The standard size of envelopes

tonight
mergansers trim the moon language
shave misted verbs before the plunge
let us all in line answer-
word for word
love, concrete
an understanding of wire
as the corrupted
symbol of the steel heart
of stone dropped
instantly dropped in to the body
and counted as a soul,
the same view as Maine
or Brooklyn NYC, I know the
deep intrusion of this copper- it is
oxidizing inside of me, water
fire- first green, now dented blue
lunatic azurite, and wolfs at malachite
more fluvial then animal it flows
to the delineated day
framed in heavy arithmetic
until lit by the sun, all
orange in October
and December medium rare
pink and gray the defined
thing hangs there
ice and Spanish moss like
memories
like hair from every limb
waiting like water waits
for a place to go, with
tiny packages of each stone-
earth and moon, to carry
along like its own.

chlorine the migration of chimera

Condensing tanks
vapor their waste waters
to blue electric, a
flame, a ghost moon
a flare burning out under
water, a river passing into
rock in to language
in to the myth that
created man, hard
hearted and broken
in to a thousand living
landmarks, a sky frozen
and shattered in to
the Christmas lights we
long for, looking up through
trees through the dark
fingers of new man-
stars our ever clear
gaze that stares
down the night and
guilds each walker
home, to adventure
or dreams or the gamble
that this last
saunter will be the
final addition to the
puzzle and walking will
become flying and
flying will be floating
on light water,
the bone hand
lifting of the river, where
the ghost moon nightly
sinks and rises.

the furnace language in semaphore December

all the dead come to
visit in this shallow,
strides like river water ripple the
ghastly and the mundane
at this one hour, the
bones that crush,
dust up the out line of
each ghost, filled with girlfriends
high schools,
cars blank and mute with
clouds and clouds of smoke
hash the edible and the insoluble oil
mixes the memory to
quiescent grease the cement
of my soul at this hour
dead, dead and willing to put
a match to every building, every hut i
could later sleep in, to be now warm.

streets are numbered in the body, bones and more

what is the brick in the field, a pile
of red remembrance, a working mans
cinder a rich mans ashes
walk here in the windy chimera, the ginkgo
bough bearing the faces of each that passes
desolation and Buffalo avenue, collide
in the eyes of trout and heron alike
recording our endeavor recording
the finality of the Falls- on and on for ever,
our history working to shrink this haunting
sliver to buildings and photographs,
anything that can be built up, to fall down
and mark the train yard a red that
remembers bleeding.

to the last coffee draining the last man

what else is there to hate
the fried egg, in the pan
slips out of hand, the grandfather
rises
terrible
and human, an eye lost to
cancer, "i shouldn't
have let them take it" as
if we
were God and his denial
mattered-
where is the cocktail hour man
that skilfully
removed each
element of
death from our physical heads
sweet dreams that I have
curled at the end of my finger nails
while
the bloom keeps growing steady
and under the shadows of 5 oclock
on some clock- a drop
in the mortality
rate on this friday afternoon-- coos gentle
on the leisure of
this pale gloom
the green hands of this woman
hop up to scribble
hopeful warnings
about fresh
lenders, of glow and comfort glove;
about letting the unbearable
in, this north country is measured
tough under screw and nail
the wind curls the docks
like soft eye lashes
batting wire minnow traps
to balls of twine
where decoys rest in a duffel
and
rot none in the frozen
gun of this place bird shot
clearing every last heart beat from
the blue of crackling
Canadian sky spheres mouthing prayers
preparing our passage as we go down
to die.

mention to me the dragonfly

asphalt, brays it’s black gray
pea gravel screams, and tar, gleams
pocketing a destroyers sun then, sudden as stars- extinction
the wings find purchases in stillness
death has bought a moment of
equanimity before the soft, earnest feast
before the history of light & furry
can be written- the pale blue & common
flowers bloom palms- and my human mind
sees biplanes & wind mills, wars &
ultra-violent mushroom clouds
smoldering, a sign rising from glass paneled wings
dormant in forever; a proud sparrow
vacant as a Nazi, hopping to the maddest
dictators- heart and mind unraveling a power no greater
than rain, a gentle demolition a shadow cast by the moon
all nothing- only there to remind me of the clay growing up
through my own feet, and my cloistered fire fed by time
hardening each breath, each vein, until my eyes are opaque
and my sight is as rigid as glass- burned pure stone my
heart, rugged porcelain waits for the day it is broken,
by beak or claw or the blizzard feet of the one longed for.

