I dream houses.
I dream small rooms
behind small doors
in which small wardrobes
lead nowhere but trappings
of our mangled time -  
of yours and mine.

I dream chimney fires,
tongues between walls
and curtains hung like tar.
We were never long
in the vapors, strangers yes,
but a lope of gray shoulder
and a turning was you, I am sure,
everturning and blue.

I find you in the floorboards,
scuttled in dust and debt,
heaped for a match,
for a flicker,
but nothing is scorched in this.
Rather what crushes here,
the burdens of rooves on cinder,
the cracking of small rooms,
small scores
never carved from a plan,
compress what should be at rest.

I cry “Wake”, each morning,
I cry “wake” to find you,
tragic in the sheets,
bound before the fan ,
mumbling something to someone,
flexing your hand. Yes, I see you,
tangled, but dreaming I think,
twitched of some else tomorrow,
stitched to your own land pink.

I saw a picture of you today,
that crow's foot smile, your eyes
blue behind wisps of bang,
arm around his shoulder,
same old still,
and I felt nothing.

But then again,
I was small fish to fry,
and you laughed and said no,
you are a whale and went away
that Tiananmen spring.

And there was fear in your voice,
strung out, evacuated, long on the line
and coming home, unnerved.

I missed you at the terminal,
you didn't wait.
But that was no nevermind.
You met me at the station,
red on your breath,
giddy with a gift.

You pressed that sterling
Shandong bell in my palm,
that small Shandong bell.
The bell I keep in the never box,
behind the broken watches
and shells.

You called me a whale once,
but when you returned from away,
you pressed a small Shandong bell
in my palm and held it there,
impressed it there with a finger,
that bell with the small fishes,
chasing each other's tails.

In this winter called Leviathan,
gorged be the meddles of men
lurched there, rustbound in ice
and enzyme.

And all that arcs over, whether
the crust limbed trees, or the white
tresses of sleet pinged on our heads,
mocks like a maul.

Roused and thus cursed by the makers
of beasts and things craving anvils
and the nails of undoing, undoing,
undoing us all.

And though it was said "Thou breakest
the heads of Leviathan in pieces..."
it is the heads of all men that break,
it is the wilderness fed.

What can I say?
I was a bad sunrise,
quick scudded to cloud
and withholding.

Look at it this way,
it was a great day
for pictures,
unshadowed,
no hotspots
to burn away
in a dance.

We were a function
really, a shallow
angle of incidence,
a glancing blow,
mathematic,
not prismatic,
no split beam,
just one garish
morning thing,

and a slow
overcast
trundle
to a setting.

I can smell my own pits,
my night sweats,
****** up in my week
unwashed robe.

I am disgusted.

And yet, there,
in the garment bags,
lingered in your suits,
your suits I brought home
from your funeral
in the sands so long far gone,
remains these same
and bitter musks.

And there, in the bags,
the pastes of rose wallpapers,
struggled up but aligned remain.

And there, in the bags,
a spruce topped Goya,
thick hipped as forests
and earth angels remains,
there before a sniff.

And though I sit here
in the acrid smoke and
coffee fumes, wondering
breakfast and baths,
you stand stiff as dry-clean,
tall on the hangers,
held and never squandered
for a tear, there,
thankfully there,
the scent of you remains.

The roads here,
*** tongued, black toothed
and pitted, lead somewhere.

I am sure that over the peak of it,
splayed out like toes in dry sand,
tractioned for tide, a florescence,
maybe, maybe down in the abalone towns,
the oyster shot towns - in The Mother of Pearl,
where I met a guy,
a guy named Reason,
slim fingered and wrung
out at last call.

But there it was, he said "if" first:
"nothing really closes,
I just exchange doors for
carpets, throwbacks and
occasional tables - leaf down
and close to the wall."

He said his name was Witness,
but I knew better, I knew better.
This cat was leather on tweed,
a pick-up line on a business card,
call me anytime. He had shacks
for eyes and his temples pulsed
like Patsy Cline.

