A face silhouetted by a computer screen
Electronic radiant light
Cast color ‘cross his face lean
Smiles in surrender’s might
Dismissing where the moral compass points
Wandering eyes see
Accompanying the computer is three joints
And a hidden key
Burning cherry, burning soul
Water starts to boil
Set another unachievable goal
Return to the soil
All the children committing fast food suicide
They love to eat sweets because it makes teeth cry

spherical tension.
A cord, a wire
For which I have many names
That I can never seem to speak.
That orbital nature of my being, that
For reasons chemical,
Sparks fires of color and creation one moment,
And consumes light the next
In a glorious ecstasy of oblivious self envy.
They are the same moment.
The fire and the light are one.
Where one crystal facet lies in the dirt,
Covered in musk
And shadow,
Another face of the same crystal
Shines blindly
With light,
And reason.
Balanced perfectly.
All beings are orbital.

"Well ain't that a cryin' shame!"
he drawled over a split grass shoot
"**** birds, better luck next time son."
trying to comfort me
at least out of my silence
"Well shoot, hows about you take a seat on the porch?"
squeekscreekcreek
wrenching a sigh
popped back into a rocking chair
"Here son, roll me a cigarette"
trying to comfort himself
his egg-yolk hands held out a glass jar
made with rainbows
full of ****
and a tattered rolling paper
the gum almost invisible
"No no no, do it the way I taught ya!"
a cigarette's a cigarette
"hrrmmmph, that'll do.
Now, tell me what it is you lost again?"
the smoky words sliding out into where there once was green

the bed sheets clung like water

Blow roof and empty gutters
Cover crop
Spread hay
Collect seeds and deadhead
Wait for rain

Haiku:


#9

Crowning the moon in rainbows,
The clouds

#10

Warm Febuary
Finally Rain
Sidewalk Salamanders

#11

Rainwater
Gathering
Underground

#12

A lonely wind
is keeping the door open

#13

soft
the morning light
birdsong

#14

new moon pinetrees
waiting for the
              wind

#15

Last night's fire
Dying
Under the sun


Senryū:


#11

Watching the rain
Waiting for a poem

#12

Reading to stay awake
Falling asleep
with the light on

#13

Rooster at dawn
Rising
to **** him

#14

outside
the city sounds
inside listening

#15

Breath
Following Breath
Following

#16

a quiet drum
the children sleeping

#17

step after step
we will rest
but not yet

I can never feel the thing i say
and what I write is just a shade
a patch of color without an outline

The outline was carried away by smoke one night
that night she cried
that night she loved
that night she did nothing at all
they were all the same night

This past year has been that night
i fell asleep
I feel asleep
i want to wake up
but if I did, what would happen to this dream?
these familiar colors
this familiar air.
I feel as if I wake up
there will be no air
or worse, no color.

I'll make excuses about the stars
i'll say i never want my eyes to stray
i'll say i never want to go away
but i'm still not here

I'll say
"leave me,
this heart needs to bleed
else how could it beat?"
I'll eat a star to burn my heart.
to teach it to beat while it burns
under rising smoke

I apologize if you're scared by sparks

a cat is a creature of elegant feature
when leaping through leaves or wrapped round a heater
there's one that i've seen who lurks by the theater
she's shy with green eyes and i wish just to meet her

in all my crying
i've found tears

in all my speaking
i've found words

in all my violence
i've found blood

in all my eating
i've found ****

in all my loving
i've found people

in all my silence
i've found truth

in all my finding
i've known nothing

Here is the melancholy
       of my own open bleedings into
    the World!
  My lost "once was"
gone for a gap of cool confusion.

Stupor'd and infused with
the repetitive
eat/sleep/
imagine random flash pictures
of pleasure and pain.
Stick/carrot psychology of the
free world media,
saturated color stain so sweet,

as unavoidable as death.

The ice in your eyes cracked
when the rain your eyes wracked
fractal fingers reaching rip her iris
when the loud cloud-brow rain whispers "why this?"
it's priceless

The demon that screams in your shower
is lie-less.
The fire inside, some evil power.
Your crisis.
His lips aren't meant to be kissed,
but his screams won't be dismissed.

