Sunday, December 26, 2010

Everglades (Flamingo), 2010

Spiny cirrus crystals over Florida Bay at becalmed sunrise
drifting wispy, the soaring fossil wings of feathered flight-
today the wind retires, royal palms are royal still beside
black vultures flocked and jostling carrion in dawn's rosy light.

White pelicans soar in formation with black tipped chevrons
riding warm thermals that rise from this prairie coastal strip,
a synchronicity unspoken controls the swooping squandron
on a blue canvas under the drooped mahogany's mossy tips.

Mud clay banks bunk over a beach strewn with swollen reeds
where footprints slide to gush at tides but never to stay at all:
no trace will ever tarry for the pert killdeer's feigning needs
nor save the brown splash of the proud pelican's swift fall.

The rustle in the bushes that made you freeze and turn behind
is a snake that slithers, mostly, in the mangrove of your mind.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

JD State Park, 2010

A coney lolls under cooling shadow of aluminum bins,
sniffs the humid wind blown through treeless hillocks
ignoring the loop of shell roads shorn of saplings thin
as when sight adheres past scrub pines and simple forks

to a swampy place where gators wait in carnal silence
and feral pigs bristle brown under fronds in rustling rut.
If always a pond in the sand it's a masked green suspense
while the river still swirls with tawny fishes schooled but

in the temporal buoyance of trolling on mirrored peace
the glass is broken with sudden rolls to a grassy shore.
A man yells Quebecois into a pay phone at river's beach
but the concessions stand will tender hickory as before,

so rest tonight, eyes heavenly as the cypher face of Orion
creeps from east to west in his glacial chase of setting suns.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Wekiwa Springs, 2010

Born to churn opaquely, the circular headwater spring's
constant warmth respires in rocky black and sandy aqua
where a fuming rises under igneous prisms of mossy cling
and a darting mirth of minnows quicksilvers the grotto spa

near a drained lantern's orange glow in fast fading light.
Scant promise from a sandy trail though beige meadows
where the orange blaze on gnarled pine fades to white
and leads a squint astray under the coniferous boughs.

An arc of bending darkness mistaken in creeping fog
skulks crackled under the foot near grey palms in line-
heard by a black paw a scratch on the fallen bark log
under the swirl of Ursa Minor and a sky dimmed pine

which float overhead in a glass from reflective remove
and, in tracking the stars, you can sense the earth move.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

in the still of the

Dancing so civilized with no recourse to fail,
she bawls with blanket clutched in woolen sweat
where, under a darkened porch, the play reveals
a paisley counterpane of ghostly pale barely lit,

her crystal d'arc of thirst a shadowed octagon.
The opaque prism is fast gulped clear of passion
and the night's caffeine pulse that greeds upon
a mattress flopped is the restless turning ration.

Vertical blinds quickly turned too dusty creaked
for the woolen blanket's dreaming seams to settle
against a random chance as rising dawn is peeked
with orange streaks dimly bounced on colored metal,
these slats that fail to seal a frontal vision leaked,
his leering spiked by turns of sharp edged nettle.



Sunday, November 21, 2010

Shadowy Salvation at Rest in Transit

The fluted profile that greys in shadow
over the imaginary Ionic column,
who sighed at sin for grinning over
the rumble of cracked macadam,
he utterly changes every time
the light bulb flickers in the creepy breeze.

The roar of the glasspacks is the wet fiction
that has been prophesy
in your purple tense of every instant instant
that might never even happen,
not unless in a thinly minded white conrer
just behind the flowered pantry door.

You're in good hands, he said,
it's only the squeak of a mouse.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Zouave Ghost at Antietam Creek, 2010

Across the wispy creek with vast fingers of mist all grasping
and braiding the twisted boughs whose leafless remorse
looks moonward to expose a stare at pitted metal rasping
and blankly downward on a slowly moving reflective course,

where perfect steel reports echo and pierce again a perfect day,
the muscles that no longer ache shimmer beneath the tatters
of once buttoned epaulets over an open jacket's scarlet fray
in moving mist both blue and grey where flesh has ceased to matter.

With no lost home warmth longing in winter snow to pretend to
it wanders adrift in memory's aching realm along the lonely banks
with no needs from its drained and scattered flesh to attend to
searching in vain in the moonlit mist for its blasted missing ranks.

