The night is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole --
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.

Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments--the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.

He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue --
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.

His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.

Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.

skyscraper man on seattle time
looms in the corner of swan lake and fry
untouchable denim untouchable blueblack plaid jacket
     he's put together with clothespins
     he's put together with stipends
     he's crammed between taxi cab book ends
skyscraper man on seattle time
stoic as the jet engines roar by
all his friends are magazines all his friends currentbrief
     he's got a little future
     he's got a few dimes
     he's got no father to call out the lies
skyscraper man on seattle time
watches smog children kick ***** on concrete
vulnerable under trees writes his novels in purpleink
     he's married once before
     he's read crucifixion lore
     he's returned his money to the store
skyscraper man on seattle time
looking through spectacles of ***** and brine
the rain falls hard the breeze sweet on the leaves
     he's emptying the soul of modern rock n' roll
     he's emptying the tray of ashed thought
     he's emptying the bank account cold
skyscraper man on seattle time
sheds crinkled skinmemory like the cicada
a twin-sized deathbed deathbed in apt. 203
     he's nothing.
     he's ever.
     he's happened.
skyscraper man on seattle time
carbon copied and eternal as saltwater as rust
invisible and tapping at the runrain window
     he's nothing.
     he's ever.
     he's happened.
skyscraper man on seattle time
climbs himself to the cosmos lightheaded perfection
ethereal visions of fullbloom love and legacy with measure
     he's nothing.
     he's ever.
     he's happened.

The black bull bellowed before the sea.
The sea, till that day orderly,
Hove up against Bendylaw.

The queen in the mulberry arbor stared
Stiff as a queen on a playing card.
The king fingered his beard.

A blue sea, four ***** bull-feet,
A bull-snouted sea that wouldn't stay put,
Bucked at the garden gate.

Along box-lined walks in the florid sun
Toward the rowdy bellow and back again
The lords and ladies ran.

The great bronze gate began to crack,
The sea broke in at every crack,
Pellmell, blueblack.

The bull surged up, the bull surged down,
Not to be stayed by a daisy chain
Nor by any learned man.

O the king's tidy acre is under the sea,
And the royal rose in the bull's belly,
And the bull on the king's highway.

with so many people in the world
it feels in
*******
possible
that anyone can feel lonely
but somehow
in my bedroom
at eight
i sit in my bed
surrounded by undone chores
in two jackets
in stiffling heat
just to imagine
that there is someone else in bed beside me
and this **** is driving me
insane
because
i know it can't
be that hard
to find someone to
love-- or **** that
someone to give a ****
for an hour
even if
you're drunk and their tongue is in your tonsils
but they say i have a problem
discerning 'love' from 'lust'
i know it can't be that hard
but it feels
like i am
permanently
****** up
because all i want
is someone to rip the skin
off of my bottom lip
because when they leave the next day
the black-blue stains on my
skin will linger just a bit longer

And I'm hopeless,
Hopeless for the countless stars, in a blueblack sky.
Hopeless for the mist in the forest after the rain.
Hopeless for new places, old places
and the old places that I wont ever see again...
I'm hopeless for your hair in my mouth,
and your pillow arms.
I'm hopeless for thunderstorms and anthills,
puppy kisses and fuzzy sweaters.
I'm hopeless for me and you,
Hopeless in wondering if you and I are hopeless.
And wondering if we were ****** from the start...what a wonderful curse to break.
I'm also a hopeless romantic, poetry, sunsets, drunken statements of love, all that jazz
I had you at a hopeless arms length, but my hopeless heart had a different agenda.
I'm hopeless for delusional fairy tails, but with a twist. I've never made a good damsel in distress. I'll be the dragon, and you can be whatever you want to be. But if you ever become a knight I suggest something besides a dinky sword.
I'm hopeless for the ocean, for the snowflakes, for the wind
for moonlight walks, for autumn leaves
Hopeless for sundresses, sad loves songs.
Pokemon, books, books, books,
Hopeless for beginnings.
Hopeless for memories of you, hopeless for any memories at all.
Hopeless for my alone time, hopeless for my time alone with you
Hopeless for small houses in the woods, hopeless for fire
Hopeless for the scars on your arms and the scars on your heart.
I'm hopeless for my friends, and long nights spent with them.
Hopeless for ***, drugs and rock n' roll, sometimes all at the same time.
Hopeless for tears and laughter. Hopeless for rainbows and naps when I'm grumpy.
I'm hopeless for cigaretts and rivers, hot springs
and bats, hopeless for dancing and back rubs.
I'm hopeless because you are the reason that I am going,
and the reason that I am staying.

It doesn't matter
if you die petting your dog
or prowling the freeway,
you will always hear a whoosh
when you go up into the sky.

And the next thing you know
you are in deep space
walking along an old stone bridge
suspended in endless star soup
with all the latest earth leavers
and you think -
omigod those stories were all true.

All eyes gaze  
transfixed by a celestial diamond
bigger than the Great Pyramid
suspended in blueblack emptiness
pulsing with music you recognize
but cannot name.

The old man beside you says
we are not in heaven
this the line for the trip
that goes into light.

