overheard

in quiet bubbling
streams of consciousness
I fish, for more, a
complement
to ensnare by way of
baited breath.

the scales of gilded pearl
and light white-orange glow
and flow tonight,
but all of the world's an empty pool of
sifts and shifts, the solemn sands
that drift and drift across the depths
of moonlit waves of nothingness.

ginger ale

out of stark-raving green smooth
burns my tongue my throat
slides over tonsils.
nothing so sickeningly sweet
but sharp, bitter, quiet
understated, understandably so,
so it wraps around my heart
and lungs
and tugs

wars

breathe heave like dry bread,
up a cracked and lonely dirt road riverbed.
capsizing the crooked little canoe,
as was what was there was just for you;
whereas I pine and am ever green,
we brown and crumble, like waking dreams

green green

My love, I could not have come to know
how rain drops drip
and sink into the salmon soil;
to cumber my green, green grass,
and leaven your wiry wool.

open to fall

dry dry rye with a slice of lime pie,
a styrofoam cup of your darkest red wine
under glass danced on a tabletop days
a skirts hem to slip up a glancing eye gaze
through grasswind whispers that'd pass idle ears
to a mute crook'd grin slides a summersalt tear

tied

rain in me my head
rings my hands
wring my lips
murmur dead
passés from
dead times
with dead
friends with
minds rife with
dead clichés
and lives littered ripe
with dead trends
that lead eyes for
better days
unto the deadest
of the ends.

unexited

anchors a-weigh on a soggy wood deck
of sand salted paint-stripped beached shipwreck
lays on wounded hull side as the shore
teases the dead with dull ocean roar
in splinters along the crags find hope
to deafen, blind, and bring us to cope
a failure of heart to find what it can
and all is lost among the water and sand

all hail the new dawn

I'm one obsessed

with the state of Going;

much too much so
to bother with
the state of Is;
the building of Built,
the gilding of Guilt,
and the ceaseless battle
for some kind of
peace

if pages

if pages blank could say a word
or two to help assess my mood
I'd gladly watch an empty space
lend an ear and pencil trace
the edges of a word or three
that express the depth of misery
as that I wish I could explain
as simply as a pouring rain

opia

what joyful spirit this place betrays!
what happy soul it bleeds away;
a fancy free caught in my lashes,
puncture highs and small, trembling hands, placed
on my shoulders
in tiny, shocking ways;
abrupt, yes,
but
little earns my surprise nowadays.
what reaches out cross never lands
to never ends, we'll never see?
and no, not much lands on
ears bereft, or rather ears bereaved,
but a hold of hand would still my heart
and senses awed would reinvent
lifetimes of fragment dreams a child would believe;
ambitions gone, absconded with,
another end, another means,
to progress our hearts towards the sun,
because growing up means dying young

hearth

I


hold-on,
the son,
the dawn;
spit on your fathers and kill your moms
at house, the grown grow meek and tired
from dagger stares and primate liars


II

of missives crushed and ripped to dust
in notes of passive, fragile lust:
a crippled heart devoid of song;
hold on the son,
the dawn

postulate

to the occasion rises a breadth of able-headed boys in
various rags and scraps of cotton, leather and stained with the chemical color dyes
of this and there from when and what they've loved and known
for far too long to look too far through past inside around or beneath anything and everything
they've come to see and love and know

homes and forests from whence they come, nation breathless born in chains
frantic frenzied with crusader zeal, a leaden charge towards
simply nothing.
when allegiance to none doesn't count itself,
the ends is that from which it came.

cowl

how can i not hold
in my own turbulence
a wave of upset something, but nothing arrives
to beginnings but ends
and bits of this and that and everything
in between you and i.

corrupted curdle of exuberant flame
upside-inside, out and downward
spiraling out from left to right and back again
sparkle something, but nothing gained in terms
of visions of light or such things

blessed be my heart to me,
it stings with pride at the thought
of something inside
which it is not

every person is a screaming horror

every person is a screaming horror
facing forward, in a line:
hands folded, eyes aghast,
neat parted hairs
by a comb toothed fine.

on streets paved of blues and grays,
and pinball lights against defilade,
blood polluted and mind ablaze:
steady death is life of age.

every one is a howling terror
with eyes full bloom from gleaming face
and teeth of raging white and red
with bulging neck-tied veins that spread
below the chins of merry men
who laugh and dance and drink and sing

every person is a screaming horror
whored in rags of filth and tears
with hands lopped off and mind in scatter
a puffed up bag of dread or fear

comatose

faces are visions of absolute nothingness:
a meaningless variation.
within each a world of wonder and rich, vibrant thought
a construct monument to logic and reason
ay, but not truth;
because in death we understand perspective
and only in understanding perspective do we know the truth.
as each our minds form webs of reason
thoughts pass to dust and trail off in the air
of forgotten stories and kinships past.
our short, brutish stay on this conscious plane
begging the questions the answers provide
only in death do our minds calm
and acceptance o'erwhelms our instinct to hide.