a bearable sadness

the nervous quiver crescents
her infinity pointing finger,
frames a slivered grin that rounds
a silver bend of no remand
to question the crook that beckons.

a paucity of proud ferns
governed by a cyclic transit
waltzes a bearable sadness
into the ephemeral forever,
neither controlled nor understood
in the stiletto culture of cut stones.

the swift paving does not matter,
points of elegance are discarded
into the dusty bins of then.

bad trump and leaky skins
thinly flashing, flashing, flashing:
a fanfare of loneliness
wetly queued by damp embouchure.

a misty sadness only bearable
exquisitely barks from piers of gray.

we bow to bovine competence

the lowing now complete,
in the depression of the dew
we are freed of onyx grimace
and the jeweled greed that cuffed,
unexpectedly this,
a sooty halo of clever slavery:

it asked of us a trembling throne
unwanted by sire or throng
and muffled by the why:

resurrected by milky tides,
forced from the warm blue melt
into the green of trembling dawn.

the low again will echo home:
a rescue from the herd of circles
and the smell of trampled grass.

crumbled like the walls of when

the feet are still curled impatiently
outside the down filled womb,
mooching a cool that will not blow
in a tomb beyond encumbrance:

shadowy etchings shudder doom
and there is no horn to shriek,
despite our brassy confidence.

this sense of autumnal coldness
is not thawed by rhythm springs
that creep but cannot squash
the mordant bounce of echo
or the freckled swell of tears:

we both deny retarded sleep
and force the deck for giggles-
gray swabs wash a tidal grief
that is terrycloth and tearful.

when the seasonal leap is readied,
only the wings of the wasp do sting.

visions of Ruthie

in the ocean where I took her,
she was early beyond the breakers:

from the probing waves that tempt,
foaming in the pleasing salt,
she was fractious in the spray.

somehow trapped in sea glass tides,
I could only hold the strand-

abrade the grains of fingered beach
to ease her drowning image
from my cloudy sail of hours.

oh sea! oh beach of swelling seasons!

she clawed an eight piece scuttle
in a season strewn with minor wrecks:

far into sunlight the waterless ocean
carelessly lapped its bony diet.

the brain unfolds like mobius

i. the fever cops a heavy dream

denseness is birthed with a twisted cord,
a procession of blue pines that chants weight
and perversely collapses into seedling rust-
finial density that kills conviction
and smugly fevers the physics of crush,

a vernal notice that pushes breath
and pulse to the purple of freeze-
nothing compressed completely
can last devoid of gravitas
or a gloss of verbal trust:

it's not the sweat that matters in the humid night,
just flanneled pajamas with pockets that cling.

ii. the sweet irony of singular redemption

generally mounded into cairns at poles,
out of the icy north we twist,
in the hoary south we spurt:

we bark, we crow, we cluck, we bay-
renewal is beckoned but suspect now
in the spreading of our malty grain.

the ruler embossed with gold ticks is useless,
and censers only panic the sweaty scream,
mystery flayed away from normalcy
as the second grace is offered thirst:

around again the carnage first
and the weight and birth of pain.

it's all happening at once

in the static waiting moment
I think incessantly of your ring,
trying to seize each breathy moment
that crosses the frosty line
hoping the ice will freeze this yearning
that is then and now and when.

to the graceless eyes of passing hints
the rhythm of your form is lost
in the flutter of wind-blown litter,
blinded by the climate chaos
of handbill bark and paper cups:
heads down and hands in pocket,
your spectral moment breezes.

I see you in laundromat abstract,
tumbling in space that morphs to time
in a front-loading gurgle of foam,
ending in rivulets near the wash of cry:
your eyes inked upon papyrus
as the dhows pass with striped sails
curved against the racing clouds;
even then it seems I loved you.

did my chase continue
through the colored clocks of carousels
where nocturnal spins are normal
and stallions bare their frozen grief?

was that you pounding linens
on flat black shoals
under the flowering quince
with its orange promise
of tart speckled fullness?

I sense no tearless eyes
or dry loins or barren deltas
on the shoals of our slick issue,

merely hints of did and do and when.

the sacrement of territorial markings

now in shadow honey silhouettes
are each a metronome of dripping passion
roughed in gray face by gentle flames,

waxy licks run from saline tongues.

the stained glass is marked in shadow,
a rainbow chronicle of lust and waste
where martyrs are mortared and tasted
in the dewy sip from a piquant chalice.

statues flicker in the fire
that naturally claims
the sooty sweating brick
and persuades the pulsing vault:

a crypt of tongues lashes the mossy seam.

freckled exurberance goes dark

i. the rule of pimpled privilege

when the eye-liner clique has snaked its orbit
from the pale water through a wan puddle:

(they were distractedly birthed
into a storm of thudding vacancy,
then mollified and pimpled
by sugary bursts of pebbly toast)

when the delta burst, black and prickly,
they pumped into the shaved paradise,
the end of cutesy splashy in yellow slickers-

the lost lash of false photographic glee
faded to the washed-out colors
of hazy dysfunctional memories
captured in scattered snapshots.

