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.