He said he had a flounder's way of lying,
flat at the bottom of things - loose silted.
If I needed, he said, the skipjacks
split at dawn, but that's rarely the way
for land legs. And he grinned,
wide like a seiner.

They're always there - these ones -
slumped for a schmuck
dipped out for a just a thud away
from home, down the *** tongued
road to Blacktooth,
where the Water and Sand
shutters before The Mother of Pearl,
where the windows flicker like barbacks,
and a girl named Treason ticks...

If I gave thanks yesterday,
must I do so today?

If I gave thanks that the tires
held traction, there on the black ice,
unthrottled toward the jack-knifed
semi, folded in the median,
thumping through clods
of thrown and frozen earth,
would that be enough?

Would it be enough to be grateful
for the physics of glide,
steer with the slide, after all,
it was only mustard I needed,
coarse ground for the sauce,
for the sauce that will remain
untouched on the table,
peppered with panic and ****.

Espaliered vines hang like convicts,
strung out in the vineyards as portent
to passers by.

But the tasting rooms are open with cheeses,
retribution and grim justice -
verdicts of wine.

I see them, the tasters, the gawkers,
giddy on the road for sips of vengeance
and sublimation.

I see them, glued to the glass,
glued to the crushing of grapes,
calling it justified.

S'always gonna be there,
that stain like a slitherin' dog
done nabbed a cookie.

Let's call it spilt milk,
if we must, but ****
that was a rabbit punch.

Let's keep in it the hutch
with all the chipped bowls
and riddled towels.

I know. But forgive
don't mean forgot,
just means put away
with split chinas
and red linen.

Weathermen are pushing the storm.
Nobody noteworthy died today.
Eight to twelve on the Twins.
Havoc on the plains and cancellations
pending. No travel advised.
The schools flaked out before
the first wind blew, and the office
is gutted parental.
Milks are shoveled in carts,
pricey waters too. Croutons
got hoarded like hardtack,
and only the lettuce remains,
only the lettuce, the leeks,
and a few fibrous cereal grains.

What can I beg of tomorrow
that hasn't already been denied?
Am I a cup in hand, an avoided eye?

If I yearned for a lung not shallowed
with tar, would you grant it?
I thought not, I've asked before.

If I fought for one black minute
to toss the shovels aside,
to use my hands to dig,
to sift my own grave for riches,
would you give it?
I thought not, I've asked before.

And if I spit in your face,
take all the days unnumbered unto myself
and squander, would you take it?
I thought not, I've done it before.

I'll meet you in the morning,
yes, we'll face each other again.
But I'll want nothing this time,
I'll beg nothing but hard weathers
and grime. For that is all
you are want to give.

If the sun rose without you,
thin-lipped and petty,
a day would slump over me,
either frigid or thick-steamed.

And no cool wind will pass the trees,
And the sun, a mere mock of warmth,
will tumble west that is sure,
certain as rock in a dry creek bed.

For what is a light without hands
to hold it? And what is a day without
a warm return to a hazelled iris,
chiselled long and arced as horizon?

Outside the house that's never ours, down-***** and foundation, the faceless one in violet jacquard slid the stone away. And he was strong, by God, for he did it with a touch light as breath, light as fingernails and not a callous revealed a trade. Exposed and streak, some long and rodent thing, large as gator, sloth-faced, skunk-haired and toothed barracuda leapt out, then paused. Flicked its wide fan tail. And looking back at me with eyes both black and brocade, it urged my eyes down, down into the pit where the young and unnamed things flickered like moons on sewage, dull but hungry. And I, in a fit begged the faceless one to unhinge the stone and roll it back, but he laughed. He laughed without mouth, without eyes, more vacant and grimace than squalor. With the stone unmoved, he lifted his hand and pointed to a window not ours, slack-paned and green. And with a flash of jacquard, I was there, in the kitchen. And you were there in the kitchen, my love, crouched native and scooping leopard frogs like water in your palms, then sliding them into a box. You said they didn't belong here, in this kitchen not ours, and you sought a relocation, down the hall, where dust settles like rain and cool clean sheets. But those other tenants, more heard than seen, slow to rents and vagrant, held the doors shut and blunt with chairs and no rattling **** gave way. And at the end of it, where a green window spilled vague shafts below, down-***** to nowhere, a faceless one in violet turned. Turned and walked away.

