canto 1
I call her daddy my own. He felt nothing for her when the time had come for him to do something he fell and she felt nothing at all, nothing whatsoever. It is a cruel world, mateys, and the best thing you can do is curse God and die. Hard to ditch the pity act. Ditching is denying and there is much truth to the lie.

canto 2
Their eyes bubble in the open air, they fill to bursting and scrub until they scratch. **** drips. It's a sound that I will never forget. A sight that should be reserved for the dream world...a stench unrivaled.

canto 3
The Chinese bomber is persistent. One has to wonder why he bothers at all, seeing that his attempts have been futile up until the present moment. It's shoe week, so I guess he has his reasons. But this has gone on for far too long. If there were a way for me to stop him I guess it wouldn't hurt to try.

canto 4
Random parking lots and good God what have they done? I thought it was all over, these thoughts were through, these voices are mad. Usually it's not as upsetting. Your car door gets stuck, you know, it happens all the time. It happens every day, still you never get used to it, do you? You're always stuck inside that ugly mirror.

canto 5 (the "missing canto")

canto 6
I want to tell the world how good you are. Amazing and incredible. **** and *******. Talented and unrestrained. Honey nut Cheerios. You give it but I have a sneaky feeling you would rather be lost in a dream. A banal night vision. Comparably

canto 7
I want to make it better. I want to see you smile. What can I do? You are my own heart ripped from my chest and given wings to fly. Your smile is a lost treasure I would do anything to get it back to give it back to you, I didn't mean to take it away from you. You push me up against a stone wall and you don't even realize you're doing it. That my soul cries and prays for something real, for some kind of explanation or even an excuse would be fine right now. Instead I float. Not the way I like to float. I drift and crash, a dizzying spiral out of control, confused and dumbfounded by the realization that none of it means a ******* thing. What I thought was love turned out to be a jester's game, a joker's trick. You don't need me anymore.

canto 8
I hide myself behind a blanket of stone where you cannot spit fireballs at me without cracking an egg. Cold breeze tickles my news. It's not too chilly in this room. But the fireballs warm things up. "Blanket of stone"...what a stupid expression. Why do you have to be so hateful to me? How many times can a man say I'm Sorry without losing an eyeball?

canto 9
I have no right to feel the way I do. I don't think I can control it, though. This is one of the ****** up idiosyncrasies of my confused existence. Vanish without a trace and look for clues in the alphabet soup.

canto 10
Weariness is like a slug, a giant slug, a parasite infesting my body, hanging on and hanging out. A fire down below that waits for my imagination. My sleep patterns are getting ****** up but I'm not sure if I was sleeping or just dreaming I was awake. Under the impression that it doesn't matter? Well, you are a stone fool for thinking that way. You've never experienced the life-changer. Else you would know. But all I want to know is this: Why am I afraid of sleep?

canto 11
Things get slow. Patience is required, but I don't have any. Why does it have to be that way, o cruel dictator? You get a kick out of this ****, don't you?

canto 12
Spill your guts, maties, it's the only way you'll ever come out of this situation with even a shard of dignity intact. I know it's early and you haven't had time to adjust your eyes and your wrists for this delicate task. Go! Do it now before you lose confidence.

canto 13
We took a holiday and it was so nice. She stood there on that stage without a stitch of clothing on her voluptuous body. Baby, don't you let your hairdresser down

canto 14
Who doesn't love breakfast? Me, actually.

canto 15
I can't help it if I'm changing every day. Ask the question later, maybe my answer will be suitable. I don't think I can help you because I'm not like anyone you've ever known or will ever know or can ever know or would ever want to know and why do you keep wanting to know where I've been? I've been right here. Right where I've always been. Haven't moved a muscle.

canto 16
This is the 16th and I should be proud but the apathy seeps from my very pours. That little ******* was about to take a **** in the corner. When I picked him up to take him to the paper he dropped a couple of turds on the floor beneath me. I guess he couldn't wait.

canto 17
Sometimes things change so much that it's hard to tell if they're for the best or the worst. It is at these times that I enjoy a good evening on the water, enjoying my yacht and eating peanuts from another man's sack. Salted peanuts with pickled eggs and deviled ham with a side order of angel food crack.

canto 18
My wrist hurts and I've lost the will to **** socks.

canto 19
The lawn chair has been placed under extreme scrutiny. It's rocking motion is being scientifically tested and arranged for packaging. The physics of this miracle are in the process of logistical infiltration. You'd be surprised at how useful a rocking lawn chair can be in a world tangled in war. It's a good place to relax. For paranoids, that is.

canto 20
Bird feathers of a different post, it has never made a lick of sense and the promises made were broken. Who was that man in the bird suit? Why was he making all those funny noises? I'll have to investigate. Lawd have mercy I do believe I've **** my pants.

canto 21
Don't come crying to me if you feel misunderstood. I can read right through you and I know that all you're doing is fishing for a compliment. You will not receive one from me, Salty Dog, not because you don't deserve one. You probably do. But not from me. Perhaps you should take up your case with Hoda Kotbe. Who knows but that you might look really, really good on television. Just remember to feed the dog before you leave. He gets hungry. But he doesn't miss you. I don't mean to break your heart, but the rational man within me is very convincing when he tells me you are a real pickle.

