the waves

brains aflame, you know,
howl and glow the rain away
like the oceans wily waves--
like the oceans whiling waves

the uptown

in my dreams i can only see and chase
the hem of her dress when
her smile flickers and fields flood my memory.
we (the two of us) are the duplicated souls across the stretch of golden grain, the
densities of tiny seeds overflowing boundaries and constraints, inhaling
the afternoon swollen with her silence,
and how desperately i'd like her to tell me
everything she knows about herself-- the intimate beauty of her
classical vulnerability,
the thoughts that calm her winding mind
and soothe her heart to sleep,
and the structure of a will that has bent itself against the raging world she
bravely faces.

mercy

mercy has the mind of an ancient archer, who has only to
see a dream of a fletching's end protruding from some breast
before she finds herself
drawing back the glistening answer,
tracing its deviation from the horizon's curve
and sheathing it across the hint of summer air,
plumbing heathen heart with obsidian rock
and paralyzing the rest in fear.

stole off

you should see those symbols
dance
across
the
page
and those partners shuffling
in and out. they're lovers
locked in their
lunacy, who break their angles
in swift spirits
of dual misery
and the audacity of their crime.
the victim
i should know--
also shuffling, but
to a fro-- a miser
swifted with spirits
resembling
the density of an angular flux's
maniacal locking, itself
mistaken in its conflation
of its memory and the time.
separation knows little but its last seconds
well,
and even less to one side or the other--
as
old history comes to know its
limits and
beckons to mirrored images,
it searches for the certainty
it once held in
its visage.
so eternity does fade,
it thinks,
gone like a death unmade,
the last whisper of truth and
control
tickling my tympanum,
breathing its moist wish
along my ears and neck.
no more of my
dreams for its dissection--
the anatomy of my vision
unraveled
has dried up and cracked
in sickly lit motel beds.

i.m. cutting this place loose baby
i laid it on you straight, he said,
i cant hang when i got little time to be whiling away
for all these pretty
shapes. more of
that in the morning and other nights burnt slide--
more of that, tomorrow, would grab you more--
but these miles of rap can hold back the dawn, man.
you might but wear out your treads rolling it around the
block. it's a down square ball-all-night
beatin' up your chops kicking cans,
but nothing over
till you say it cold
to cut it some slack, jack.
ya dig?

loneliness is sexy, but your photos trade for mirrors--
and the guilt you'll feel for your bursting pride
in the finest movements in your unfinished forms,
reaching completion all on their own.

dead end

it was small of me, again,
to have knotted and spun all these
itchy red yarns (i should have known)
in the same autumn/winter wind that i’ve pegged for
pain the more painful behind private eyes, now
my poem cast, black on black, notes carved into
transparent stone,
the ink chips that echo a cascading descent and just
mad tinkling fragments that will never be born. so
loneliness is strength again as the forecast
calls for snow: i’ve managed just
another recourse to
the same old mantra’s end.
here we flip like postwar pages,
hearth-huddled, tattered for the warmth—
a company of miserymen and our cities in the earth
(i really should have known).

promising

let's write that love song
you've been talking about for years
without mentioning
in every sigh you hold when we speak
and sentence gutted,
then unmoved.
remind us we're alive,
or take cause to wonder why
in last nights, mornings and
mid mornings given to collection
and recall.
let me see the rage of
pain you'll feel
when you twist yourself from mine
or crudely fit your fears
against the idiocy of my pride.
send me the masters of fate
that I see in me
with that dreadful clarity
who buckle and sway the day away,
bring me miles unchecked,
springing from wait, standing broken,
the future incarnate,
domina nocturna,
lady luck,
justice blind--
the eternal spiral.

american trace

fur fur flies from
a golden fade,
thankful for the time

saved the
shame and pride of an
age denied
laying spread and locked
our bright steel maws
teeth out
in the lighthouse shade,
faces frozen in
horror, wait,
eyes dust-locked on
the black cloud
streaming some triumphant flags
in its wake

easy

slow skirts
give birth,
all
inveighed
invade.
age-old
art
of self-control,
the paper
barricade.

