standing by a bed

quiet, then
dog bark
Fort avenue is empty
all its
ghosts- powder at noon,
the bright after rain is
glowing again
wild in this absence,
some thing is
waiting
to collect
around each lost
soul, palmed
vapor, endless sugar, coffee cups
it is here that one
can be
rising and defeated,
known by copper
collapsed,
the
near concrete, speaks
as
house
after house is
wreaked in slices
time for this sort
lunch, breaks loosely
& today
we have chosen to raise
a
whole
union of spirits
to ritualize the
simplest snow, turn a heard
raindrop
crystalline and tear
at this thinnest vale, noon.

what the heart knows in a hole

this stone my heart
has been stopped
it has been dead
before- loam lengthened in
the long hours
bleached white, before
the awkward moon
time like bone growth-
proves painful & surprising
all along the river
has pruned the night
of its being and
this world
knows nothing else-
but the echo of coins
falling from hands
fortunes gone and all
its shallow documentation
for the marriage
of the living and the dead
dealt with in parlors neat
as loves woven nest,
yet the dead want
their song of ash,
their compact of dust
to ring the mind
and balsa fear, it
is pure mission of
the generations to
float this catastrophe
through each human
estuary until it
joins the silent chorus,
the evocation of being and not,
the soul shifts its ragging
disposition and nears
recuperation to eventual
disappearing in to
the wage of every day.

home coming kept here

pain organizes with
in me, and
template's my body-
i read it to know
how to rebuild
my scattered mind-
delicate and careless
as milk weed,
i am open
to any wind, and
scatter fruitless seed
over water
finding fish bones
& seaweed,
regrouped, tightened
by singe, by
evenings bonfire
heat, my skin
bristles, fresh in
the morning snow
gray echos
church bells
the landscape I've
come to know-
yet it has yellowed
become orange green
purple, the
world once colorless
has opened up
and rain is silver,
coins, valuable as bones
that speak in
syllables made of soil
words i long know.

what has to be done lee

respond, said ruby-
leaving us as
she died in the door way
loving the
cafeteria, the passionate
jello
translucent,
rhythmed by
the ribboned train of florescent
lighting
knowing something of pudding ,
she
had all her yesterdays and one
more
tomorrow lined up
right
there
like
storm clouds,
like
sage, at
the foot of
prayer ------------------------>
as if the robins egg blue : sky
echoed the last
scrumptious notion of food
where
the whalebone children
where born
running-
music in their heads weaving
evenly
the sharp knowledge that
came to harm them
into
knotted
copper rugs
given
subtle instruction,
spoken
a mothers tongue-
rolls, holds
shores full of
delicate
urchins
rocks hold lichen
for
bears breath fills with
fog horns and sponge
cacophony
ghosts
where the far away
tube holds the melody
how lost can we
be
hoping
for
final
quiet the
dawn holds
us at its pre-being
where: me, she , and i have
grown
our oldest
in the tissue light,
under sea green night
a dream blunt
in morning sky.

potters meat field gone

never in the ditch, the ribbon
reveils the mouth and
it
is empty,
i wanted more time, where
is it the
street
the linear path-
the want moderator
the trail wants to talk
now and it does not
it stays near things-
at the beginning of
doors, blue jays echo, the
forest as a jail
the family fails and revolves
again
the pipe is passed the
teenage basement
is replaced by the
clan by
the warfare anodyne the
killed mode of being
these streets
these streets
know what is real it is stones
under foot it is the rubble
ruined in
the wall of church in
the tin hub cap in the peddler pushing
the wound, the steel removed
the god of the street, of the road, of
this multiplicity is gone
the blade rips
the blue sky tears
the language flurries down inches
squalls out
on the vacant lake as
the fisher men die at home
warm in loves permanent bed,...

sweet belly one

grafted on the first
light
this heaviness does
not stop, does not lighten,
the simple violence of this
physical undoing parades down
my skull all day
like rain in the
sunniest hour
mouse traps popping-
death clicking through
the
night, through the day
the birth rate
runs rampant, hunters are
mad with liquor
trying to stay up right
shooting
coffee Irish whiskey, jack lights
they fire my brain through
its fish bowl
to mouth its broad emptiness
with in it
the swarm of blood,
issues
rivers to the lake
to the canons
better served by the holiest murder:
a fish cut- the feeble fed,
the derelict sun
mooning on and on loving like a cat
lapping milk, as the I creatures
drag on our apatites for days
and long days.

cunning no body removes

to spend one more
word across the page
to mouth over an echo
low to the ground, i
don't know, what is
the alley empty for
at the glowing hour,
what is the heart
empty for at the
hungry crosswalk, under
the significant
traffic light, why
learn one more phrase
why not beg with mute
desperate incantations
stooped over grits
stooped over oatmeal, lentils
over rice & beans
quietly masticating the
soil, in to soul, where
are the stories, the words-
where is the container for
the legumes, the seeds
that stalk up
the mist, and raise
new squash, spent in each
hope, the house of faith,
the body speaking writes
out the menu of the day
the earth made conscious
the bean, the knee, oneiric
& holy.

when the ribbon is cut, then untied

first slate gray light:
this day does not ask
for this
newness
it is
broken
with ice as
rain it
wants
forgiveness
and then
refuses it
long in the
blond morning hours
it is
formed as an
old shape, a stone, a
stream left cold
for
water has
worked its daily
toil there and
is there no more-
it is
the
landscape
that has always
been
it
holds my
heart
in its cool
depressions- it
holds my heart warm
in its
haunted
grieving air-
perpetual it
allows the hours
to fall here and there,
leaf scattered,
residency
of the vacant street-
waiting for breakfast noon
to unfurl
the promise first suspected
the promise in its eventual
renewal.

the joint undoes the thing blue rose

things to do, all
spirits combine in the
rocky hand to make
lists of things, so each
finger will know it is
not alone, working the
fine documentation
of this
being

roads are named,

so
they can be added to
the list that ascends
the grave-
stone, printed granite
against the honed knife-
Time,

rejoice

the
opus of the bent can
the rust melted off the
fender sun, so many
piled in the yard the
cars reach up to heaven
and ache to die again,
this
is
the quandary of the: traveler,

when to rest

when to go-
stop
to
feed
the pigeons,
stop to tie
up
your boat and speak
at the local talent show,
pray, pray, pray, and in
your closet feel the blood
cool in your
vein, what
else

luxuriate in a woman-

action, and evolution, the sweet
growth of
seduction, and then ...
the bones know this
possession from
dusted nothing to key excesses
and the walled
mornings destruction

coming back

to the middle
of the old town,
the traveler
sits or
saddles, talks
the winter
talk in spring, or
the
wolf pack forest, or
talks of the sea
and
only
when
it
rains,

enjoy the fascinations

of
company (?)- oh,
things to do, let the lazy
hand make
lists of
things to do

blue socks ride the ferry to moon.

