This *****
Artificially awake
Lydia
apples 20 years have passed
oranges i want a do over
manhole cover coins
savage glares across the 4 wheeled property lines
young moms not giving a ****, that's alright
kiss of sun hidden from
anxious from blue oak , it's ridges pluming in the dappled twist
and floundering wave, wiggling wave of oak leaves green as frogs.
ponytail suzy, *** from galaxy sci-fi
i brought up a cup while it was empty there,
but so distracted by my own trembling effort,
every hair a furry hood, every fatty fixture of my face a rebounding basset hound
tennis shoes up to my neck, dumb naked in my greenery,
already old somehow, the window closing,
the permanency of parks, like a stilletto in a limosine,
green fixture of my white blinded attempt to see tomorrow,
tourist .
thoughts of Sylvia
, my gaping awe at the feminine,
and its green garden.

-cbrander

to curl up,
to go brown and crisp with drying edges,
hearing the ears, the ears hissing of space.
sitting,
falling, bone on bone resting into their couplings, their pile, their doll form.
hanging, by threads and rubber, my guts, my heart, gurgling with eyes wide, pressed to the floor.
sinking, into the chair, compressing, my flesh kneaded, an ***** of folded clothes, seamless fabric edges.
fading eyesight, in my thoughts which are empty as parked cars,
leaning halfway over the shadowy cool ponds of the evening,
smelling wet, heavy, musky, bouquet, night air,
a watching forest.
alone, free and forsaken, light as dandelion seed,
scratching at my dreams with shrieks of protest, we sail.
icy stems snapping, autumn to winter, charcoal liver.
waiting peacefully amongst the tiniest renters,
the other crawlers of the quiet house.
idle unit. murmuring water cooler.
The plane of death is cool grey slate. Well dressed, impassable, implacable.
This is the valley that sinks, wet warm and green,
humming, buzzing and ******.
wary and jutting, retracting before his spit touches the water,
playing with his mucus, a boy soon to meet his father.
His father cried, like jesus, with eyes rolled back like a shark,
in the hospital paliative care unit, unshaven, deflating.
Sylvia Plath's inky fingers,
hushing my lips, keeping the secret, where there is no secret.
trade the moon for a penny, because the penny is real.
implacable is his love for the park, his spring over the stream,
over the cracks in the pavement, where the weeds grow,
in beautiful greens, with the sound of crickets,
playing their combs.



cbrander

i'll get you one of these days,
anyway;
tin can alley doomsday,
hooray;
cans of acid spray,
in the basement of our youth parade.
Fatally questing,
for a truth we've never known;
to get back to the story,
and the green grass bare bones.

I hear that man a' shouting,
from heaven's cloudy nook,
baby darling's deer eyes,
glowing wet,
like they were shook.
Passionately declaring, my love for saints is real!
The yellow bulldozer is whirring,
how's boy's love to cop their feel.

Baby black bear's purring,
watch our for momma, she's lost her pill;
dreary snow come calling,
i know that dream scape will...

I hear that man a' shouting, from cloudy shaken nook;
"i hate that you were smoking,
instead of reading that ****** book."

Give a little chance, for the living to go on,
my darlings in the brush,
you're almost there, where i've known.


jingle jangle jingle bingle janggggg....

-cbrander

Naive is the weather under the umbrella,
the umbrella holder,
hungry and sick.
if only there was something green in the fridge,
to get fresh,
to be dedicated, able to hold a memory,
knowing what's around the corner.
to labor,
to be empty and full again,
like rivulets of running water,
instead of the paste in my numb stomach.
Bright as blue the storm came,
pure as fresh rain on harsh gusts.
i want it again because i never lose desire,
to be fooled again,
and constantly enchanted,
into being an umbrella.

-cbrander

for when my thoughts make icycles and drip.

when my thoughts thaw into streams adjacent swamped cheap land, gutters by my family.

fuzzy red raw swollen hands, fists clenched on goose hearts,
on dartmouth writing clubs, my ivory skin sought tanning.

I remember my favorite russian girl i met there, long gone, her polyglot charm ringing like chinese bells tinkling,

Thoughts remember my daughter, grown under my intermittent sun,
As if she too is a visitor,
like visitors bless a place.
Like a place wishes to be flat
and run across by the rapid heart,
of a brown hare across the wet black asphalt,
of trapped wet lips, of an elderly man,
and balloons of blushing boys cheeks.

I squeezed the shoulders of baby's mum who's heart i broke as a fool stone. I gave her kisses rich as strawberries, because that's what she is.

Rabbits catch on hooks and crushed and stuffed in the black cool summer night full of ambitious boys' erections,

Reason to recall the things that are, the way they are wide inside the empty around that, which is most of everything, most of what blindness is.

My grandpappy went up Italy. And sixty years later this girl came here from Milan to explore. Tide in, tide out.
Now the hangover. Time to be sick.

-cbrander

matchstick novelty,
a lake,
soccer,
beautiful hairy arm
from a young man
blonde from sun
smelling sweet like
watermelon laundry lotion
like the sun, like youth.
The tangled hair
laid out across
the wrinkled hexes
of this forgetful cuddle arm...
thrown back into a blue sky
i once was.
i am
as a young ape,
with purple on the inside
of his eyelids
sinking flowers of falling asleep
orifice after orifice
senseless messages
to oneself
wondering if the nothing man
does right by my daughter.
Or, if no other line
could draw the blinds
on my secret world of laying still

foggy memories
the sound of tall grass
water droplet color   drop of water color
my mind
ready for sleep.

-cbrander

The mist on the pond.
nervous ducks, bird sanctuary.
new life, new things, tree blossoms.
ducklings, just two, very small.
a triad of flyers, carrying some spirit.
an encroaching of day, apologetic.
pleasure of green leafy chutes.
enamel bird song on silver air.
the glowing quiet.
fat squirrel guards the stump.
mirror of my steps, a hollow thud.
while i walk without a shadow,
breathing hard.

- cbrander