then the toy horn squawked annoyingly
and moistened, through the Manhattan afternoon,
the flowered shifts of graying aunts at play.

this we term awakening.

ii. when the pecking is paradox

devoid of magic, their end is marked,
but the chosen, bored, seek prey.

they mill and swagger and sweat and smoke,
birthing milky emotions of imminent doom:
their stomp is weak but artfully crass
against the pale of subdued classes
whose pronounced freckles telegraph
the innocence of speechless normality.

their styled screech of fake hurt is mirrored
in matte kohl and drama insipidly Gothic,
enacted by the coddled loiter.
an epic grasp climaxes with the eye roll
against distracted masters:

in private, they cry from heartbreak
and the streaks require Kleenex.

weep not, their metal too is chrome.

iii. the ivy league disgorges

here will strut the hallowed issue,

emitted from a line of chromed behemoths
piloted by efficient haircuts with spiky shoes,
braking in dried crotch day-planner overload,
rushing to a suck that pleases no-one
but masquerades as titillation in the suburbs
when the Martinis overflow into honesty
and labored raises conflate with nylon grins.

there are many ways to live.

iv. long in the art of suffering

in the way preferred by anatomy,
hierarchical submission is a tribe insane
despite its perfect grooming of hairs and suits.

it births a cruel that wilts a blooming smile
and crushes too the seeds of why.

when Apollo shot a bad load

when the sun's higher than the sky
and a massive liberating pulse
tongues your cheek's brown stubble
with dancing licks of constant fire,
replacing any trace of equine travel
with the kestrel screech of downed surprise:
here, you might forget your youth
and grin toothless at the dawn.

a less ceaseless flame might offer thrills:
a peck of dirt from blossoms long away
pushes through the bloody fields,
erupting where khaki is nourishment
and caravans amble from the Hindu Kush
to the plateaus of green-eyed wonder.
where arms are made from scratch
and shooting is normal and eternal:
you will eat this peck before you shrivel
and are shroud wrapped into kicked-up dust-

this is a form of salvation
that is lost on repeaters of chants
and builders of chanceries,
unrecognized by watchers of the circle
thumbing beads of Chinese jade
in the stifling market-place:
there must be some escape
from this bitter white dust.

these are only hazy dreams
encouraged by the silent crow
flapping wings against the black,
following a dusty course to finality
and oneness with the gods of imagination.

to burn you not this rush cannot,
when the sun's lower than the ground
and you beneath the ground still yearn:
sleep, my lovely, sleep.

the thrill of missing meters

if you played the inker
in a latticed leafy space,
and gave tattoos with a grave
sense of silky weaving
across the web of arms and face-

if tatooed skin you also spun
like gems revolved within a drum,
the pearly polished discharge
would leap in arcs electric,
the shadows and flickers caught
in gray-green mezzotints-

if savagely wet we also pressed
against a cushion of yielding moss,
and worshiped in a moment
the issued scent of slippery dew,
grown musky from the green blossom thrust-

when sweat trickles but ink persists,
caressed by twigs but not released:
who could doubt our verdigris?

one way to grok your leave

you take my spurn so lonely hot
when like my go you ought burn not.
spot me stay if you might lean
but debt me then a dearth of seem.

look under the fern you urban pagan

crossword picture puzzle blues evolve,
rushing from the elasticity of solve
headlong into the pulsing green and silver:

a long aura lost upon the retina,
where recovery does not matter.

(if paradise were due,
it could be used for recall,
but control is not the motive)

dare to stare the wavering sun
and the gods will slap you fickle.

(do not let that stop you)

a chorus of love that boils with truth
might dry this heathen measure.

(their joke is not forgotten)

from scree to southern moss

quirky platforms from the summit tumble,
arriving at a quiet pool
where granite wedges bubbles.

gyration on the lodgepole pine
mocks cracked rock anomaly,
the hidden mirth of dapple.

in the dancing plot of staring ferns
scoped to light above the giggles,
this tarn a want of dusky spores,
their eyes follow the fevered ball:

we need to lap despite the eyes
where lapping can be fertile.

small grains favor coolness
at the bottom of a fault,
sliding into blindness.

cool knobs of verdant oaths
allow tubers to let us promise
a shadowed rise of evergreen:

we know these streams and cones and moss.

hush, little piskies
twittering in the rush-
it's only humans rooting:

there are spores and needles galore-

carve a forest for gnarled runes
near the promise of a stream.

scalp problems

the muse in candied underwear
flew up my nose, right out my hair-

she give my lice new eyes to see
Beauty, Truth, Eternity:

each flaky sheet a work complete,
my dandruff falls in volumes.

socialization errata

duck woman with your webby lips
how deck these cards of random?

better plush a seemly life
at the risk of dance abandon.