Gerry Boyd's Poetry

hey now, in memorium

2012-01-18T15:44:00.000-08:00

There was a dream that crashed a purple pellicle
so obvious noticed first in post-periwinkle doubts,
the clouds as divine as wake up calls and bent bells
awkward ringing on a white table with black chords,
harmony balanced on mahogany legs sweet fine long
and sandaled in teal ink from a fountain pen drained
on script soap soft carved in scars deep and refined.

I could have punched myself for open stupidity
but even that would have made me stupider still.

only if you're counting

2011-12-31T14:06:00.000-08:00

A dark blue gray skeleton fish on a grey pink sky at sunset
could be a musky, could be a pike piercing the horizon,

now a small drift into and also away from the possible.

I have seen narwhals approaching from the south
in this most mild of winters

and I was not afraid of the darkness.

To light the bayberry candle and wait for the dusk
is not only sensible,

it is the only possible response.

it hovers under there, in a blanket of mist

2011-12-28T14:52:00.000-08:00

Your genome misting smeared on a thickened goblet must of red
is near to mean that revelations are yet possible but partly sealed,

mostly apart from the little drib of saliva glisten left again revealed
when, certainly, all you wanted was that perfect quench of dread

to pitch away into the heavenly green of candle flames gem tossed
under a waving horizon of jagged black teeth lost on broke slopes,

searching for a purple chord that can reign in harmonious tropes
so not yet again a formal sonata with fiery canon is barkly mossed

with velvet greenery grown upon the antler budding sophomores,
who, from the gaunt wolf that howls up from the needles a granite

slab where worship is expected, groan silver dew to black night
in the foggy mystery that wisps and purrs in pineapple spheres.

when the sun arcs low at dawn

2011-12-03T15:31:00.000-08:00

cherry red scales of coloratura scent drift lightly
white across gleaming uplifted patinas of sound

and rhythm cannot exit so quickly across deer
skin stretched taut against pale December skies

of cirrus and crystal ice that brush near heaven
with vertebrae scales frozen stiff sky high in azure

canvases chiaroscuro field and ground blanched
to spin a colorless globe with blue focus glowing

on iconic foothills whose spiny bones revel under
the leafless supplication of grey trees that reach

for a god that is half-moon hidden behind fiction
that arises in bored parchment dried to reaching

so far too far when the sun arcs low at dawn

when I dreamt of a faraway place

2011-11-30T15:16:00.000-08:00

Cold little winds started to flirt
from the northwest white again
with buffets of black chill to come.

Headlights flicker haphazard
on the sheet metal bevels
of nearby roof ducts erect,
orange flickers of deceitful heat-

one small net to ensnare errant drives
ensnares instead the purple clouds.

Wouldn't it be nice?

2011-11-27T13:10:00.000-08:00

Fleet of footing, the bristled beard is decoy driving
around and round an upward spiral of macadam-
switchbacks walled by hand placed rock fences
with those little jagged points discouraging rears
from resting though it was a not a hike but more:

I expected an observatory but here was sure escape
led by genius whose pale ivory parchment was insured
and so inscrutable that we found a pearly seaside where
the quiet craic was good despite a sloped sea wall scare
and a growling gray horizon filled granite pale with skelligs.

At the end of the road a tessellated turret merely yawns
and you ask to photograph the orange ferns and lilies-
I just wanted to say "Wouldn't it be nice?"

a season long in turning

2011-11-18T18:45:00.000-08:00

The rock portal to the trail head was closed
but Mount Shasta welcomed our grace with
piney arms that were in pine swiftly opposed
with grainy scree and an orange needled pith,

woody cones fell plenty in a season austere
where snowfall tumbled into secret ravines
and opened a deep freeze in cracks where
bursts of young pines yearned to be green.

A season long in turning matters to spring
but shortens out as one returns in default,
to stare left at whiteness and wonder if salt
will hasten the melt despite the obvious rings

when a beaver Moon has Saturn eclipsed
and one looks backward with quivering lips.

Early to the Barrow Laid

2011-11-06T13:59:00.000-08:00

Early to the chamber laid in a bloom barren bower where
the chairs are shrouded in synthetic white because bare
the long chrome legs would near and laughingly compare
to those naughty thighs pressed blackly lush in nylon sheer

the two crones chatter in cotton candy conspiracy sprays
and salivate about where the open House of Debbie lays
for all the ladies that come to see a purple weave betrayed
by felonious saliva that washes their scalps in bald hearsay.

So early to the barrow laid, unable to grasp arcing tropics south
and topics in northern ears that cannot avoid their carping mouths
even while sitting alone and still while bellied wine erases doubts,
a mind blurs behind my tortoise shells and no breath will out.

a reading from the dry ventricle

2011-10-31T03:47:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-22T18:49:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-15T15:17:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-08T15:03:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-02T15:00:00.000-07:00

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.

a grasshopper slept still in the grass today

2011-09-30T17:16:00.000-07:00

a grasshopper slept still in the grass today
unnoticed most by heard sheep munching.

if you were looking for green uneven chrome yellow
the camouflage would at last astound unseen for

even tipped toes though blades crisscross might
have through quiet snoring caught a downy ear.

the persistence of crickets just shy of crescendo

2011-09-20T17:17:00.000-07:00

the persistence of crickets just shy of crescendo
pierces the leathery cornucopia leaning to hear
a wet shoe unashamed in post rosy dawn that
some will twitter uncanny in lush under thickets-

it's gray steel clearly that sneaky catbirds sing without guilt
and russet cleared pines lean crisp for a fox to suddenly blush:

in that one minute I was only a listener bent to consider
and nothing else mattered at all.

a whole world just to the left is wet

2011-09-19T15:47:00.000-07:00

a whole drowning world lost off library left wet
just covets moisture from snapped dry words-

so cloudy bricks walk solitary lanes barely bricky
where blood is a natürlich barrier burst scarlet but

the window fogs whitely to entrance a silly cyclopic
under the moss paths laying a greeny landscape bald-

and when the fogged window into crispy azure clears,

suddenly you're speechless.

when the shadow ghost is splay

2011-09-12T15:47:00.000-07:00

dancing in the dark is its own sweet frolic
even when partly lit by market lights.

apples and onions are close by degree
but do not draw the opposites we see

on a white canvas that dances mundane
where nothing at all by daylight shows
unless you count a steely gear of sweat
that counts for a blue dream fit to a day-

at end of the dancing begins at dusk
and, almost scarlet, lasts the all night

whole.

the alien fingers beckon leafy
but are seem to leave at dawn.

more to follow

2011-09-09T19:51:00.000-07:00

While a funny little rain lyrically blows
with lovely drips on hydrangea rows

and scattered endlessly across avenues
is our quickly duck with an umbrella blue.

letter to the inscrutable

2011-09-05T13:08:00.000-07:00

Oh, I missed you honey
while I was pretending
to be a rabbit.

