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

talk to me: notebook page 3

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

there were duck- then none.

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

8 o'clock dandelion tea

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