18 knows the next line to be
said
out loud
the curve of woman bends
the eye to the ground,
so modeled after death, no
fear can ever ever enter,
the seasons want
specific loves,
of
snow fall of leaves-
gardens, tomatoes, beauties,
beaches, and fires
in
the heart of each one
like love but, unmoving
omni temporal
all here, the girl, the woman that
has bent the world to her knee, bends
as well, and leads in the
sectioning of a grapefruit,
in the translucent tangerine,
in the pear moored out
on the
frozen lake,
out by the boulder
dragged by
memories glacier
there
the air
sharp as crystals, in her
nose, and burns her skin blue
she sings, and signs
the birds their new melody, and
lets the roads forget,
lets the graves turn to
dust, and prints leaflets out
to the dead, and the
dead wait
with the dead, and the lions
and the brutal sun
of the friendless, and the forgotten
the golden seal is delivered by her
absence- she goes
to come back, and then follows,
paw pad,
man
and wraith impressions
to
this blue serenity,
and calls it
Niagara, or home, or thee
and enfolds
the compass of
the world, in her eyes gravity
stunning the wilderness silent
with in me.

thirsty ditch 3

coffee longs for the
curl of a sentence, the
laugh
of man made
ivory, of lost days
coffee longs
for
the
celebration,
for
the
blazed out
buildings after,
for teen
aged minds
frozen in the, long
long prose poem-
smoking
the last of the cigarettes,
the last of the scrapes
of
the
illicit blue
caps of seedy
adolescents
the
destroyer comes at
dawn
and even then the
beautiful people
allow nothing
to come -we want that-
we want
bricks of friends gnarled
by the fiber
of work, by the weave of heroes
by the confidence of every
copy
cat
artist and finally
the fingers twitch to know
every tin cup
now plastic
now paper, now
empty,
cool classic and
ultimately disposable.

not a judge of augur

1.

looking at
your letters
i thought
about
you
- traveling
i then thought,
dreams
must be
the map to work,
work is the
dream come true
the golden
axle
that
bends under its
own
weight-

2.

near a
cannery
plush
with
guts, a dance hall
of gills
reigns,
a cat
that
scrapes at the
moon-
the festival door,
waiting
on the bone shoot,
the
ghost leaver...

(2a.)

the
surf
pierced by the
sting
of
new new
night blue and
if a word was
purple
tonight
it would be filled
to
the
plastic edge with
recyclable
cans,
no paper,
pure aluminum,
a
blue so pure it is a sea
a swan a lake that
disappears
as it
perpetuates a basic map
of the land.

cells return the wall to guard me

the world freezes
before me, & after me,
the sirens are constant
through the day
the collapse has
come so quickly
that the rebuilding
has already begun-
here on the thirty
block, the sun teases
the guests of the city,
knowing full well the
light it sheds casts
more shadows, then hope
the orange splinters
embedded in the window
sill allow brief compass,
it is the wing in the west
it is the head pointing
east, waiting all night
for rest, and never
finding it, it is, the
mind that is in
Lockport dungeon, wresting
not unlike the owl,
smart predator, sharp beauty-
expelling ghosts and bones
in to the forest loam.

self costs the survivor

this my dears... my dear
friend is a
test, a small sketch,
a burial of teeth,
a dusty reunion with
the sea, with the
artful ball and socket
fetish of the ground corridor
sweet grass, arthritic warming-
afternoon, out here in the fresh
field she changes her hair
dark to light, to reflect
the counting of days, the
tabulation of moons,
a crackle of thunders light
beyond this stressed shattering
this document of her luminescing,
the feet find nesting
the wings and
scull of a water bird,
like perfection, forming
an elegant algebra, a form
angular, closed complete
so close to a formula that
x is blown away like a
dandelion seed- drifting
first west, then southerly, riding
buoyantly through these changing winds
waiting for the lull
in to which it will be sown
and find purchase in new life
and brightness of being.

stolen change; my merry mood

not
unlike the writers hand the
horse gallops manic
full up to the mane
with panic, glue
sea salt and trees
done over like the last thing
i knew before night
before snow and souls,
rare, changed- broken and
deaf, the -less-
thing left out in the
meadow where the thing
that is, is
the
thing that has long ago
disappeared.

ringing in my ears

as the wide
scope of night dwindles,
i prepare to wander out
and capture its last
dark ember, i have
faulted the
universe, for its broad
strokes
and asked for individual stars,
to light my way, in
slicing up the
constellations i lost my
only way to navigate
and wander at twilight
aimlessly.

love, what the shell demands

i am a machine animal
for your thighs
cracked open to your
sent, over & over
top and walls blown
down by
the pure salt of
this lust, remember
the ceiling that cupped
our names spoken
from our throats as one-
pulled up from soft guts, to break
like tea cups, the solitary mind
with the steal flowering of
of tongues
around wordless me's and I's,
devastating the boundary
in quiet decibels
writing the body's
longing in one long
unspoken syllable.

stainless drop of rain

then we enter the big words-
the street grows silent
only trash moves-
i wait, and hear graves whisper
their sticky nearness
i see the cobwebs, and
turn to watch them go incandescent,
what else is there-
love to love,
day to day, secretly pay
the bills
while the rest sleep
lick stamps for distant places
and always
remember the insects are
going to pity us, when
the flood comes, when
the heart fills
and dumps what the anguished
world has held all the while.