It was a puppet really
but I had to get the voice just right
and that took longer than expected.

And the challenge of using my hand
in unusual ways caused a delay
in getting back to the balcony.

It's hard to speak in coney ways
with a middle and a pointer
and thumb and pinky paws.

I hope you'll understand.

kins of nap for wipe of grin

2011-09-05T04:56:00.000-07:00

Kins of nap for wipe of grin
is ever over moistly down
but it's just enough for now.

Pale beauty breath sparks low
in a two-part push of bending now
and, out where an ether of blues
glows orange pulled to please,
there's a minor key of salivate.

So many records of scratchly
spin with background noise
of births of static sans respite.

A white echo holds a name in spin
for grins of snap that wipe the grin-

Dance, dance, dance,

when all you need is funny.

There Was a Place

2011-09-03T14:54:00.000-07:00

Mostly grey chords in a sweet place
where begin a sneak seal biting-
and open flap surprise bred scars.

There was a place where

we bounced pesky the black ants
and clever spiders drawn through
asymmetric slates extra designed:

this place looked great in the 70's.

Now the parents walk on submerged

brickworks, circulating

in a cool zombie trance:

and a seal bit my hand
while the kids are synchronized,

swimming.

ain't no corn here no mo'

2011-09-02T14:59:00.000-07:00

dere ain't no corn here no mo',
s'all up on dat hill
sittin' in barrels and rottin'
'cause a pig cain't et it all-

ground be dry and blistered.

was a time people was happy
and da corn plump and yellow.

ain't no more.

ain't no more.

there is no of

2011-08-25T18:04:00.000-07:00

disregarding breath is a cousin of death

once removed.
.
the praxis of disbelief comes flying thus
through a coughing and gasping hysteria
only there is no death really really really,

the goldfinch has beautiful wings.

a truth birthed of lies if ye follow.

yes memory no memory
through the pierced pellicle
of sun streaks yellow orange
now on the branches of an oak
you can barely remember.

little jimmy beat with a bat,
susie swooned against and wept.

initials perhaps in carving
from a blade now rusted
with a wolf risen emblem
that once you were proud.

Read this in Ragtime or not at all

2011-08-19T17:32:00.000-07:00

Dark matter doesn't matter so much it seems,
what matters darkly is buried in dreams,
filling a void towards the apple that fell
upwards from heaven to luminous hell.

O! The Mythology!

(Not to make light of the Hindenburg,
but, hey, though lighter than air-
that was one heavy crash, man)

I love fiction, yes it's true-
There ain't nuttin' fiction ain't do.

(And it's made us what we are today)
That's history in a nutshell-
multiple stories, multiple lies.
Here's a bad pun: greaves against griefs.

Corollaries:
Where's my Surplice?
Where's my Pooja?
Where's my Incense Stick?
Where's my Tiki?
Where's my Torah?
Where's my Fetish?
Where's my Hound's Tooth?

(The last one is for Coco Chanel-
That's a belief system too,
but it could be an amulet
or a fetish too too too taboo.

Best to ask Fergus,
after the Druid.)

Guess what? You're gonna die.
Know what? So I am.

Numbed by clear and or ruby red
philandering by a secret name,
was he was known or was blind
to an awkward table lamely set.

Now and Then and When

2011-08-07T13:48:00.000-07:00

If I had somewhere to go

I'd be there.

Only now is only now,

orthogonal to then

orthogonal to when.

Not talkin' about the birds.

Or am I?

The flutter of blue wings

and a quick peck and

a red splatter on denim.

Birth.

Drop from the maple

in heavy august mist

and run to the cabinet

for the salve salve salve.

Death.

Feathers rise from the goop

and cycle of eggs and beak.

Past then tense and when future.

The clarity of a peacock

scratching the urban grit

of a granite window sill

is the only proof proof proof

of feathers and breath.

Now and then and when.

If I had something to say

I'd say it.

then in the end

2011-07-24T12:15:00.000-07:00

Then in the end there were thistles
bursting purple and prickly
on either side of the moss brick walk.

I was prepared for the end
but the end never came.

An endless row of thistles
as far as the eye could see.

Just purple, prickly beauty
beside the moss brick walk.

the waves break in three

2011-04-04T07:32:00.000-07:00

i. try a little dumbness

a flipper with a creaky wheelbarrow
can, seasick, carry so little else:
even numbers hoist a tragic burden

of twos and fours and sixes-
an orange drum of oozing crude
squats in the public square of red proof:
normal schooling has not reached the riddle of three-
perfect odd breeds the pod of mathematical glee:

this is the first wave, barely asking questions,

feckless breakers born of slim perception.

ii. then came the silly thumping

a hairless mammal born of aqua water
smooches to a groove of lonely warehouse
propped on stilts of rust and gray,
scratching a riff devoid of moisture,
in a turn-table suit striped with pockets-
fine this crime that outlives ethics:

this is the second wave, rising into rhythm,
a changeling child of chilly waters.

iii. trump is the beginning of cool

a vest of stuffed squid and shrimp is stylish
for most of the downstream fossils:
these slick boardwalks in the fresh of splintered rain
where triple pops are collar cool in pink and green
for the culture of the never-ending grope and move:
it's never too slim for a flippered slipping-
grand this sand to a fine-toothed beach:

this is the third wave, darkling by nature,

a cunning crash of foam and spray.

Elephant Butte Lake, New Mexico, 2011

2011-03-14T18:34:00.000-07:00

The creosote is dry and black
and the mesquite is dry and gray
and the parched yew is dry too,
a dessicated yellow stalk scrawling
its bleached and barren pod into
a high calligraphy of white cirrus.

