talk to me: notebook page 3

discharged, slim narrow blue
white the revelation is electric
there, in the swallow still lingers
illness, and paper work and
long hours chanting out
childhood until it is vespers
the Lords Prayer, a hand
washing a hand, and the clean
dry winter that comes crisp fresh
and never ending, I breath deep
and feel each crystal forming
the solidity of health
in the caverns that once housed
ghosts, art, feeling- the power of
need and the hand extended,
the haunted mind reaching.

there were duck- then none.

the snow
belts against my face
a pleasure unrackable
standing east, that
is knowing where i am or
where i am going-
i feel maybe- ok
about the prospect of
being lost,
the weather
agrees
and becomes
colder, lonesome cars
dwindle until only
tow trucks, plows and
ATVs wheel the street, me
and a dog or
alone, the stars only
speaking any easy
english, vipers- holy
twist around me,
and i handle them
the past
wells up like strychnine
and each drop kisses
a open new eternity
in the crisp supernatural
evening, my jaw begins to
numb, to freeze,
and i call out
in mumbled incoherent
ecstasies
for the return of
some thing, my frozen
hands can't seize.

8 o'clock dandelion tea

there are two stars which are
planets and the moon, and
the sky should be unbalanced,
but instead blinks
radical symmetry
i look up
from the dogs i am
walking, and
hear past the wind chimes
on the porch to the
church bells, evensong,
mans verse to man
and i switch these lights
so fast it is
this thinking; renamed
and under the influential
strobe, stone
moves left then right,
and grows hips, swaying
to the chimes and finally lips
to sing out all the bells
ever rung.

permutation read as cream

Here there is
an electrician
a snow storm
the sun-
in the stone of a peach, the
eye
envies the pear
its complete
edibility-
complicit soft lips
and the mind
lingers over her, the subtle
spring of
life
its self
but my hand stops
at the
end of my skin, and
my heart
the bar car drunk
full
of love and travel, can go
no further,
and the looseness of
the world
unshackles completely, and tragically
fear grips me first- instead of
the intense
liberation of falling.

1989 tile project remains

i have anchored myself in anger-
chains pinch the mind
to bleed- a longing
for rest is created
where the iron and
enduring skin meet
the eyes swing open
like arms to embrace
anything, to over paint
this wicked feeling and
fall like Rome in fire, or
meteors of light in to the
oxidized night of pain, a
grooved phosphorescence to
pale the world of ache- still
words rumble and form solid
identity like this-like brick
left to cure
in the sun, and
build a person slowly to withstand
wind and gather a cellar of sand
only to fall prey to its own
construction, the echo chamber
the halls meandered, that collect something
more insidious than rain, that busts
the walls out, and needs to be build up
again.

one.

...when we touch
we enter touch entirely. No one’s alone.

-Anne Sexton
THE TRUTH THE DEAD KNOW

You swing open a smile
and the sea opens inside me
the corpuscle of doubt turns
to periwinkle and dives through
cool October like a stone
my hand fits like
a small mercy on your hip
and lingers its ghost there
when not there- haunting
bone white light days,
with longing-
your eyes
smile and open in morning
with autumns unseasonable
warmth and the heart
that once died warms in
the last groans of summer sun;
your beauty and grace that
rises one full turn to
raise me up past the
dark brick and concrete of
the city and landscape a
man, from tidal rocks and sand
breathe- espuma life in to me a
instantaneous anemone of love
as constant as the days
rising light and hope
and life beyond anything
the dead may know-
because it is love that haunts me
here- and I long to be haunted

some [warm] body only yesterday

immerse Berrie
and purple throttle
choke
silences the engine
on Balmer Road
out to
Springville & Harley
Festival- twined
to the rush of
streets warm with
late season sun
and bleeding
asphalt, there the
contingent
burrows dark ribbons in to
hearts- promised
to heresies and
the distilled smolder of
each cubic centimeter
chromed- holy and unforgiving
the mistakes the flesh
has made:
gravel, granite, grave.

epaulets and melodies.