canto 22
Those comments are found particularly offensive in light of the situation in the Gulf. You need to regulate your interest in beans. One day you'll fly to the Middle East looking for peace and all you will find are demons like the ones who raised so much hell in "The Exorcist". You don't want that, do you? Settle for Ranch Style and leave the diplomacy to the masters.

canto 23 (the "lost" canto)
I wouldn't wish this on a barrel full of monkeys. They say that time heals all wounds and I suppose it does. No "if"s, "and"s or "but"s. Don't believe me? Listen to 'em snarl. They're hungry for blood and sandwiches. I owe you nothing, so perhaps I'll send you a good time from New York. You gotta love a trapeze artist.

canto 24
I'm trying my best to change the world but the fact remains that the human race does not deserve the kind of tender loving care that I'm well known for. This holiday event will not include high temperatures or the kind of crap the weather people try to sell you.

canto 25
******* Valhalla. This is how it always seems to wind up, isn't it, Pinnochio? Just when you think things are getting better, BAM, ****** up again.

canto 26
You know you've reached a severe point of boredom when you switch to the Daystar Network and find yourself singing along to the bogus faith healers. Pecans on that one, please.

canto 27
Plug away, Sailor. Keep plugging away. When you get there you can say you plugged away with as much vim and vigor as a much larger man. Slough it off, O Great one. Keep sloughing it off. When you get there you can say you sloughed it off with as much skill and empathy as one might expect from a lizard. Or a monster frog.

canto 28 (the "twenty-eighth canto")
Come, look at my incredible collection of dice. Right next to my collection of mice. Next to that bowl of rice. Sugar and spice, everything nice. My head's full of lice. Don't think twice, just break the ice. Pup your puppy dog in the freezer.

canto 29
My toes are cold and so is my nose. I should be concerned with this situation but, strangely, I could care less. There are so many other, more important things to worry about. Like how many frosted flakes are in that box over there. And is there any milk left? And is it the real deal or that phony 2%? 1%? Skim milk is even worse. If it gets down to that point I'll save the money and use tap water. Don't think for a moment that I won't.

canto 30
Colored pencils expect risque answers to tame pencils. Unfortunately the quality of superior eggs is relative to the ice cream that has dripped down your shirt. You're starting to smell bad and I would highly recommend soaking in vinegar for an hour or six.

canto 31
There are times when I wish the planet would implode and **** every living thing into a void. I don't wanna die, but if I'm gonna I want everyone else to come with me. I'm tired of hearing about God's word. But even more so John Hagee's special gift for your love offering of any amount, the super duper Bible verse audio player, with selected passages read by the man himself. You can leave him behind.

canto 32 (the "same as the 31st" canto)
There are times when I wish the planet would implode and **** every living thing into a void. I don't wanna die, but if I'm gonna I want everyone else to come with me. I'm tired of hearing about God's word. But even more so John Hagee's special gift for your love offering of any amount, the super duper Bible verse audio player, with selected passages read by the man himself. You can leave him behind.

canto 33
Yazaa, yazaa, yazaa I told you I was gonna steal that car. You didn't think I had the guts, did you? But look who's laughing now! That guy with the big flower in his pocket must really feel like **** right now, realizing that his awesome vehicle is no longer in his possession. Maybe get an ice cream cone, maybe feel better.

canto 34
Come out of your hidey-hole, scurvy dog. Rat scabies be breathing down your neck and it's cold and old and you'll do as you're told. Pinch back that stray lock of hair, O Queen of Sheba. You shall spend the rest of your days parked on a green chariot overlooking Lake Erie

canto 35
You could have given me a reason for the season. Instead you had nothing to offer but a huge chunk of pepperoni that had mold growing all over it. Admittedly it was delicious but surely you could have come up with something a bit more expressive of the tender emotions I inspired within your fluttering heart.

canto 36
The prospect of a news reporter calling you a crack head based on information gleamed from your Internet social network profiles is quite terrifying, but when you tie the noose you might as well make sure it was time well spent. It's a shame you shaved your head because the painful truth is that now you bear a striking resemblance to Telly Savalas.

canto 37
Energy. That's what is required. And not just the kind of energy you can get from sugar, caffeine and butter. If it were that easy you could be **** sure that the Catholic Church would be the first in line to canonize it. They have a burning desire to fall off the wagon. "Which wagon?" you may ask. The one with the ice cream, of course. Don't be a fool.

canto 38 (a "short" canto)
If boredom is a sea in which one can easily sink into and drown in, I must be swimming the Atlantic.

canto 39
When the dog barks like that it's a sure bet that he's been neutered in the last few days. It's a sad and sorrowful sound that is only recognized by **** knockers in the deep woods.

canto 40
I could stare at the bars of this prison for the rest of my life. Okay, that's *******.