There are spikes and thorns
with bleached green razor edges,
but the cactus has ceased to care.

If a rainbow can be found
under the pale, pitiless sun
it rises from dust and rocks,
for the eye willing to wait,
and the rocks are drier still:

pink and sienna and gunmetal blue
for when the sand in the washed arroyo
desires the festive cracks of others.

The lake in the distance does not exist
as anything but a glittering that mocks
if it takes an act of faith to exist at all.

It is too early for the spring blush
and too late for the slivered moon.

There is only time
to wait for the time
like the other time,
that long ago time,

when water poured from the sky.

Port Isabel Lighthouse, 2011

2011-03-05T11:45:00.000-08:00

Thrusting up seventy-five black iron steps
on chipped paint with edges decayed by salt
I twisted up round and around white bricks
caressed the exposed mortar with wet fingers
tracing for a groove under the beveled lens.

A voice floated up through the spiral,
a folk song sung from a face far below.

Between vertigo and spin I was lost in wonder.

A seagull spasmed against the glass
and shocked me to my senses.

There are things under the feathers, things
hidden from the dust that clenches the throat
with the dry fingers of remembrance.

That time on the last night when the sky exploded.

the lithography of nocturnes is not bitter

2011-02-05T14:05:00.000-08:00

In a licking split lashes of laughter,
the tortoise shell brushed accident,
a blush once imagined in a minor sandstorm
of tornadic blue powder, dusted corners
at the rusty table in a dressing alcove
hidden from light by nocturnal browns

a once-famous name, red scraped amber light
behind the face, long ticked, when drawn lines
drew hot presses and the splattered greens
were draped upon a scene of woven linen.

Now the bounce is just a boing,
a bubble issuing from the dream of Krishna,

a rough of bristle dabbed in black
upon the arches archly formed of bore,

a carve upon the greasy stone
that is only borne by heavy pressing
from a gearbox beyond the grave,

a copy of the controlled accident
on tee-shirts for a dime.

Galveston Island (2011)

2011-01-30T07:07:00.000-08:00

Motel shroud sheet thrown
down cheap on shore sleep,
the grave sea grass now weeps
a shrift white on shorn gown.

Wait a minute.

And in a minute rise to wait
the footboard is overgrown
to an iridescent blue marsh,

a tricolored heron posed so
blue becomes transparent,
is rapt through lifted sheet
because there's no one there
to cough the fluff cotton down
or downy shades poised now.

Perhaps inside a halo will burst-
no it's kept elsewhere where.

And there's none but a dream of
hurricane rustpaneled amphitheater
importing beauty to salty marshes.

One man lives in a bowl.
others on shorebird stilts.

Pastels for the common folk,
stone for the stone bishop lift,
a dumb wait for a stony heart.

Romance on the third floor
but you're not lead to see
the green patina or scarlet glass,
just a boulevard of sparkplug stores
and a statue for tall revolting heros:

the seawall has never loft enough
to stem the brown surge will.

Mississippi Sandhill Crane Refuge (2011)

2011-01-21T05:55:00.000-08:00

Where the grass trail runs savanna gold in winter's mood

the trunks quiver as silver ghosts on trees at solid rest,

so tranquil above the blue water veins of Castille Bayou

and the only sound if you stand stone still is quiet breath

measured in time by the distant shrieks of hiding kestrels.

Here the plants are yellowgold pitchers of deadly nectar

that the summer flies are not scaled to fathom but willed

to a slow leeched death as salts dissolve in season's fare.

Here cypress roots wrap to jealousy around liveoak

and never never let go were tight love to drop its leaves

without the thrust of a season to guide the acorn's arc

in a close embrace that will sometimes clush the skies.

Left on the table cut glass is an emerald found apart,

scattered to crown the picnic leaf in aptly lying art.

in memorium for a rainbow

2011-01-12T20:12:00.000-08:00

Saw a half massed spirit of passed friend
though hard salties on the iron rack alcove,
the board with its steamy legs and blown
fibers scary nowhere as a prism's ghost
after a purple day's pursuit, clockmaking's
timely arc icy tucked in a terracotta tomb:

it's just a reflection from the womb, you said.

And damp over the koi pond a brick bridge arched
leads to Otto's ruin amid a dispenser of fiskefoder-
for a quarter you can recover the past in a mossy pond-
one route with many names covers enough tears for now.

A white hearse with a horseshoe turned on the rear
dirty lid in need of washing of course a christening
in a motel that was void of expected chrism dipping
the washer dryer combo dripping under awning rain.

So we move on damned,
faces covered in red wax asking for remembrance.

Maybe it was not a

2011-01-05T05:26:00.000-08:00

spot requiring ask at first,

prior the cowled grins fell limp
into coal carved melanin ash,
scorched brick orange grime
they came back one, creak footfalls
slipping past cabled green walks
where a coral snake slithers, asks
of palm filtered light oh! holy day
to please wind the ring's handless clock
in black some fire dappled timeless way.

Or so it occurred to me.

They scattered to nim an emerald eye
in a red clutch of mangrove shadow
knotty near the block house umbra
Spanish moss moist with hidden life.

This should never have been touched
or used for the crispy sacred kindling.

The flight of a sole mosquito
sang the constellations cold
enough for klaxons to be sound
lights clicked on again anguish.

The moonrise was so much later than I guessed.

Equinox, the strong north west wind,
holds no regard for latitude,

or these funny little haps of solstice.

Everglades (Flamingo), 2010

2010-12-26T15:40:00.000-08:00

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.

JD State Park, 2010

2010-12-16T07:17:00.001-08:00

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.

Wekiwa Springs, 2010

2010-12-08T05:53:00.001-08:00

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.

in the still of the

2010-11-23T06:58:00.000-08:00

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.

Shadowy Salvation at Rest in Transit

2010-11-21T05:07:00.000-08:00

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.

Zouave Ghost at Antietam Creek, 2010

2010-11-17T13:35:00.000-08:00

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.

Hogg Rock Vista, 2010

2010-11-15T06:23:00.000-08:00

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.

Snavely Ford Trail, Antietam Creek, 2010

2010-11-13T08:03:00.000-08:00

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.

Wolf Rock, 2010

2010-11-11T17:12:00.000-08:00

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.