Nocturne: 443 Pell Street

faded trumpet- bell curve of
late night, opens to
sound, to
the ringing Gabrielle,
listen and hear the wings on
which the evening
flys toward me,
shadowing a hope
for language
all its own,
stealing the verb from the
dwelling: skull
&
from its own
crow wing, unfolding
and folding in again,
to
cancel the
corn mush
sun
the darling daughter of day
then
reversed the lush horizon darkens,
& the
blue sky turns gray
then strikes flame to green
to reveal the depth of
day in its, unmaking
in luminous mutability
as the dusty copper head
swallows her shivering rattle
to send word that every thing
is this way.

formattable couch

fear, the venture of love,
the over arching boundary
what is there, left to break-
flagstones
as
easily as the
mended heart, the
owl speaks
and the mouse,
the bent flame
of existence repeats
in the pulse, and the eye;
is the force the
breath journals in
to the body,
long hand notes of
who to be, and critiques of the
body in being, fear the venture
of love, the language, is new
but the words are repeating
and i dance, with out dancing
cool in the new November evening
wondering aloud, her new body
the symptoms of
animal being, blood, building
its self in to a structure of
longing, the world, becomes
apparent, lists arrive like bees
storefronts, collapse, bricks blink in
hand warmed humanity, i eat chunks
of sky, and dwell in that eating
what can not be consumed, will be
burnt to cinder, bitter or not the
fear, the heart, the lover must be
placed gently on the tongue and savored.

called content

the eye yoke breaks
baring the burden of living
be happy, be inhaling always
be the sleeping man
murmuring yes yes always
or else the hand will let go-
Let go Now, know the current
be the bird swimming to the rapids
from the shore and bobble all
the way to the edge, of the falls
and before going over,
break open in to flight
and glide down
over the Lower Niagara.

waiting in your lawn chair

if i could shift my body
collapse like water,
face east first then west
i would shift, and let the
heart loose, and empty every
gaze on to you,
i would harden against
my life story, resist each
photograph, replace the image
with heat, not a warm copy
but a smoky blouse unbuttoning
like will, like V after V
of autumn geese flying, a
wilderness of longing,
driving me in one direction.

girltalk the azure hope dweller

what will i learn in the
wake of her music, what will jam
in my brow, what
cruel animal, will
grow, born of wind and wild
bloom fluid as ruined periwinkle,
broken as a chewed rose,
thoughts like knife fights,
and water forever
water,
the
necklace crystalline, the
cobalt anchor love,
stops the body's head
its broken arm nests
the heart in a sling
like over night
like a clean fill word-
all day and in to the blue
wilderness bright
with blood rubies
and coagulated Easter
hymns blazing the end
of the world,
my hand holding her hair
hopeful, beast, the
creature wanting , a
harpsichord
shattering, the saw against
the circle sky
but
it is just a kite flying
a
glass of noon, filled with tea
with lavender,
no tarragon,
no mint,
longing for sage, for meat
glinting heady beads,
and
mysterious graffiti,
the past so fat and empty now,
it fills
the bloated moon,
it
is not a woman at all,
but a shadow hiding
among the osprey and vacant lots
of downtown night
and milk weed release.

the lie about mist

the portion is
abundant sown
bellow the creature
bleeds out
brown, winter wheat fields
love
taps
golden
apples
or
pears blushing
in late August air
tree branches reach out
tenderly they
scuff the
wind, and lay
articulate rust, and choice
imperfections
there
pouring
all sin, wine and fire
in to it's
collecting cup-
it
becomes the relationship
and the faith of
the believer
like hard seed
thrown in
unidentified fields
has found
purchase, a harvest
of careless words-
lost, found a living mouth
quoting the
shut up dead.

try in october, say more

where current becomes rapids
it splits the blood beat, and
all of history drains in to
the ventricle, the muscle takes a
breath, then leaps, in sacrifice
and survival it tears its self apart
to preserve, to continue on, to witness
its lifey madness real, and
red in the dreaming sun,
its strength, fills concrete, broken glass
beach glass anything solid
and able to transmit light,
so in that moment strength touches its own
shadow, its toe turns to moth-cinder,
ash, smoke, ascension.

morning vends the after glow.

i bend down at Haeberle
the smallest strip mall
facing east, it
greets the sun with me
i am open to this
temple
wall of pharmacies
Chinese to go, clinics
and coin operated laundry
empty at 6:30
ghosts of the city,
hoof, to foot, Portage Road is
printing man, man, man
over history just scraping through,
endlessly indifferent
to the domino rowed
head stones, populating
the asphalt's undiscovered shore-
empty markers spider still capture
this slice of time,
this Gaussian morning
in their gaze, and sink
its holy moment in to
granites torpid gravity, as
my own living hand lets go
the living thing
listing words around invisible streams
at Haeberle the Plaza fills
with prayers not said, but heard by me.

talking, her lips, are eyes are body

minor aches today are
likely to pay off
handsomely tomorrow
-fortune cookie

this pertains to the
heart, the deer
in
the woods, the
wisp of smoke
the
hidden one,
i know the owl, has
spoken all night
on the vicious
and obsolete deaths head
the canny mushroom filled
with the potent mouse
the cloud stuccoed to the
roof
of the critics mouth
it is spoken from
the branch, as if
it where an orange
ledge
the recipe for this
and many other catastrophes, hard
as the wildebeest
screams, even harder
the side walk ends
in and empty field
near a water park
and a casino.

pieces, clap the fish

motion over the
double yellows, collected
a retrieved
junction,
now the
wheel lists
these
constructions within
the small
glove box skull
methods
of translucent carburetors
fueling v8 love, and w/no
0-zero-0
efficiency
burning every
old ancestry every, fern
laying under
the forgotten brow,
I know the forest here
under my pedal foot, pushing
the loam down into the
darkness it hopes for,
to the roots, traveling
the turnpike up to the
clover leaf, swaying
in the breeze like a leaf
ferments a million
years burning, quietly
in the hold of an
innocent devouring
machine.

fin, fur, feeling; fine

i.
we have been blessed
with 13 love affairs, under
the broken bells, now
only pa recordings,
our small small
town woos away the
last summer days,

ii.
stroll no
thought out to the
gray forever winter,

iii.
roots
are strong for
this ending, for
brutal
catastrophe for
desolation,

iiii.
lovers under cherry blossoms,
monks, and tight lipped
nuns with in the frozen mansion,
collecting wood, collecting lovers
the things that warm us, turn to ash
and send us out to gather again,

iiiii.
smiles and scents in pocket are replaced
by silence, and our hands become busy
collecting prayers written
on the fallen leaves,

iiiiii.
and humming the insect sexual chant
of June,

iiiiiii.
watching Decembers river choke
in her ice flow.

