a reading from the dry ventricle

Ghosts in grey drift a room crossed lob
away, now devoid of eyeballs cloudy clear,
it's a creaky door that denies a greasy knob
not easily opened by the red pulsed fears

flowing down blank corridors, what the fuck,
into the freshness of a stem cut bouquet
standing on a high ledge and looking up 
to freeze a vertigo season where lilies lay.


Each fleshy moment passes in pedestrian motion
because of thrusts remaining safely asleep
and the question never becomes a question
of pulse when the pachysandra slowly creep


over cooked rimmed orange edges on ground
to throbbing at dawn for a Quixote in clouds.

A Canticle of Breath

With every breath is a universe expanded
and contracted the same as you breathe
endlessly in and endlessly out
but you count one breath,
if you remember to count at all.

The time you think you know is funny like that,

so is the brown flutter of a sparrow's wing
on a cold morning in late December
when your vapor is the breath of dreams
forming crystals you cannot see are silver

and this, too, is breath.

A stalactite was formed while you slept
and your dreaming drips of mineral green
gave birth to limestone runes of praise
in a tongue gone pink deciphering you

in whispers you feel are funny like this

and that, too, is breath.

prana

If you inhale many galaxies
I shall re-invent you as a god
and exhale a nebula of light.


If the exhalation decompresses
into a grave and infinite density
I shall blackly breathe your words.


If neither happens
I shall endlessly repeat myself.

in the afternoon being library spent

in the late afternoon being library spent
there is a need to grasp a shorter death
where the details are lost in lettered intent-
yellowed words and a dust gasped breath.

a bit of covered scarlet silk lipped desire
is heaving enough on a scant page turned
to a crescent bibliography of burning fire
where each citation is a reference yearned.

leaves enough in the autumn turn slowly
in an opaque blush of time's modest brush
teases the black nascent wish into frozen be
and ends with a sweet little death not rushed.

what starts with a turn into a lovely long seep
crescendos illuminated into an autumnal sleep

lily pond

a drop of water on the lily pond
is enough to create a miracle.

look into the ripples
and your face is transformed.

Li Po also died drunk.