stir ashes with twigs tonight.

introduced early to
discrete disappearances
new water in the corridor
revels no surprises
there blinks the eyes that
are past eyes,
and and a mouth filled with
black straw smolders
in silence
knowing the footsteps that
echo, knowing the breath
that fills the chamber walls,
each moment a brick that
builds the room of life where
dusting capacitors, and
ringing coffee pots fresh
with their electric directives;
glass and silver- connect
each morning to rest
against a wall of dawn where
the reluctant mind reflects
on the cautious mouth
surrounded by chrome and sun
exhaling a calligraphy
that writes out the
pervasive soul- a book
read over and over, in memory of you.

re-aging the permanent loan

the inside blade cuts
as gravity melts my weight
shifts and perfects a filigree rendering
my breath against stone still sky
the glide turns green, malachite; my mind
a smooth crystal descending
tips meet sky and snow as
it deepens- cups fill like spoons
the sky drops its clappers
for the dark bell of evenings sound
question nothing
i open the palm of my hand
and drag all that I've held
up, behind me- a carnival of
time and let the rumble of
thunder call up lighting to
burn this gray baggage white
as a destroyed sun until time releases
all old injuries and reverses
the current of my heart- its
measured beating washed in ice
and the sent of pine needles blending
a prayer formed of silence, speed and
freezing.

licking mercury stones.

time now to reread
each moment- carve
and set, the
rigid thing
into,
a fragile ornament
calendar of hours, of
festival flowers
revive her supple
bone,
that there
the
descending hip
doesn't
sound too
American
her tongue
collapsing
and rising in
shape song
in,
across a boundary
over water to a new
country- a jagged
beauty that
makes her words
sometimes pretty
ugly.

2 mysteries 3

a leaf chases
a pretzel bag
like a bird
after a squirrel
these dead and
empty objects hear
weird music woven
into wet spring
where young die
and thrive, shell
game with out
the pea, no
hand in the
glove that raises
them up but
their dance is
one of lost
souls and survival
coursing through the
air like unborn
dandelions, daredevils a
shriek stained by
sun, blue, and rare
now not forgotten.

fastest car early in town

i dreamed i was the
murder innocent
sent to murder
a idea- belief,
i have crowned in
solitary coronation,
my own head-
and mortified my
green cranium- moon juiced
and swimming i
transmit the channels
of all the reckless dead
until you feel my
faithlessness and stop
asking me why i can't
kneel and can not stop
mouthing words in to
the vacant ear of the world
silently.

25

i remember the rocky shore
of Lake Michigan- full of
vodka and still morning- yet
just steady enough to make
my next 8 hour shift hustling
100 dollar bottles of wine, and
4 dollar pepsi's- summer on
Mackinac drawn up and down
by horses, or my transport
a red Schwinn found in upstate
garbage, lowercase new york,
a prize I cobbled together
to save fare, and make it to
the store for more beer, I
wanted more, love or the smell
of its meat, its inexhaustible flower
crushed to simple sent, I know
I wanted something more- the
world sent letters to my reckless longing
and prayers for all ten lubricated
knuckles, that sought relief, of their
own envy or anger, stumps at the
end of my arms linear time, grave stones
marked and dusting in the shop waiting
to be planted in to dry wall or moist earth-
thoughts that limped downward,
to the shore, navigating by bridge lights
and stars, moons and morning sun
hiding there, the way beauty is unbearable
and secret, the way each day organized
its self with such stunning gravity that
I was pulled to a past that never happened,
that now fills me complete
with its dream and impossible yearning.

we were asphalt and the sea; the upper river

the suns irritate the the lawn
mower obliterating each delicate
lemon headed lion
under blade and disinterest-
butchers wine out in to the air
salad of days and days,
that collect and form rooms in my
brain for gods,
rocks
and
birds as bones
that
dance and try to take wing
but of course can not, the fish found are
found dead and huge-
the ever moving gut blown out
but other wise the whole machine
is intact and not gray, with the
exception of the eyes
and here over the dead body
i lament nothing but the emptying of my
own lake, the diverted river within
powering turbines of anger,
masked lust softened to look like love
and dangerous passions
that pump in to my heart
effluent PCB and other poisons
more deadly.