canto 41
Who was it that once said time is the only reliable concept in the universe? Oh, wait. That was me

canto 42
They tell you to wait. That's what it's all about. Wait, wait, wait, wait until I can almost feel my hair turning gray. The estimated time is currently number 7 the estimated hold time is 4 minutes, thank you for your patience. Well, you're welcome, comrade.

canto 42
I've only to surrender you to the world, lie down and wait for it to crush me.

canto 43
If I can only keep it together...if I can only hold it together this one time, I know the gravy train will come my way. Would it do any good to pray? This isn't the first time that enlightenment and illumination have reared their blessed heads. Would that I could live within them this time.

canto 44
Have I told you lately how much I hate to wait? Thinketh not that the Chair has lost it's financial imbalance, the very thread of chocolate that brought you here. It is still a very important and, some would say, a hot topic regardless of the amount of grime, sweat, blood and V8 juice is spilled on it's ivory shaped pear seat.

canto 45
The shadows turn into cloaks, dark itchy woolen capes that enfold the nothingness beneath them, the nothingness of being. You could have worked a little longer and a little harder on that one, amigo.

canto 46
It's been awhile but my wrist still hurts and I've written the word "moon" on the back of my hand with a Sharpie.

canto 47
I'm movin' this **** to WordPress. No I'm not. **** WordPress. Press WordFuck. Word FuckPress. On and on and on and on and not the least bit clever or entertaining. But I do like steaks.

canto 48
I swear to God I wish I had never taken that first hit of ****. Look what it's done to me. After so many years, I guess I was only fooling myself. Or maybe I was so dumbed down that it didn't seem to matter. But now things have changed. And I can do nothing about it. Dump a can of Campbell's Chunky Soup into a bowl, throw it into the microwave, let 'er go for three minutes, let 'er cool down in the oven for a couple more, stir in a quarter cup of Tabasco sauce, let 'er cool down for a little while longer, mix in a ****-load of Cheez-It reduced fat crackers and then go to ******* town. Go to ******* town, I say, **** the stoner days.

