michael kudela poetry

the holding of light

2011-11-04T23:27:00.000-05:00

you know the pool in love canal,
my now girlfriend, the one that loves
Jesus, the one that might be the one
says over the phone, i am not on the phone
but answer, yes i know it-
yes i know
it holds deep blue benzine and
bubbles of pure noon
each a container of sun, and I know
that it has recorded
my youth, silent
as a spring of hard iron
water constant as limestone
time runs to it
like my fathers love, a combination
of duty and anger,
the quiet maleness of doing
the manifesting disfigured intention
a rage of convention, defines civilization
digging holes and filling them in
finding purpose in the action -alone
the auto drive to work
the cage a woman becomes,
after she calms the sea, gray with
anger so deep
it is white
and she
provides earnest flying lessons
to those birds of desire
the ego like a window on fire with
mornings to come, and a finality
in the mourning of moving,
hands and dwellings
first one home then two- 4 houses
split parceled out like seconds swept
clean by a hand counting the
minutes we
dwell in becoming whole
recordable truths, a pool dug
in dirty soil, soiled dirt
its is a simple list of the
sacrilege, my parents
grocery list become confused
in the milk and eggs of everyday, as
we would shoehorn church in to the yawn of
Sunday morning, my spirit longing for
the tragic, the blood i knew was true
now though i know the water
is cold, and the chlorine is
strong as white stones, and the only
poisons swimming in the deep end
is the past that threatens to stop me
and pull me down past the embers of midday
fracturing time and propriety
where i and he and this 91st street pool become
one thing, and just the memory
is whispered, like a gust, a God
through the leaves of an aspen tree.

buried in the calendar

2011-11-04T23:26:00.000-05:00

For me alone
God tugged a dark text
from the lemon light page sour with
morning sun, a ghost called to
dance in the melody of memory,
copper flavored as a mollusk, and
grown even, heavily biologic with
rage to haunt the steal
blade ego me, sideways through the
blank street of my marigold and mercury
sunrise machine,
Riding the clocks fastest hand
gravity’s thought astounds as
suddenly as a goldfish, curling faith
to cream, and weaving in the
willow trees that limn each
separate memory, in blue & pebble gray
along each orange scale burns the
difference, pronounced as night &
day
a wobble of axis, the word made into
rock, clay, dust and abandoned where
the glued stones shine by the
slices of light that accumulate into
a life long railroad, traveling east-west
a fixture of spirit, silver as a
gun delivers to me daily
new lead, dull madness inscribed
in my mind
forever two lines, running alone
together, a darkness of wood and stone
between us too, a million rails burning
sun untouched for a life, but for
the antler of shade where deer
crisp through September apples
I ache at all this gleaming gold
pressed up against a window pane
my mind winding
hair into sweaters and scraps of sweaters
into quilts, a feminine finger points
me north, a signal of that cold
freedom, courting the moon in winter
night, snow & space colliding in my eyes
a colorless world, metal lie
and before me now grows hands of
blue sky after its slumber, drunk and abandoned
love keeps me quarreling, pull at the wheel of
life, pouring out glass after glass, of this
electric thing, from some thing that seems
to be a great decanter of late December.

toes in the depth of cold shadow

2011-07-28T07:05:00.001-05:00

there, growers in lean times.

2011-07-28T07:04:00.000-05:00

pale with grief
I ride the sun in to
the flat black rooftops of the
abandoned and boarded
hold outs, the
solider skeletons of
the immaculate desert- downtown
the last daisy flying
up in solitary wind
my widening eyes
empty burning a
crescent moon in the blue
lung sky I exhale a
pattern of street lights
solemn and begging, bums, food almost
never,
wanters- but mostly cash, a story a
lie- if not one cigarette, two
a quarter,
some how 33 cents seems to be a scam,
too
the unbelievable made true
by urgency, panic, desperation glue
to hold their brass words up against the
shredded sun, telling it to children too
softy though
because it is so quiet now
in my city
that
the mice wail, and gather
under its purple hour
to call her home,
Midnight, Midnight, And she comes like a wife.

granted for you in stone & out

2011-05-20T22:54:00.005-05:00

where sand is gravity
a baltimore
oriole
reminds me in number
that it is the birds, that limn each
line of poetry
further away- husking the
silk, and refining the poor,
out
of their mouths gold is dropping, and the
secret bubble is (a cupboard that is wrinkled blued
as a gun, and draining)
busting in side of the
wind, the last carriage of meaning
rests on each (remember the shopping cart of
books and the distant man...pointing at the rain)
wave (the riddle)a sort of killing, a fin
descending, the trophy of life,
an elaborate thing to say, (in gesture and gray)
I rest
when the
clock strikes ten
and cement
the dour corners
down, and
look, I see the end the end that is not
coming, what (posit, each number thoughtfully,
and empty to the night, the
other name for red, so cool)
gratitude we will
have- everyone (green and through----->)(yellow)
looking back, remembering the
possibility of extinction.

the haunch of venison is hung high; our place of honor and thigh

2011-03-07T19:36:00.002-05:00

this evening is the last
i will know, i have been extinct before,
and am i old now,
as the trees, as the moon
a violent clown sleeping and now
the question rings, like a dark telephone,
what is it now that i know, can i sense this thing-less thing,
shape a word around it and call it nothing- i know and
do not know, the moon, violent and laughed at,
drunk now and sleeping has been what i call
my heart, it twists on the river stationary, waiting
for some celestial fall
to bring a peaceful rise and maybe tomorrow it will occupy
the same sky as the sun, and lose its glow.