If it turned to grin the beige chill would freeze your core:
those hollow eyes that once saw yellow now see no more.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Hogg Rock Vista, 2010

A notice of runes carved by worms under the bark
of a stripped and fallen trunk is the first sneaky clue
along the mild ridge-line that a forest has hidden marks
that are easily missed in late autumn's leaf filtered dew.

Distracted at first by the scenic view of fog ruled tides
made by white mist in the rippled murky vales below,
it's hard to tell the blue sky from blue ground, besides
patches of bright hiker nylon then rise and voices echo

not as humbly silent as the voiceless creatures underleaf.
Working sideways sans the fussy serifs of civilized noise
but slowly across the rotted and wooden hole-filled sheaf,
the runes are a sonnet where no clock wound and poised

is ready to rudely tick and tock the climb to something new:
atop the crags of Hogg Rock, under heaven, with nothing to do.






Saturday, November 13, 2010

Snavely Ford Trail, Antietam Creek, 2010

There is a place so oddly named though bloody stained
it does not roll easily from unschooled in local history lips
as other embattled places that have been less sadly drained
by a curving creek that perfectly mimics an unplanned trip.

What rolls behind is green, brown, and pastorally sound
and the trail from the bloody bridge to the bubbling ford
is quiet and sun-dappled from the banks to a rising ground-
silver pools leave half-leaved trunks through mirrors pored.

Walking noiseless as possible despite the autumn crisps reborn,
still no way not to flush the rutting stag to quickly sprint uphill
or cause the sleek grey owl to spring and sweep across the corn
as the nascent oxbow turns against the muddy banks and spills.

Around the yellow bend other magic may suddenly appear
but, ahead and alone in hazy fall, it's wonderfully quiet in here.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Wolf Rock, 2010

From the clouding gray of leafless endless branches
it bursts into view along the timber sprawled borders
of a hushed path where a rock wolf on granite haunches
was what was most guessed to prize the image hoarders,

a suddenly there dramatic cliff that yawns with height,
an immediate rise of quartzite from soft brown sponge
and green moss, the scattered snowlike sense of white
that catches the eye's corner and, almost deja vu, plunges

into self a sense of something to be scaled and divined.
There is no sense of the wolf in likeness to apprehend,
only the makeshift joy of hewn thrones under scrubby pines
and a crevice table spread with apples, cheese, and pita bread.

The faint sliver of a crescent moon over gray veins diurnal
is the howl of a wolf that stays a howl though mutely internal.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Harper's Ferry, 2010

There is a door just up river painted green
where two white torrents clash with spray,
inside where wispy rope fray curls unseen
that bound the wool wrapped corpse that lays

just down river in the bent autumn reeds
with black boots and face turned downward
looped with sisal and gauntly hidden needs.
Who would dare to turn that grey face skyward?

Behind the quiet door that is painted sickly green
the deed completed as the candle's scarlet dripped,
the pierced body wrapped and silence dragged unseen
to the rushing river with rough wool shroud unripped,

hidden until rosy springtime when the flood
will rinse the clues without a trace of blood.


[Note: I really don't care much for explanatory notes re: poetry since
I believe the poem is just the poem but, in this case, I will allow for an
exception. At Harper's Ferry, while strolling along the river, just at the
point where the Potomac and the Shenandoah rivers meet, there is a
corpse shrouded in a woolen blanket wrapped in sisal rope. I suspect
it's part of the exhibit, but it was shocking to see and there is still a
nagging doubt in my mind.]

Thursday, November 4, 2010

The Brunswick Line, 2010

Squeaky ache of squat wheels on cold steel track
departing near dawn with breath amber haloed
by vapor light from green poles of an earlier time,
a journey begins on rails ended by bolted plates:
there is only one direction in which to travel now,
south to the city of mausoleums and white stone.

The posted grid announces a three departure limit,
there are no good clocks for leaving smoky warmth-
all three hands are dark antique before the sun,
blue vinyl seats split in spots to soiled foam,
frosted cornfields grazed by shadowy deer
near grey tracks bent by the crescent moon.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Assateague, 2010

See now the yellow finch of bullet sleek and
flitting over a steep place of rocks and scrub
where against steady white crashes so tightly cling
tufts of aqua sea grass washed velvet by rhythmic tides

in a place where blond ponies strut and breed
among dunes with crusted sap loblolly pines
bent by constant wind across the salty marsh
where the storm has cut an inlet to be sure.