a quote of Bernard-Henri Lévy

~~~

the divers’ recovery, diverse,
shipwrecked salvage from different locations,
auctioned to the highest bidder,
tho the excised excerpts are exceptional,
none come to do the bidding,
for the provenance of words
belongs to all, and to none

~~
“so oft we trifle words,
expel them from the country of our body,
without passport and earnestness,
as if they were the cheapest of footnote filler,
day tourists, to be treated as leavings,
refuse for daily discardation,
barely noting their fast comings and faster disappearance,
but leaving not, a mark of distinction”

“the addicted pleasure words granted to we privileged few,
like every enslaved soul to the mind, which I am, I am,
evening dreams, midnight thinkings, sunrise seeings,
how can I infect and thus protect the young to the liberty
to love the crafted content of our human essence to better
comprehend that a moment caught on tape of our shared
words is a holiday, a celebration for the ages...and every molecule,
becomes a human tuning fork in concert, in pitch identical, in blood tainted with the simplicity of we are all the same, only words, this will transmit”

“murmur me, with soft downy charms,
these words discovered
recoursed and intended well to
pointedly offset and contradict
their very own tumultuous discovery uncovering,
tear tongue me
with calming, lapping word  wages,
hymns harmonious and fine homilies,
a call, a request,
a bequest
to sedate my shrill life

“some cells, microscopic, preserved digitally,
aged to imperfection, thrash my eyes,
making me speak in tongues I do not recognize,
but fluently possess, no wonder there,
the memory place fairly empty,
room aplenty for passerby's and the imagery
                                                         ­­ of the vaguest of dearly departed

skin is not the only mot shed,
                                                sloughing of woeful words”

“speak them slow and distinct,
for they arrive slow to you,
a trickling of refugees for your sheltering,
harbor them as full companions,
protected by natural law,
provision them well,
prepared and ever ready for a quick departure,
moor these words at the embarcadero,
for the next restless leg of endlessness,
which they themselves will inform you
will last longer than eternity,
long after there are no humans to speak them”

I see an angel slouching,
In the sky, as if heaven
Were so heavy.

Seabird, where do you come
From?  Is the earth too much,
To take all in?

I know how you feel sailing,
Above it all yet drawn too,
As I am drawn.

Wraith, I want to feel that place
You are winging from here,
As now, forgetting.

  But it's so hard to fly,
  Unlike you, just easily,
  I will close my blind eyes
  And trail your mission starry.

I will tread in air backwards,
Deep into sky heavens,
Sloughing all the way.

the world removed
a childs world
idyllically drifting with the wind
sloughing off dreary earthbound millstones
free and rising with intense delight

every moment
is continually shedding itself;
sloughing off the skin of time,
dying, into the past,
to freshen in exposure,

this moment.

to live, really
to breathe, by
impermanence.

constantly transforming,
the body is never solid,
here, there, as atomic flashes,
electrons popping in and out
of existence,
an appearance made,
to depart, in a flicker.

all turns off, like this,
always, eventually,
momentarily.

threshed and stripping
bare chaos
voraciously burns,

returning through extinguish
on smokey black horizons.

sinking, into
tendrils weaving,
knitting by fray,
tapestries engendered
by enveloping decease.

you feel this
don’t you?
unconscious
as much of it may be.

it is the nearest of near,
and dearly intimate,
passions corrosive kiss,
oscillating, opening,
to retract, in flow,
pushing in
to pull away,

thanatos is eros
together, apart again,
together-apart,
here-going.

the heart is aware,
supremely aware of this happening,
even when the mind is fooled
by apparent stability,

and the soul surrenders to
it's inevitability,
even hungering for
divine destruction,
as basic an urge
as the creative impulse.

to be composed
is to be subject to decompose,
fertilizing compositions
in cosmic chasms.

our lungs darkly shining
with every fall of the chest
mirroring,

each breath
one breath closer
to the final breath,

each exhale
a letting go
of what can’t be held
forever,

the expelled
foreshadows annihilation,
on the fading road, towards
this mortal coils entropic end;
a preparation.

to live, surely, is to meet loss
over and over,
to love, fully, is to grieve
again and again,

there is a deep
melancholic knowing
that exists in all living things,

water drops
tears like rain,
leaves fall
like sighs,

everyone,
and everything
dies.

our melancholy
might be sacred
could we truly embrace,
and feel, this reality:

death is the ever present condition.

My pre-dawn conviction is weak
This cold ember death will sink its teeth
My winter coat is a sickly sheath
Sloughing with every retreat

I hope you know
Your eyes lit a thousand snows
We drowned beneath

I hope you know
Your lips caught aflame so cold
Disintegrating against me

For whatever reason
Your glassy stare broke apart in the autumn chill
Fluctuating against summer’s warm laugh
Our first wavering dance

We soaked our skin in teenage radiance
An adolescent haze of lust
Plotting our dreams
In the lull before dawn and dusk

I know I’m dwelling on better times
Wasting my life away
Can’t ******* shake this habit of mine
I guess I miss the days
When love was just a song and dance
And every breath held weight
I’m catching ghosts in the pre-dawn light
Lost in a memory daze

Death, my friend, is in everything
we touch
the small porcelain cup
which holds my coffee
the tiny silver spoon that
stirs my mind

our breaths are numbered
assigned at birth
watching your chest rise and fall
as you sleep
I count
trying to formulate between us
the perfect equation

my deep and dire dreams
redeem me
no lunar memory remains
I'm transformed with no recollection
precious state
dissolving ribbon
a fresh organism
cells renewed
a sloughing off of the night
a hatching
