"elsewheres" poems
The elderly psychopomp speaks his gullet words
Preparing me as charity for birds
I smelled snow and sweat when I drew breath
Though now I must give charity to birds
Juniper and fire become alms for the air
As I now must give charity to birds
The vultures are first, their beaks are the strongest,
They take the meat of my charity for birds
My friends come next, dearest to my heart,
Laughing as they grind a further charity for birds
What once I was is mixed with milk and bread
To fatten my gift of charity to birds
The speckled hawks and midnight rooks arrive
Hoarding their share of my charity for birds
I might be a wisp of smoke or softly chanted prayer
As I watch myself give charity to birds
Destitute and zephyrous I find my elsewheres
Having given everything in charity to birds.
Aug 15, 2013
Aug 15, 2013 at 5:06 PM UTC
All elsewheres being equal,
the Monarch Butterfly
prefers to winter
in Michoacan.
You told me once
that even chairs have souls.
Since then I've grieved
for all the dim sum.
Imagination is so ******
an odd portal
for poetry,
which explains the sweat.
I'd give all
the taxis in Vegas
for a do-over
before I'm obsolete.
So, I'm heading
for Michoacan
to winter
in the sweat.
Jun 4, 2012
Jun 4, 2012 at 11:15 AM UTC
the wine-singing ceases its crescents as the grasses' leaves' small leaves are blown/
by wind. the wind paused by sunrise. airless and plum-coloured. my fire runs grey-dry. i'm drunk./
and well? doesn't poetry arrive here then? imagine my wordliness!: i know things!/
claiming them on some soft days as if the end of time will not yet have happened yet, grand/
as big children in bell-towered schools and the word that is taught to them there. meaning that/
the affront of the word is not something that should compel a throat opening. my throat opens/
without expectation of an other entering. through. and then what if not surprise when they do?/
and after when my tongue turns sarcophagus?: a song?: singing/
black! like mirrors and black! within it saying how here we go again with how the sun did me/
before i was born. how sturdy and taut this sunned-skin is. how apple-mouthed and coffee-bean. here we go again,/
i watch the cars go by my window with great longings of elsewheres. and fear. the red, white and blue flag-flashes,/
passing by glassily and hologrammed in front of me as the question of when, the question/
with the gun, here,/
horizoned./
click. icarus./
Oct 21, 2018
Oct 21, 2018 at 12:53 AM UTC
A cigarette dangles from your lips,
And from it smoke arises
In puffs and celestial swirls.
Eddies of toxic exhaust,
In the process of a great ascension
To the sky,
So blue.
Black lungs to match a blackened soul.
What truth there is in your eyes,
As if the purity of the iridescence
Was a sign of unadulterated authenticity.
How infallible your arms
To be enclosed in them
Is to be enveloped in radiant heat.
Never shall I falter
In the presence of you.
Your gaze holds me steady
Even in the instability of this world.
Precariously you lie on the bridge connecting life and death.
You don't waver when the wind whispers deceptions,
A ploy it created to drive you off the edge.
The wind's jealousy creates deceit you will not fall for.
I am not so strong.
I come to join you,
But where you are planted firmly,
I am loosely placed.
And when the wind whispers my name
I turn to it,
Falling away from you
And into the vast expanse
Of broken elsewheres.
Jan 16, 2015
Jan 16, 2015 at 8:46 PM UTC