dead mans pen ; dead woman fills the instrument

dead womans ink
so truly past dust
the sun obliterates
her bones to sand-
a reconstitution of land
I witness Niagara Street
bottle caps gleaming like
coins and feel the
partials of a past sun
pass right through me
and on to oblivion, where
my bones tropism toward
sand grow the city's
brownfield geography larger
as it has grown its sweet
toxicity deep in to the bones
and arteries of me.

twice measure the dress for wounds

so the heart full becomes a tired word,
knows each intersection the city
raw after vivisection,
a full life story, no new ink
the page as small
as a single man steering through
midnight, trouble
is the quantum mechanics of
greatness and house hold
gods sweeping up the corners of
an unfinished attic room
all messed up she said leaving
and dried the blood rag against
a blue forehead, ablation,then
camphor and rage a shark swimming
becomes one as
antiseptic as cartilage,
filled in the frozen land with longing
the heart greens to gold and darkness in to
a violence un-perfected, a blunt ax
braking down doors to a house not yet
on fire and so a crime and not a hero at
all but an address flowered with poppies
- madness, and the flimsy dead

build a new fire at midnight

there in the gray change of spent yesterdays,
a new vocabulary waits to be spoken
where
the red fox paired in spring, visits
a solitary man, clothed in smoke and trees
and dream for him in pictograph, the wilderness, and
the full palm of his
hand to reach out
and pencil electric sticks in to being
to circuit the mind with embers and ashes
laid out in twigs and leaves, a cartography of
branches, matching the forest that meets us
at the edge of silence and meaning.

February apropos the firsts of Spring

the dead haunt me
in the same way the living haunt me
they peer behind words, behind
products, they fill shelves
at the dingy florescence of Kmart
they spread salt and speak kindly
about me- when I am not present
they love and love, courageously
my Aunt explains the mysteries
of day old bread and the microwave,
memories fill as solid as a blue crayon
drawing a line around me of not
quite sadness, but a stillness-
life quiescent in melancholy.

third avenue blues count oil 1, 2...

8 smaller faces- lean back
there curves down
citrine luscious and orange
and chain mail dangerous
chain letter love or money
the catastrophe of sex
a penitent virtue now
in wax wood
middle-age a stroll a
country without
border guards- salt on a
slippery road,
all gravel and potholes- blessed
the broken axle,
still
crumbling down the road
remembering the combustion
engine heart, by the
cold metal sheared to
spark.

what the cat paw evening brings in claws.

The ceiling falls in and
under it- before its collapse
is a last kiss,
the triumphant hope
the joyous boast of lust
it knows nothing of
futility
and
wanders to a breast
and is turned
away
by volcanic dust
show us the derelict
love, pissing its pants
pleading for
dignity
it is lost- a
contained
disgust,
bring on the
sarcophagus, and the
reburial of the
once dead
heart, / or Mender
let this be
your last
needle, enter and exit
stringless- with
no thread to bear
the mend to
it’s barren
cousin- i don't care
for hope, lame
and weak-
feeble
as a discarded crutch
no longer wanted
to bear the weight
of handicap- or a
broken leg, of the
fast immobile barstool
the
last landscape remains,
each saloon- lounging an
afternoon through
corpses of beer & beer
let that be
a truth
it is as neon
and swallowed as
the open road
whore of signage
and sleep deprived
stone kickers
let the pool table
resurrect me, each cue
one Moses
one temple
chalked blue- no don't
play for the heart that
longs for no heart
crush it under
foot and keep
walking fresh from the
beautiful nicotine
buzz- ringing your head.

salad for queens and the street

lattice work crowds out the next spring
fabulous green blue ascendancy, and rings
aghast a gnash of teeth into algae
stopped in February
pouring over the dam of
my mind meandering
sauntering and asking
each passer by to support
me and my lineage- man so holy
i don't know the words but even
choking on immigrant salt
and citizens patriot launches of
perfection i hear the splintering
twig, the crow wing the midnight
of matrimony sing
and lend to me all the dream
and dreary
lengths of humanity, here on old falls,
and the sound
of the parkway drowning i hear gulls
long gone in winters field speak
echoes of white and pure being,
almost
as silently as distant redwood trees