Harper's Ferry, 2010

2010-11-09T06:07:00.000-08:00

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.]

The Brunswick Line, 2010

2010-11-04T14:58:00.000-07:00

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.

Assateague, 2010

2010-11-02T06:40:00.000-07:00

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.

thirty-five measures, one wrong cut

2010-10-04T07:25:00.000-07:00

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.

the stuff that dreams

2010-09-19T06:46:00.000-07:00

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.

the prospectus is inscrutable

2010-09-07T13:09:00.000-07:00

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.

a near catastrophe in mild blue

2010-09-06T04:09:00.000-07:00

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.

Can I get a witness?

2010-08-29T20:23:00.000-07:00

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.

pounding a yog on the ammo box, 2 am

2010-08-27T04:37:00.000-07:00

owl vibrato

over moonlit cockade blush

mimosa blossoms

a bolus of dried cranberries for coney

2010-08-23T04:43:00.000-07:00

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.

a gift of green mussels gone

2010-08-15T03:27:00.000-07:00

A flash of blown snow in August

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.

one day your jellyroll will

2010-08-08T05:25:00.000-07:00

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.

it ain't why

2010-08-01T06:20:00.000-07:00

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

seven beats while the metronome joked

2010-07-24T11:28:00.000-07:00

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.

more than music is grasped that

2010-07-17T12:37:00.000-07:00

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.

when the orb finds pause

2010-07-12T20:18:00.000-07:00

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.

swirl one knit brow

2010-07-11T08:27:00.000-07:00

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.

and ye shall lie in the bosom of Abraham

2010-07-04T05:21:00.001-07:00

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.

when sparrow faked eight to cover

2010-06-24T20:45:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-24T10:13:00.001-07:00

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

what the mocking bird said it's just a little

2010-06-19T06:43:00.000-07:00

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.

sang a ballad too

2010-06-12T08:02:00.001-07:00

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.

a mondo of transcendent sorrow

2010-06-05T07:58:00.000-07:00

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.

psalm for the

2010-05-30T20:21:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-30T05:44:00.001-07:00

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.

The Mysterious Topology of Knot Formation

2010-05-22T06:26:00.001-07:00

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

2010-05-22T06:25:00.000-07:00

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.

seven scenes from a vase of jasper, moistened by a salty dew

2010-05-15T05:43:00.000-07:00

i. High cheek bones show two ells but here is one

The return of a portrait nude of a graying male slightly torn,

jagged with a careless letter in a distant studio by a raven pupil,

closed an oily circle that began with an initial smudge on a ocher flank

and ended with a volley of correspondence that slowly grew electric.

ii. A cough designed to catch your eye

The now pudgy former gamine bends over trashcans

in a discount housecoat of red velour with sporty stripes

near the place you met the smudged mascara that night

cycling home from school with the tears that made you cry.

iii. The uneasy disappointment of no longer feeling murderous

Spooked with calm tears in the bedroom morning after

committing the unnatural crime of square-toed shoes

near a table with blood red wheels; the smudged curtains

wisp a chiffon of meaning that perfectly freezes alarm.

iv. Chrome is no substitute for a welcome reflection

A vigorous smoke exhausted by the smudged fanning blades

pauses to snatch a callipygous view of hiked yellow hips,

as she bends over a linoleum counter in a short striped robe,

attempting to kiss the tearful lips of a spread white rose.

v. Etching over a careen that has no finish

Hoping for a curious little job by calligraphic hand

that will turn the aqueous face of smudged glass

into the smoky hues of sweet sticky forgetfulness;

the perfumey residue of nicotine on lips and lungs

releases gray memories of other hidden tears.

vi. Taxonomies go up and down

Of the thirty-seven ways of hiding tears,

the best use hallways three through nine,

to feather the short vortex of raven hair:

it was just another kind of smudge of death

and another mark of a prickly birthright.

vii. Again the curtains are revealing a creep

birch thin bones in a leathery box covered

by the tricky cloud that played the moon

in a vein pumping peripheral drama

played on a stage of rocks and scrub:

ever see a yellow finch of smudged green

lashed by raven wings and the sting of salt?

that is the mold that dually breaks the mold

both tearfully true and crazily easy to behold.

past the point of mere inertia to the line from here to soliloquy

2010-05-08T05:13:00.000-07:00

The screaming blazing comet of your head from a nice boot of white

streaks the grey brown void to places where there is no other stuff

to curse you with unnatural pink volume and the yellowness of stars,

a empty dark billow where all is right because all has ceased to be at all

except re-entrant crispiness because the burning ground is all burnt up.

There is no consumer taxonomy for streaking on such a gone degree of orbit

while you flail a dead sock at the eel weir moss that takes your breath away-

black and white scotty magnets on macadam cannot patch that glassy trouble,

nor your helmet made from broken street lamps shield your grey from aliens:

your thirty year detour in primer paint with a down-draft wing of six-cylinder spunk

marked with crusty cedar apple rust always washed out under dark umbrellas.

Orange sunrise on the sherbet dormer reflects your gaze so blank and banal

with that scrufty dog window sill white over the winter bales of grassy seed:

a plump berry of hazy fumes in this sweet and churning perfume of icy ecstasy

encourages the theoretical kundalini of monkeys to stream your long jones live

with hard radio static over the squawks of geese that plainly state the granite statutes.

In a world of ubiquitous metaphor when I click on the light I am a god to you,

just another kind of blackbird with extra tears for the withered little tweaker

who's stealing breath for one more sunset in an exoskeletal bag of crispy chips:

and it's all just a mandala in sands of green, maroon, and rust

about to be swept away.

When belief is breath

2010-05-01T03:49:00.000-07:00

Marionettes of muscle man the sober lines,

jerked into shape by the loose smiles of change-

always a little rougher on the flannel edges,

despite the miles of back in the looking glass.

You never realize how heavy a severed leg can be

when the proud laughter of a cargo pants bulge

is used to grab your apt round-eyed attention

and ginger counterposes the citrus appeal of orange:

how deep will the toes reach to find a formal table?

There are corridor passions deeper than brushed nap

but no longing longer for the shagged distance runner.

You have to label everything or you cannot sleep at night:

the beer-can grin of satiny curbside pornography

with a train whistle mournful mise-en-scene,

the cute names that rise acidly from a fluffy tongue,

the imprint of a curtsy retained in dowdy aqua towels-

there is no longer a word for the abstraction of crunch.