The wilderness calls the pigeon, become- dove.

the spine
my spine has become
the Grand Island Bridge,
the rusting
blue blinking
water lounge
the
span of a life
tripled
and divided, while
other constituent parts
physically
form to memories
false flag stories
things that had
never been the gallant
shudder, the fish rising
to shake a real hook-
the English boy stuffed
in the trunk
smuggled
in to the country,
the
felon carrying
a load of
dope
the hope, of
the run away
wanting
to
make it
to
eventual Florida
i encountered
and found
again
these dreams
all
muffled under the
mornings shard
the rainbow pierced
American Falls,
where the
perpetual
world is
on view, under the
mysteries and
the quiet suicides
the Orpheus
solution, the singer roars
and the 4th sees
quarter sticks of dynamite
lit by uncles
just drunk
sun burned happy
inhaling
black powder
smoke
like fresh unfoiled pall malls,
rolled in stained sleeves,
boats bring us back
and
forth under
this thing now so mine
that i
am no longer any thing at all
this
past,
the
echo name
of
friends
only death makes them important,
art
fades in sexual
delinquencies, drugs booze- old,
leave only this
ball
and
socket
on
which to dwell, and
like true potato folk
i dwell,
digging
with my fork
handle, and tine, tine , tine
in to the
graveyard
ground
to find, the stones are worn
as if this
where the shore
the place
where life blooms
like flowers, like mushrooms.

what mind throws at midnight

candy banks a gentle slither,
the mute man walks
the pier
buckets of shrimp wait
off screen there
the dream
has found material, the cold
ocean relents and its
madness crawls up to my door,
giving gifts of rubber
and powdered milk, candy
fronds its deep mind,
so crossed
it erase each thought, with
a memory, a feeling
tone, in gelatin, golden
sepia, a drift wood holding
to the living
shore, being dragged
back out to dread sea.

clutch lender; why the decanter- does not recant

meet the motion
and the junction, will arrive with
in the stem flowering in
you, the queen
sun turns back before
going down, in to
her red yawn,
get to
know the paper sack the
paranoid religion of
evening, get slipped
the moon blessed poetry
of rivers, not looking for but finding shoeless
counties
legs running pumped and,
steaming
the holy rage streams through
you at
the city water board- where
cruelty is fresh awash in Daphne hair,
there IT coolly
bares the heat and steel
& pressed to earths
anvil IT resolves not to bend,
rises up in mammalian
rebellion slowly obliterating
under the corrugated clay canopy
IT is
elevated by shafts; light
cams mobile, dancing
the sky
stale onion skin from
its dusty death, to
firm firmament, to roiling blue
to the royal doubt,
that has doubted you all your life
and recast your life a bone
dwelling shadow IT lights
the bones own marrow.

thin wafer canopy

the full code, unbearably
weighed
of the double
has shifted,
fallen abreast
of the north star
ablaze the cold evening fills
and empties
in its walking
the books open to close and the dear
one hangs
up the phone, after
only
hello,
what now, the globe
unravels and leaves me alone
to know what-
the deft maneuvers
of soliloquy, the bracing ,
breakers
of will, branding the spring born
heart, and yet in the swirl
of time
over
even the new worthless moon
a page,
a full sheaf of
glued
beams
filter down
to you love
to me, to
our separate
suffering beings and
log them for next years
little lusts and matchstick heat
and gives these two vacant hands
prophecy, meaning.

7:15 am French spoken in doughnut shop

I.
there light a fire,
still ambered in the TV
slow she encumbered me
with love at last
the low animal
had been roused and
meanly became the
guardian of a
human heart

II.
damaged as
an arch less brick
as the conversation
of stone continues,
shops full of meat
are closing and in
the town all that
are left are the grave
markers, quiet reminders
of afternoons spent
dwelling warmly
as the mealy conch

III.
I return a collapsed
language a way the
word forms snails in
to the academy mind
and falls back
to the butcher to be
trimmed, ground together
with lamb and leaf fat
to become the common
raindrop

IV.
In the early morning
the ascending elevator
is the angel, shot
through the liver- a
sling shot against fort knox
so full of gold and
longing- with out ever
knowing my endless pebbles

V.
If to walk, walk
now- and then to:
a final truck stop-
isn't it always the hard
shore, the man made
bay that intrigues the
mind most- if only
because the words float
like a whale shark slaughtered,
full of less liver then
the boat- the angel,
lead filled and happy
legal, illegal the animal
unrelenting- you can not
do- this thing, claw
hammer a nail with
that hand instead.

VI.
we must chronicle the aches first,
the inklings of conical being
revealed first in, how
not to do this-
how to have comfort
in the Broken Glass
the eyes reflecting
thier wave length comfort lounging
where none complete the
weave of being and disappearing.

VII.
there in the cinema, the
dust of death rises and
filters the room, the
light fills, we wait so
long to kill evil- the
expanding dark Empire
that at the end of
its long night, we want more
to know- to remember the
shard in our heart, but the wound
fades and the casts and photographs
mean less and less- until
ever hardened and smoothed over by
star glow rollers the
stone we have become can be
swallowed by any one, monster
or lover and pass through unchanged

VIII.
Assemble the machine
loaded with ribbons
of what should be
done, 8 is for woman
it is impossible for it
not to be -8- is the
perfume sea she wakes
with heels and careful
claws keenly delicate they
curve the inner hip of
life, and under their
mercy, violence is done
so near hate- but desire
wrestles the seed thought of death
in to a combine love
and 8 is reborn
in line, a word
a truck idle in the
body machine of being
filled and portable-
working the raindrop
brick and under its
arch the wardrobe of
skin embellishes the
world, of tooth dragon
and spider plants

IX.
we land in Canada
new, old- over timed
clocked by youth-
by names, by schools
by hopes of companionship
where history
columns up the stair
case, the disparate
airport motel & the-
the morphology of
simple city new
urbanity- speaking
of new Capitals hopeful
hounds tooth leaves
the shell unhappy-
wooden  under urethane it
tightens and expands
to twist that latex,
dreaming of evening
wife the- warm
alcohol believing in
hours, the ring of
hours, calling you to
the day sleeping under
medium tea with
2 sugars.

X.
How can the homeless
heart love one land,
all or none, both harden
from possibility to fact and
love drops from the
hand, minted
out as coins, gleaming
under the same one
sun, and betray every
one in boundless
candidacy.