The diamond hums  
everyone's kundalini rises
and one by one
each person reaches the end of the bridge
and steps off into the vacuum of space.

They waft down like leaves
grinning like children on a merrygoround
coming to rest on the diamond
then slowly dissolving into it
and they disappear.

But they quickly reappear
bursting forth from the diamond's tip
as sparkling cherubs
caressing a billion luminous suns
each one another ride
on a celestial road trip
that never ends.

A darling girl of three
Violet ribbon cradles golden hair
They fuss over her porcelain skin
Blushing cheeks and baby blue eyes
“Eyes you just want to steal,”  say They.
She crayons pictures of castles
And heroic princes.
Her little dolls are played
Then locked in their little dollhouse

A fair girl of fifteen
Mornings she is taunted and condemned
By the mocking mirror.
She stares
And draws a smile on the vacancy.
Head, shoulders, knees and toes-
Strings attached to all.
Puppetted by the fetters of Expectation,
She smiles, and acts,
And dresses in little outfits
To please Them.

A charming girl of seventeen
Immured little fingers cradle the wiled world.
A Crayoned face fronts the masquerade.
Mangled in tangled strings,
She offers her heart and scissors to a little blonde boy
And cries, Kiss it better.
He smiles and smooths her brow
As his honeyed whispers tear her open
And he ties a heartstring.
He stitches her up with the thread of Promises
Leaving ribbon-scars delicate as lace.
Blueblack bruises blossom across
And stain her porcelain skin.
She shatters
While screaming his innocence.

Thieved eyelight
Makes for a jaded girl of eighteen.

A darling girl of three
Plays with toys
As They toy with her.
Just another broken doll to be.

her blooming figure gyrating
arcing, tilting, wilting above;
my tasting her secreting prose,
licking all the lines

that come
and go

like fallen petals hugging themselves
in moonglow spell,
lit with an aftercoil meld, blueblack waters stilled

moonwhite skin explodes into
blueblack bruises on your thighs
(chainsent)
like the words of your mother as she
consoled crying you in your crib:

she will always
know

the daughters
were not are not will never be
careful
virgincolored and apathetic
albatrosses scream overhead as you
take her paperpale hand (too thin);
and when
your fingers lace
your bluebird heart flies to your knees
and your butterfly soul flutters to your
stomach:

you will always
know.
the hopekill of your
mirrorcracked reflection
you in fragments
of
you mirror youmirroryou
knucklebleed flows onto the parqueted
wooden floor
where the silver glass
glints at you like
her skin in the moonlight.

and so tomorrow
if you are
still a
live
if tomorrow
when the sun sets west
if tomorrow when you open the gates
there are no wives
for the husbands waiting in line
if tomorrow you send her
a telegram:
(i will still be in brooklyn this week stop
and i love you
stop)

she will never
know

and the thunder
will bellow overhead as the albatrosses land
on the sweet, drunkwet pavement

chainfall.

Is it a mountain range?
I think that’s strange
To start in the plains
Through the foothills and rains
Over streams and lakes to bulky terrains

Up and down, and up a bigger one still
It starts as a game, one big thrill
The valleys are sweet and the peaks high
How high could they get? To the sky?
Maybe high enough that you can fly!

What’s on the other side? More plains perhaps?
Or maybe an ocean, with breaking white caps?
No one’s ever made it so we’ll just have to guess
Some say at one point the height is much less
But that’s not firsthand information, so I digress

The path is strewn with bodies whose stamina wore out
But signs on their necks read, “This is what it’s all about!”
You can’t know what that means until it happens to you
When you’ve shattered your dreams, and your legs feel it too
But you’ll miss these people who tread paths for such few

Perhaps you’ll find where the peaks get a little lower
You won’t find it by resting, push on! Upward and over!
There’ll be bruises and scratches aplenty for sure
For this wondrous disease there is no known cure
The majesty of the mountains is a deadly lure

So many have tried to reach the other side
They’ve sweat and they’ve bled, they’ve fallen and cried
But to stop is to go mad with curiosity and thought
About what lays beyond, what the dead have sought
So we climb and we climb, even if all for naught

Then we find that perhaps it’s not been worth doing
Were it a play we’d probably be booing
Then we think of the foothills, of much simpler days
When the son shone blinding and we danced in his rays
And we wonder if there was a pass we’d missed on our ways

All the while climbing to the end of our days
As the sun starts to dim but casts a dark haze
And we wished we had enjoyed the peaks
Climbing and climbing for thousands of weeks
And then a slight rose comes to our cheeks

We lie down for a moment and softly cry
Take one final look at the blueblack sky
Then sit up straight, nice and stout
Confidently moving, no shadows of doubt
And don on our necks, “This is what it’s all about!”

Cold is the shoulder wrapped in narcissistic delight -
The wanton
The diligent
The emptiness abides
But for iceburgs calving in the asiatic sea
Do they feel the tremor of the broken shard released
Can the blueblack glass reveal the depths of the mislaid man or
The woman -
Never given the chance to Be
It is too much to consider broken pieces should be saved,
Hidden for much later, when the sea will freeze again
Can he open to the touch
Can she build from what remains
We throw out the scattered remnants like the iceburg melting into sand
But consider the sand:
Remnants too, of shells and coral of bones and buildings fallen, broken, discarded
yet
Washing up on land
to build a new shore.

