She was crushed ice,
great for chewing,
bad for teeth.

She found me thirsty and pica,
down in the taps,
bounced and fanged.

And there she was, tall in the glass,
clear in her gaps but clouded
with lime in the hard stuff.

Yea, she yielded to my jaw,
ground her by the mouthful,
but my throat only dried,

dried that only a long pull
could quench it; dried such
that only a melting would do.

But when the water came down...
when the water came down,
she crumbled to a chunk.

And spinning in her way,
spinning in her way of refusing,
I set the glass down, parched.

But that's the way with ice and water -
that's the way,
somewhere north of thirty two,
but somehow south of liquors.

No longer the measure mechanic,
the setting lever and loosening coil.
The need for fingers, precise,
laying thin metals, tweezed gears
and spring engineered
in the knowledge of frictions, is gone
and towered hands are still.

What once was built entropic,
cuffed about the wrists of us,
this clutch wheel of grace and holding
ring, this yoke and winding stem -
mere baubles to the collector.

For now the hours are true decay,
half-lived and radiant,
taut with the drip of what is
and what must be known.
And that bent clockman,
hunched and relic,
stern in his craft, compelling
WIND WIND WIND,
fashions jewelry for peddlers,
but not I.

Up there, in the brevities
and rifting cloud something
lured my eyes.

For this dog is a blacker black
than a slip moon night, but here,
on this morn, the dim prevails.

And the bending of wet leaves
beneath her paws wager green hope,
but they're brown. I saw them yesterday.

Yesterday, before the rain came winter,
before the now the sea plops
from a rust split gutter onto an ice pick.

But this is what wanders
when a blacker black dog
is hidden in black.

This is what wanders
when wet leaves mute her paws
and I wait, for her.

But up there, in the brevities
and rifting cloud allured,
a dust cut the night briefly.

And briefly, so briefly,
there was a moment assured,
but uncertain as daybreak - I and a dog.

How many schisms
does it take to change a light bulb,
that gray irritant in the shade,
that fray behind diffused glass,
incandescent once, but burned,
but burned out?

Twist the *****, **** you,
dare you take the **** thing out
and pop it on the floor,
such joyous crack, this glass ever thin,
this wire-mocked glow, exploded
as air seeks to neutralize the vacuums,
seeks to restore among the vacuous,
these lumens built to fade.

Cloud came no closer than that,
but I tried.

Emboldened and primate I tried.

Scurried up the elm to bring night closer.
But the limbs got thinner,
thinner there and sapling.

****, the stars are wounds,
and the moon's a gaping.

And what swoons below
is a lark, a laugh and a flaking,

like skin ripped in endeavor,
like skin that is ripped with want,
ripped with gravity, like fingers,
pale with just hanging on
as the growing tip breaks
and falls before magma.

I am the stickman you drew as a kid,
the one you flipbooked on the corners
of every Christmas catalogue that hogged
your time and pencil.

Oh how smooth you drew me - and thin.
And I remember when you gave me a bike,
rolled me right off the page, right there
at the hardwares - those Gifts For Dads.

I see you bought a sketchpad,
and some conte's and charcoal.
I suppose you draw much fuller men now.
No, I never spoke, just eyed you.

And you didn't see me that day at all,
that time I was jiggered on the steps
of Woolworth's, smoking a blunt
at the corner of Fifth and Deluded, watching you.

Why? Well, I didn't want you to see.
Or perhaps I wanted another go,
strobed and animate, not fat and gristle,
walking among the things you'll never buy.

God willing, I'll find my own way
down to the rust caverns, down to the dust
and seared calcite, stressed and cleaved,
God willing.

And God willing I will make a trance
of us, a Pan of us, all musics, impromptus
and guile. God willing.

And God willing we will take the rain
in our teeth, shatter on the brink of us,
barrel into the wall of us and bleed laughing.
God willing.

And God willing we will cast the first fist
at the faceless faiths, bent as clay,
that engender the hates of hedons
and lusts that only skins abide.
God willing.

For there is no god, God willing,
that will seek to stem the strides of us,
loose in the hills and running,
loose in the hills and ripping
our flesh in the brambles,
cloven and jagged.