Touchdown I
--------------------
Orange Cat IV
--------------------

a.
thirteen misspelled birds
typed under the color
black and green,
the parrot is named
grenade- produce
reintroduced as
heirloom- new

b.
seals cracked the
long maligned petroleum
mold, red Bristol Cream
holds each modern wheel
loaned, rehearsed by the
numbers the unsigned
check lays like constant
renewal and rebuke- hating
all insanity but rubbing
against it like an orange cat
& celebrating it, with a
touchdown dance.

thebuffaloavenue

the bartender 23
a blond girl - encroaches
on me; solid behind
a beer- her happiness
wreaks against
me, perfume, eye shadow
and glare, she does
know this thing
having boy after boy
leave her heart
corralled by a lie-
it is that despair,
a letter sent and returned,
a drum submerged
it is a despair that will
not be ringed by
words, it is a deep
sadness, a cobble
stone under asphalt,
blue green and alone
long under horse hooves and
shit pushed slowly deeper
by each tractor trailer tire.

tools to know the way home.

metal stakes the cement, the floor
cracks along the
long line of history
the metal pushes up and floats all of mankind
like a feather
answers ribbon asphalt, and glue
wanes to perfection the
grease
reflecting the first single star
of solitude- evening.

$10.80

corn burns golden under
a sun foreign
the razor mimics
the soul and lets
go of the peeled
imagination,
i am here at this
cross road
burned by the
wonder of grass
blinded by
flowers and
wasted by the
space
in which
they grow.

the option of innocence

if i were to say blue
and spell it to you
with three extra letters
i would be cheating
it would be an admission,
there -
is your admission,
there is the gate, the take the
five syllables,
first
and third line
making sense of fall
and winter,
of the frozen toe
the child left to feed sea gulls,
the lonely
mother
leafing her magazine
i know and do not know the city
is raised daily
and the fires start
and stop with the
dawn and no one will ever
stop that
there is no utopia, not
while there are human hands, not
while there is fire

the myth of what really happens; family

i.

what else is
there to hate-
the fried egg,
& the pan
slips out of hand, a
grandfather
rises terrible
and human, an eye lost to
cancer, "i shouldn't
have let them take it"

ia.

they
where gods as they are
and his denial
mattered little
to that remote man
that skillfully
removed each
element of
death from his physical head
but his god shrunk like a penis
in early April keeling
a dark water lake trying to
swim to the other side
but unwilling the body
also wilts

ii.

the bloom growing steady
and under shadows of 5 o'clock
love lives a drop
on the tongue
a sweet measure of the
mortality rate on
Friday afternoon
the new mother hoping to scribble
a hopeful warning
about love
about letting the unbearable
in each daughter passing the dark
note famously quiet to
the next in line

iii.

this north country is
measured
tough under dry wall screws
and counter sunk nails
the wind curls the docks
like soft eye lashes
batting love looks at you

iiia.

despite minnow traps
and plastic decoys
resting in a duffel
until fall

iv.

the gun and the hound
all night animal
closing around
one thousand
lakes and islands here
the eyes steady
the boat
the wind takes quietly
and empty of
a rower to cattails,
muskellunge, pike
and the sound of an
egret lifting in flight

merry tool, sorry shoe

so regretted: the sea gull dead
and now it
wont come at all
the sun wakes
to stones, to horse apples
to the
anachronistic speech
of the last hopeful- one
the rain
comes and we
are happy
and stuck
in its down pour, ringing
the afternoon with
its steel
cage, leaving the too old
to fix puzzles and
gossip grave friends
up and down the flower lane
and the torch
they hold blows out
upside- down the drain pipe
wash
one hundred seeds,
the street
sheds its foam and libertine
garbage, the whole earth
shutters
under claw
and the cat wakes
to stare down
another man, that dared to
walk his way at all.

how the city grows barely

there is the fastest inflammatory word
the fastest lapse
of love that out lasts every stone,
smooth it rides
the heart to a glowing rich
ruby a glass and bloodless red
there in the alley the
spent and shattered to jem
the destroyed glitter in the
worn street lights proliferate gaze
the hungry crawl slowly
to sleep mired in
these tossed out dreams,
the scrapes of passion
wasted to the knife,
fork and plate
hopeful love is added and consumed
valued quickly and left for seagulls
beggar men and shopping carts, stolen
and pushed slowly through grease,
garbage and sleep long till
morning light.