The clay drawn literate has ceased to live,

has ceased to spit and snort and fuck-

an ominous maroon of maples etched in the breeze

says, in charming leaves, that you will die and soon.

Would you rather bend chrome time

or expand space to be molasses slow

or give wizened advice to the overheated

while balancing on a cane of boredom

and drumming flamacues with stucco thumbs

on rough beige walls until there's blood?

When belief is breath and breath alone,

observe that the ootid will surely last

beyond the four dimensions of your grasp:

no point in getting all strung up in knots,

there is actually nothing happening

in the end.

midway through velvet incarceration

2010-04-24T05:04:00.000-07:00

The boyish facade of that dynastic king

promises a pyramid of facsimile amusement,

a lame gold mask that falsely tames the rural mile,

and royally tenders the shrieking greens of spring.

What is drawn from the sapphire clouds

is also condensed in a spooky window:

a solo pine cone alone is spared in view

atop the hallowed spokes of spiral rubber.

Sycophantic circus freaks shuffle at last,

worshiping the retro karaoke of pecking divas,

at last the howls of where and squeals of when

are burst from the belly of a bulging tomb:

welcome to the threshold of banality.

Spun in a syrupy four part stigmata

odd sockets of the savior's sugary skull

have ceased to be a harmony that soothes.

Little Tina's sweet shoppe is barely stocked,

but emotions run high when the carny's in town.

Isn't it necromantic?

2010-04-14T07:59:00.000-07:00

From a blossom born of yellow thrusts

the thought I thought half-dead dissipates

into a moon half-shrouded in tissue clouds:

from a bronzed and milky bosom,

starved in common of rare earths,

I was in vitro once-

but it seemed to barely last.

There was a fecund goddess there

coaxing dybbuks through the maze.

out of body out of

2010-04-10T04:07:00.000-07:00

A battered staircase leads to must,

a bookcase glimmers in lunar dust-

bathed by piercing cratered swoons

a parade of pears in yellowed lace

pins your retina to a waxing place,

the red rust redolence of indolent musk

spells with brief sleep the patina of moons:

every insight an insight

into the futility of insights.

In that lumina of nocturnal shade

you were the lizard on the arid shale,

shorn of scales on the dizzy down.

You thought it was astral to neatly creep

in parallel to the course of spooky stars:

pointing at Polaris, you were misinformed.

It's not that is was evil,

it's just that it was pointless.

Four months of perfect aridity

there in the polished mirror-

you still do not taste your gods,

here in the breathing desert.

It was along a river that I never heard

2010-03-30T14:42:00.000-07:00

"There are varied responses to the process of
socialization. Many acquiesce and replicate
with their children what their parents did to them.
Others do not. In clinical observation, we can oscillate
the difference."
Thorsten Heisendykker, The Bland Mirror of the Medusa Ego

i. Once more, into that pesky garden

Prickly troubled being burst forth again
along the newly spaded furrow of jaded roses,
often bubbly wrapped as a hapless thorny stem
against the rubber boots of a tame green calf,
often pitched by the sleeping wight of life
or the soiling dreams of ever-blooming black:
yikes! the concrete square is so sweaty rich
with the capillary dew of bloody aspiration.

In the swampy mist a hunkered rail
quakes in mirth as the banshees wail:

a two-clawed braid of mossy twist
with elbows blue towards bluer sky
in a heathen dance of heathered mists.

And so it ends and so it begins.

ii. Climb every anthill until you reach

From the violet calm of my omega
I saw the alpha swirl of contenders
dissipate and cease to snarl at rivals.

I had a chartreuse tiffin with twin black straps
and a plastic zipper that never stuck
to carry fruits and nuts and yogurt:

persimmons and clementines mostly,
an occasional prickly pear-
blanched almonds and pistachios,
savory with the salt of the sea.

I watched your reflection
but the sun came out
and you went in
squeaking a hinge behind,

blankly.

I parked my aqua truck in a narrow space
and solved the white brick puzzle.

Cutting the deck with every breath,
was it brave, then, to draw another?

I spun with the cirrus in a fulcrum of air,
I spun with the mud that had clumped in your hair,
I spun and my eyes were white and nowhere.

And spun and spun, spun again.

then there was an explosion of branches and

2010-03-28T08:38:00.000-07:00

Former mandarins use ghostly windows
fronting the dormer to trick the eye,
sashaying her sole segment of dance
in the leopard prints that drove him skyward
and made the window dance and disappear,

and disappear and dance.

How silly to invent an object of worship
and then choose not to be chosen,

and disappear and dance.

Some revelations come in four before sunrise,
a red glow and a blue glow barely focussed,
and the lifting of a veil, speckled legs and silver feet,

the revelations start here:

A drab fixation on pips and pips within
the liquid fray of consciousness,

the squish, squish, squish behind the eye.

Isolation and the dismissal of disturbing thoughts,

fictional pulp beneath the wide pore rind

that yields to the scrap of glistening teeth.

Distractions that limit attention to the critical bonds,

the sweet arc that leaps from eye to eye
and electrifies the soul with the tart of time .

Thirty-seven glasses of squeezed juice
to take away in separate paper cartons
will never be enough to make you orange,

to dance and disappear.

That's as good as it's ever gonna get
and it's damn good too.

At least one unburned codex

2010-03-20T04:01:00.000-07:00

Then we came later inland
through the frilly cordillera,
chilled by the knee-deep torrents
and chaffed by the wet spray
and scraped skins of alpaca,
slipped through the paths
of printed shale footprints
and reached a shimmering desert
that mirrored our dry salvation.

The emerald dead whom we carried,
we entombed in a barrow of promise
which we rose from the sand with sweaty hands
under the pitiless grin of a parching sun.

Above the barrow we erected many blades
painted red and black in memory of oars
which we used to pierce the drifting sky
in honor of the Beauty of Pachamama.

When the silent crows blackened the outskirts
we gathered our kit and left in silence too.

Please remember what we were like
before the others came.