cold dreams

the doctor hooked me up
with that k2, have mercy.
it's almost gone, a day later, from more
night times wasting around in the city
sauntering off to afternoon eyes blinked out of slumber
swarming with old loves laughing and smiling
without no one by their sides.
all dead friends found wandering
abandoned churches like allergens cracked off of skin
they remember
climbing determined up to banners and testing
their trauma against the whips of
the autumn wind. here in
another uneasy heartland neighborhood,
when times are rough
with the precision of the slick night streets
and the downy hollow of a widow's shriek,
more struggle she knows
once the winter dulls to a sharp spring sting
blooming poison lifting to nostrils carved from
icy months confined
to home in bed again where
no new or old lovers she'll find
amidst no roaring static, her
late life reflections
slowly dry

writhe

only moments will ever hold you,
only now we can haunt
the passages of your shame
and misery's sexy depths

should have known would have shown you
no endings in endless pockets
stuffed
overflowing,
dripping trails of
moaning static
from the eyes of
harlequin masks

armed with
projected rends
and grim future grins
never enough you save
against the moment that
swallows us whole
again

camp

the open field inlaid with my various little
shapes and knives
i've slept in for nights
freighted with shy cheeks
frosted
by unsold breaths breezing
the raging gray death
of a tired winter heaven's roll.

sweet wise lies to stay alive

moeru

more hearts slid through grids
picking lies from the cotton beds
built by honest jackasses breaking their backs
cultivating
the particles conjuring a dreamwoven nation,
or bring a smile to your town in
whole lives and quick quips breathed by
morning commuters
and the stations they've tuned into's sound
drumming the time blown 'way.

touched

i see you die for someone to know you
when your eyes flicker, newly guarded by clouds,
dim-lit and swallowed down into ether,
absorbed in daylight-- a suddenly spiraling recursive function,
wild and wet again, retreats into distances
misted by doubt.

your soft grin spreads when the waves
echo after you,
all gone lost in moments eternity holds onto,
gone again miles that slowly start replaying
and fixate upon the ghost of an image.

"she wears the cute dress,
cuts at the knee and neckline
heaving in the breeze,
with eyes that see and look like they believe.
she'd rather not smile, but
she can if she wants to--
and often does, when she's with me.
she has a blue jacket
and a scarf that she hides behind,
even though its only october.
i'd like the snowfall to hit hard
and fast,
just so i have an excuse to hold her."

this isn't healthy

suffering is the new wave
of a heroic masculinity,
becoming a disguise that,
conjured up from shards of daydreams
dead before nightfall,
repeats itself
repeating itself--
chewing on the slender hairless arms
that waste away, still wondering
on ambitions never known or sought,
shielded by colors and noise going off
in the dark, saturated with faces we
won't remember much.
there's that gentle eye i saw myself in and
broke myself to see again,
so submerged in another set of
waxing narratives
and buried with boiled questions about
these
written memories ahead of me
that drive my eyes across more depths of beauty and
sin than i should know.
but some ideas i can't let go of
until i've gotten more.

weight

all the structures of my soul
that i once saw as blocks of stone
now sift and shift under their weight
like sand dunes spreading under homes.

drifts

no more destinies where i haven't gone
lying with hearts unloved and sworn
like written dreams we burned for warmth.
and no more needing to be born
back in the home i used to know--
in bed with oil painted eyes
disagreeing on staying closed.
no more war for weakness waged;
the humbled guard now sings his pain
like children huddling in the rain,
who fiercely kiss before they're taken.
no more miles that roll and sway
like the ocean's wild waves,
wind flicking foam from gliding tips
and speeding from the lives she saves.
she draws black tears across her face
and whispers notes the current left.
her simple measures become the thoughts
that guide us to our thinning breath.
smoke rises like a beaten champion,
ducking straights to start awake.
it braves the shade behind bursting bulbs,
and follows blindly its mother's traces.

starved and fed

you used to get by
on winter nights indoors,
bordered by decorative banners
strewn with holly and mistletoe,
wasted and boiled:
the cost of the year for
the last of a
ruined breed,
whistling and splitting
in no age for purpose,
with the roar of a wet mile torn
black by pounded snow
for its only company.


the dinner theater storyline
lacks suspense down to
its posed broad questions with
the word "wrong" on your mind,
spit in time with a response.
proud to be loud, i know.
i know you too well for talk, lately.
your jaw sets like a stonemason
in good health, slipping
threats beneath chemical flowers
from your breath,
and banging morse code messages
with your thick, wooden fists
along the halls through fitful sleep
as if the next day
would be your deathbed.

sleeper

she wryly observes
my nerves
lined up and shot--
slowly drifting off in ashes and smoke--
her eyes
secreting nectar--
reckless, coquettish--
tracing the fissures
that crack my veins
and bleed sweetly between me.

oedipus, electra

dead folks deserve their malodorous embraces--
acclimated to hearts and
ruinous logic--
they contain themselves entirely
and huddle in the terror
of god's absence,
liberated into madness,
dragging fleshy little hands across
their slackened lines of luck.