yards off the rack

let the charged heart,
be broken
forever
and repeat the same instinct
to love
too crippled- to look back
the bones mend
and the walker moves
unsteady
but still forward,
dreams cash in
with howling winds
and hail where
the bobcat meows
terrible in the east lane
and love is battered, lost
unmoving
like a homeless man stolen
in a roofless garage
over whelmed
by quiet rage
and the
hope
to be left alone,
still the
heart wanders on
and
is found time
and again
like words
for
the bricks, the pipes
the stones that
mix with the million
human lives
crumbled to this remainder
a fair child
born in this city
mute
and so
desperate for the animal,
the clawed passion
of being
that the morning is rung in
gold and purple
by her fate and her longing
there the
devastation is
surrounded and
blessed,
like a coronation,
the
crowing of a
stubborn heart
pierced finally by
the silver
leaf of love and the single
sustained
note off the
lovers tongue.

how to burn June a cinder

these steps are the last the
blue stone gloms to the
shoe holding a firm
hope a heart
beating out the spring like a
step, a sun filed with a
shyness that is
not there, the words that
are the rays of the sun
pierce each smallness of earth
and burn in to
the core some how
to bleed the green juniper
the red carnation out
and then our skin roars
under its violence
which is love confused and
brutal, but love like no other.

ohdearno.

let the pages
fall open
to the answer the
long shores
of each night
crash there
hair colored the
stone monuments put
on hold
the dreams
of morning light
are
dull shears
and the paper
birds eat only
holy ghosts
all day long in the
shadow of
elm trees,
the rescinded
living- the icon elm
brought down by what is
truly grievance, truly
mortal and
pleasing purple tin.

needing to hear each stone rattle

the needle is
threaded with
words, as the
beautiful
terror tornado
is the sound
of a
freight train,
the
capsule is
the first
thing we know
and words
form in the
infant mouth
like steel,
like rails
traveling
west,
east and
up from south to
meet the cool
intellect
of New York City,
a full
inoculation
against manner
and
habeas corpus
and
even
then the linguist
can
not capitalize-
words carve
deep
the furrow
meaning plants
mortal
man
full of death
and only an
artist can
reap its
bloom
before its
final
fruit is
shown.

the food the table the window

we first know our parents
through the deaths they have
suffered- the terms at which
the accountable heart becomes
softly human, and the
man, the woman become
more than stockholm syndrome
and adore- becomes a
holy word, and the child's
feet fill with clay and
carry the body full
of ghosts across a field
of corn stalks turned
back to earth.

the fifth against the wall

consider
the
terradactyl sex
so extinct
in me
so morbidly
obese
that rock
dwells
eons under feet
and moves to
soft sand,
a gentle
wind
kiss
so long
on the
island's shore like
more elaborate
games and
bobbled breezes
squeezed to
hemorrhaging,
the finger nail
burnished red
to gray the
russet
colored one
tastes first
of love-
the rein
before the hand,
the heart should
lead and let the
that fruit plant
deep its seed
and flower there
again.

back story and undo

Komatsu raze the
city, the sharp stroke
of gears, chains link
brick to the devastated
sand, washing down
Rainbow boulevard, a clue
to how far we have come
the blocks vanish and
dreamed monolith's
mirror
both suns in it
the east constructs
sharp yellow
ascendancy
and the easy blue evening
encroaches at
sun sets cornered
and silent mouth
so think our body is that
monument solemn in darkness
the sun burns on
though the world has
turned away, and
the cycle refreshes even
the ash of the old city
in the broad company
of morning light, the body's
heart expanding to greet
warm being.

rattled in the brezze of meaning

deep in the green
rush, some thing
corresponds with the river
its long hand note, is
sent by the notion,
of movement
of the bare foot touching the
untouched forever, and there
knowing the persistence
of the grower
to keep on under
the asphalt cover, the
street dwindles and
recedes and is hoped back
by the community
of hands
it is black then gray
then blue under the spring rain
and the men call out under
its weight, for rest or
abandonment, and i walk
over this labor, loved
and hated, and i move
toward the
river, the silent completion
that leafs through each page
of being-
and dumb as snake ribs
caresses the walls of
its haunted sheathing, and
suggests a crawl
as if it is evolving
toward a more recognizable
casing, or is it
my thumb, and fingers
crafting digits to grasp-
in delusion, a understanding.