Monday, October 4, 2010

thirty-five measures, one wrong cut

There are certain sighs for which no gestures yet exist
signed the hushed lady in red and blue, hedged near
the small plump aubergine pokeberries about to burst
from dark and stormy silence into the rain drenched

psychedlic bursts of oily autumn pavement swirled
again sweet thrusts of summer to cloud sniffed dry,
a crisp paisley of turquoise, canary, and rust whirled
arrows and pesky sprays measured in neon blue pulses
highlighting how quickly the most effective incision

will enjoy the muffled comedy while it lasts as
an unholy trinity flickering with black flecks and
fiddling about with things quite gloriously taboo
through furtive curtains passed the frost glaze then

it was the morning of the rosy cirrus dawn,
an epic in which the bald Titan weeds his garden
whistling an etude while reseeding the bare spots
notes morphing from chance brown to fortune green
in the summer turf that was parched unseemly when

I distracted you from seeing the dead cardinal
knowing it would upset you so only in the mind
and I was teased by every red car that was not yours
but prompted me to think of your flourishing utopias:
athena on the half shell with flamingo escort
a pink pulsing speck in the periwinkle mandala.

We left in October with the calculus of tresspass made
before the down tumbling leaves came drinking then
an elixir made from pokeberries burst with scarlet
which might repress the breath's reject of healing air.

That this perfect slice of reality cannot not be the one
that we really deserve:

Those are just lines from an old grimoire.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

the stuff that dreams

Was it in a nightly rite of purple pique
that the wobbly stanchion light was lit
and gilded with a thin taut elastic strip?

Perhaps this was only light for quiet eyes.

So easy to be fooled by the early rings
of baked and boiled dough, day old moldy
but flash frozen first or so it's come told:

kinky perks, smoky karaoke in night's pane,
she tapped with evaporated paint exhaling,
that it's its own guard for an evening stance.

At Last was echoed through the rabbit count,
sweeping, dissipated, with incidental focus,
prone with one leg straight, one knee akimbo

to sail past yesterday and tomorrow's swirl,
unafraid to mark that evening sky as brilliant
in an inner teeming puddle of startled starlings,

where certainty is assured by uncertainty
and that feeder flock full of noisy finches
brings ripened grains fully chocked of nijer.

The slap of time that excites the nose
whispers go, little redwing, flutter past
the bales of dried grass that seeded winter

through the squawky radio static of geese-
it's hard to really see with eyes sewed shut
there is no way to crisscross court the warmth.

A good-looking man in tan pants and a blazer
enters the hive of commerce briskly strapping
with our Mary of the holy sporting harness

in the middle of a sacred sandwich half and
half again you can smell the perfume of ecstasy
and rejoice and let us squirt, again exhausted.

Thinking of dogs and a blackbird appears
prompting a peripheral pump of adrenaline-
this was not what we expected in early race

a chignon of meaning that almost teases time,
the roar of the manila leaf bag drifts into sky
past where is parked the crap-mobile this time,

not lashed by hair outside the serene call of nylon
repressed desire resolved in tinting windows rolled
begalia pollen a mark that is always washed away

it starts to get interesting right about now-
done in by ruminating ovine, moon equipped
and no longer sanctioned by a state of grace

he officates from two wheels screeching rust,
available inside delivery and liftgate service
sensing movement where there is none, whoa,

and a feathered fight for the last french fry.
To be the possum unloved by many at sunset
with a slinky tail that can prove delightful

but only when it's crepuscular and easy.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

the prospectus is inscrutable

There is a smudge on my glasses
inside the dreams of the flower nod
which provides the landscape I need
as I imagine a foil scar on my left cheek
to enhance my appeal with the court
in a rebirth of the cool that occurs
three hundred years too late.

A model lighthouse in the front yard
of a Cape Cod fifty miles from the ocean
does not make me smell salt air.

If you want to get all brass tacky about it
I don't really care.

I practice the high art of giggling
at a point far removed from the whine
of pool filters in the morning.

The touch of my penis feels good in my hand.