When Aqua Went Missing

2010-03-13T05:57:00.000-08:00

Upon runes of sandstone scratched by gnats,
unrubbed and legible through a rubber sole
the squealed aria of high pitched muddy traffic,

It's always by the shoreline
that these dreams twist and turn.

where byssal threads of mussels cling nearby
and sing the opera of a soupy sloshing tide
and the primordial blunging of man and water,

caught by fear only half-remembered in fear,
where brazier toes were orange embered
in the burning embroidery of a cast iron grate.

As I reached for the white skirt
at midnight it seemed to come alive,
flouncing scarlet and rusty frills
with dental and gnashing intent.

barely noticed in the trills and wash of tide and song,
the flutter of the shadow of the tissue that cleanses:

I heard urges at which you feigned surprise,
though it was only the burnished lead
of a bass line thudding the spirit
that thundered in the night.

there's never none of these demure boys
that comes to any proof.

Once a melody conferred

2010-03-06T11:54:00.000-08:00

I saw a girl brush her hair there, once-
but became rushed into the sparrow's eye.

A refracted patter from a rise of pine,
marooned to pining with sawdust filigree-
to cling to twist to turn to needles
in the sappy knot of walking away.

Something since has sintered the evergreen
into a sinistral stump of weeping silence,

from that dust up to a musty pedigree
I have grown aphasic in the orange muster
of a lattice sun and ovulate cones.

I saw a girl brush her hair there, once,
or so the sparrow seemed to song.

Nausea at Moon-rise, Re-Birth at Dawn

2010-02-27T12:10:00.000-08:00

During the brief run from a spinning light
to the brass flashed plate of a keyhole tide,
you could feel the tunnels of fictions shrink
and freeze the geologic laws that govern stone:

black veiny marble with frothy pearls of clot
bled in gothic red on the funnel's twisty script.

Did I mention the ticking palpitations,
spiking along the cold wrought fence
with odd aspic medallions of even hearts?

Yes, it was a pocked marked sweaty frolic
that fashioned an image in the curl of your locks,
pursued though we were through the cycling spin
by moon kissed slurping through the lesser ferns:

we were feeling that fear that distracts from fear
if only for a fleeting clock of silvery breath.

I am speechless and yet I speak,
guileless and yet I beguile,
thoughtless and yet I think:

man, that is really boring-
one of the many days I often die,
in that place before the dawn.

The pin-prick mantissa of the visible kiss,
raised only a fraction of what was possible:

an orange blossom that unfolded in a bowl of broth
and slowly spun the hairy prayers of multiple birth.

Then, we ran into the gray creped mansion-
the laconic one slurped yellow bile,
eyes down in a library of musty footnotes
and dusty bindings muted in velvet rays
while the clever one spun of glee from fusty skeins
a dramatic green gift for the loquaciously visored.

Whether it was the ruby ink or emerald glass
we could not tell in the pre-dawn light,
trading the silver breath of tomorrow
for the baffling tongue of acid now.

wait a minute,
wait a minute,
wait a minute-
the sun's about to rise

Perhaps there was no illumination,
but there was a cirrus palate
that almost licked the sky.

three smudges in the puddle

2010-02-20T12:17:00.000-08:00

Whispers From a Rose

All voices hum now:
each murmur a perfect poem,
vibrations blossom.

Quantum What?

Infinite X's-
life's linear equation:
whatcha solvin' fer?

Concrete Paranoia

What if
half of you

got big

and

half of you

got small?

In Search of the Spectaculous

2010-02-13T12:20:00.001-08:00

Lifting an exhausted sock with prehensile toes
from the counterpane side of dawn's downy rose
is the minimally primal use of quintuple digits,
greater is savagely ripping a ripe papaya for musky seed
with sticky juice on warming fingers and frisky wrists,
and licking the thickening syrup with a simian glee.

There are seven ways that are less than prime,
all secretly scratched in clay by a whiskered few
and here we only lightly tease by noting two-
three through six are partly dusky and void of rhyme
but number seven, of necessity, involves a clue.

The clue is that little miss misguided Moffit,
made a u-turn and couldn't tough it:

Charmed by crystal and the spectrum produced,
she glittered through aqua and orange and spruce,
neither cowed by refraction nor sunlit but chance,
she spun through the motions of an anodyne dance,

At the bitter script of cuneiform prophets
she began to, leeringly, just peek askew,
coaxing brass music from ethereal bracelets
and waiting for clouds to razor the moon.

The clue is a little miss misguided Moffit,
she made you turn and couldn't rough it.

Murky bowcups indeed.

an almost innocent haiku

2010-02-12T17:33:00.000-08:00

saplings bow to sky
oven mark now passing nine
salt and peaches pie

Turning left for the milky way

2010-02-06T06:42:00.000-08:00

The chrome knife of a yellow fossil
is your cut bone that cuts me too,
entangled neurons silver buffed
in the jungle subways humid brew,
prior to shrill and before the blade
basalt scratched the sankofa thrill-

we were engraved by comrade baby chrome
into a goosed cadence of pablum clumps:
from the stomping argyles of pedantic hue
to the saline paths of washed-up krill-
a tidy nexus of etiolating fuck-ups ensued
before I left my sun-block out of reach
in the sandy bunkers on the washed-out beach.

Idle graphite scratched on wordy grout
their tack itself a talismanic snack,
hinting at the facial rituals necessary for
protection against sardonic maps of melt:
long in the sun but not long enough
I needs some heat for my feets please.

When hurtling and huffing on a sunset train
in a westbound carriage of terminal sun,
a bad pun in Dutch about cannon fodder
does not stop the pain or cancel the jones
of watching unpleasant seasons tick through time
a wrist for which is overkill, limping into stardom-

when the pillow cut meets the fossil bone
birthing a little flutter in the licks of distant stars.

unexpected evidence of a yellow poppy about to bloom

2010-01-22T10:52:00.000-08:00

The flapless dip of a buff thrush in sudden flight
is a frozen snap of broadcast joy obliquely snatched

in that moment certain moment just the same

you are the cirrus cloud you see you are
breathing at sunset into sure dissolve
leaving nothing but of breath behind
except the exhaled trails of atoms clashing,

when one jagged node through the gnarled pines
delaying darkness with yet more darkness still

egresses into sudden light:

a death that seeks to conquer death
with pebbles tossed to distant curbs;

the opposite of myopia is a tremolo just dissipated
into dusky assignations on the boulevard of minor keys,

a fillip without cream or sugar
that takes its black and proper place
in the azure pantheon of ceramic doubt,
the bloody hole of a glazed donut
drizzled back upon itself
on a disk of princely Doulton.