perhaps, after all, there is a soul

The heron spreads his wings and preys.
His stony stand a beachhead sloughing
The salt sea, a sepulchered wading.

Leaven the broken bred, unshell
The teeming waters, a fisher of mermen
Unlordly low this lying father,
His wings are palms,

His rock a mount, his wings a bay,
And deafness, tears in the outer shores
And exaulted seas the forgiven waves,

Swells the briny blood and kelp.
Vains are streaming to the fisher king,
Lordy he lands the lying father
His wings are psalms.

A tiny flood that arcs the sky
Marks lord in miniature, a King
Fisher flies, His wings are
The waters calmed.

The otters bask and preen, mermen
Jostle in the laddered rays of the sun
They mark their surf, insouciant play,

Wavering the fisher of men, he sways,
Simply they circle in song singing hours,
Dancing as do the murmuring waves,
Their strokes are psalms.

The possibilities are perched and overwhelming with their weight
the withered autumn branches of my street. Whining sinew of my mind
breaks off and flutters down, like leaves from life's misbegotten tree,
a petal or a timid accusation.
What now am I left holding here-- vulture feathers or sapling leaves?
That girl, with tufts here and there, dropped each quill as an embossed coin, effaced
by intrepid maids vacuuming my room of cloistered couches since
soiled by madam president during isolated summit which won't convene again, her golden
gown of rues has not a stitch of fabric for a single pocket more-- sloughing brittle currency under cushions
like Fall foliage under conscious footsteps striding in constraints of time.
She picks that soggy garment from the cleaners' with the sideways background ringing of
mistrust, apprehending
silenced, patient voices; detached from their seams with dis-acknowledgment--
the dress, comes by on the carousel and
fingers her feathers with its motion.
They're washed with him, her feathers and the dress-- shored up by late summertime’s ebbing
flood that year.
Each gust eddied unaccounted toward the beach our circumstance.
What held intact the branch of life and plucked that chord for dancing in the night?
The self-same vibration that severed from the soil his trunk, which was the ship's ballast, with the adz, my will, my want
and hopeful mooring --
cast and sunk, thus.
Sound waves clashing with our spinning crystal surface of wisping nodes
plunge now beneath themselves-- frail, flaxen and woven with water.
Held out near Tyre's port a scanty mast,
thought out for catching air; forfeited this vacuous, unstable mole', their bottle
poured on water to make earth, which swells as moistrous and abridged
as a musty vestule, corked and knotted in the wind.
Encased through sanction, hold and curiosity--
the tine rubbed and singeing, loosed you from me. Those brazen beads, sand percolating, lie with us.
We are now misrepresented; sniffling as sows after the trough who root.
The woman-leaves let will be known-- to dry up and disavow
their lecherous beauty by shriveling in the tepid sun of
late September. Does too, the feather-man eviscerate the model of time
in his way of losing each and every granule
that is the ground which swells with frozen rain 'til
Spring, then thaws and flies away. Or was it
their dainty, dizzied rose petal, suckling smog from sky since birth that has weather-worn
their gowns sheer silver, freshly hewn anew, by being ripped and pressed about
which came to stifle thoughtless dew?

Poet to my eyes, you are the sight of whitecaps
On the sea water, or the sudden turn of a bird
In flight and as the wave I roll and break,
With drowning wings that lift toward you, my sky.

Mistress to my soul, I am the nave of your holy
Cathedral.  My head is but an occluded riff,
De-noting songs you make in aisling airs of light
Polyphony, my star over-sings the windy globe,

She swallows heaven, like swallows blacken the dusk.
Shearwater bird, strip my surface with your cutting
Wings.  My waves peak to reach you starling girl.

The sloughing chill of winter dies quick in sighs
Waft asunder my little Indian summer, wake me
From sleep and I shall dream but once for your kiss.

We speak, or rather you spoke
I listened

You'll be fine, you'll do great
You've got so much going for you

I never understood why you said that
Maybe just placating
Weary little broken boy toy me

What good was I, could hardly speak
Or look at faces, just shoes
All shame rotting away
In death trap little future overdose room

More ***** than brain
Felt skin sloughing off
Hair falling out dead anyway
While cancer ate away ulcerous stomach

When looked in mirror
Only saw death, reaving reaper
His scythe my smashed absinthe bottle
****** X marks the spot where
I drag everyone down with me

This morning
I woke up
and
told Melissa we wouldn’t
make it past three months.

We're at month two,
and I can feel it.

Either I’d drop her, or she’d
drop me, but either way
“we don’t have staying power,
and there’s no point
in either of us
pretending like we’re grown ups
who can just power through things
out of sheer complacency”.

I wasn’t looking at her.
Just up
at the spackle and a spinning fan.

It’s so hot in here,
that we sleep on top of the covers
sweating little puddles of skin
into the comforter.

Nightly,
we mash those deposits of dried salt
deep into the mattress
with our sloughing bodies
to get stuck
and form
tiny caves of skin and boredom in the springs.

She rolled away from me
swirling off a cloud
of stale, watermelon shampoo
And reached
With a tightly domed deltoid
towards the blue milk crate
where her purse sat.

She rummaged in there,
her back muscles working
like a landslide of flesh.

She finally dropped the purse,
after an effort of five minutes,
and I heard the successful flick
of a lighter.

She started
puffing and chugging down smoke
As she laid on her side.

My eyes watered
in the bluish smog,
and as the fan turned
raining down peices of our own skin
in a dusty, undetectable cloud of particulates
I could just see her,
out of the corner of my eye,
Shifting the weight of her body
from her deltoid
to her trapezius.

The heron spreads his wings and preys.