I am a semi-animated object
barely aware of my own motivations
unable to escape things that are black and yellow
and all that remains is a figment
to be pawed and prodded in imagination only
no less visceral than the now
littered with carcasses at regular intervals.

What the mockingbird told me
is good enough for me.

The prospectus is inscrutable.

A bird chirping once is the sound of eternity.

I am the faint cosmic giggle of an unproduced producer.






Monday, September 6, 2010

a near catastrophe in mild blue

A burlap bag taut on a bony rack
awful parched and scratchy brown
jonesing for a warm rain's slake,
he was a sisal sack of unhappy tack
when I chanced on him that summer,

his pithy brick grafitti combed over
a stenciled canvas of regular weave
with a misty green branding muttered
through the gone meander of himself.

After calling for the quench he craved
overlapping ripples from silver drizzle
plinked on a puddle in the shallow rain,
and I looked down at my own damned feet
scraped leather telescoped a mile down
splashed clean despite roccoco splatter
in the muddy district of stucco walls
where two brooding chalk eagles
proudly guarded the cute nausea
of embracing faux patina twins
tinkling on kissed pink blossoms.

None of this was or is to scale,
he was a bitter pill in a bitter shell
behind the kitchen curtains daily
a shadow hinting at the blackened sheen
of biscuits from the oven crumbling.

Which was mystery and which explained?

Be happy, be joyful a mantra
of another kind of scarlet death
in the data points that mattered
through the rasping of his noise:

and I never crossed with him again
except years later in a buzzing dream
while dozing on a warm park bench
when I chanced upon that beveled glass
and whispered three short phrases.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Can I get a witness?

A rearview mirror with silver reversed

so motley reflects a bald-faced ride

of forward lusty sweaty rolls, reet slide

and how those sideview lips are pursed-


arisen, a crispy vision might have sunk

erect when almost stopped traffic

genuflects, a feast this scarlet trick,

ash ridden sackcloth firm in trunk


a purring look at me growls fantastic

preached as con jesus the holy way out

squared from grave to holy roller doubt

two short arms boxed grace cast plastic-


ask a mirror's imperfect glass to reveal

a savior's perfect hidden smirk unreal.


Friday, August 27, 2010

pounding a yog on the ammo box, 2 am

owl vibrato
over moonlit cockade blush
mimosa blossoms

Monday, August 23, 2010

a bolus of dried cranberries for coney

Bungee corded cargo caught between ditch and
the river drops into rubbery knocking rhythms
on a gravel path kicking red dust that coats
sharp oiled sprockets and chains to a province south
of brush strokes flat and grace notes rhyme:

the periwinkle glow flattened laughter
on the banks of newly sprouted fescue
calls and draws with fingers curled
hinting foreign ways in blown clouds
and thorny pink hedgerows close

near ash felled trunks mottled white,
poached giraffe hide on bank chopped
a fractal map of bark design mimicked
in bits and pieces and pieces and bits.

A gape faked for brickwork fades
and chipped red is just unpointed
mortared oil, anointing aromatic grief
with a grey feather flipping in the mulch-
scarlet leaves worm-eaten loose today
but not the sun whitened log noose hung
by denim fingers frayed in unskilled blue.

A recall of how few things are known but
to the common wise so obvious a nucleus
is small sun calico on a cool steel guardrail
and there's a perfect rock to break the black
and sink until blue under the foamy spillway:

a drowned name on a granite bench carved,
a bleached burst of plastic flowers timed
to mourn the rainbow that one arced breath-

the price of tossing that burden is somewhere
being shed enough for tears and laughter both.

Let the mind prattle to exhaustion
and you're left counting rabbits in a morphine haze-
look, there's one over there.

It's beige.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

A gift of green mussels gone

Flash of blown snow in August
an aural blizzard driven wavy
as memory mirrors one lined
lost lane to hard cracked two:

drifts mounded to sandy dunes
of seaside grass that trembles
near curtain slats partly open

five hooked fingers pull shell
to split full lips from beardless
sands tracked on nacre floors,
cooled by paneled ocean breezes
doors swollen down to aqua sea

and a sticky lizard laughs beige
at the gravity of stucco walls
gladly not to sweat the beady
orange tricks of salty summer,

the pink necklaces of blush
that fritter in the mangrove
provide cover for the titter
of bashful larks as the scrub's
unexpected scent of raspberry
envelopes an unplucked flower.