i'm no means to be wrapped themselves amongst,
driven determinedly towards extremes
in their unhinged attempts at thought.
my generation's fading fast-- adulthood evolves,
the weak are trapped.
emotional response without responsibility,
childlike regression, impenetrable infinity.

blimey

drive me farther your
narrow quarters
lengthwise horizontal madness streaming
nothing more
than common courses swimming through my bloods
burning my arteries and coiling inside of me,
perched like satan's snake
driving hormones home to
bedstuy and beyond
the city's steady lights--
the 4 stop's crowded with
crooks
and shades of otherwise empty nights.

swim, baby-- drowning not thinking--
arms can wave, so every save
carries us forward. joined by shoulders
tanned in afternoons
and cornering their aspirations,
students of iron cast,
dripping with sincerity
and oh so boring.
vapors
wandering the landscape,
painted in blank colors
primary and washed,
grazing the grass like
the cattle of geryon
or the honey dark jazz cats of 1928.

salty eyes get wearied of
making spirals by the hour--
unraveling gemini and
atomizing solitaire,
old cancer chokes and separates, but
burying the guillotine takes
loads of effort, sand.
waspy weather nips my wrists.
my hands dry out.

held to the molded curves i envy,
the fleshy suit of maternal
responsibility--
quiet lips that whisper dagger truths, i mutter
what i wonder,
and you meet me--
while we kindle the backyard tinder,
i'm already gone.
by the time our arms have crossed and lost
themselves in their warmth--
no more, i'll know--
i'll be dying on the morrow.

third person

he drifts on like a dream

narnibithia

i'm devoted to dying slowly,
watching never frozen faces
dry up, dust out, and run with the wind,
and living hidden in empty spaces
beyond the chinks of popular imagery,
where time drifts without notice
and memory wears thin

deaf eye

the days wear decay in the
dialogues i'm trapped,
i'll sacrifice my dying friends,
their faces trade for masques--
means sharpened into rusted points
to meet their grisly ends,
they know the old are going and they
rush to take revenge.

"the girls have all grown phalluses
and paint their faces gray,
the blacks forgot the revolution--
they're waiting for their pay,
the jew is numb from hands he's wrung
recalling his bad luck,
hoping against the deeds they've done
that their dreams are yet to come."

in turn i've built an empire
reflected in the lakes,
that horizon line may limit you
but it falls right at my gate.
material can beckon you but
cheap filling never sates--
across my heart these last few words
the blind can't penetrate

monday

i know jokes that end themselves eternally--
folks who've slowly learned to slip old
childhood hopes through oiled fingers
and cope--

who read the
slight in hearty laughter
and the gleam of toothy smiles,
sitting by smoldering set dressings
and whispering under the clinks of cloudy drinks.

the forgotten loves that visit my dreams
grin through tears and lose their faiths--
their memories went dry by habit
but their flaws still keep.
i say shame's in loyal's grave;
i'll hold her closely as we sleep--
when sunlight comes she'll just be dust
and i won't need to weep

tch

i have rewritten my rage and
worn it in my skin,
in
mean jagged fingers that cut and bleed
ink,
unsung through teeth
and shimmering brown,
in light behind dreams that
dip down

the movies

dead men give birth to the world--
they starve after hypnotic strobes
rapid coughing flicks downtuned to their
waking lives summed up in few hours alone.
we hum the hymn of myth in
gone remembrance of hopes we once
believed-- dancing hands that would share
our gods and arms wrapping around us
like silk ribboning.

consider me covered and fading like
ghosts broken into echoing streets.
in love i've learned the imagined end
of what we'll never see--
mirrored glasses line the vaulted halls
of a true eternity:
images reshuffled, the intoxicating dream

all you see is

crawling gods of
hidden worlds, secret lives they only
see flying by in flashes of reflected light
get closed like boxes born in paper factories
printed labeled and stamped by your favorite
old grown men dead eyed and stained
packet-pocketed, paid and drained--
public spaces closed around us shedding
pieces of their final persons--
grey plague magi rooted, gaunt in neat arrangement
resembling cloaked crucifixes in stinging desert winds.
another sweet and fickle beast
unleashed in an old metropolis, where the
dreams sound like wishes gone mad.
in time the new hearts chirp their mirth, coughing up
thoughts they've kicked around re: the next
day after's answers. they punctuate my sentences and have
no memory of the silences they've impregnated

ashes

no more slowly we're decaying, though they
may fill our humble fields of green
with fears of troubled movement and
old violence in between.
but now the drum they steady beat goes swaying in the
nascent autumn winds--
its thinning blankets muffle night,
its haunting hollow rings.
tonight the sea is sinking with us--
its waves
sound like its sighs--
and on its broken mirror face
i still make out its eyes.
butofcourse no dream of ours will ever see the silky dawn
in their dashes strewn along the sand--
our thoughts and hearts are torn apart
and buried in our hands.