even grows the thin man

i.
knowing there is a
broad leaf waiting,
knowing there
is a
bullet changed
for gold
for water
for mineral rice, i know
there is some thing
willing to push
the street up and
willing to
flatten the sound of
sirens and church bells
and guard dogs
belting out
there beating
on
me: sleeping,

ii.
the sun is green
today
and muddy with
clay
the volcano of
creation,
violently takes lead
in the parade,
the flowers have come back-
is it
even possible-
can't
you now believe
in resurrection
being the hind
leg and dangerous
scratching out the
silver bulbs of being
tubes that reach down
to the middle
of the earth where
the hand opens to
the heart of
all things- cool dirt
the hard hope
of new seasons
the thunder
at the foot
of falls all night
the orchid grows
while you remain unwilling

theanimalofgrimtimes.

The casino would survive an
atomic blast,
and cast its sycamore
shadow over all the cinders
of the city, glowing in the
orange sun Niagara the coast
of never ending apocalypse
would rise- a blue and cool
gaming obelisk
wide with wealth
and deterioration,
the so hardened souls would
inhale devastation
like Canadian fresh west air
and glow green verdigris
a copper so clear
a currency of love would flow from
their fingers like coins,
and caressed slots, all opened
and loose as the streets
asphalt melted and shimmering
sin in the
gloom shine off tar, all noon and
snowing the evening grows and i alone would
stand to record the last syllables of time
as the sky turns to stone, flakes
sharp as stars fall from frozen
obsidian, to tear the bridal veil
and inscribe humanity's name one last
time across the face of falling water.

cans and the past hand of pick up.

I am a man
defeated by art,
waiting for a woman to pull me up
and knowing the lush
velvet of my Niagara river
surly as her faithful hand
is pulling me under,
what else is there to do but compare
stones and apples,
hearts and hawks and handsaws
finish the roads out of here
with pea gravel and
hope for distant dirt roads
and pencils, and charcoals
to fill the afternoons
to look to the hand,
my hand to unburden the whole
earth of my consciousness, fueled
and twitching on caffeine and blunt rage
know each of these dark streets holds
its silver coin, its mysterious
relic that i should know, should
find and bring back to the glitter show, but
now i hold only blank post cards
to send out notes of regret, and
explanations for my abandonment.

away away away

whats lost again
in the shadow
of the
sun new-
as
the
clock
has been refreshed
by imaginations long
handled mindfulness
shoes linger near
the
door
waiting on
each increment of
the
bloated sun
to harden
in to a summer season
so the owl may again
fly against
the fat
mouse holding
out for the same
harvest as this
human man
wanting the days
of ease to reign down on
each one endless
spreading out
scattered like seeds
on the dinner table
the perpetual grace
promised
to us at birth
by lies, by our mothers lies
the famous orange
of sunset and pink like
bath water in adolescence.

travel_along

the pounding red club of color
rises the sun in the morning, the
kid breaks his arm in flying off the
swing
the artist cuts open new
canvases with bristles sharp as blades, the
palette a knife, a pill a weekend
the summer squirts from a tube,
lust as juicy fruit- oil,
linseed dribbled
and boiled down to silver constancy
scorches every eye born
to the crackling metaphor, happening
on the visor,
the screen
the hand caresses in to being the
blues are a silent guitar
alive dwindled down to air- there
it
captures the moth
again and lights night in to
marigolds and vicious zinnias
in to the solid wooden
flame
turning earth to smoke
all lives revisited again-
still just a
hollow inset
driven near mad
by the language of it all,
the it though
capsules that night
that purple darkness green and
feeds to the world whole and growing
like greed love the lust of
human receiving.

valentine_08

love first rises,
in autumn
its eastern sun
blued by longing
she enters
the red door
in glowing portage
bearing
the long boat of
her beauty
a delicate frame to
buoy my
lonesome body-
her smile
extended to touch
each singed part
of me and
slowly
with graceful
healing, chanted
small
songs in to
my cupped
ear- hearing
each note as
it struck my
heart and grew
a proliferation
of seasons, but
these have shortened
in to one
long evening,
where hours have
lost all meaning,
and the final
measure
of me ends at
my joys beginning.