The scene not too unseasonal
to offer wry spreading frost
webbed silver in spun summer
causing flashed peaks to stiffen
with the surprise of early chill:

to trace back crash to Wednesday
in the boney script come please,
penned in aqua ink the day before,
imagined blue flats a foundation
for the invite shy of bas-relief

the wet release at lost belief,
a delight to the slippery slip
a worn cloth belt champion grey
on the frayed white damask sofa
and sliding on pearly puffy drips.

One last peak at tawny tight skin
a museum quality veneer covering
fictions and histories and exits,
one lasts as the mirror glazes

ice forward glacier white
a straight-jacket yardstick
from an under blaze heard
the swoop of three egrets four
is white down in eastern sky
and just back from the stars:

a gift of green mussels gone.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

one day your jellyroll will

One way to be in the world
is to live jerk furtive
in the quick store carpark
squat behind buick wheel
scraped and all banged in,
hungover unshaved erect,
with no pony tips to play.

Mocha big gulp balanced
on vinyl dash cracks with
your beige savior upright,
one gloss ring per bored day
making a coaster extra luxe
while spitting your dribble
onto seedy shifting carpet,
rubbed off brake and clutch.

Sneaker tongue shot eyelet
worn through daily rhythm,
enjoying only in your mind
white sweats stretched elastic
from damp plastic into trash
when the lap becomes the thighs.

Ritual light and sweet
a morning queue wait,
flapping brown packets
of sugar bulging pre-tear
next to spills of coffee
and ashes from the suck of now:

an ask never even noticed
glimmers into wasted guilt
from the gimlet of your eye.

Death wish goose limping,
invisible to chrome hoods,
tries to reach the wood
wondering how much glass
is really in this world.

Sunday, August 1, 2010

it ain't why

with no keen counter to humid flats
rose of sharon mauves in mid-august
burst in the eye's betrayal legion and

under gables feral a longing drenches
poured down panes flapped lead peels
mixt and ridden by unguttered rain

curved up on wetness sweet at splash
to poke in furtive quiet an arbor hid
of unripe grapes climbing scaling blues

unfixed to picket and pecking lark
from rolling front behind her back
chopped bug tagged his rust creep box

red caboose with curled black arrow
lined blue and green and it was good
the sprayed art of him spiked in flats

black white moonlit that snapped away
skirt stuck paisley intact from quickly
licking came pale the same curved thigh

clanged iron recoil from a pearly quiver
balled up panties by the engine track
a nacre nib in fiction so perfect fades

recorded to a wrinkly black book
in pocket shady ink on onion skin
culled smile over donuts plated plain

and peaceful rings of cooling coffee
on gray speckled veneer chipped thin
to plywood dusted sweet and low

scratching the dawn he went up swiss
got on the china horse near needle park
and not returned through alpine drifts

less days ahead than behind the bark
what happens after fade to black
is just what happens now

Saturday, July 24, 2010

seven beats while the metronome joked

You know the clock's not real
but still you ache its ticking
tricked to notice movement
when it is only painted still.

While a skull grins in icy clouds
leaves flip silver to wait for rain
if that's when low you look to see
the pink globe at sunset swollen,
ersatz precursor to a steady diet
of dry brown acorns easily plinked
and eventually served as charcoal
despite the awkward faux pas style
of clasping with fingerless gloves.

A concrete angel bows to the azure half-shell,
her dry lips foaming a pink V for wanting
on a granite stand trimmed green for sorrow,
after a limousine chase for the widow in black silk
and a rural hearse with no juice run down fresh
to a moist entrance dug from angled mounds.

A bebop version of circumstantial pomp
causes greedy tears to mark this turf
with clinging spray cleaved to flesh,
requiem high-notes by a monkey sung
hirsute y muy simpatico y mas,
the girl in plaid is walking beside
deep set eyes and squeaky wheels
under the rising limbs of linden:
it is not gold but cork that floats
safely lined for carriages of loss.

A monologue of normality
from a desiccated carcass
that simply loves the disco,
the soutane above the fray
if the legs had feet instead of glide
by the sacred sign disguised.

Under this sad hymn of high summer
(crickets strumming rhythm
led by cicadas syncopate)
only plain birds sit the sizzling wire,
the dotage that never blinked downhill
rolls from neon crying time's suspense,
the frozen bauble to never flash again.