Outside the house that's never ours, down-***** and foundation, the faceless one in violet jacquard slid the stone away. And he was strong, by God, for he did it with a touch light as breath, light as fingernails and not a callous revealed a trade. Exposed and streak, some long and rodent thing, large as gator, sloth-faced, skunk-haired and toothed barracuda leapt out, then paused. Flicked its wide fan tail. And looking back at me with eyes both black and brocade, it urged my eyes down, down into the pit where the young and unnamed things flickered like moons on sewage, dull but hungry. And I, in a fit begged the faceless one to unhinge the stone and roll it back, but he laughed. He laughed without mouth, without eyes, more vacant and grimace than squalor. With the stone unmoved, he lifted his hand and pointed to a window not ours, slack-paned and green. And with a flash of jacquard, I was there, in the kitchen. And you were there in the kitchen, my love, crouched native and scooping leopard frogs like water in your palms, then sliding them into a box. You said they didn't belong here, in this kitchen not ours, and you sought a relocation, down the hall, where dust settles like rain and cool clean sheets. But those other tenants, more heard than seen, slow to rents and vagrant, held the doors shut and blunt with chairs and no rattling **** gave way. And at the end of it, where a green window spilled vague shafts below, a faceless one in violet turned and walked away.

Some dim tide strode the beach pelican,
had quarters for eyes, and a gull's sense for scavenge.
I found pearls under the boardwalk,
but they were just butts
and hunks of abalone
caught up in the pushing.

The skeeball racked out addicts
like melamine and spent rubbers,
but we were young then,
not known for drinking.

Safari had fake skin in the flukes,
Zulu shields too tall for a penny,
and some chump carved out Jesus in sand,
but the waves whipped that away.

I got all surf rod crazy
and hooked a dogfish in the belly,
and some **** took my kite,
so that's what's up for fish.

Later on, though, when the acids came on,
and them jimmies were ants,
and that ******* carny wouldn't stop the ride,
and footprints became skulls,
and the sea turned opal,
and the horsecops stayed cool,
and I became dolphin,
and undertow spoke of passage,
and the horseshoe ***** washed up
gray and silent - I learned -
that mussels cling
to jetties not for communion,
but in the hope that the next sap
would take the pounding.

On the face of it
is  a mountain.
Below that,
orange sinus.

And in the long drip of it,
down to the lip of it,
a snot thing crawls.

But I took it on the chin,
lurching up to the clime
where leaves resolve
to needles, and the white
cliffs fall like beetles
in a tinderbox.

And the tangled lines
hooked below to stumps
and trinkets trickle
in the slipstream,
warm as mucous,
slow as dream,
bound to rust,
released as steam,
and effluents.

If I knew anything,
like a dog's tail wags,
like an iced wire sags,
I would know a hard mouth stings.

But there in the blaze of it,
in that thick tongued moment,
when your eyes glazed on a word,
a dry twig snapped beneath a bird.

And what fell there, what broke there,
now limp in the now dry grass,
was neither a bird nor a wing,
but a foot pressed on breaking glass.

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.

Out, among gray and cloud-spliced
verities, beige and stubbled hollow stalks,
a doe held her place on the rise.

And I, slippered and robed,
gathered the costs of my comforts -
the papers and pages of heat
from a white and resin box.

She tasted the air of me,
upwind of her, and the twin steams
of her core beat out, split the chill -
pulsed and sinuous.

Her black eyes unmoved,
she stroked the ground once
with a forefoot and her left ear
funneled toward me.

It is winter now and what hides
beyond the rise, before the snows
and thin forage is for her to know,
not I, for I am not that dear.

Was thinking of you as I ******
the chardonnay out, black exile
to sewage. Was thinking of you
and those trusts - thrice drawn
out of me - breath ******
in perverse resuscitation -
collapsed a lung
and shudders my gut
in the steam of it. And then,

Soft-bodied and filament,
a spider reared up,
pin-legged,
from behind the tank,
and topped the unset clock,
flashing twelve and twelve
and twelve again.