XI.
eleven is potatoes
even out the plate
grown among the
stones so
full the apple of the
earth a delicacy
unstoppable- a truth as
true as hunger- the
hunger, the wealth of winter, and
the thankful cold
decree of that season
to let us know potent
greatness in pressed
slacks, the collecting done
in solid solemnity

XII.
food no other bus
moves me, the
burst of poetry-
of words, of the
wakeful curve, it is
the first fusilli, of
tomatoes and my
being transmuted to:
gone roots, disappeared vine
down in to the permanence of soil.

9/15/07

citadel coiled 2 roses

bathed in cobwebs
& dieing night
evicted;
home less dreams roused
at first light
I
push off the dry walled
mountains
containing every particular day
and raft the newest noon
of the narrow trail park street
howling once to find
the day fruit waiting,
busied and deepening
a sea
connecting its
coolest ascendancy-
I turn nightly
now
under the cascade shadow
blued by neon casino
I growl sleepless
with the bridal train wreaking
on the rocks, blocks
from my futon bed room
turning the stone of my
life around hoping on to it eons, there
in its, silence rings this short
avenue Niagara Falls keyed
soul in residency.

firefighter

light the cigarette,
the slang of old age of
destiny played
blues wormwood, surreal
mossy rock the musical measure
evokes
morphology:
a Christan mystic [man] drinking
wine
-rusty-
from the bottle raw
and the
baritone horn in Spanish
blackens even a grackle wing:
our tongue[s] (can't you feel it) damn it)
wails the night away
corrodes softly the
devastation of dark
water-
tea at the ocean shore
simple: a man,
a wish
and one story he
can tell twice and
be sure its not really a lie.

the number increases ; the hollow year

pillars formed of platelets
stacked they rise, from
their own porch of hunger,
my hunger
though
comes from the hunger for fields for
the shadow of fields
the lost imprint
of the oldest farmer
i feel that resonance in
wine
the short hand of drugs
drown
then in such long days
suffused with articulated being
sharp at the dendrite, and mean
coalesced greedy the mind
is decanted in to
an unbending mineral
snapped at the nose, metallic
a hint of almond arsenic
a poison of days and memories
of words trickling and luminous
waiting for the plate of lamp black
to cob web a formal hand
ordering till and mule through
mans morning murk and glory.

movethebinder

first there is a smile
the
morning laughs
out leptons
and
these
z
particles
love in our
human language,
a
girl
expressing love
by way of
calculus, and truly
by conversion- poetry
why not write
poems
about
poetry
who reads,
these
blue
walls
who prays in church
the believers
the lovers
and the nearly dead,
and those peculiar
high energy physicists
slipping ever closer to
their white light
singularity.

translate_2

in the end the distance was too close,
which of the two selected,
how their days have terminated
removed from the
point of conception, as
if from Canada split
the arctic hoist and
now downward,
you tighten
yourselves to it,
in order to yellow a just position
in addition
to having traveled the clean ice fields
its secrets are late,
forever outside the edge of cold,
they pull themselves from these
deep immersions to
immediately find
the time of the swallows a
plentiful taxonomy to examine
(down to my fingers)
frozen by the road
of the nameless town
a woman on a fruit crate rusts our will
welcoming the harbingers from feather/spring as if
snowdrops, and crocuses
could issue along
the road of winter
or within the farm of the mystic

invincibility_code

sex has ended for me
the terrific blood spilled -
and paused
asunder the packed soul
weeps without weeping
and slips out larger, and
smaller,
like a balloon exhaling
I am coming apart under
the moons revolution
hours slack with over abundance
force minutes of decadence
to fall fast as midnight,
and i am entrenched in it-
i become, scorched- useless, loved
lusted and dead
the hunger a ghost feels is no hunger at all
the desert has been worth every sacrificed
photograph
now though undone my
corpse dusts away down the
glinty sand, and the world of woman,
chase its
ash and shadow in to soft milk dream
and radiate no shame as i am resurrected
and fitted a new harness.

food, tooth and black beer

the order of
experience, the raw
field, the salvaged
lot, this open, empty
parking lot,
it,
that is the grass
the sundown sky
unfurls-
opens to the wind
in evening, and
vitalizes, activates
each stone toward
words and
words
each a fruit
a berry, warm
in the,
mouth,
opening, seeding
the stomach with its
extremities of being,
softly arching
and combining its
soil story with
my story
a man made of
empty narrative and
expanding sky.

POCKET MEMO

count
backward
to count at all
spread the
evening out
past,
- past
the linen
table cloth
- line it mathematically
born again
the mutable
bubble,
crisp truth
in
white
kitchen
light
knifes
the hock
and bursts
open
the black
wing
of starling, grackle
& crow.

fireside at the oil drum

why not dream of fish
why not translate easy symbols
faith,
have it
is the cola sign not a sign
red and white, austere
the color of Fresh blood on Bleached cotton
should the dingier square
not be a park, other than a rail yard
shouldn't the pond
contain Tilapia
instead of copper fillings
green as a dollar sign
i own more than 3 knifes, and
know that means gluttony
but i can not pair down the collection
this is the sand lot at the end of my mind
this is where i kick dirt and think,
halt at its corners, a ghost runner
standing in for some other person
at some other time, finding the fillet
blade waiting, i carve to the bone
the tissue, still living, it focuses, in and
blurs all the colors to one framed instant
that never existed- and now does.

why_why

three red cups, stacked
i document
to say yes
yes, my victimization
the knife wound of being alone
together or
of
waiting
for the reveal- for
the dust cover
of love to come off,
and then
finding that
the chemistry book is
Just Mathematics:
a long pause-
as this sun set slips in
the lids, rawly ground
by
the history of oil stains and
foot prints,
do you remember the pennies you once found,(?)
the pennies, like a lady
like a mother, like
the hen woman
of
each old cage, do you
remember the finding of lies behind
each specific thing and the truth
being only the way words string together
like popcorn garland,
hung for a Christ less
Christmas in July if only to make it
too funny to hate the whole goddamn
thing.

must untitle

sea: winter right wal-mart
the cabbie on brake,
feeds gulls behind
a dirty crystalline
dune: melting in
the sun
just a friendly day
fission every where
the
gray split up
sky
soiled avenues
push toward wilderness
and heave
envy not evil
but still a stagnant
shrill
in
decay
a
sea bird
fighting for a
ketchup crust of bun.