For something to believe in pink
the pearly globe grows up in size-
we only die each time we notice.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

more than music is grasped that

When tumbled in a puddle of musical pace
the aural infinity of rosewood and brass
is a gamelan curry grooved sweet with beat,
a pantheon picked a whole tone to chose
than can be fingered away in blistered grace.

The fingering of the work crew sprayed
as graffiti glyphs cemented on yellow mark
a squat pallet of ash stacked by the elms
and hoops of tubing wrapped clear in blues
to slicken the slippery frets again rained

away from a silver string devoid of beads
towards the bird chirp surviving night,
plump zombies in baggy shorts and gloom
with no RSVPs pending for this party of twos
cerebralizing the rarity of death by weeds.

There is a fear buried so deep
it is no longer a gate to bliss,
a brown handle filigree
ruined a hint of orange
that leaves it just short
of the rust that squeaks
by the OM scribbled in tar
on the road by the creek
near where that real gone man
rose sheep in quarter time beats,

long bleats after the subdivisions
evolved into a sharp fungal creep,
a twisted rim and rusted frame
a caution chord for the trickster
on the sunbaked concrete isle:

pink of must the blossom drops
and the miller sails away.


Monday, July 12, 2010

when the orb finds pause

when it spits at midsummer darkness
the killer rests in the porch lit damp,

nothing in shadow on wing tonight,
nothing to prick in the sticky moist
and nothing flits to wrap in kisses:

brief para-diddles of windless flash
stroke the rushing clouds with silk.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

swirl one knit brow

The blueberries in the saucepan
said yes but the bowl's metal flip
rising said spew char into blains
and the tragic arrival of ointment.

Everything takes you back
to some recurring dream
that is a constant deja vu:
couched in the louvred porch
symmetrically opposed at pairs
in red corduroy and ocher throws,
spirits gathered to haunt in silence
wondering what you're doing here.

The carpet stairs are worn there
and no repairs are scheduled,
the green clang of the dumpster
is a lifted chapter already uncus
in the window behind your ear.

How did that pine tree go
so unnoticed so lonely so long?

Intonations for a spell of virga
in a season already pluvian
go unanswered in the swirl,
the flirtation of the hanging squirrel
has coaxed the lettuce to seed
and the maple from Japan
is dying from ants under bark
and antic slapstick collisions
from the trampling of hounds.

A green and yellow garden glove
flattened with navy wristband
half in shadow and half in dust
awaits fingers of light to spread.

In the cry of the catbirds
I am summoned as a god
but nowhere else I turn:

it would be of no value to you
but it has great value to me
because of milky magic
in a molecular rumba
invisible to the naked eye.

Wondering if I should prune two branches,
I want gold finches and I want them now.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

and ye shall lie in the bosom of Abraham

The wheel tuned out dry clay carved
and red splattered at the weedy edge
of a rumpy drive come to a tuning end
when the dream stop potting screeched.

I saw that with my own two eyes.

I did not see the giant that soaring dream
crushed in the oily distance that saw these
phone pole legs kicked and pine pitched
and still all possible sawn is listening still,
tarred to the dawn birds at the bare apron
of stubby grass gnarled at the car park edge,
an abandoned bottle label obscurely turned
into sinister maps that are deciphered black-
now all pain and all joy eternally gold in me.

An eight cylinder dose of splatter
just over heaven's yellow lines
heaves salvation when it matters
becoming then just memory of want
then just a memory of memory of want
that happens at the end of memory
when the neutral bits that mattered then
then are rinsed in pink and swiped away.

The sphincter of a smoke ring collapses itself
into a candle of Rome that whispers the night
in a rainbow gouache behind gray lids,
a lone maple barking its perhaps lesson
brazen unaccosted by chimes of leaves.

The surfaces of a Toynbee tile
wear away to reveal its cut scroll
left handed jeweled facets coal black
finger crude cuts of dancing hands
that cymbal between the tropics only,
places in the chiming rhyme of solar night
with the ritual pomp of a secular madman
at the year's worst time and all that matters
just implied by the glare of dust on goggles.