And with my one hand free
I plucked it up, loose-pinched
between my thumb and index,
held it up before the mirror,
before the medicine cabinet mirror
and the lights, buzzing rifts,
bad as daybreak and drought.

And thus, this spider and you,
dropped upon the waters,
yellowed and foamed, spun
quickly down the trap,
a larger purge to a purging.

They hung laundries like prayers,
these women, there, new to pants,
between Beechfield and Brisbane.

And all the actions were in the alley,
the zipper between, where we,
young thuggeries in our dungarees,
plied bicycle trades on summer days.
Even flies shunned our manes.

Fists and spit and baseball cards.
Skates and snakes and fenced-in yards.
Each these swinging statues,
thrown, frozen, spun, fastened
to concrete and rash.

And yes, there, the women,
the mothers, pinning towels
like code, pinning sheets on wire,
glancing through a breeze, they saw it all:
saw us, the young and barely criminal,
rang it up the chain.
And yes, oh yes, these mothers,
there'd be hell to pay,
there'd be hell to pay
come dinnertime.

I ain't seen no crow do no killin',
never in a day.
****, they ain't even a squabble.
I seen a lot a' crows
on a lot a' roads,
courteous as squaredance,
bobbin' over ****, skunk,
whatever red,
always cool to clear the way
and wait fer a passin'.

I ain't seen no dead crow neither,
not a one.
I seen 'em harried though,
hammered like B-17's
swattin' one o nines.
But that ain't no nevermind.

Pigeons, yep. Lotsa pigeons.
Slapped a few sparra's on the grill.
Never took a pheasant
but I seen 'em,
all broke feather
and bonnet in the ditch.

Baldies?
Now that's a bird that's got one
helluva marketin' department.
Proud one that.
Eats the eyes and *** first.
Runs off the competition.
**** things don't know
bumpers from blimps.
But wha' d'ya do?

A con-vo-cation, yep,
that's what they call 'em -
hell, we almost snuffed 'em
clean out and now we call 'em
a convocation?
Seems a bit stilted to me.
But there you have it -
a convocation a'eagles
a ****** a' crows.
Just goes to show ya',
them namers don't know.

The so and many ways to sing the breeze,
whether it is breath or breathed,
or hummed in trees unleaved,
bison-heard on plains or high crested seas,
it is wind that rattles here - here upon the eaves.

Church bells are not pealed, but pushed
as chimes hung from the porches of time,
piped and true turbulent - these random tines
of a taking - chattered on a window,
scraped on a pane, loose-glazed and limed.

And whether we praise or for that matter pray,
wind don't speak my name, don't gust me down,
to each and all a song, pitched as a gale or a brief
unsettled sway, slack as linen and sung that way.

Saps run before the weathers -
hordes of sugar in the root -
what little stays - thin and capillary,
above ground, contests
the filigreed fingers of water
with denser sweets.

And thus, unleaved and ****,
what to the eye appears barren,
rude to the dog-eyed sun,
summer nests exposed as frail,
stricken to bone in winter,
stands as a man I once knew -
propped by his own root,
wide as shade and none other.

You left hair in the tub,
toothpaste splatter on the mirror,
a wadded towel on the rod,
wet footprints on the floorboards
marking a stumble to the kitchen
where you guzzled milk
from the carton, there with
the door open, cold spilling
out like flumes to your feet -
and I loved it.

A sudden spasm raked,
raked your shoulders,
your torso, all caught
ecstatic at the mingling
of milk and hot bath blood.

Wearing your robe
like a prizefighter,
pink to the ring
and gearing up for a bout
that never comes -
now that's the stuff
my sweet **** -
that's the stuff of the long fight,
the long familiar,
the mustache I lick from your upper lip.

So smooth and piquant then. Remember?
Our love a puree of roots and bitters,
quick peppered, swift boiled
blobbed up and sulphurous.
Melting the ladle, melting the ***,
smoking the burner, firing
the whole **** kitchen down.

