We gathered our water
and packs at daybreak
to hike hand in hand
toward the distant ruin—
a tall stone chimney planted
on otherwise empty acreage,
a kudzu-covered tower,
the ghost of a farmhouse
now a home to field mice,
black beetles and bats,
with bricks the color
of weathered blood,
vertebrae stacked
a century and a half ago
by a stonemason’s craft,
still solid and bonded
despite the slow decay
of arthritic mortar.

How long have we
walked together?

The morning
is all we have
left to ponder.
We walk for hours;
the chimney grows
larger at our approach.
I want to ask you
a question about
the night we met,
what you said
just before I held
you for the first time,
but then I catch sight
of my hand and realize
I am walking alone,
moving inexorably
toward a ruination
of my own making.
How could I have been
so careless? Unable
to stop, every step
strips something away:
my hair thins and falls,
as white and weak
as sickled wiregrass;
another step and my
body atomizes into
the stuff of stars,
pollen scattered
on a rising wind.

So this is what it
feels like to decay.

By the time I reach
the ruin I am mostly
cinder and ash,
a sorry vestige
sown in a quiet field,
a forgotten landmark
that strangers will visit,
if only to contemplate
how the evening fog
spindles like smoke
along the enduring
column of my spine.

“There’s not even room enough to be anywhere
Its not dark yet, but it’s getting there”. – Bob Dylan
.
A pair of die is tossed across a plywood-table.
It’s oak-veneer of creamy grain glisters with light
Which falls crummy, like dandruff from naked bulbs
That are illumined by a hand that screws;
There is no switch.
The flick of that wrist charms those die into snake eyes.
And so, the two-fold trick erupts our opposites on top
Of the laminated universe. The stones have settled.

You can smell the ignited, paper wick
Of a well-packed cigarette
But none of the sweet leaf which follows.
The virtue of our space is that
The substance is snuffed out.

No more panache with death-
Wish; just sadness fumbling with toilet
Paper, because tissues got expensive.
Pretty quick the crown of that nose chafes
Against the single-ply and specks of skin
Suspend themselves in oddly solar
Bathroom light. But the cells reform so quick;
The cartilage is solid like the trunks of effusive,
Sappy trees that create a sympathetic prison.
Soon, apathetic winter comes to ****
The ornaments obscuring
A depthless forest.

So stripped of foliage, an ascetic, wintry oak
Must look inside itself.
The anatomy of tree
As annulated grain,
Is kept concealed; flat circles. marking. years.
It sees Prospero’s Ariel and Carlotta’s Madeleine.
They’re gagged, trapped in the trunk
And point outside the Vertigo of time –
Inside the television – to “total flow” –  
(Where Scottie drools catatonically)
To spotless light, in evergreen rooms
That are built of such better pulp.

..

Conspicuous are characters around here.
It seems that silver dollars stack ten to a word
Of which so many do plague these matted
And miserly phrases.
Intelligent, it isn’t.  Green looks blue;
Intelligence is stupid. It does not sound
Like anything and means much less.
No, they’re hopeful to be musical or
Umbilical; like, connected to the harmonic
Mother who’s just now gestating an utterance
For life or death. Whichever side
Of the soil you prefer.

Most folks used to hedge their bets on both
But eternity is out, the moment is in.
Like Jesus Christ it’s difficult to stay
With the latest
Transcendental style.  
Friction atomizes faith’s tension ‘till
Belief systems are burned out.

The Library of Babel is in flames.
The ash falls and frosts the boughs
Of culture’s mangey oak.

That tree, was just struck by the zeitgeist’s lightning.
And furiously, so furiously our year’s snow is falling,
On all the breathing; all the sleeping,
Whom sawing logs are situated in the worst, possible
S(lumber).
…

I saw dust, and it looked like me.
I am the 3rd Adam.
I am a-bomb.
And I will deliver us.

Sawdust

beginning of an itch,
a compulsion to recall
wallowing in reminiscence
it flows in one eye
and out the other

hesitant to attach names
but willing to start
for the sake of a source caring enough
to warrant breaching a feigned barrier

the detachment atomizes
so decided against
as it was with a left palm in the sun
with a wallflower valentine
and a song sung at night

I feel the care - I really do
How it feels as growing pains
To grace myself with a belief
One that I so quickly apostatisize
Savor the reverence of it all
Color negatives of care,
visible only for a moment - up to the light.

Wavelets left in vibrations of the sand
And the beach keeps the tranquility
Calmness washed over my face
As the water atomizes on the shore on the natural sands
Art wishes that it were as modern as that act of finding
New memories on a new land