travel form

love resides some where in the weeds,
some where in the mowed grass
of the interstate,
it forms as a dream behind
the garage in London Ontario
it is the book that has been writing its
self since then
it is my new city, burdened by its Formica
and slate
red brick
and bones, lumping streets-
cobble stone,
the orchards of ghost grow
new
souls daily
the collective moan
blows its low horn
through the rapids, and finds me hat on head
breathing cold wars, and
cereal plants
woven to vapor still expanding in
the spreading mist, the splintered back of
the Niagara rising, to the Eire jet stream
and lowering on to cabbage, corn, and
dark earth grape vine.

more the known, knows.

lying
in the waste of excess
i climb the
battery of morning
through
noon purple hues
each divided by its own pink
a division stopped
at my window sill
i remember only the
challenged evening
out of time
through rumpled
sheets of
memory, her there
and still as a ghost,
walled in, only aqua-marine
eyes blink their imposible
blue and crowd
my empty heart,
a calm shifting of
centuries happens there, before
sleep,
before the
first inkling
of need,
pure,
genuine it rises
and the fingers
of mind reach
out,
whispering- companion,
a soft
blanketing
for a soul
once bare
rendering new cloth
from
vacancy
or
air
to spoil
January's delivered
cruelties
and lend peace in February's
hungry waiting stare

bare wires and concrete

I have to hear the city
new, to know her
destroyed wrists, supple
and exploding, quiet with
in their course of aging, i need
to walk these side walks elevated,
shocked by the bright indifference of the
sun and the bone fleck moon,
i trace my heart on the named avenues,
and pace out a life measuring the ally
for neighbors loyalties, this kingdom of
dust and ash can rust, watching each
moth, ascend the seasonal tree, being
captured in the cicadas bronze
summer soundings, all collide here
in this city, desolate, growing
so many flowers, and tomatoes, prayers
of thanksgiving and the ghastly echoes
pushed along still to chlorinate the
dew, and purify the simplicity of being
i walk knowing and not, like love
afraid of what dark thing i will map
in the course of wandering, and
see finally the face of my own longings
deformed by loneliness grown tough
and empty by singularity, a house-less road,
forgotten by the cities tender municipalities.

know know 123 know...5

so transfer the cloth
the rag of witches the dark
colloquial
word
left out on the
street like a moved heart, the
kidney blood
of forgotten language,
i need this back
the lest word
replete with for
ever repeating voices,
bullets laid in mud
and to be the finder of that
golden domesticity
let it be me, forgo all fame
for the catastrophic vision of
a virtuoso, collecting the
debris of a city full of souls,
grinding out the miracle of
misery, the miracle of living,
busting
up toward a reluctant sun

all dull beside the spring

so comely
the absolute
deception the spirits
envision
wanting and
long shadows, beneath the mist
i awaken to candy, to foolish
adventuring
the already
fled monsters- so luminous in
the earth, crowned blue,
grave massive gems, grotesque
behind the wind- where the
day is hard
& across the
water a ticking clock
plagiarist, communist,
the manual
suggests a traveler
leaving
his hotel with out knowing why
while around his
vacant eyes the city burns
out gasoline and cruel need

maiden tale & catnip sleep

a saw meets bone
the carpenter, weeps blood
from stone estuary eyes
i know, this type of
knowing, metal glowing
wood receiving the element
of civility, the pavement
reflects the rain when it
rains, church bells dominate
rooms filled with faithfully
faithless; bound to seasons
more now then any ancient
farmer, wives count days
as artful as a miser and
know when the down pour,
downfall is coming, they
are secretly saving up for
escape.

can dropper

missive, the last mast of
happiness, resolves the
motive of love, the
heart breaks the well of
stone, the code of dark north
brightens to know Polaris
and the dog star, howling
lets loose the colloquial left overs
for her, for the fern of my
brain, so long in the pan the
world ached the rest of
faith out like blood, at the
wound kneeing in prayer,
the solemnity wasted on no priest
wasted on the fulfillment
of past promises, of past hosts,
reconciling and left to ring
around a stone already thrown.