Ice and fire are of the same stuff.
You tried a taste of this life,
and it's not enough.

Well tough.

as I was reaching for the doorknob
i saw my arm on the ground
and mistook it for two cats
because the light inside was shining through a window pane
and the cleft face
of my split shadow
lay bleeding like
two cats
on the sidewalk
suspended in the moment I took
to grieve for them.

and then I opened the door.

Kissing stone
with lips cracked the same,
wishing bones
are split in your name.

We are never tame.

Stuck
like what we eat
in between these teeth.

******,
but it’s so sweet
to be beneath.

We are never tame.

In these veins
Runs river water,
In this wire
of a tongue,
Ice and Fire,
balance dire.

Heaps and mounds
of sand in a pyre.
The sand is the past,
the future is glass,
and the faces we found,
after the blast,
at the tips of our fingers,
like live bumble bees
without any stingers,
Linger.

Kissing stone
with lips cracked the same,
wishing bones
are split in your name.

We are never tame.

the friend you had

too far behind

to catch up

The truth words come in shapes like water. Washing over me. Sometime I feel like drowning. Sometimes I think we all have. Known something so liquid that we can't.

i've so many ways

in my hand
five threads
twisted

left with a choice
i'm tangled

i took a walk in the woods.
the rain pulled my limbs
into a humble slumber.
arms swinging by sides
with nothing more
than moisture trails
and crying fingers.
and mind
and eyes
that don't want to see
what the body wants,
so badly,
to feel.

walking through falling clouds,
under living bones,
and over dead skin.
the forest is about its self.

singing about screaming,
not looking both ways
before crossing the line.
we don't have to take it
from the top
to get to the bottom;
but i guess it makes
some sort of sense that way.

humble arms swaying,
tired eyes yawning,
and the forest watches.
it's arms holding up the sky;
still humble.
it's eyes not blinded by color;
still tired.
the forest never screams.

but it hears my fire,
it feels my ice;
and i can see it cringe
out of pity,
out of a lack of understanding.
Out of myself.

Shared breaths
leaving me breathless,
in another time.
kept fresh in the smell
of honey and your pink
shellfish.
and the forest,
understanding somehow,
my contained chemical
self,
leaking from my eyes.

It's nice to be listened to.

Where do we go to?
Is that the question?
What do I ask
to open the flowers in front of us?
What answer is the acceptance of this moment?

Now! a glaring shadow in the periphery
of the past & the future within it.
Now! the ever remembering self
& the forgetfulness within it.

Only.. even in knowing
I find myself opaque
when I reach into the flames.

In the sun,
scintillating snow dust whirling
in the wind.

we are found
in dark rooms
burning the afternoon's blossoms
in search of
dreamless sleep

we are found
livid
underwater
needing to breathe

we are found
heavy lifting
ones and zeros in sequence
weighted by quantity

we are found
reflected in mirrors
not really there

we are found
together
casting prismatics
making memories
without a blueprint
or recipe

we never gave up our certainty
the we were right where we left ourselves
even when faced
with all evidence to the
contrary

finally the rain is here
something that i still hold dear
something to clean out the drain

i find it quite ironic
that the rain falling symphonic
provides a silence in my brain

that distant lightning screaming
and the clouds tears still streaming
makes stars wax and the clouds wane

flesh rubbed raw
under a heavy coat of rime,
painted on by the night
with wind, her paint brush.

the blush
of vermilion hue
undone the next day by the sun.
he releases the red,
and the earth takes
what was always hers.

it's not a matter of give and take
when we share the same hands;
and when they shake
there are no demands,
only miles
and miles of sand.

no flowers here,
only the sun,
and then only the moon,
and only the sand stretching
in heavy sheets across rock.
the sleeping beast beneath
is unlocked.

let it eat me alive.
I am survived,
and it's killing me.