Collecting offerings discarded or often lost
by others to deliver to a streamside chorus,
a chorus barely worshiped enough to weep
yet feared enough to arrive obsessed
in the fiction of a continuous cycling mind,
the most common of these being things
that have fallen in transit and things
that have been washed through the gutter
by a twilight rain that rose up skulking
and auburn strands caught in mirrors
and storm drains clogged with leaves-
twelve cents worth of grimy temptation,
two pennies and a dime trumpet
a halt to running washed to source
by the iron grid of unlucky rushes.

Though it often seems that way at first
the miss of silver that plinked the rubbish
bounced off from there is your pleasure
in the gathering of fetish for water idols-
plastic bus stops are barren of breath,
but with candy wrapped and flat air blues
ragged pine tree shapes easily pass
through the extra ripe of lemon bitter.

The girl with the mandibular grill has gone
to ground leaving an endless roll of box cars
to rattle frame a dry and dusty boredom-
the convenience store is hardly eponymous
though it might seem quickly enough at first-
when you have to come right out and say it,
it probably isn't true.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

when sparrow faked eight to cover

There was an eyebrow of cirrus
stroked black above the sun,
black over white morning,
as I stared at garish clouds
and watched the soffets drift
under the steady clairvoyance
of two sage and observant crows.

I could smell the pitch to come,
a pitch that would hide the cones
under a white diguise of freedom:
if I had been halfway smart
instead of dumb all the way
then that downy woodpecker
would not have guessed right then
that I was smug and thus unguarded.

When I watched the flock
from the hemlock boughs
the traffic of wings
was appealing at first,

so ripe and bold and bracing
in late spring when wild beaks
peck fragrant nuts on bleak bark
and the mating flutter begins,

so behind the green facade
to mount eight pleasures
was almost numbing to do:
but in striped joy red ploys
were fadged in cackles
or plotted with a catlick
before the feathers bloomed.

A clam shell luna of night
illuminated her solstice of flutter
but a wet bird never truly flies:

when the new eggs hatched
they were tiger striped with lies
and I was not amused.

There will always be a bird
to fuck with a sparrow's head
if the blue jay is there
to bribe with timely trinkets.

There was only one truth she chirped
amid a burst of later trilling

a trilling never ending.

there was also water too

she handed me a card
but it was not as funny
as she had lead me to expect

I did not use an opener
but it may have been in a dream
where I was suddenly growing older

she wanted to be bedded
I was quite sure of that
for she told me so herself

collecting bling for the Ondines
I was also quite sure
that I was not intended

Saturday, June 19, 2010

what the mocking bird said it's just a little

Some time after that season of keening rain
blanched the bleached slats of blue-gray siding,
the gutter's low scrub bloomed shortly once-
just before the blocked and frosted jalousies
shuttered the lime-streaked porch for life.

Inside the nod of flowers drifted away
drowning out pool filter chlorine whines
behind dapples on dry buttery siding
where once the rain had flowed in sheets
over a withering brown oak's low branches
and vibrant figs coaxed from depleted earth.

A table plated with unfinished eggs gives
a circus of coffee aged evidence of lift
in a place where nothing uplifting is left:
no mouth in the greasy skillet entices ears
with a low sizzle that has long since passed
into a torn curtain obscurring cloudy skies,
ripples form on the pocked aluminium shore
of lidless guardian service with steamy
gradients of starch under the striped rose
hanging a shadow over the newsprint news.

Puckered lilies would rather smooch the moon
than greet the apricot rise of morning stalled
long since a quartered acre of silence arose,
arose for a sun that only after stabs next door
and only after an early breeze shakes uneven rain
from other sun-drenched leaves of maple.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

sang a ballad too

One item filling her arms
when he yawned the door
was the umbrella opened
when she left in afternoon,

an umbra begun in breath and blue
under a dome of breaking spines.

There was no salwar kameez or sari
even in aqua and ivory to meet
when she crossed the lintel,
her pale and ungainly jog
in the journey away from ash.

There was no magic in the candy wrapper
nor three-chord punk in sandstone places
nor copper rounds meant for flipping tails.

His mistake indeed.

The flat husk of a crushed toad
was sad baritone to his eyes:
the candor of found objects
easily embossed in giddy flock.