iknewtheives&theyknewme

it falls apart
it is reformed
it is a dead end with no exit
it is the magic of being trapped
it is coffee
it is theft
it is silent
love
it is more than this:
a [the] storm
blows in and transforms even the birds
the question is not what but how long
and
how intense the
flame
how intense the
shame
&
where
the shadow falls
where lies can be told
there-
the logical beast
the stray
sniffing at each can, at the wonder tree
at the asphalt of feet
the feet
of old age-
disease
of death-
the feet, that form palms in prayer
feet
that hand the knees to earth
not to beg
but to know the vibrant grass.

morning and smokestacks rate

The 56th street bridge
it is an old- over(pass), a word
puzzle long and gray
measuring the limp of industrial
sleep, blue snow falling- fresh
as the corner bar, 20 year old
scotch and white sheet wife beater
blasted in crisp finger
grease, calligraphy spelling out
extinction, and the undeath of youth
the furnace of the hart, smelts
the fearless, and the suicide as one
and on the present bus passing the
demolition of these grandfather
factories i watch empty rail cars, fill
with iron with concrete with the
invisible names and as they leave
the last car is full of the rails
that brought it to this place trying
erase a stubborn ghost from this
graveyard land.

brimming cup of dawns home

single garbage cans line (like poplars)
Thursday morning in the park, trailers gloom
pre-bright
misty light
crucial streets, straight to
the air port, the wayward
duck
the elegant Canadian flock
geese
slicing precious air space biologic
and dangerous to canned commerce, as if
all the truck stops should shutter
between
Kansas and the greasy backdrop of
youth
the cotton stained, deep in the weave
of things
still so thin, still the
stars are pin
hole to oblivion, cold pockets
hints of the indifference
algorithm, searching out
name after name until
the last spent syllable
corrupts
time with it valuable silver and spares
no sinner
trading names for shekels
in the nameless temple.

quickly the teeth grind show

LET ME KNOW something ABOUT FORGETTING
LET THE sparrow
be my witness
to the slow spring of mid June
and the collapsing future's fall
an autumn so hue golden
that this now spring dies
like the shadow of AN empty glove,
like a town disappearing in to
its own population, watch the dog on the chain the
fortunate one that remembers nothing
clinging though to
each moment as it is jumping
down.

pencil, pen, drill

remember it mattering
the day after
the twisted roots of April
do cover your head with
your hands and remember, then
and its promised oblivion
do you remember the cold brotherhood
you felt to the other
your hates and loves
your spectacular jealousies
mounted on TV
the movies and the huge
submarine logos
that circle even now the sea
like a ghastly uncle unheard
in the attic, screaming to nobody.

morphology

next to the green field
and the
side of beef
i dwell, citizen
of the deceased estate, longer than
a dream shadow
snatched for
white wash, and canvas desperate love
like a song filtered through the muslin of
eyes
the shock of love lost moves
like a hand dealing
cards
blows to
the head
the tomb stone rips up to the daisy sky
and avalanches of graves
follow the
heart as it
reasons itself to the
carbon map of
dry bone
and ash velvety
as the newest skin

talkarrowtalkarrowtalkarrow

talk because August caught
sleepers in January dream
automatic decent
wine launched the
permanent me
so qualified
as a memento:
ghost
a silver chain
to... asbestos
there the original mooring,
the posted soul
south-west
sage, smugged
across
apt
green-ways, corridors
vacuum cleaners sealed in the
museum mind> listening
for the dust to
creak,
the mustiness opens
up to fresh love, the
coast all sea foam
&
salt
lust
broken album, bathroom shoot ups
and
the silent night of Christmas
all
drip
drip
drip
through the steel evening
through out
the hopeful sleeper-
a mind, through
August caught
in auto-launch.

Defthandsoap

What i knew as automatic
the waters at mid morning
the corner store filled with bread,
with beer-- with equal sunsets-
the sidewalk has led me in a
circle to my past, the
long fault line
of time
burst the global
muscle of eternity
over the lips of love
speaks the
dark hunter the curly fries
of truck stop dust
and earl grey silent tea &
lemon, the beautiful day
a bar full of parasols
like a country Like
all of Asia combine
to spring suns
from a rust cage of calenders
to fall at once jokes
weapons toys yo-yos
egg yokes gold
you know
the standards of
cheap mystery.

never seen it kid, never

Aberdeen filled with blood
known and crude,
poured out in coffee fulls
great howling moons
marbled down the gray asphalt
under the ascendancy of Night
like a weekend singed by
vodka, straight Siberia to
the brain- straight
disobedient blue notes tapped [out]
on toy pianos- in the
nowhere collage dorm- before
the album skipped the
seeds where hosted on
Diver Down and let go
out the window for
the squirrels, for the weight
of one quarter of an ounce,
to germinate- the next 20 years
in a jocular wistful, windblown
proof of purchase.

stacklights;northsidenight

i am formed in the
beast brown fields
in between the sand, stone and smashed
glass conglomerate
glinting down industrial row
i am the ghost of chlorine
my hand has broken
holding my own in this
doomed Provence border
kingdom of rust and lustrous chemicals
saving every spent dream,
(crematorium scull cap furnace full)
fueling Lenten anger
my newest food: deprivation
a catalog of overtime
and baby boom- stuffed
with it until the last
tendril of mind is chocked
and still, unable to move that
luckless palm out in to the
world unable to draw the
next card, unable to out
maneuver yesterdays long
shadow, and move out in to
Canadian breeze- Arizona sun.

wormwood thimble full

and all we want to know is if the
road is ruined, if we can say
the mouth will chew or kiss
if a hands touch
will empty us, or
fill our life up -
if the coin is copper
or nickel, this time-
if silver is extinct then
let us hunt her bone for
bone in the dollar store-
watch season, season, as the side walk reveals its
age;
cloistered life, Purslane, and Shepherds purse
watch as the trees rip apart
nearly every early
spring, wait for the soft
ruin to come, if the fertile has
also anger, eventually
enough to fight for fools gold
and feral metal beer, pop, tin can
or will the silver vain run
along the spine of her pearls-
or
slow, bolster, scales, tang
cut a line
demarcating the edges of a cumulus
day dream, clay, sticks, rain
built for stuck, built to sail.

