t you heard?
It’s only a word

And I can be whoompus
Only when I wumple!
Or else when I foompus
With a bodkin’s kerflumple

Have the senses all gone
From inside of your head?
Don’t be absurd,
It’s only a word

I can say them where I please-
I can say them to your mother
Who gives for right or fair
When behavior’s but a bother?

Are we all done
With defining instead
Of crowding in herds
Of only words?

In thickened night, the fretful rapture came
Awakened in the dryness of straw-dead summer’s mind
Cursing in wide, breathy howling as it went
Pushing lofty power over trees that blew and bent
And so abhorred, slung wetness at the bind
Sprung lifting up to cry, dew is not the same!

Though long before, rest its firm and lightless lid
When pins of rain flecked the outer-skirting leaves
Then devil-tales plucked on the heart threads of the breeze
Tremulous, fought back the humble strain of ease
In a flinch, at everything the sudden outburst heaves
A brawling mass, to be still, the night, to be rid

Ahold impasse, our eyes, or thoughts before the scourge
Our cares aside, as all else was left to smother
Lightning-soaked, its crossing moods uncertain
The moaning tantrum, and careening of its curtain
At all greenery, and all the din saw fit to wuther
We who watched, perturbed: the bright, dark, passing urge

Dear Jimmy
How are you?
How is Jenny?
Any news?
Quiet here
So you’ve heard
To be near
Much preferred
Out this morning
Town was gone
Storm was forming
On the pond
Gray and dense
Air that girds
Like a fence
For friendly birds
Feathers dark
Whatever types
Crow or lark
Bars and stripes
Rainy days
Sky-lit piers
Where I stay...
Tiny fears
Have to do,
Sorry waves,
With me and you
A place to save
What remains
Or keeping pause
On putrid strains-
We’re all the cause
Not me alone,
The ilk of heart
What was done
Was all our part
Not just mine
From onset
Nothing fine
Deep regret
Nothing sound
The worst of friends
Could have found
The better ends.
In ruins here,
Sure you know
To be near...
Unlikely though
Gray and dense
Air interred
My lovely wince
For stupid birds
And brutal trees
Sick duress
So Jenny...
I digress...
There again
Sometime soon,
Will think of when
This afternoon
Tell the rest
That I said...
Whatever’s best
Off the head
As much for now
I’ll try so hard,
To stay low somehow,
Till then, regards

The tree in the dawn is:
A bronze statue.
A collection of clattering crows,
Besieged, a storm of ink
(they strut, they stab
to break loose.
a quickstart batter of fright, is
the figment, that which sent the birds sprawling)

The tree in the dawn is:
Exuberant ebony versus deathly whitewash,
A cold sculpture
Standing.
(levying the imperviousness
of blank-white backdrops,
a darkness against-
reaching all extents of black and white.)

The tree in the dawn is:
A frightening monster!
...A dark urchin tower,
-aquiver with black tentacles
And squawking feathery runoff
...A beast with its metaphysical yawp
Thrashing every way, a mass of limbs
(drips a blackness off it,
A fluid like dark soot water
   cleansing in dawn light)

The tree in the dawn is:
A tree.
Nothing more.  Nothing less.
     (now that the sun has risen)

The sky turns hard
Like cauliflower,
And bleeds me out.
It turns hard,
Because I do.
I am the blood of the Earth
And bile, its running waste.
I am its health chorus.
I have known many faucets,
Creaky most, unknowing of any grander plot,
Chartering my way through lime and rust,
I have known many faucets.
I have also known mountaintops.
Places where the air is clean,
And in its own pace blows freshly over my back.
I am, on the mountain, a slumbering snowcap.
I blanket the mountaintop, I am locked with it
In a never ending kiss.
I have known places in the countryside
Where the air breathes nearly as fresh,
Sweeping down from the mountains
Thinking of me mostly, in an open talk.
I have known cities,
Where I am not so well received,
Where I must pound myself between the brick buildings,
Places drowning in nooks and crannies,
I am not so well received, though I try so hard
To reach every surface.
I slide down the sides of walls, I tremble from the slide of awnings,
I mix with gravel.
I am your dirt, your cleanliness.  I feed the doves.  I drown insects.
I wash the air between your city lives, leave your cars and livelihoods
Shining.  I am washed away by the sun, but never leave.
You see me in your gutters.  You see me in your grates.
You cannot live without me.

Actually, to
Consider
Reading
Over the left
Side of
This poem
Is
Congratulatory.
Still, it’s

Arguable, is it
Really poetic?
Ending in

Fallacy,
Using
Nary a rhyme?

June was not the same
As I’d last remembered it
When last it spoke of gentle trickles
This time it threw a fit

And July had a guardian lace
Before last it fled away
Came back a beast of booming claws
Battering the day

Then August seemed to vent its steam
Fuming more and more
Till last, I felt steamed to death
And folded by September’s door

I
Feast your eyes upon this current
A history of things long forgotten,
Eraser marks-abundant smears
On this current.
This is the mauve universe,
A purgatory of notions from which
No ideas will come
Filtering through like soap bubbles,
Piercing our dimension’s pores.

II
It exists in no dimension,
But extends to all-
A great river of a current
To carry our notions through.
What once filled the hearts of men
Now discarded, and carried on a zephyr
As pieces of notebook paper
Torn out, and the pages made new again.
The current never stops. It moves
Slowly onward towards vast eternity-
Our discarded notions move to it
Like lost souls to a one way train.
An eternal business this current makes

III
Wasted dreams-
Splendid wonders-
Day old notions-
Worn ideas-
Forgotten memories-
Journey to a one way train
Journey like lost souls.
The murmuring current,
Is upon her slovenly children
Whisking to and whispering fro
The places eternally vanished.
The current, unbraced over shadows and glows-
The long...sonorous...multitudinal current,
Being loudly everywhere,
Straddles our dimension’s pores

Smiles the waving soul,
Touching on simple things
Such as looking in
From the outside
Feeling a blur of
Banjos and pianos,
A smile loosened from
The pit o’ the soul,
And a twinkle in my eye,
A dusty road to look down
So I see the way things were
And I smile in good humor
Taking the road,
And tossing the rocks of ages