i rope in your lungs
with my fingers,
there is a space
between your bones
and i want to fill it,
pouring in the lines
they told me
before they left me,
one by one,
leaving you
to carry me home

your fingertips,
they are riverbeds --
they are waiting
for the moment
when i can grow gills
and swim with the words
that crowd inside your chest
when you can't find
the right ones
to say

there are stars
tattooed onto the underside
of your stomach, there are
tiny planets swimming
in your blood stream
that i wish i could
dance my fingers through
just to remind you
that there are heavens
stirring in your heart,

this heart,
it chokes with shadow
some nights, but there is
a beacon shining in your bed
that i can't wait to discover,
submerged in the wreckage
our bodies left behind

and someday,
let me stir clouds
into your eardrums
let me breathe life
into the caverns
you've forgotten existed
let me fill your skull
with salmon finding
their way upstream,

you found your way
through the stream
that flows in my wrists,
you kissed the reeds
growing in my blood cells,
and one night, you held
my jaw together
as the sickness threatened
to break through it --
you always knew

how to unlock
the fastenings
in my vertebrae,
the ones who beg
to pull me down.

if somehow
the darkness
in my throat
began to spread,
i know
you would be the first one
pleading
to be dragged
along
with it.

From an ornate podium
the orator spoke words--
..extraordinarily elaborate ones..
as if,
as if

But those who know..
we who have  laid low,
down in to the trenches
as grunts, both  outside
and inside  

    of the wire..

Those who have  quietly
done their legwork..
who have accepted their
difficult fate  as that   borne  of
and in to,  a training..  an equipping;
lay low,
lay low

.   .   .   .  

The throngs
at the foot of the podium--
mesmerized by their own  need
to be mesmerized,  never even
   noticed the children
who  in their innocence,  peered
out from under the crowd's legs

to better see the 'magnificent' podium..

The oldest of which, ran back to trenches
trying to describe what they saw.
Two of the quiet, unassuming-ones
made their way back to the podium,  
and in blocking out the orator's voice,
(which  to the  knowing,
was  as that of a clanging bell..)

Now observed up close, the inner-workings
of the elaborate podium
and sat in  wonder of its expenditures--
wrapped around such  slipshod,   weak
and hastily assembled framework..

And in having become interested in the
structure's groundedness to what one
would hope would be  a solid-built
foundation, placed onto solid, earthen ground
They instead gasped as they saw its
legs floating upon nothing..

"What the **** is holding this thing up..?"

War-trained and battle-hardened,
they remembered their superiors speaking
in hushed tones that even ******, with all
of his blowhard oratorical *******,   at least

had a semblance of the podium's fastenings..

Albeit, partially assembled by our own country's
stupidity within certain provisions brought forth
in the Treaty of Versailles,

   but this
   but this;

This oratorical misleading of the broken-ones
this empty illusion of a presentation,  borne
not  from a suffering  leading to true regeneration
but instead, a distractive short-cut into the Realms;
   This counterfeit substance..
as if borne in power,    as if..  as if.

    .. But the realms.. they know

It is only those down here on earth,  spirit
cloaked within the deceptive misgivings
of the flesh-- so aching to establish itself
apart  from the necessary legwork needed
to humbly become a part of Stream's flow:
(borne,  solely from the inner Wellspring--  deep
within the bowels of Love's True Ache)..


It is here.. on earth..  that you will find
the reward you seek..  oh wondrous orator,
oh magnificent 'smither' of fine words..

   Your podium, a whitewashed soapbox
   floating upon nothing..


--And therefore meaning   nothing
within the Substance-Based parameters  
    of the Realms.

The shutters are rusted open on the north
kitchen window ivy has grown over
the fastenings the casements are hooked open
in the stone frame high above the river
looking out across the tops of plum trees
tangled on their steep ***** branches furred
with green moss gray lichens the plums falling
through them and beyond them the ancient
walnut trees standing each alone on its
own shadow in the plowed red field full
of amber September light after so
long unattended dead boughs still hold
places of old seasons high out of the leaves
under which in the still day the first walnuts
from this last summer are starting to fall
beyond the bare limbs the river looks
motionless like the far clouds that were not
there before and will not be there again

I

I am the undertow
Washing tides of power
Battering the pillars
Under your things of high law.

II

I am a sleepless
Slowfaring eater,
Maker of rust and rot
In your bastioned fastenings,
Caissons deep.

III

I am the Law
Older than you
And your builders proud.

I am deaf
In all days
Whether you
Say "Yes" or "No".

I am the crumbler:
     To-morrow.