after long long night

beeps in reverse
a dilapidated heap
heaves its yellow core
through Sunday sleep
the yesterday of funeral & festival
pasted with a wink,
nudged by tomorrow, the
running gag builds family
homes, power plant dams,
and in these yesterdays
crafts broad tomorrows
solemn giants serious as
your own blood coming
out, thin ghosts and thin
time converging
at this present heading
to qualify all time
from death to beginning

foil

alone in a room
i love you-

the world is not
a lonely room-

when i am with you
i am a vacant
claw gripping

clay-less being,

each
erupted pebble

fortifies my

harts
beating-

seals in
the chamber of
my chest

dust that renders
the vaguest
features of your face

what her jawline ignores

you have made me old,
a Buddha string hanging
from
a
daisy
a
tragic muffler
young
as palladium
green grass at the
dome
the girls are field
stones
on the path
qualified lovers
mark
an ocean
then a
grave
because of you,
i've
a hundred times
died stop motion
gray
if only your [photo] dancing where real
this time
lazy
and blue would
be beautiful and unchain
my heart
to sink through transparent
you

4RussianSeasons

spring frost almost
transparent,
It is the easiest blue I've ever known,
smoke leaves
its lazy tracing air to the
loam-
Drowsiness is the
upper jaw of heaven, still
dark at dawn.

seasons neologism,
Winds open
on all sides,
Not a drop is not disturbed,
the winter has stolen spring
corrects it

Then, it is summer,
dark and masculine
he
forces a bark: a slow howl emerges,
the dark
mouth bends light
heaviest green
no escape
for the Pleiades

as these
days drool down
neither sadness or resentment,
honey and salmon,
as a guest
in the eyes of a rabbit
where faith quarrels alone

October sniper
winds
pose along
roads, and wail
The poor alms of
twilight means-
Friends, age
in this term graciously.

Autumn wood almost golden,
its shine is
not sunlight,
snow-blunt and transparent, blue so
Tranquil, dry and devolved
that the contest ends
in the beloveds
bed.

cigarettes of light and misery

Peter I have senses- plastic as
the hours- crows ending in
dynamos- industrial
forms- come on Joe,
come with me- it is unbelievable
this wing makes noise
of voices over head
the tarmac is ready
the obscenity of
light is
dancing and making
the soldiers home sick
for weaving
the buried are not weeping the
powder is bleating and sweating in the
brass ball cartridge waiting
the paper is molding and the
hands are unfolding at
the whistle the gassing- and the
dawn breaking out like a warning.

mascara bags

[human bon bon]

nothing left,
the banks are closed to the
tide tonight
the boats have drifted
out
with
the ice
the silent pause
is filled in the format
of the global call,
the cell phone, is a butter fly
present in the void
such soft wings to
kiss an ear, long ago the
meat left the bone
and the stew grew thick
mythologic foam
oceans grey, blue green
and bursting soup seaweed
cells to the corner ceiling
of the 3rd story walk up
room-
carry your breath with you
when the hopeless moan
casts over
like a razor cymbal-
there breath in
and be once, 13.

words, words, words

blue mountain, there
the television
runs on coal, the
world bleeds plants
to flame
and the electromagnetic
charms of light
fill the
hollow textbook with
flowers,
like Sylvia, dieing
once more before
the unbearable hands
of adolescence
there, burned in the mists of campfire
songs-
(lets have it then:
pavement and aftershave)
the coins in the mayors pocket
dwindle down to bus fare and
the constituency, you too
become
turnstile jumpers, in the rain
as it pours and pours.

used books

rain mixes with oil with dirt
with the voice of the
man on the phone begging for
one more chance,
being alive
he will get one
but still
after
hanging up
the phone
he shuffles back
alone to his
room at the
YMCA, out side the window
the
street lights mix
the smear of tires
around yesterdays corner
there ghosts
the errors of being
close the door-
in the light of the moon
every thing combines
blue into Tuesday night
rain-
the mind wanders
south and then east
through this mess of one
splashing galosh after another
in search of
the next calls coin.

galvanizedsoundcore.

C130 prop engine
echoes cupped hands to the
bottom
of this
dear roads aching pot holes
melting under memories lean Sunday South Carolina
green trees
i am measuring release
with white
island sand
new words for
knife wounds
mortared sick leave disease
there is
gray birth and clay-less mother mathematics
drenched in chloroform love
time disabuses each crow south lawn of
of the pyromaniacs that the
heart mollycoddles with matches and gin
a step through doors the knife edge spelled out
in 1st grade song detonating over The city
ripping A sky
for 55 years
silent
March has come and gone and the print radiates
guardian, juices sweet and invalid
holding all comers at bay
the door closes effortlessly and
the solid machine spreads warm afternoons in to
the purled ghost of May.

rewards program

the core eases lee ward, not toward the

sun

mind you

but toward faith, temples, vacant malls

toward new mountains

signaling the grape

crushed in the broken hand

the bloom of glass-lightning-sand

there a crisp circling of birds:

means- for the lonely

rain,

yellow leaves falling

and the sidewalk,

walnut tea stained

bleeding
a fortune tellers copper coined palm.

Atlimitlesswindow.

Cramps the tool – wrench

under the breast

the New Worm Moon is desperate

and reflects it's none-ness

on to the midnight street

fingers each leaf of fate

the evolution of skin

softens

under longings totem

the folds of ocean tides

under the influence of

moons moribund ride

returns blue and

pale, an easy Phoebe

in the weeks to

come, oh yeah clandestine

rose over our

back lot trees

one single star, or

Jupiter, angry

sputtering and alone

waiting for crisp

union, in springs soft

water dissolution.

cannibals.

her blue eyes are

littered with

pillow cases of candy and

star wars movies,

she is well

aged

in her thirties

and has run

most of her devils in to the

ground, her protracted seasons

where just

sweet tarts and mounds

of industrious

rage released

as love love, and there she

has stayed,

taunting all comers

to take their

best last shot,

the past remains re-glued and

untouchable,

there sitting on her

day bed,

her high school journal

labeled journal

and her poetry

labeled poetry, then,

now

in a box under that muffled bed-

but this is not about her

cubical life, it is about the

orchards,

10 miles

from her apartment, her

mothers house,

so close to the

farmers market-

its about

her sheets, her bath robe her

long, empty Sundays, its about her

not being

with me, its about me.