His stony stand a beachhead sloughing
The salt sea, a sepulchered wading.

Leaven the broken bred, unshell
The teeming waters, a fisher of mermen
Unlordly low this lying father,
His wings are palms,

His rock a mount, his wings a bay,
And deafness, tears in the outer shores
And exaulted seas the forgiven waves,

Swells the briny blood and kelp.
Vains are streaming to the fisher king,
Lordy he lands the lying father
His wings are psalms.

A tiny flood that arcs the sky
Marks lord in miniature, a King 
Fisher flies, His wings are
The waters calmed.

The otters bask and preen, mermen
Jostle in the laddered rays of the sun
They mark their surf, insouciant play,

Wavering the fisher of men, he sways, 
Simply they circle in song singing hours,
Dancing as do the murmuring waves,
Their strokes are psalms.

winter
the wreath’s rustle interrupts my sleep. in my dreamy shiver there is lucidity. between my toes there is carpet; I can feel its green, sense its virginal cool as I shuffle across the hall. I have the urge to scream, to tear the milk-matted blanket muffling my fervid anticipation. I hear you, then: the creak of the door, the friction of skin and silk, the sapped wail of youth’s wasted power. starlight pierces the linen curtains and casts my shadow ten feet tall, two feet tall, not at all. I crawl into bed and feel your breathing but it is not you. you are the unbroken hum of the furnace.

spring
the sugared smell of candy fruit depresses my throat and ***** threatens. my eyes search the window for a stranger but only rain knocks; my clothes are still wet, dripping one, two, three on each step. they dry more quickly than the boards creak; more quickly than I can find the storm drain, my translucent skin sloughing off at your touch. you are the static of broken vhs, the rattle of the closet mirror door as it slams, the easing cries through a premature mouth. I scream again, only to feel you in my ears as cotton, in my limbs as rigor. you whisper my name and I turn like a dog.

summer
dandelion seeds litter the dew-fresh yard. sing louder, you say, and I run faster. the wet heat is psychoactive. I trip and fall and you are the grass; you are the mud, the leaves, the water, the worms. you are the earth who protects my knees, careful to keep pristine my blue-jean jumper, careful to capture every moment of fleeting touch. oak leaves sway above. as intently as I gaze at it, the sun gazes at me and my doe eyes well. maybe there is something in them. maybe there is something in them with your crystal reflection, an eskimo kiss to speak what I cannot.

fall
afternoon sun rules my body and becomes blistering, unbearable; I stir, pressing against the heat, pressing your fingers into my skin, seeking to relieve the thrill. steam curls from my eyelashes as they squint to see you through the illuminated dust. it accumulates. you are the sudden cognizance of the windburn on my cheeks, lingering october air sharp behind my eyes, forcing tears I cannot help but to explain incorrectly. you are their singed, sweet-hot puddles in my hair. you are the residue they leave long after your sublime touch made them invisible.

carpal tunnel
born of first-serve lets
and second-serve ace
comebacks --
from
sloughing off
winter coats
to share between
twelve --

my wrists are
less than echoes
and may have
been little more
to begin --

suspended
by gossamer,
brass-covered
lichen
and ticking fungi,
like man, (with his
whirling gears
and mad metals)
replaced
nature's course
with an automated
system --

i would rust
just to crack
but they keep
me too clean --
my sunspots
have fled to
warmer pastures,
i am milk-buckets
on overcast farm
dawnings, but surely
even they have seen
the light of day --

splashed my face
with wine
and rooibos
to see if i
would stain
like the canvas
metaphor
my generation
ascribes to --

maroon dispersion
in terra cotta wash,
twining around
a spiral course --
the folly of it
went ignored
'til my lost and
floating freckles
gathered at the
drain and clogged
the sink to overflow.

Women who sleep on stones are like
brick houses that squat alone in cornfields.
They look weatherworn, solid, dusty,
torn screens sloughing from the window frames.
But at dusk a second-story light is always burning.

Used to be I liked nothing more
than spreading my blanket on high granite ledges
that collect good water in their hollows.
Stars came close without the trees
staring and rustling like damp underthings.

But doesn't the body foil what it loves best?
Now my hips creak and their blades are tender.
I can't rest on my back for fear of exposing
my gut to night creatures who might come along
and rip it open with a beak or hoof.

And if I sleep on my belly, pinning it down,
my ******* start puling like baby pigs
trapped under their slab of torpid mother.
Dark passes as I shift from side to side
to side, the blood pooling just above the bone.

Women who sleep on stones don't sleep.
They see the stars moving, the sunrise, the gnats
rising like a hairnet lifted from a waitress's head.
The next day they're sore all over and glad
for the ache: that's how stubborn they are.

.
The heron spreads his wings and preys.
His stony stand a beachhead sloughing
The salt sea, a sepulchered wading.

Leaven the broken bred, unshell
The teeming waters, a fisher of mermen
Unlordly low this lying father,
His wings are palms,

His rock a mount, his wings a bay,
And deafness, tears in the outer shores
And exaulted seas the forgiven waves,

Swells the briny blood and kelp.
Vains are streaming to the fisher king,
Lordy he lands the lying father
His wings are psalms.

A tiny flood that arcs the sky
Marks lord in miniature, a King
Fisher flies, His wings are
The waters calmed.

The otters bask and preen, mermen
Jostle in the laddered rays of the sun
They mark their surf, insouciant play,

Wavering the fisher of men, he sways,
Simply they circle in song singing hours,
Dancing as do the murmuring waves,
Their strokes are psalms.

The heron spreads his wings and preys.
His stony stand a beachhead sloughing
The salt sea, a sepulchered wading.

Leaven the broken bred, unshell
The teeming waters, a fisher of mermen