I have a problem with
filling my cup and falling asleep
words come hesitant to my hands
or to my lips too fast
or not at all

A plague of excess
more letters than could ever be made into a
meaningful sentence
more wine than to ever be
pleasantly drunk

Lose my imagined person
to walk or speak
as a multitude
or a beautiful
nothing at all

that which you give,
let go.

generosity consists not of applying yourself,
but releasing the things that you think you are
onto another
with prayers of light
and love,
without the intent of
direction,

for the soul knows no compass rose.

i never metaphysical man

Breath.
The open ocean
and wave-spray white.
Every vessel filled
and beating red.

The bleeding sea
trading warmth for wind
to mix the shade
and sunlight
encapsulated.

The green on the surface
is alive
and sifting into shadow
where bones feed the
greater beings sleeping there.

We sail on,
the sun-soaked horizon,
a promise of the days to come
in the golden-orange strip
cast from black.

We sail on,
the beast beneath us wooden,
the white cloth wings
to catch the clouds.

Over the green, the deep
We sail on.
Silver shimmers of fish
along side,
the roughness of barnacle
along side,
and all our long-shot gazes
falling overboard and sinking.

Thirst.
The open ocean
and wave-spray white.
Every vessel filled
and beating red.

Through eyelids,
the sun.
Over brine
our path marked in ripples
fading

Stars making maps
in an ash-pit sky-scape,
unseen for the fog,
thick in drapes
hanging.

This vastness is inherent.
Here, the liquid vistas,
our calling,
is making us
steam.
Evaporation,
our Queen.

unforgiving
the whir of the mind-clock spinning
giving forgetting
to a dance in the dark
and I'm grinning

Your conception of the world
can break if you
drop it.

It is not the precious gem
you've made it out to be.

To feel the warmth of sun on your face
is one thing.
To let it in like glass,
like water,
is another.

(THIS is the symbol)

To become efficient enough
to reduce meaning into a single symbol,
a sign within a sign
(meta-symbolism).

Making words into movement
intuited further
as just breathing
and know what is
being represented.

Seamless meaning/thing connection.

******* hands
keeping things
from being free
let them be

shut up
there's enough already
to listen for six days steady

maybe sleep
is more realistic than I think it is
maybe
i'm already there

wake up
there's no more in dreams
than what you've already seen

go forth

filigree trees
firelight gilded

golf green peace
evening doves
hushed by sprinklers

With this love abundant
still leaving
like heat in an open room
we go out to find what is waiting
here

Find me some truth to seek
and i will gather all my lengths of
threaded hope
to climb us a wall
and make it into the
finding place

God ******,
i say it all the time,
invoking no thing I know
asking for a wrath
I could never want

In the puddling ice
both feet
not yet wet
but soon enough
laid up and bone

you look like two dead leaves
and the trees between
in the distance
swaying
as if they'd never heard
jazz
before

give me your hand
the one that you **** with
and i'll wrap around it a bracelet
to keep the liquid
from reaching your
skin

as if it was all determined
by the look in your eyes
when I told you
that which you already knew

I danced with someone three days ago
and she was smiling
and the light was orange
but I could not keep from crumbling
when you smiled
from behind
closed eyes
and then left into the night
weeping in my imagination
as if we wanted the same thing

a GUNSHOT
is one part black
and three parts red

count me out

the guts are the logs of a fire that burns thru every eye and ear hole
smoke pouring from my mouth
the whole house a home
ablaze
warming tired feet
but burning the toes
and keeping me awake

who is it writing poems at this hour?
surely the cinders grow weary
surely the morning has more life
ahh but the something in my guts
pumping the bellows
ringing the bell
and shouting up the chimney
"THIS IS ALL THAT REMAINS!"
and I understand
watching the fire wane

the water's movement
unmakes the silence of stone
still, the ocean sleeps

it's the wind's whimsy
which is the way of water
that guides I, the smoke

burning the candle
from both ends makes twice the flame
and twice the shadow

fresh morning dew drop,
suspended like a planet,
appeared over night,

With all its movement
the ocean roaring and white
is always resting

Pines under the moon
wind felling silver needles
the birds are asleep