Bagged sea salt cheap

I salt my carrots with
necklace rust, my slow sun
drags numb oil
across asphalt blue trails
the stiff element of time
like
a
spoiled
pen, remorse coats none
of these documents
the ink is remote from its
formula- this like sunfish
crappie,
the maelstrom carp- raining down
on to this listing map
drawn in to life a skin of seconds
shimmering liver, or pancreas
sweetbreads, the brain
i am packed full of these ticking
guts, a sunset in nylon, lard
in a gill net, easing out the
wide wide holes that caught
time to begin with.

buried

i've decided to bluster
smash a small chair, be bold
once and
then retire to
drunken equanimity
wriggling the fish through
the net one last time
freedom, and then the pan,
how lovely is that
freedom- deboned and
popping the olives pressed
to sear, a holy land flowering
calamity,
so so long in the sun the
farm land fits in to the palm of the
hand, pushed together the
hands mostly remember to plead,
and mostly forget to open and receive.

void as dragon

there is a creeping waster all-
an orange goblin benefactor-
a monstrous cabbage eater
we are THE POLISH
and the dancers on fire, flamed in ghosts and
parasols,
do you know the interactive
value of the iris,
i never knew how little to trust
and if the bread is black it
either feeds or eats the heart
it stands still-
the heart to hold pins & needles
a bouquet of hypodermics,
blood the slippery finger of the soul
holds the fish hook
like gruel, cruel barb of
mythical square, bowl and
portal to the gut
of history
so packed with crap the rose
police,
with their only gold watch will
hope to beat the sister of your sister
and order YOU more water for your whiskey on weekdays
and bright blue hydrophilic beach breezy drinks
on the dullest of sports car weekends- give
a scrape of melancholy, moulder at the base
of clocks, and release [off] minutes like
swimmer meant for the graves of the sea.

yturtyurt

move the method stirrups
to the sweet face, in the
glacial fields, letting the
air born fall westward over the horizon
the wild turkey cringes in midnight
march, waiting on the
hot hot heat of
morning
to institute the howling of life-
hang the freezing at the door, find
northern rest at the
hearth restate every brick with a
photograph,
and quote constantly
the genera of each age
so incorrectly that
the text
fables freshly out
your mouth
like minted sticks of gum
the collateral of each birth to
chew anew, the
gargle of the past
we are here poised for ever
and hoping the glove of history has
slipped, it strangles like a hand
every chance it gets.

ourness

the last moment of her apparatus
collects points at her lip
freshest makeup applied, plys
the evening air
warm paws from beasts bloodiest
chill, and
her eyes canned champagne-
the rolled
isotopes of stars
wrinkling time, she holds
the hand of eternity still at the
side of her heart
hard as sheet rock, coiled creek beds and Triceratops fossils glazed
in museum cases
empty the rest of history
as her cells beat the wing of blue
sea change: foam
the color of everything
pulsed until death.

bluegun2.

remember the record will skip
and the glass will empty
before you are through
there are no one
mores,
the cows wander to the ocean shore
the grackle
pierces the faithful sky
the wolf grouches in her decline
the broad metallic
element of sky skiffs a sailing
vessel right through
the loveless hart, and the purest potion runs to
dark
know this about the morning commute, the wheat
the shopping cart, know this
that we, we all are
privileged as the sun to
burn, to
radiate, out here in the
cool weightlessness of our lives
turn heavy and inward and start glowing
until unbearable,
you start exploding.

filled: secrets harden the walls

this measures it
the head ticking
counter clockwise
reflexive,
waiting for the fragment
past to become
whole, (again) contacted
pure- she said: love
like bar soap
or afternoon
chocolate
dry goods
the stuff
vary named
in parcel
i want that package love
(again) but i know that-
that bow box is
stuffed with wax lipped
words, powdery and soft a
brutalizer confection
it laughs its injection,
deep swells the bolus
and nothing-
but dry fever and editing
this (again) bachelor's room
tight as scripted ash
sick with
moldering pansies
and crazed plates
all muck and mild lather
caps blown off pens-
double measure, tranquil
caffeinated leasure, its walls
coated in dawn and resin,
a place for a dusty heart
to cough and bother where
memories die and gather
under unwritten letters.

ante fish, the stone

rearrange capital
intricacies, so much
to lose here in the
dollar store,
she blondes her best
like plums blushing
in the sun
so tired in her
motherhood, and sweet
her hand is as hard
as a carpet knife
and-still-rips the sullen
stitches, upward
awkward
moments frayed
toward a ceiling who's
white heart turned to
grey years ago
one night after
a penny poker
game where time and
money where won and lost
hour after hour until
all lots had been drawn
and discarded, ending
in ribbons of dawn.

kite in trees.

my mouth is filled
with goodbye kisses,
ancient, longing- meaningless
my lips linger on regret, so
often
my tongue traces, the text
of a lost lover, a girl gone
to some where warmer, and
sure, a florida, or
arizona- i know this
is the only stamp NORMAL
i'll ever get from them
the wives of the world-
to brush up against it, that solid
place, and linger on a residents lips
only to be dismissed.

a.) scales the murder makes news when she is free melody.

three octaves, up, or

down, these

old measures,

these skipping stones, ringing time

earnest, liquids, blessed- in silence,

a ganged cacophony randomizes

in her shallows,

the sexless

prince unfolds carp and magnolia

plush, encountered on the shore

heavy beach, caressing

the down town hours

away from the animal

tooth, the claws retract,

the bloodless night

is about to change, the

steal so close at hand.

there.

mathematics round out the
evenings dog teeth
slave to the history of hours
so many multiples, pulled
through dark cloth,
so many eyes in the petrified night
dwell in row houses and under queens
like super market equations,
figuring
the number GRAPE, and
it dense illusions, i know
it was crushed long ago
foiled in
gold and pantry dust
To: Can hours and tomatoes
to paint red over
the sterling black and white
photo time is sealed there, as it
still
pours in.

Heater as fire hazard

In the winter corner
there the
electric coil
riots through
cold near night
30 years after
monumental snows
fresh faced, fractals
proceed to seem
the same, I
have unbound my
heart, mid-valentines
& find no warmth
there for love
foot prints unfound
drawn deep into
snow banked streets-
a city silent buried,
washed under soft electric
glow- motionless
crystalline (my heart
my heart) cold- sterile
refusing loves lustrous heat.