Unlordly low this lying father,
His wings are palms,

His rock a mount, his wings a bay,
And deafness, tears in the outer shores
And exaulted seas the forgiven waves,

Swells the briny blood and kelp.
Vains are streaming to the fisher king,
Lordy he lands the lying father
His wings are psalms.

A tiny flood that arcs the sky
Marks lord in miniature, a King
Fisher flies, His wings are
The waters calmed.

The otters bask and preen, mermen
Jostle in the laddered rays of the sun
They mark their surf, insouciant play,

Wavering the fisher of men, he sways,
Simply they circle in song singing hours,
Dancing as do the murmuring waves,
Their strokes are psalms.

Sometimes a fatted pig will wander off from the pen and find his way to the pond on the edge of the property.  If it’s dark or foggy, he may fall in and sink to the bottom.  Only later when his carcass has filled with methane and mucous will he float to the surface.  You’ll know he’s been in the water for a while when you see the bloat, the blisters oozing, and the skin sloughing off in large sheets.  Don’t go there.  It might reflect poorly on you.

Ok.  So you didn’t listen.  You went ahead and fetched a stick and poked.   And you were taken aback by just  how easily it slid through his tissues, like the time when that pigeon alighted on your hand, and you were startled by how it weighed almost nothing at all.  So to see what might come of it, you wiggled the stick, and suddenly what was left of the liver and kidneys popped up onto the surface and spit a stream of water into your mouth. They drifted towards you and away again, like your lost toy sailboat, the one that got off the string and floated down the rapids in Lucerne.  Over the falls it went, under the covered bridge, and that was the end.

Of course you still eat blood sausage.  Why wouldn't you?  The texture is rubbery but the taste is well ….. like blood....so metallic on your tongue.   But this blood will not wash away your sins.  It’s more like Pepsi Cola, or maybe Mountain Dew.

The heron spreads his wings and preys.
His stony stand a beachhead sloughing
The salt sea, a sepulchered wading.

Leaven the broken bred, unshell
The teeming waters, a fisher of mermen
Unlordly low this lying father,
His wings are palms,

His rock a mount, his wings a bay,
And deafness, tears in the outer shores
And exaulted seas the forgiven waves,

Swells the briny blood and kelp.
Vains are streaming to the fisher king,
Lordy he lands the lying father
His wings are psalms.

A tiny flood that arcs the sky
Marks lord in miniature, a King
Fisher flies, His wings are
The waters calmed.

The otters bask and preen, mermen
Jostle in the laddered rays of the sun
They mark their surf, insouciant play,

Wavering the fisher of men, he sways,
Simply they circle in song singing hours,
Dancing as do the murmuring waves,
Their strokes are psalms.

Cystic
Nothing but a cyst
Sloughing skin
Kept within

Cancer
Nothing but cancer
Sloughing skin
End/Begin

Dirt pop
Nothing but a dream
Simple wish,
Spinning disc

Meat pop
Nothing but a dream
Nothing good
Nothing grand

**** me. Rend me.
Pull my soul
Out of my ***

Hold me. Taste me.
Rub my flesh
Dance into death

The apartment lies just on the hill.
Beyond the defunct track, beside
The working track. Tall, pale grass

Pressed under trash. Food bags.
Food bags and drink cups.
Cigarettes, butts, and packs

Watch as the refuse stretches
Just as it is
Sharing light of morning sun

Cystic.
Cancerous.
Refuse.
Detritus.

Watch as the refuse stretches
Just as it is
Paper and/or plastic

Beautiful, isn't it.

Poet to my eyes, you are the sight of whitecaps
On the sea water, or the sudden turn of a bird
In flight and as the wave I roll and break,
With drowning wings that lift toward you, my sky.

Mistress to my soul, I am the nave of your holy
Cathedral.  My head is but an occluded riff,
De-noting songs you make in aisling airs of light
Polyphony, my star over-sings the windy globe,

She swallows heaven, like swallows blacken the dusk.
Shearwater bird, strip my surface with your cutting
Wings.  My waves peak to reach you starling girl.

The sloughing chill of winter dies quick in sighs
Waft asunder my little Indian summer, wake me
From sleep and I shall dream but once for your kiss.

Surging through the life way
Feel the flooding all around,
Wade neck deep in turmoil
Inundated, cold and drowned.

A waterfall of trouble
Cascading through your mind,
Slashing through the visual
And rendering you blind.

Awash with soaking platitudes
Immersed in ideas fraught,
With rationale that's compromised
By sudden thoughts of nought.


Sloughing off precipitants
Skimming through the mire,
Rearrange the tangled sequence
To leave potential to aspire.


Dispense with poor priorities
Expunge them with a shout,
Simplify the landscape
And flush that mind set out.

Is tomorrow looking lucid,
Have the torrents disappeared?
Is your temperament improving,
Have you lost that leaden fear?

Have the serpents all submerged
Beneath the blackness of abyss?
Has hope's glimmer re-ignited
To make a drowning death remiss?

Marshalg
Mangere Bridge
1st December 2008

I am sandpaper
longing frictions heat.

To grow both fat and
weary, sloughing
away your skin.

See what is strength
suckered and sickly
is set
to diminish.

But paper handholds,
why so dusty?

You aim for ignorance,
blooded hands to tease
simply tremor.

Yes, each whisper
charms so sweetly,

sweetly rough
against your grain.

The thick layer of polish comes off slow and painstaking, stripping away with it layers of nail. I cute away at my brittle nails, claw and scrape at my cuticles. I tear skin and hair away from my face along the strip of thick glue that I toss into the waist bin. Water pecks at my flesh as I scrub at my scaly rough arms, I rake my dry scalp, run a razor along my legs, and more hair and skin fall away, circling the drain as they go. I rub a watery sandpaper up and down my forehead and eyes, my nose, my cheek bones, chin, jawline, sloughing away yet another layer. The water pecks and pings and falls away from me like blood and dirt and the earth beneath me goes. I'm not in my body anymore.