open

this morning i dreamt of
new gardens,
now simple sculptures--
encasing old hopes and trying my eyes
against black backdrops and savannah grass lit
by wildfires in abandoned plains.

here the echoes down hollow futures
creeping out from one another
leave no shapes within their shadows
there folding notes in solitude

masters in dust

i say leave us, ernie--
for our sake, let it be. i've learned enough about suffering
in one little corny joke of an existence
for me to be at ease with sufficient grace
befitting a man of his times.

dear tragedies i've never known, i love that sexton's line:
september calls, a father falls, and she tires of being brave.

beastfade

i'm building a new world
on the remains of that reality
that exploded out of your chest and crushed us all
old black hollywood style--
more music and motion that go on beyond the end
in my memory, washed out with the aftertaste of
no age abandon.

deck nights

fantasy land again and again--i slip in and out
of missing the old cold weather,
losing fights and
walking away, minding the images
and projecting assent
as old friends work their way
through new lists of regrets

violence

in all of this searching, anything obliterated
shapes a path resembling ourselves
closer to death than creation's strength,
born martyrs in a heart's quarters and cells,
dreamland architecture stretched with
clawing walls for destinies unmet--
other halves, incomplete--
no bold new order for god and me.

news

we sleep soundly
in the broken glow of rainy streets
trailing curled up dragging leaves and
humming with the ocean sounds that slowly
knead the sea.
i still follow your Rx
but i've skipped the past few days
these OTCs do zilch for me
and i forget your face.
i hear my dreams more clearly from
exhaust impaled on lights,
still lifted with the only gaze
seen safely out of sight

capricorn

argued back into the trees again and
i'm dry for dull moments
combing hills, darting mad with hunger,
buried in PA leaves and ruled sheets.


this summer we've been born again
new virgin fine, finally
teenage royalty at 29--
the old fates
send me rough and sunny showers,
odd shapely autumn figures run amok again
in my sordid little dreams.

remember that imperfect poise
licked with flint and kerosene--
pattern splintered words and ashes,
and frozen in its minutes?

prone

i've witnessed the equator move on
and slip into its age
signals simply represented
to linger on a page
all stars align around us
and send us separate
in embers represented
modern lovers made unfit

holding

all moments move so
the memories go by--
i remember all things
no more.
new moments are borne when the soul expires
and crave more to build
an ego-- resold, unborn, made whole.
knowledge is death
and we seek to know--
finite blessings
not unseen
and mourned.
no coward knows death
that makes his own grave,
and envy in passion
is born.

born and old

how closely fits the mother's experience
yet shorn close and made tired
these empty walls make mold only
and become the homes we own

movement out

after ways have parted like the wings
of a dying fly
fanning
lost dolls in our blankets
who can't say a word,
fresh starts that feel familiar--
only bodies drying out on lines
guided from corner to corner of
a cold promenade--
a funeral process,
new makeshift make-believes moving
determinedly toward a magical ending.

sorry, we don't do "art"

disgrace

i have no use for a new machismo--
even packaged in paint and fishnet lace--
paradigmatically bound
and mesmerized, singing the refrain
in cheerstarved monotony.
ive seen women
and theyre not you--
no pain transcends your vision
but the prescription of self-satisfaction.
another victim of triumphalist imagery
joins the ranks of manicured wolves
marching lockstep to the
famous breeder's beat

inhale

i spend
afternoons in the void,
head dressed down in metaphorical
maps-- charting old sentiments in
new beginnings
and the slow fold of
tired eyes

caw-caw

all old skin has
years listed in it
and knows itself by
a dozen shifting names--
remnants of membership
in esoteric collectives--
stretched out in years
and rendered the same

qualm

i can sing the night's
calm diatribe
sweeping embraces into its
mildewed eyes
common touch prescribed by
embossed capsules smiling
new sentences in
examination
mentioned in brief
collides by subway stations
burned out and faded
forgotten pages

apology--
isn't after all the ever afters whispered mentioned something
neat about my staying here to see it all?
mention me to jesus please
i havent seen another face since i saw credits
in 3D
rolling names of mated hearts
dressed in pearls and sponsored clothes
crawling back to joyous notes
they've gridded in their memories--

media remade love
and me,
reprojected reality
in membership manipulate
reanimate the fantasy