Yes, it still stings my lips,
***** on my uvula, something
never fully swallowed
but scorched on a hard palate,
peeling skin on the blistered roof
of a recollection.

It was tough then, I know,
making soup last for days,
for weeks, for years.
We were young then
and fond of quick eats,
grabbed before a cab
and shoveled whole,
gulped like a snake
teasing eggs -
unhinged and transient.

But savor these broths unclouded, love,
clear to the windmills, blue and Dutch
at the bottom of the bowl.
Draw the spoon, gentle and away,
lift and breathe softly, eyes closed,
and take what remains, what lingers
velvet on the buds and nourishing.

Again today a study
proves our immortality.
To run, however long,
reduces the risk of death
by twenty percent
in a sample of two hundred
fifty thousand.

And now they are running.
Running against the certain stone.
Running on the slim trails of hope,
gathering ticks as they brush
the closing blades.

The path gets thinner, old friends,
Narrows to a deer-path.
But the whitetail seeks only water,
forage, such sweet leaves -
never the headlamps, no,
never the headlamps
that creep up the road.

She had a long bore smile,
a smoker's laugh,
and a posture born of whips
and taking it.

She had a red onion mind,
a carrion wit,
three prison-ink vines
on her hip.

Her scent - a pudding
of ash and caramel,
hints of road ****,
burnt rubber and mint.

She'll cut your face
for a dime of truth
and slim recognition,
but not a penny for dancing.

She read Proust
and hated it,
spat on the spine of me -
dropped me a notch.

Soft-shouldered for gizzards
she was, taut in her loves,
tight with the greenbacks -
she called them gloves.

I lay a palm on a wall of quartzite,
red, unhewn and beckoning my lips
to count the strata, number each
compression from heel to nail,
down below the rooted fissure
up above the quiet smirk of a creek -
one hundred.

And as I drag my eyes upward,
to where the scrub oak and juniper
mangle an ash blue sky I am taken.

I am taken there beneath my palm,
pressed metamorphic on rock,
to become a thin bent line,
hardly a hair's breadth,
nary a bone remains,
beneath the heat and pressures
of grass, trees and all things -
all things crushed after me -
all things reordered and tendered.

Sing forth the treasons,
the seasons have been sung
long before revolting - D minored
the winter, G majored the spring...
Bah, the seasons never heard
these grovelling breaths,
but ****** them deaf up.

Give lung to the unbreathed
rumors squat below the bridge,
that the tumors unskinned,
revealed pulsing on our red,
white - blue tunneled drums -
these cancers defiling the myth of us.

The fall does not applaud
the clapping of leaves, but
strips us to bone, and the
blown away come to us cardboard,
cornered in the cold sun, unsung,
mocking the radio comforts of disdain.

Our own unmaking, unmasked
and riven with lies - lies and all lies
reinforced with steel and striped beams,
stiff on a pole, snapping as whips
on a cotton bent back - crowed
as every patriot hymn
fades in a grumble.

Such joyful music this treason,
this treason not treason,
this discomfiting strained ensemble
sparing neither breath nor ear
the true screech of anthems -
beat, immobile chords,
chained and ghetto thirds,
cast-off tritones, contrapuntal,
scraped on gut and strung up,
and over the laminate woods of us.

At the still axis of revolution,
about which our tortures churn,
the pure and toddler self remains,
present and young,
uncoiled, unlearned.

Such that a top, spinning,
poised gyroscopic on a point,
traces a path on a floor,
spiraled to the delight
of a child's fresh gums attentive,
must wobble in the end,
must with those most
stupendous frictions fall.

Neither the lean nor
the circumference, dead on the floor,
succumbed to turmoil,
defines the top, no - it is the axis -
that about which all things turn -
stiff spindled, silent, and spun
by the pink and toddler hand,
in the wonder that is yours,
in the wonder that is ours.