We sat blowing shapes in the smoke
and twirling insubstantial rings
around our fingers like wedding vows
I do, I do, until the end of this cigarette
Til ash do us part, my flame-ridden bride,
my raspybreathed king---still

and quiet in the little
cruelties stacked between us
wooden-faced as Russian dolls
growing smaller and meaner
in cold smoke curled round shoulders
space between shivers
contrary wispcat, blueblack cracks
in the universe and veins of a wrist

black to blue
rubber to glue
you’ll always keep chasing me away
and I, like a rubber band,
snap back because I’m

sorry
I spilled cereal on the floor
and crunched it up with bare feet
cracked the martini glass
into so many pieces it didn’t look
like danger
but hard raindrops on scuffed tile

sorry
redwhiteblue America strobes
are scary, you’re not in the club
it was dark and you wanted
to go home---you still want to go
home---but without the blue-uniformed stranger
or the guy who bruised his fingerprints on your waist

sorry
for wearing dreams of romance like perfume
on pressure points, curling my tongue
around pain pills with wishes that
can't put out thunderstorms
and mend the gaps in a sidewalk

sorry
(and this was back when i cried for a
bandaid, any at all, for surface cuts)
we wanted to look
for truths in picture books
and lies in the law
because life is so much better as a cartoon
with our speech planned in bubbles

sorry
that when we were little
I thought rivers were small
because the blue veins mapping your wrist
were water to me
then I let you fall into, y’know,
that real emotional condition
where life was written in rules
chubby fingers & a Bic stick pen

sorry I didn’t leave a post-it
just a crumpled up coat
and the smell of smoke
when my footsteps burned a river
blazing outside and away.

He floats there near the bottom,
Dragged and anchored like a ship
To seabed by rusted fetters,
Down where ***** shuffle a slow
Ribbon dance, twirling black seaweeds
And long grasses,
Where they snap out a rhythm
In solemn beatnik fashion to mournful
Whale songs like low saxophone moans,
And where the disapproving clucks
Of dolphins’ tongues echo
In quiet communal protest.

His body floats bloated in brine,
Cheeks puffed like wet bread,
Skin grey and shadowed blueblack,
His face slack,
Broad chest beaconed out of dark waters
By dim pleated streams
Of ocean light.

Predawn is the most underrated time of day, if you ask me
Blurry lines and street signs
Cast in hazy yellows and oranges from the burning sodium vapor in the street lamps
That iconic suburban glow,
Stark against the impenetrable blueblack sky and all the mysterious silhouettes cut jaggedly against it.

(A staggering feat, to beat back the darkness. Humanity.)

The pavement shines bright gold - must have rained - fading to bronze,
rose,
purple,
finally disappearing into nothingness,
a question mark.

Pillbox houses,
neat rows in every direction,
squat mutely,
some with their own brief reach of a lamp in the window or the warm assurance of a porch light -
Even the occasional sharp cough of a security spot,
high beams razor white,
primed for each raccoon and every vague, faceless fear.

“We never thought it could happen here.”

Ah, but the unsalted dough of the middle class is a subject for the afternoon

This is the royal Morning’s expectant hour.
She wanders eternally,
accompanied only by her barefoot unrest, bathing the earth in her wealth of unspent moments,
untold riches of possibility streaming from the many secret folds concealed within the depths of her ermine cloak.

(Am I hopeful or fearful of the coming day? Are the paltry occupations of one electrified grain of stardust worth a thousand words?)

The flat sleepy windows of the sleepers and the risers,
grumbling caffeine addicts and early birds, night owls with their midnight oil long spent,
dreamer and seekers lost on the astral plane and the merry punching rumble of the bustling workforce’s well-rehearsed choreography hold court over this rarest domain,

while the Fates, ever watchful, hand select the paths to put before us.  
Each choice a thread.
Each decision a stitch.

Time drips slowly as clouds pull into spots

scattered among the blueblack lot. Drip

drip drip drip drip drip it pours

out of faucets thrashing over cliffs chip chip

chipping away smoothing clogging suffocating

the pores beneath the eyes. Everything

is fleeting in perpetuum yet nothing

ever ends ever begins ever ends ever begins. Endless

songs are sung throughout the ages repeating

word for word for word for word forwards and backwards

the same old thing. Newness a concept to those

with hope a dream to those who dream. Nothing

changes underneath the changing skin

of rocks and grass and dirt and seeds and

blooming lycoris disguised as acne pockmarked

across the poisoned poppies. The same old thing.

Nothing changes. Nothing ever changes. Life goes

on and on and on and on and death goes on and nothing

ever changes. The same old chirps of adolescent crickets

dance and sway and chirp and chirp and chirp and chirp

in unison forever drowning out the midnight blossom. Flooding

flowing basins sneak around the vibrations. Take them.

Take them. Take them. Take them home

to meet the writer of their never-changing lives.