Must not give up
must not give in
must not fail to start living.
If mantra's work and I'm assured they do
I'm sure that this may see me through
those times
when all is bleak
when I am weak
and all I want is to streak away
but like the fastenings of the night to day
I know that I must stay
to see in words that mimic me and mock at my endeavour
if only then to free my thoughts and
whether they would rise or fail
would sink or sail
I could not know but have to be free to go and find this truth
or pull it out and inspect it like some rotting tooth
black and pungent smelling
like some telling of a nursery rhyme back when in the time
of wolves and spells
and trolls in dells
the truth was not so clear to see .
If I were me and I'm sure I'm not
I'd find a little spot hidden far away in some place where I could call and say this here is mine and I would stay
secluded from the rush of people pushing past and I at last could start to cogitate upon this state of who I am
well that's the plan
but of course another pipe bursts into smoke and I can't even smoke the joke of dreams that fire the sky above
and If I love then who,
who could fathom all the deep that I myself can only sleep above,
another love?
it's a battle to keep my head afloat or keep a coat on
go on to see and what is left but me and another me in mimicry.
If in all of this,
in all of this life I could but only be a copy replicant not free but locked into technology
and who could not but fail to see a form of ideology or idolatry
psychology
a branch of yet another tree that grew out of necessity
and that is yet another faking of the free chained into some solitary cell
encouraged to scream and fekin hell
I screamed
streaming curses intervexed and supertexted them into the padded wall where swear words fell but I being on the ball and mindful of recycling picked them up and sang them,rang them out again until I myself was wrung out dry.
Why Is it then that I should feel that being peeled like a ripened plum and waiting for 'Jack' to come and stick his thumb into my eye
is wrong
why is it written in the fables that poor men wait on rich men's tables and drink porter watered down while those that sit with crowns upon their head would in any case be better off if I were dead
just a thought to think and in the blinking of the middle eye it joins its brothers in the sky where all thought congregate to die
another why and another after that and flat out,shout out,can't read enough about or write the words to set me free
one more branch
one more tree
one more me
one more me
ideosyncrasy
ideas of being free
immortal in mortality and death to all banality
I see nothing really
except the cornflake box
a pair of sweaty socks and my life whistling down the plug hole.

390

It’s coming—the postponeless Creature—
It gains the Block—and now—it gains the Door—
Chooses its latch, from all the other fastenings—
Enters—with a “You know Me—Sir”?

Simple Salute—and certain Recognition—
Bold—were it Enemy—Brief—were it friend—
Dresses each House in Crape, and Icicle—
And carries one—out of it—to God—

One hundred years of solitude
and Marquez still couldn't shut you up,
your words tear down the walls of Macondo,
heckling the Buendías, poking fun at Aureliano
and his golden fishes. The circular history
spins to a halt, and I fold down
the corner of a page, as if closing the book
could save the city built on paper,
on the Formica tabletop
of an old café with a broken clock
A few chapters back,
you were chastising time,
saying one day you'd
crack your watch open,
rearrange the gears, twirl the dials
and steal back from the ticking hands
that steal so much from you. On page 178,
you committed abominations,
spooning sugar into espresso,
and declared your love for Dali because
the man melted time,
didn't care for anything
not molded to the back of a horse.
Cranberry scone finished,
you ruffle the newspaper,
bemoaning the stockbrokers
who grow fat and complacent
on the crumbs of seconds,
chewing chronological cud, you called it,
but you said nothing could ever pin you down,
much less some cheap Timex
on a nylon strap. Cast out of the fourth dimension,
Marquez scribbles graves for the Buendías,
in death, they've forgotten the original sin
and the Colonel forges fish
from the gold fastenings on his casket
ad infinitum.

(20 minute poetry)

There was Judas who knew it and went forward to do it,
betrayal is a quick zip in the fastenings of night.

Sight unseen, but we took it in good faith and the legend lives on.

John took to his toes and ended up in Panama, as far as I know he is doing quite well.

Pete looks like hell,
Thomas has his doubts and thinks he's malingering.

Mary,
******* the rosary in the garden at Gethsemane and wondering if her man will come home.

Paul's at the wall with Michael and wailing, screams tailing off with the arrival of dawn.
It all makes me wonder if life is so tragic
why are we even born?

Make shapes for me –
abandon all proclivities
neat and sterile; spill
under me.  I will still
your peril. Fastenings
will not keep you bound,
so bolt! Do not stay with
me, amid my bloating
awe, while your bedlam
blooms and daybreak
looms. Sweet perfumes.
Consumption in the
dark while others only
dream. You will never
fill me but we’ll again
put out the ladder
tomorrow.

The edges of summer’s
soak and throb routine
begin their curled leaf fraying
with the last fat spoons of clotted dreams
lashed haphazard

All those weights we foisted forward
to when wet autumn
would just **** us off anyway
rattle-threat at their fastenings
in the fractious post-tropical gales

Inertia makes it clear
why our transatlantic cousins call it fall,
but pre-echoes of crisp, clear frosts
do their best to placate anxieties
that appear to be calendared

I know that life is complicated and often hard, that things are not simple, and that most of all they get better but why can’t I pack up my stuff tonight? and start going I’ll walk all the way down into Boston from the hills and I’ll sleep outside and catch the train in the morning and I’ll ride it down to the coast, so I can swim in the ocean again, so I can feel the salt in my toes and the wind in my hair and I will cut my hair shorter than it has ever been, not to symbolize Change! or even the wayward meanderings of a capricious young person’s heart, but so I can feel the sun sink into against my scalp, so I can sweep my hand across the bony cusp of my skull and know by heart the fissures, the crevices, the fastenings of bone and tissue and muscle that make up me. I

make me up! to create myself by wandering, to beam a smile and open up my mason jar of love to the world. I have lived enough life to write, and I've more than enough love to store for a lifetime, so I can give the extra to the flowers and the strangers on the street.

and maybe if the spirits inside are feeling particularly kind, they can bring me to the white space, or the dark honey corner that the lamplight grazes, when i can walk barefoot and feel earth below me. Maybe if they are kind, they will allot me two extra hours to explore Madrid, or to adjust my binoculars, dip my hands in Lake Erie; gasp and sigh; and ramble on.