Herefords lying down,
***** to the wind - this bodes of rain.
Cloud gray and anvil,
clobber shot and some ways off,
a cliff falls precipitous.
There's manure in the air
because it's November
and the harvest is in.
There's manure in the air
for the fields need a feed
before snow tangles the greeds
of Autumn, and the Aberdeens
crush stubble leeward,
beyond the spruce breaks.
And there, atop a shaved hill,
a misthrown cone of gold,
shoveled by the shade hands
of gamblers in the **** winds
jangle in a pickup.

Come to me vagrant, O Death:
starved of bone, starved of lung,
dime-eyed and savage.
Do not come to me gorged and gorgeous,
for it is only when you have known
true hunger, withered to a stalk,
submitted to beggary and stale breads,
you may come to my door, my table.
It will be then, O Death, that pity
becomes you - it will be there
in my clouding eyes you bear witness
to what makes grief a giving - it will be
there in my dry cracked palms held
empty before you, not a partaking of life,
but a share of a hunger assuaged and willing.

Burnt in the steam of crab,
there was no in your eyes.
There was no on your fingers,
peeling the apron,
splitting the shell,
scraping the devil,
digging the claw for meat.

I found someone came like a mallet,
but it was you walked away,
bored in youth,
bored in the shell of love,
met on a crab lunch hesitant,
in an inland cafe,
where they only steam female
not thrown back to sea for spawning.

But what else could I say?
If honest is the plate of love,
then I served you well.
But what came hot,
like a platter of crab,
was quickly indulged,
and all that remained is the no:
the no in your eyes,
the no on your fingers,
the no on your lips.
the no that always lingers.

Tobacco tar walls,
Resin ceiling,
Dun carpet floor -
all receding -
creased receding
to the elevator door -
and the doors -
the doors - the endless
doors repeating.

I drop a penny.
I squat but it's tails.
I look up at a girl
looking up.
Her hair is black,
tangled comely.

She has a chocolate smear
on her right cheek,
Her uncertain teeth
bared in child's
glee and caked with it.

She wears a mustard
blouse stained canary
and her pants are
frayed at the ankles.

Her eyelids are ticking
ticking the flickering light
She says,
"The light turns everything yellow
and nobody picks a bad penny,
that lift only goes down."

She says her name is Mara,
"Mara will be around."

Sheathed in a concrete calyx,
a flower, a generation folded in
upon itself, waits the horrors of the sun.

These petals once unfurled, fell upon
by hard rains and scorch care not, I am told,
the grim and arrowed planting, but
brace against the stem of the next blossom,
for none, I am told, hold the wind alone.

But that is not for me to know.
I only know that these seeds forever sown,
do not prove lustrous on the hills,
in the fields, narrow-tilled,
worse yet, in a vase, I am told,
worse yet, in a vase for gazing.

She was a slim volume really,
a short read, an afternoon
in shades of cypress, conceived
on her own costly parchments.

She prefaced a day a warning,
that if any eye should scan her
lines to her own bleak skin,
to her own terse margins,

to the limbs akimbo nonsense
implied by her scrawling,
there would be a price to pay,
found blank beyond the epilogue.

But she was a slim volume really,
a short read in shades of cypress,
grass and thick with bugs.
And there, pocked by her words,

torn by such strongfrail inks,
torn like a hyphen dangled
at the bottom of a page,
ripped from her tongue

I hung on the breath of an epilogue,
A few faint phrases:
"All that you have read here is true.
All that is consumed here is you."

It is not inconceivable
some smeared and blind thing,
like hail or perhaps some top spun
cue ball, maybe some blunt
beaked bird wary of our passage,
or a bullying stone,
unchaperoned in a spiraling sandbox,
or a slap to the back of the head
by the swift palm of a correcting mother
for some thoughtless remark -
a child's tongue unrestrained...

A child's tongue unrestrained,
naive, precessed, tethered
and dragged, star-eyed and still
reeling because I said "hell"
in Hecht's men's department
on a Thursday, because I didn't
want peas, because I wanted
pudding and said "hell"
and she smacked me,
just stiff enough to tilt the axis,
just enough to shake loose the leaves,
freeze those vanilla puddings.
Yes, that must be the reason for winter,
the start and wobble of all things northern,
cold-shocked by the sun's glancing blows.