The pointing yellow markers
painted by an unknown hand
marked out a route in henna
that he already knew quite well,
for the want she imagined in him
was meet for her when peaking,

was only a blossom tip where
floating in a cloudy dome
the blood orange hollow rises.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

a mondo of transcendent sorrow

Rounds of bubbled slag-iron
spread as ersatz cookies
under day's pale crescent
and nimbus frowns at play
to soothe the porcine boy
who only watched while

the moony boy became the moony man
standing on that sown strip of grass
between the same curb and sidewalk
observing the cars chrome blur
nonchalant with pot-bellied grin
year after passing year

the lawn sprinkler's syncopation
only worshiped by happy chance
with the rotation of each breath.

To polish in smile that door
with cut prism facets
and beveled oak galore
and prize a routine portal
into shallow self-reflection:

having been all things
being again one more
was barely a hair's ruffle
tickled by a light breeze
that hinted of rain
only later in the day.

Sunday, May 30, 2010

psalm for the

A barely legible brownstone hand
on a weedy fenced garden tomb,
a weather bleached picket fence
draped with inky newsprint folds,
wet smears of that christ be risen

then

nickels arced onto felt-lined baskets
meant to wick away chance fears
with an ironclad smooch of redemption
from the pale and lined cadaver
whose son now landscapes mortuaries
with the stench of black mulch
and white and pink impatiens.

Backing with a warning beep
through the labyrinth
of every possible reality:
the manly joy of a perfect weld
painted and worn in blue,
a warm wash of diesel
exhausts from the autobus,

then

honeysuckle sweet crushed ice tea,
heather lane and holly court,
the patience of water
and the gluttony of flame.

There's nothing civil
about the nubbed ball
with a preteen idol decal
deflated in the gutter
laying limp and beached

but to blissfully piss
in the still of the night
while listening to satori
must be something just the same-

go at them with clippers
and your body hairs
find their own groove:

not always for the squeamish,

this life.

now we fade to green

When the snooze button breaks
only a drift from the dream
there was a chapel in the pines.

What I had called the marker
was really just a hallway light
to let me know you were coming
spring when promise blossomed.

That never really happened
because we were only born
a few brief moments ago,
triangles of narrative memory
etched in missives of moist clay.

The pastel dress of blue and lime
that I dreamt of lifting high
over your head in ceremony
to mark your privet
with mad muddy wails,
a vitrine before you sighed
in shatter on flat ground.

Many spoons of downing stew
sanded hunger into burnt tongues
of catty chatter bored in grainy doors,
leaving just enough browned sugar
to invent hallways of tongue
but not enough to sizzle brains
into a final spasm of lust:

I had already fucked everybody
that had ever danced
dances still
or will dance into the future.

The authority was you.

Saturday, May 22, 2010

The Mysterious Topology of Knot Formation

What with his egg-shell skull
and red beard full of demons,
discoursing on at the wake
just below the broken mirror
to a table full of tear-stained relics,
his disagreement almost convinced me
that my perfect idea was lame enough:

but fat and squat and supremely certain,
he surely would have been uncomfortable
under a tent in the endless rain,
and his snort of sure derision
only served to steer my head,
to make my path that much clearer
after being almost kissed by Jimmy's axle.

(There's a possible context for this
for which I have no name or address-
one of the places where there's a shrubbery
on every goodly trimmed and godly corner lot
and a licking tongue for each steaming greasy pot,
where a perfect photo has yet to be taken,
in which the sneaky mouse cannot be seen.)

Suddenly a great truth dawned upon me-
that hippies can be assholes too.

His seed no match to man up man enough,
I made plans to see that house with the mansard roof,
with inside delivery and liftgate service,
because the claw that holds the bloody ball
has a ticking face on each grasping talon.

I had started to count before the true beginning
and almost missed the truest end:

Towards him, I just smiled and said of course.



unsolicited (and possibly lame) advice for two transcontinental lovebirds about to meet in meat-space after a whirlwind telephonic romance

Cry a little at the beginning
and also at the end
of your spell together,
and laugh as much as you can
for all the time that lasts between:

you already know it will go too fast.

Split and reappear just once with passion,
so you that learn each others patterns:
but do not confuse the rabbit with the hare.

What you at attempting
has a high degree of difficulty:
so cut yourselves and each other
a whole lot of slack
for all the time that lasts between:

and laugh as much as you can
for all the time that lasts between:

After all, in the end,
Omnia vincit amor.