Half the friends I had, where long, long dead

I have not forgotten time,
when the hands of the clock drag me under,
pulling me down to shopping carts and 55 gallon drums
looking up at a broken yoke sun, I know
the iron gate of time, so go and float
down the river w/ old friends, count the bodies
that wash up on the red shale banks and wait for
the currents to bend in to back eddies, an
endless circling of dawn's joy like new born minutes
you count the cloudless sky a blessing
still you move down the folded water
toward the lake, toward the sea, with the
intuition of salt, as a sleepy mind begins
wondering how you got so far out, now
that the mile marker is in sight, it is a
bleak suggestion that to return, the swim will be a fight
find some thing, find it because it is lost and the carp will
eat it and grow monstrous w/ scales made of copper
and eyes of fire that see the globe of time descending
(the thing lost to every one on this river)
and when you come to the rocky beach at last,
the fish that had the golden ball will be only
bones buried in sand.

Mornings wet in the sun

I want to know the
the mystery of asphalt
the decayed ghosts of buildings in my city
i am baptized daily in
the mist of the Falls
but sin envy at every
corner, all the Japanese
and Koreans seeing my
streets and water
for the first time through
windows of buses dispatched
from Toronto, I know they are
happy to smile in front
of the rainbow, a snapshot
freezing the linear madness
of time slipping away from us all
but they do not know the secret
migration of the unhappy
and broken away to Atlanta
or some where Maryland, leaving
an emptiness that strides each
heart beat, we are a casino wager here
bad choices with money and yet hope
keeps the city thriving
with motion, a man
pushing a shopping cart
filled with empties, a woman
begging cigarettes and change
we need something to fill
the pot holes where our hearts where
and we find it and we do it
finally with or with out
the world that comes
to see water fall
167 feet to the rocks below, as
our lives rise and sink like the water
thought turbines lighting
cities and people else where not knowing
what the light switch means as
it goes on and finally off.

Feathers and blood magic

Death is the monster of beauty
what lines come in the sun of
early morning
death is the grackle, is the crow
is the obsession with birds at all
we know them by name and
have whispered them like secret
mathematics, 8 grackles, it means
something, a single heron, an eagle
we we we are dominated by this-
hoping the day becomes important
because a murder of crows sits in
the dead maple, or 2 crows and a
red wined black bird are chasing
a hawk, how important, it's like
vision, it's nature and it is outside
commerce completely, save for the
book to I.D. such important players
and so she, and me separately now
strike out, to see, to elevate the
moment, to soar or sing differently
free for a time, important, of wing.

Try a little harder to be happy

I have dreamed of
the street melting tar
and all the life lived
walking the blue black
the sun hazy behind
pollution, purple ma bey
and the feet move regardless
lost in the middle of now and
the geologic time of the road
I a paused by 3 crows
tearing apart a pidgin
feathers floating in the breeze,
they are proud and guilt
ridden by their desire
I feel hot with the shame
the living always feel
I continue walking and
the tar sticks to me
black iridescences like
crow wings, I am
walking over the dead and
now I feel it in my feet the long
shadow the falls on pigeons
and crows and men

what is bitter but the pill you prescribe to your self

fresh in the scent lemon
a sun shines the shoulder of a
girl drinking tea
mouthing words to no one
where am I
a long time since the brown
home town wintered under a Canadian
north west wind I winter
now in a hospital that
replaces all the wished for cold
a bed surrounded by
cops and me a corpse
who else knew this mind
but the invisible board of life
vetoing every move forward
agreeing to a lesson instead
of motion like talons burned
black and remade in to the silver
gold of mercy, a lie a
classroom of pain but there is
Art Park in February
where I will one day stand
petrified under clouds about to
dump more snow then
Ive ever seen in a short cold life.

salt at the seasons end

salt at the seasons end, the
the plant flowers gray noise

all this comes together
finally to come apart

the sky gathers a storm only
to be blown to sun

all this comes together
finally to come apart

the walker is blown east and
north and at dawn back home,

all this comes together
finally to come apart

the addition of rice or prayer
will help the unjoining

all this comes together
finally to come apart

the glue that the world applies is
loosened by logic, or magic

all this comes together
finally to come apart

all things
come apart under tears.

all this comes together
finally to come apart

the dark morph- blue no longer, now white

i invited a nightmare
and it came, a shadow of
ash it rested its silk generously
over all things to bury a panic,
under it's hooked epidemic-
bored of its own fangs, sunk
in the the sun warm second of
asphalt, any abandon parkway will
do, or closet or
any room, to grow
muscles and toxicity,
the keenest
of claws, draw blood, not clean and
oyster coppery but hard as the sun that
dries out bones, white as talc
a bleached reel of memory
repeating... i know more than this
i know more than this
but i do not know any more
this now institution has held me aloft
and dropped me, as small
as a nest feather, to the ground,
blown to the river, where
i float and fall with a tide
i am forgetting, and a current
carrying me closer to oblivion

Marco among the stone walls

Where is this? I do not know,
just that i must have been there
the only value of this blurry photograph,
a note from the past, a note from
the person i was,
the person i must now forgive,
what a legacy of guilt you have
left, rocks in the shadow, stones in the light
built up like
walls, bone the center
each echo a voice fossilized in each brick
the mortar groaning in the bright morning
laughing at the absurd notion that this light
is the same
as yesterdays light, and that all our yesterday are
built up strong as walls, as small as dust.

breadfruit the pineapple with green

first the thought is i am crazy
then as time goes on and the
foundation of
a soul is built, my
feet as they walk produce an echo in the
pea gravel under the asphalt,
whispers return and the whole race of feet
march collectively,
under the grey is blue and in the darkest black
is mixed light cobalt,
a truth or not it is one
piece in the puzzle, the
window i look out of, where i
see the veil, a torn curtain, a desperation
of stitching, and want nothing
more then surreality,
French lessons, lions on beaches, all
golden all hallucinatory, an alarm clock in my mouth
going off when just the right combination of
words build up and instead of speaking, i wake up

there the wood sorrel grew last

the snow will sustain, the rest of the afternoon,
before the evening breaks its pink blood in to
squid and indigo, and the tablet count
will fall out
sheet
after sheet from the unwritten book,
the
new dead and the un-reined horse,
all ghosts of a season discarded
now held up like glass to the light by
young words and in a cruel infant vernacular
spread by snickering into
old phone trees, tossed aside
for dust off bees wings as
each head looks for the next gum drop
the homonym
community, where there is never
a haunting below zero degrees, where the hands
break through human skin and grab
each candy cellophane of heat
to let loose the mind
from the ferocity of the present enemy
a moment turned to face the steel charts of
clause and indemnity.