Gimme swill,
not one for smooth liquors,
I cannot fathom velvet.

Jigger me a burlap,
stir me a drink
in low thread counts,
course cottons and twill.

My throat itches for wool
and stiff denims. My throat
itches for loose weaves,
warped lazy on a loom,
distilled with a towel,
stiff on a rail in some
damp and arid bathroom.

I am stuck between Sweatro and Gingerman,
stuck out by the dumpsters, ****, and toothed butts,
scrubbing concrete for roaches, hands stung
out with brown shards of Michelob bottles
between shots and lines.

I am stuck in the batlamp, stuck in the felt,
stacked like quarters by the rail, waiting my turn
at the game, my turn at the trough,
hailing drinks like cabs, two fingered,
absolute and limed.

There was a girl there once,
square-shouldered, brass-railed
and flickering. There was an eye
to an eye, a mocked dissection - yes,
a cutting - a splendid humbled nothing.

Yes, those nights bled fast,
slumped down to Campeche,
burrowed into beans and red rice.
Yes, before the fogs wore off,
before the graystones went gray,
before the foilman don't like that,
out there in the dumpsters,
where I found a roach,
scarred my lip, spread glass,
spread lies and conjured a time
high in the **** of discard,
high in a nothing called mine.

My mother loved the dogwood blooms -
each spring a fresh crucifixion.
And when it flushed wild in the clearing,
where our new house stood,
on a stripped skull, quick to erode,
my mother would rush to the dogwood,
take each stained white blossom
in her hand and said "forgive, forgive."

She never went to church anymore,
never again touched her cold dead Mary,
never again begged favor or grace,
not after that first spring
bloomed dogwood,
not after the twisted
cursed and giving lumbers
first sprung upon her eyes -
a crucifixion, multiplied,
a hundred times, a hundred Aprils
on the limbs of a retribution.

At Irving and Sheridan, cabs, buses and cars bled with a scab of gray belch low in the gelid airs.  Above, a draught of light spilled out of the Redline, spilled lanky into the coffee of the night, filigree cream in the eye.  It was then that I saw her, strobed in amber as the train banged itself taut and fleeing.  I watched her decay, velvet down the platform stairs.  I stood gum on the sidewalk before ticked-out commands. Walk. Don't Walk. Walk. Stirring a light thick with the bitters of spent grease, she poured into the street and came toward me, longstriding.  It was then I saw her, tepid and far.  I no longer heard the flickering scrape of the El, nor did I smell the burnt hashbrowns of the New Crystal flickering day-old soup in neon and steam.  I heard only a vague exhausted wind, smelled only the lurid musk of Obsession and rot as she passed beyond the veil of my brim. It was there, at that moment, I walked Hopper for the first time. It was there, at Irving and Sheridan, I became an overcoat and a thin dime.

From some forgotten cache,
a bur oak, scrawny, stunted
humble and tawny, high
on the red sheer palisade,
twists the moon into shards
and shattered pearl.

Raked by the ever wind,
a bur oak -
cleaved into cloven rock
abhors this ****** moon -
its waning wandering wax -
such mockery of clinging.

Sprung from some forgotten cache,
a bur oak rails against it's own
stripped rippling arms,
as if to proclaim and rightly:
I, alone upon this rock,
hold the blackest gray squirrel -
that hoarding, heaving vermin -
to account on this crooked,
blighted night.

Black Aggie presides on the Druid Ridge,
taking children to her lap
that they may convene with bent-feathered
birds felled in her shadow.

And there on the Druid Ridge,
in the red eye of night she foots the grounds,
drags each from their slumbers,
calls forth to discuss the marrow.

Oft scorned and feared by black grasses
burned in her passing, stained by vandals
unfeigned hatred of grief, Aggie
remains for to harrow.

Cold, still, tormenting the Pikesville shroud
such that none could rest in the lime
of her stone-eye, such that none would test
the hand to reach into the pits of their loss,
to find each one a pulp for the barrow.