I am grateful for my body.

I don't know where it comes from but I'm crying now. Who is not grateful for my body? all the attention it gets…is it me or them?

*I love my body. It is not my body's fault

"My Pen is a Keyboard"
Was a ditty I did
When I was a kid
Feeling out the corners of my mind,
But there is a boy -
His Keyboard is a Pen -
And now I prefer to feel out the corners
Of his.

Sometimes he is Neruda:
He writes the saddest lines;
And sometimes Frost:
Penning a the sun on the back of the deer
As it splashes through grass dew;
Sometimes Eliot trudging through
The damp streets and
Sloughing off the day onto paper...

Sometimes Millay -
I think sometimes Millay -
I hope -
Forswearing death
And clinging to love, though
It rests on the point of
The second hand of God's clock -

But I am there.

And so long as I am there he is there
Writing his poetry without words
To be read without sight.
So long as he is there I am there
To be a reader with closed eyes,
And feel the corners of his tired mind;

And to say:
Love, it won't always be night.
We are here and I will sing you hope
As long as I can. It will be alright.
Love, it won't always be night.

God I'm
crazy and
weak.

I wish I still
believed and
could pray -it
really did
help-

A godless
world is exactly
what you'd imagine
it to be -partially
because we
live in it-

I hate
that once
a month I'm
stuck being a
girl with girl needs
and girl whims

I hate that
it makes me
actually miss
you when you're
gone: acknowledge,
assess, process,
exactly  
how long it's
been

Maddening.

I imagine
disgusting globs
of whatever
stuff you claim
to have so much of
sloughing

off,
crawling away
half dead in the
cold coming to
the window to
tap, or perhaps
the door
to
knock like a
lonely soul and

you know
I've a psilocybin
enduced empathetic
streak embedded deep,
couldn't possibly
leave a thing to
freeze on its
own,
but
still yet
intruding
against my
will:

This is
the only
explanation:
I could not
thus feel
otherwise
by myself,
nevertheless
being mired
in such muck

I hate
being stuck
with the absence
of you for days
at a time
-especially with
these blobs
reminding of how
once
you were willing
to drive to
Tom's before
I had to cath him
at 2:30
in the morning

Just to smoke
and talk
a little
while

I doubt any of that
even matters now

God...
I must
be crazy
going crazy
acting crazy

I hate it.

I also hate
hating things.

You could have heard
The wingbeat of a wingless bird
I was frozen in place
Stiff, with a stone for a face
Legs heavy as mountain sized blocks of granite
Probably not a force on this planet
Could have moved me, at least I doubt it

After all the hate you’ve radiated
All the silence you’ve created
I am welded to the wall at my back
Not strong enough to
Take the two steps that it’d take to
Walk over and sit next to you
Tell you how many things
I wish that I could take back
But you do the thing I can’t
The last thing I think you’d want
You get up, walk, take two steps and stop
Sudden.
Sit facing me
A face I never thought I’d see
Look at me again
Especially not with that spark in your smile
It
It always told me when
Your smile was real

My eyes trace
Every inch of your face
In glances
Glances like the dances
Of shadows chased away by midnight
Broken by firelight
Yours trace mine

I take in the complex mix
Of tears hiding in your eyes
Shifting glances sliding by
Subtle smiles bursting I
Think I see a remnant of friendship
Hoping just a little bit
Hoping for a hope, that’s it
Think the (soft ,strong, wavy, weak)
Punctuation of our voices when we speak
Reveals it almost perfectly

I chew on every word I hear
With every word I speak
And the whole time we’ve been talking
My heartbeat has been shaking my rigid body loose
Stone skin sloughing off
As if I were a cement snake
(I feel like a snake)
(in the background)
(and in the background I think)
(this might be the feeling that makes)
(both our smiles sneak off our face)

We speak in broken sentences
And repeat ourselves
And speak in
Broken sentences
It sounds to me like
Words begging to be heard
Being heard again
Again
But for the first time

if a came summer
                          (over the beaches
                      sweat
                           in ribbons
                       or rivulets
                    binding the sand
                            with *******
                   and ****
                                     improbably
                     fleshy rumples
                                                     )
i'd be gladly giddy in its shall on me
its lazy hands on me
   to draw me to it in
    to it drawn a manacled surly
      bead of magic
        burning ***
          on loose footing
            the unreasonable grains
               of sloughing seconds
                 I
came a summer
                                 to
                   livid unmanageable moments
             where myself and myself
            used our stuff of soft and pink
           to drizzle drugged blatant
          skin on a beach somewhere i have been with you in the fall but then it was not so
          like the hot testing nerve (the bar of crimson branding light) instead a pale and
          frail limpet gruffly muscular light was all over it and it was cold and i pulled you
          really in my arms stabbing the youth of you slender able promise of corded
          elation hotly sudored morsels of.

Poet to my eyes, you are the sight of whitecaps
On the sea water, or the sudden turn of a bird
In flight and as the wave I roll and break,
With drowning wings that lift toward you, my sky.

Mistress to my soul, I am the nave of your holy
Cathedral.  My head is but an occluded riff,
De-noting songs you make in aisling airs of light
Polyphony, my star over-sings the windy globe,

She swallows heaven, like swallows blacken the dusk.
Shearwater bird, strip my surface with your cutting
Wings.  My waves peak to reach you starling girl.

The sloughing chill of winter dies quick in sighs
Waft asunder my little Indian summer, wake me
From sleep and I shall dream but once for your kiss.