Entwined with the discipline Etrusca
a headlock of four syllables for the cursus velox
slams the lettered mat with a rough phillipic
funneled from the aural miasma
into the channel of your bronze and purple vision:
an idiopathic halo in a message of bright.

The propensities and densities of animated meat-
the meat is animation, animation meat,
or so he claimed once in Amsterdam:
his naught was not a vengeful naught
nor incensed by the orange burn of clove
upon the third forehead of a creeping dawn;

a hare stomped upon the pungent reeds
but the warning was diffused by punks
standing erect among the fragrant petals:

from zygote to zombie and back again,
a second coming is surely not enough

A deviled egg? No, you good.

2010-01-10T15:46:00.000-08:00

The peripatetic pane of the pilgrim fly
with its thrilling vertigo so perfectly wry-
the kaleidoscope tumble of a glassy thrill
through a white-hot vitreous bethel spills:

the baize purchase of idols periwinkle diffused,
by a thunderous crack decayed and bemused.

Is it better to have too many gods than not enough?

Mrs. Porter could not keep pace
with the scrofulous scribe in yellow-face.

The green rock gnaws the lichen's spectral white,
eagerly mocks the saplings wind blown quiver-
their kind has come in earnest and gone to flight,
blessed by the driving rust of rain's damp sliver.

Mrs. Porter could not keep pace
with the scrofulous wag in yellow-face.

To carry a demon ovum through the boiling dawn
with a tattersall shirt and brown oxfords on,
in indifferent forms with an indifferent clock
waiting for the chattering of monkeys to stop:

it must be bronzed sorely on perilous faith,
that these are the jokes of a fickle wraith.

Mrs. Porter could not keep pace
with the scrofulous fool in yellow-face.

the holy hoax was a hoax itself indeed

2009-12-23T16:09:00.000-08:00

The covered path to the redbrick cloister
was overgrown well before acoustic strings
became the dogma of the pilgrim's skulk,
well before the baroque cake of an April down
replaced the simple brick of the red earth
with a hyacinth path that led to furtive tracing.

To have found in the crispy regulus one last spout of glee:
slated into the broken legato of the paving stones,
a flip-book pareidolia tempered in the flickering crypt.

Between the flat gray panels of kerning cracks
the nascent spouts of lime and white
poked with insouciant crinkled laughter,
though the splatter of up-kicked dew
drenched the parted surplice hem
with the haughty charm of lifted habits.

So we conversed into the third of the seventh sext
but we were not to attain the hoary fourth,
heated though we were by the chill of purple snow,
barred by the thin lack of another slippery lambskin.

The repressed pulse of bloody flats but sharply played
with devoted stops stepwise notched in muffled air,
majora chords to minora chords swollen to a key:

an egressive kiss inside the robed and hooded matin
brought our pearly spittle into proud display,
warmed as we were by the gnostic mist of promise
and a pink fascalia wrapped to prime your chords.

Winged cymbals clashed and fey proclaimed
loudly into that brash and heathen season
when we were the power and the glory amen.

the flavor of simplicity is hidden yet pleasant

2009-12-18T15:00:00.000-08:00

It is starkly the fragrant lattice
of leaf-stripped branches black
that gauzes the linen soft of river dusk
and frames, in its pink expansive glow,
the fuzzy drop of a glacial velvet sun.

An arced string of parti-colored pears,
strung in a scarlet garden ripe with rain
echoes and re-echoes in the hushed ludic night.

Come to be drowned in eyes aqua and lacustrine,
framed by a pine torch of flickering doubts
beneath the needles of a wavering sigh
that absolves, in grace, the attic stairs of almost.

You are merely a liquid bag of liquid bags
draped on calcite branches of porcelain white,
a ghost of gray silk that quivers in the breeze.

To see what cannot be seen except through mist
is often hidden in the immanent thrill of now,
the pearly lies from a teal bowl of steaming tea.

So you hang your blue-striped bathrobe
on the chipped corner of the closet door,
skipping the knobby habit of the brass hook
in order to thank your white and holy god
that it was Bellamy, and not Rothberg,
that came to pave the driveway.

rock salt has its own reasons for being

2009-12-06T12:55:00.000-08:00

twelve tenacious yellow leaves left behind by an autumn late

were otherwise quivering on a stark and twisted spray near
the bleached ropes of hammock that grasped my inner name:

I waited for your windy release in the leafless valley chilled,
so early anxious that my burning weep was spilled into diamonds

and scattered in hopscotch gratitude upon the concrete way.

positing a moon of isosceles and tide

2009-12-01T16:47:00.000-08:00

i. sometimes we hope there are talismans that can distract the fisher

what is prescribed by the dessicated wise
with their vertical slits and alligator eyes,

leave them to leer with their yellowing leer
and wait-

until our dreamy dream of the moldy rye commences:

then, we shall resume our habits imagined from the sand-
we will bobble at will in iceberg blue among the laughing blue,
laugh again where joyous scales are washed by blue
in a laughing shimmer of also laughing laughter blue.

ah! selchie, come to me in a form that magically matches
the creeping sundrop, my rough sweater, and the orange tide-

if I were a sea leopard laughing in the salty tide,
I would only bite you, nicely, while rolling underwater:

I no longer care for herring.

ii. alone on the strand but not in those dreams of sand

a flowery sonnet a day is anorexic to sum
with all dem iambs and such tricks that seek
to flatter the notches of conquests begun.

from how many realities is it possible to flee?

I only ask because I'm counting on something-
algebraically, I would claim that n is greater than zero
but that does not sound sufficiently endearing for now

and I can see that you are not melting.

I have attempted to capture something:

it's just laughter during blue abundance,
and a crystallized frolic in freezing water.

the stupidity of men: volume one

2009-11-29T16:49:00.000-08:00

my first grand-daughter is being born tonight.

my wife is at hospital,
welcoming our little Annabelle.

what did I do?