Mirror, ink and rabbit glue.

2011-01-31T13:39:00.002-05:00

i feel like death is near, not
the calm coin, Chinese
and a century worn out
in my hand ,
the
mind
that holds,
I know it as it
prowls
the handle
of my kitchen knife
the carrot a wrist, the killer
outside
garrote
with
in
twisting my heart tight
to breaking- fatal as love
rigid as a glass,
vibrating an unseen train traveling
with man and strange man
after stranger, like daffodils
a green that aspires for nothing but
hope strange men, and man hope
that
the bar car opens, before, the
trip brings them all through the silhouette
of the last town
before the diesel locomotive eventually
disappears in to some
weedy plain
or minor hill.

Half the friends I had, where long, long dead

2010-10-04T15:26:00.006-05:00

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

2010-09-16T11:37:00.002-05:00

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

2010-09-13T13:40:00.000-05:00

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

2010-09-13T13:24:00.001-05:00

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

2010-09-13T13:23:00.001-05:00

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

2010-09-09T17:00:00.001-05:00

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

2010-05-06T14:54:00.001-05:00

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

2010-02-28T10:36:00.002-05:00

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

2010-02-25T07:41:00.003-05:00

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

2010-02-12T14:43:00.002-05:00

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.

The standard size of envelopes

2009-12-22T13:09:00.001-05:00

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

2009-12-20T22:49:00.003-05:00

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

2009-12-18T18:09:00.002-05:00

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

2009-12-05T09:25:00.003-05:00

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

2009-11-18T18:57:00.002-05:00

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

2009-08-12T12:16:00.001-05:00

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.

2009-08-02T21:56:00.005-05:00

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

2009-07-29T12:38:00.001-05:00

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.

2009-05-17T11:07:00.002-05:00

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

2009-05-09T16:11:00.000-05:00

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

2009-05-09T16:10:00.003-05:00

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

2009-05-08T17:55:00.001-05:00

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

2009-04-28T10:45:00.010-05:00

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

2009-04-10T12:42:00.003-05:00

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

2009-03-21T10:45:00.001-05:00

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

2009-02-23T14:13:00.003-05:00

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

2009-02-07T12:32:00.003-05:00

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...

2009-01-20T15:52:00.003-05:00

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.

2009-01-12T11:30:00.002-05:00

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

2009-01-06T21:25:00.002-05:00

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

talk to me: notebook page 3

2008-12-15T20:33:00.001-05:00

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.

2008-12-07T10:22:00.005-05:00

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

2008-12-04T09:34:00.002-05:00

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

2008-11-28T14:07:00.002-05:00

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

2008-10-15T20:28:00.000-05:00

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.

2008-10-13T20:20:00.002-05:00

...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

2008-10-07T09:26:00.004-05:00

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.

2008-09-29T09:56:00.000-05:00

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

2008-09-29T07:56:00.000-05:00

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.

2008-09-25T21:46:00.003-05:00

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

2008-08-27T14:35:00.002-05:00

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

2008-08-15T09:43:00.002-05:00

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

2008-07-10T14:54:00.005-05:00

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

2008-07-09T09:00:00.004-05:00

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

2008-06-27T09:26:00.002-05:00

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

2008-06-16T21:31:00.001-05:00

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

2008-05-21T00:44:00.001-05:00

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.

2008-05-12T09:42:00.001-05:00

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

2008-05-01T11:11:00.004-05:00

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

2008-04-19T11:35:00.000-05:00

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

2008-04-17T14:40:00.000-05:00

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

2008-04-12T09:05:00.000-05:00

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

2008-04-06T08:27:00.002-05:00

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

2008-04-03T22:28:00.001-05:00

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.

2008-03-27T11:28:00.000-05:00

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.

2008-03-21T10:15:00.000-05:00

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

2008-03-11T19:14:00.000-05:00

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

2008-02-25T13:23:00.002-05:00

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

2008-02-14T00:19:00.002-05:00

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

2008-02-09T11:00:00.000-05:00

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.

2008-01-29T15:55:00.000-05:00

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

2008-01-19T11:12:00.000-05:00

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

2008-01-17T14:47:00.000-05:00

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

2008-01-17T14:27:00.000-05:00

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

2008-01-07T15:03:00.000-05:00

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

2008-01-01T12:44:00.000-05:00

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.

standing by a bed

2007-12-29T18:18:00.001-05:00

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

2007-12-29T18:09:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-19T14:58:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-18T11:20:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-16T17:33:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-14T14:42:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-12T12:34:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-10T13:58:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-08T11:36:00.000-05:00

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.

2007-12-03T13:28:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-03T13:08:00.000-05:00

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

2007-12-01T22:01:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-29T14:52:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-21T12:03:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-20T14:41:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-18T06:33:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-13T19:40:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-11T13:16:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-07T23:20:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-06T13:39:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-04T15:28:00.000-05:00

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

2007-10-31T19:21:00.000-05:00

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

2007-10-28T20:13:00.000-05:00

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

2007-10-28T19:11:00.001-05:00

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

2007-10-27T20:10:00.001-05:00

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.

2007-10-20T10:23:00.000-05:00

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

2007-10-14T10:55:00.000-05:00

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.