It's black and brown on a distant hill

A prayer for gray ablutions early made
with soapy green shoots of silky tease,
some too tender for the frozen hardness
that harrows brown in hard cheat spring.

An early spring not messiah called -
born to wash again is born too late,
only when the watch on your wrist
stirs a plot with glowing hands and
henna paint beads with lost magic,
a lingering saint in post damp rinse.

So many ways to be fooled
and mine is so often forecast
in a veil of endless drizzle in
that cool wet fog I must prefer.

Every day I ask the question:
what if everything I believe is wrong
and I am really just an asshole?

A man in a long black coat
told me to chew on thyme,
a sprig will turn to lemon
and leave a nice aftertaste.

For a moment, he was right.

punctum caecum

Somewhere above long orange leaves
that have lounged onto the black river
to pretend autumn carp in playful sun,

where downy hints of swan lost white
flutter crisping  in a come winter wind

an explosion of blue lays bough hidden
where the blind need not roll their eyes,

where the landscape makes you weep.

A Repudiation of Sorts

i. Order drives what's plausible

That the clock ticks give us comfort
while we push the hot dose that makes
a cardinal sing while rainbows shine
as our mask is anointed into heaven

whether over a grey glee dying face
is beside the point, a point of order

in the hot sweat night of black terror
someone comes and says it's all right.

That lie that makes all things possible.

ii. Play makes all things timeless

Yes, the ball thrown into the blue skies
in childhood suspends wicked disbelief-
forgive me father, for I have sinned.

A cardinal chirps in wonder at the red

scarlet pity that his white clock has struck stop-
and his still hallowed ground a mysterious reach.


Perhaps the ball will fall at last, perhaps.

In either case, tissues are salvation
and a mask is just a mask.
and time is well forgotten.

iii Humor divides man from heaven

The gods laugh over a hard shit
because they too remember
the burden of the flesh.

Still, we look for praise.

iv. Damnation is a noble goal

To be good enough to be damned
is pretty damn good
when you're judging yourself.

I didn't think you'd do it but you did
and it was the right thing to do
when you locked that time.

I would have done it too.

It was all prearranged before you came.

Were you warned by the myths or repeating?

It's a rough question to answer.

No-one knows what happened to the corpses
and no-one knows if it matters,

but it was all prearranged.

When the down turns downy

When the down turns downy snow in white fluffs,
drifts climb to blanket his check comforter gripped-
winter time to buffet over seasick wrinkles that, cold,
wheeze the red black blocks back to spring despair.

Over the quaver mirage a narrow turquoise tile lifts
and, under the cross-eyed wisps of grey and black,
a bit of childhood drilling is revealed, just one inch.

What did he hid beneath the curly sawdust?

An evergreen seedling so heavy in hot wetting fever
drives a terror hand dropped from his down pillow,
dank in one last swollen supplication, too late gold.

I wonder what they'll do with his clothes.

A pebble rolls down

A pebble rolls down with a purple rattle partly drawn
from the bouncy bouncy bouncy joy of slate corrupted
with shallow pocks from years of hard rain and freeze-

down where streets drift downhill past yellowed weeds,
its horizontal vein of cancrinite turning orange cartwheels
hypnotically (and now you are in another time where)
past bare white houses where breaths are rarely taken

seriously if you want to cut a fresh hard roll than arch
your thumb and pointer and keep the blade underneath.

The bread is white soft and you are so courageous
when a pebble rolls down.

thought there was a difference

I only realized lately what a lie I am.

It's easy to discuss truth and lies
when it's only the weasel tongue at stake.

Masks to meet the masks you meet, indeed.

In the miasma of self we wish

to fuck
to kill
to love
to lick
to thrill
to worship
to thump
to lollygag at will.

Hide the executioner's face, indeed.

Oh you pretty things, indeed.

A billion realities contained by lies

I am

an animal and a god.

Dream a Little Dream

Blue mold on veined cheese is a wet salty delight
evenly tongued by a saint robbed of artful memory,
memory remembering dreams of a soft blue spread
on a crispy cracker so recently parched desert dry.

To salivate onto a velvet tongue and meet a glass of malbec
is not so hard to take on an unseasonal winter afternoon, when
the damp clouds are high grey and amber and mild warm wind
dry floats across a blinding windy white post-coital mellow drift.

Hoping against the stoneware platter,
the chrome blade cries again for clatter.