I watched every version of powderfinger on youtube
until I wept like the baby to come.

while you were sneaping with the others I got my education

2009-11-28T13:25:00.000-08:00

i. it's so nice to lie among the living

my stirring, buried in triplicate in your broken zipper,
died a little that day, awkward of the rustic chrome,
and patiently exploding with an bronzed innuendo of why:

it was, as science says, a matter of degrees,
but mostly in a purple mist of irony, captive

in view of the violent fruit to come
I would have been a fool, then, to disagree.

ii. to wait for blueberries and skid into view on a falsely tiled floor is a cherished pleasure to some

then I saw you exiting the melodious factory,
the bronze chimes in a metallic haste towards

your felonious smile and your poisonous pocket bulged
with the ribbed beige cartridges from a sinister east,

the left-handed chimes in a hoison haste
so immaculately born of harmonious boredom:

then,
even then,
you agreed I was a fool to disagree.

iii. before the glorious separation devolved to pearly worship

I'd be lying if I said that I did not look down
when we circuited the alabaster dome outside
the echo chamber of black gates and whiteness

where sounds were ok, maybe just a faint gray voice

that was, if not professorially golden,
at least annoying to an erudite degree.

adding the swirls of rainbow sherbet helps
because green and orange and lemon matter
almost all the of time:

of that I know that you agree.

iv. then, bang! zoom!

anti-abstruse ranting in a pink and vehement form,

actually more abstruse and certainly less tame
than the sprouting seed from which it came:

after I had taken my time to target the moon,

should I take the time, now,
to re-explain my explanation?

and would you, ever, agree?

the naturalness of nature is a tube of lipstick denied

2009-11-27T16:35:00.000-08:00

something skittered in the dark and crispy dawn
and startled me from my rose-colored meditation.

hey, man, I was intent on something that mattered
obsessing on the uni, the sweet and orange indelicacy
of that sweet and slimy and wonderful dream,

judged, now, in absentia
by a person that no longer matters:

oh!
that!

syrup dripped its orbs of ghee into matters planetary that

and, excuse the phrase, were parabolically and crayolaically melon-

but there was butter and honey and sugar powdered, so,
in a feverish and sweaty dream, I decided to stay a course
in which I was not chemically challenged:

it was just what the hayseed imagined.

I do things I do not understand: volume infinity

2009-11-26T20:51:00.000-08:00

I had a daughter who bounced upon my knee,
she was the light of my life with her giggling glee.

one day she smiled at a boy from another tribe,

so me and her uncles
took her to a barren place

and

buried her to her neck
to prevent indecency

and

threw rocks at her head
until we were sure that she was dead.

we have cellphone pictures and video
if you need proof that I'm a man.

I have decided to expose my deferment

2009-11-25T16:59:00.001-08:00

i. it makes sense when you consider the pleasures of transgression

then they brought the heavy oxidized cannons, erect and
rising through a green mist of mud that oozed downhill-

it was, after all, necessary,
and they did have scriptures and all that shit,

and they brought it
and they brought it
and they brought it,

hallelujah.

they brought it to an previously obvious place
that I never, idiotically, expected, duh?
and, to emphasize my stupidity (in case you missed the point):

I cannot say that I was surprised or even cognizant
of the absurd and ribald bloody scene that drew,

in the modern sense of the gerund cutting,

an audience of ten.

ii. I need to buy new glasses

man, I am just trying to see.

iii. in the interim, someone asked me about the afterlife

just to be clear,
man, I am just trying to see.

ectasy found in a seaside market

2009-11-23T17:23:00.001-08:00

there was little between our rough geometric god,
dreaming of pale supplicants in chessboard robes,

and the encouraged benediction
of smooth white pebbles
that tumbled onto the silver strand
in a chaotic foam of shelled joy;

who could not sense the saline grace
of that warm and briny rhythm,
the rhythmic perfection that erupts
from the incessant sand of eternity.

champagne, the descant of marvelous claret
and a frivolous mink with an upstaged shout
that, seductively, stole the freckled show:

it was the day a million of me
met a million of you
and echoed a million harmonies
that, in harmony, echo still.

a hair is such a simple thing

2009-11-22T12:09:00.001-08:00

then I noticed that one of your rebellious golden strands
had flown awry from a crucible winged with the wilted brass of quills,

had pierced the imagined golden fabric of my pompous fleece
with a sinuous mythology that was tenacious
and prompted, to a ticket holder entranced by teal,
an ancient head of expertly burnished copper-

then that almost bronzed and autumn needle
suddenly, in refracted sunlight, opened

into a kaleidoscope irresistibly imagined and,

serendipitously shadowless,

waltzed so dreamily into such a blond captivation

that I am captured to this eternal yellow day
by a flickering prism of luminous mineral glass:

periwinkle, burnt sienna, forest green-

when I am feeling confessional, especially,

I am still confused by the red and violets

and

I embrace, as always, periwinkle,
but not so much the continuous bland reflections
of that new and awkward chrome-

I have heard that, occasionally,
for the want of a better watch,
time fritters away in a perfect rhapsody:

I heard also, reluctantly,
that there are things,
especially blasphemous,

things that are mortal
mostly to the young.

it's such a blue thrill to split the sky

2009-11-20T16:33:00.000-08:00

i. the fair weather that grew into a silky redemption

our gate into the moss that day
was trilled in a perfect coloratura,
demising at will the bark target
that was grilled by rusty willows-

pink but secretly unmentioned:

the munificent weeping of impatiens
in a necessary press towards bloom
as to my blush became the saintly dew.

you might call it paradise,
I call it something more.

ii. every evolution has a modicum of unfortunate offshoots

then came a calligraphy shorn of boredom that never faded:

our foundry unspoiled and grave where carved tablets lounged
in a soothing sienna mud that reeked of bubbling, spiky abuse.

I was so high I could see the planets.

iii. it only sounds like growling when I mean it.

there was something barking a gray language of granite oppression,
a voice that dragged with sisal ropes across the canine floor
and tore into the seductive sway of elms and oaks and maples:

it had the darkening violence of an unexpected autumn storm-

I had only expected leaves.

iv. the circle is sometimes announced by the chimes of innocence

twigs were hurled until our nostrils reeked of blood-
times were so much different when the sun arced low
and a horrified pack of shills went monkey, totally:

for a split dream moment the falcon aspired
under gray flurries that huddled with the Valkyries-

to wait for the freeze is, often, to be frozen still:

I still yearn for that sky-blue pop.