swift run

each of us had not become
another but the only one.
across new fields of insight born in
amber waves and orange mornings;
memory had separated us into compartments
made and trenched in battle--
one and all--
ignorant of the grammar
of war,
and titled men in our
minds in failure
whispering bold new
sailors and blue waves.
hold to me old habits
represented and played--
new standards known
and learned, situated
in memoirs concentrated and
contrary to divisions of ideology
conjuring the fronts between
intellectual labor and the
workhorse elite

order

arrogance begins
on a small scale ladder
leading up the side of the world
without swaying in the wind
and from every corner meeting's
unquestioned answers
there's inconvenience disregarded,
the whole of the self in veil

braid

tomorrow remains my representation
upset or unstomached--
enemy of the state miranda written
huey newton--
german
light infantry seized baptized
and preached.
representation--
holodecking made easybake,
interpreted by memory,
heard in words and
replayed in cemetaries with
internal narration like
john madden, etched out
onscreen,
arrows and circles.
keep talking, we know.
brain surgery
exists
and the streets litter
with teeth and bottles.

entrance begins the boundary;
interspecies etiquette
demands it. i wasn't born
without body, but i shuffle the rain
of knives slowly around in my thoughts
and sharpen wind into
phrases and noise.
absence since has made money fast,
and opportunity to
blow through implied regrets
with matching smiles,
mutual acknowledgment.
maladies to remedy
i'm dying to know.

empire finality has a
tight grip on her mind
and absolute quality
has her obsession.
in identity she finds a dream,
unfulfilled materially,
and germinating minute processes
under the careful attention
of freudian authority
and trusted institutions.
media-driven and consumptive,
immaculate has met
its opposite; now,
wintered post-adolescent
adjustment and faced
with competing losses,
we observe ourselves separate
and calculate infinity.

contemporary mvmnt

i'm sick of the taste of batteries
and morning afternoons.
too many jumping contests.
laughs out of boredom.
writing lists to write lists.
shifting faces like new diseases.
nights in flux, denial (really) from day to day.
visions of apartheid
and no idea what that means, really.
absolute infinity within every single subject
and dreamy opportunity frying like fat in the pan

self-hatred

fallibility represents itself
within every choice we make;
to know and not
or stand in doubt
is to know humanity

as if

slipping ships in night breezes--
meaning entire, mass breathing,
on top of bars dancing. i know
because i see them,
that they meet me then
and care to know less--
i'm only whipped by golden tresses
and teased with the chemical essence
of egyptian flowers
and rum!

future men (before the end)

at 16x speed, their hands resemble ants scrambling over fresh carcasses--
tracing patterned memories of an old order that still pumps blood to their eyes and
drinks their regrets.
they cut past time spent on enemy images and romantic entanglements,
quixotic visions of mercurial dreams--
in remedy of gone opportunity,
weathered and internalized,
holding on like ice cubes at the bottom of a glass.

grand vision

no one tells the truth
in dreams or represents reality--
only speaking
structural
averages of unknowing
institutions of totalization--
all participate in rotary circles of concentric memory,
nationhood-regurgitate, military, corporatized,
tentacle empowered,
weaponized--
but set apart; they glow the
amber sheen that reflects in each their other's
eyes,
mirror rivers winding towards landing strips marked apart
by runway lights and railroad ties, carried off in
shopping bags emblazoned with the esoteric codes of
boardroom inside gags, parlor games shrouded in cigar smoke,
talk of asian markets and the weary western gaze.

here, the violence of self absorption
winters worship of the crowd; it sustains itself on
the idolatry of ideal power, its lexicon of infantile attachment

ok

whatever you need
to prevent your death
in full supply, fly
apparently unused and
wet

old mornings

i knew love like christmas
iridescent wrap yearly
a gray morning's grim exchange
handed con descension
into hands uncalloused written
in a new familiar script.

enter my dynamics
or reseed the priorities you dream
the ether rhymes with every
line of logic reprimanded
handed down from the wet lips of
crumbling fathers
and cheap paper sculptures

ngo

i died an asshole
in a foreign land
i came to know
in pamphlet sized polemics
masquerading as the memoirs of a nation
hell-bent on remembering
the last days/Golden age
that characterized their
sugarcane parautopian
masochistic wet dreams

my time is just
memory and light
dusts of fancy distances
gone and parted gloves in afterglow
born in cover and roaring into
description

porn of girls you used to know
but havent recognized
semblances distraction from the
mundanity of eyes---
neural fold dew saturate by
the hours gone in sleep
into darkness open eyes
with old ideas to reap

i finally had charlie the dog trapped in the corner of the den in the closing seconds of an intense game of "catch me." I reached around the chaise lounge and gripped his hind leg. as i slowly dragged him out from behind it, i met his frenzied look of horror and muttered, "welcome to the realm of the opposable digits-- where the slow reign."

hey now

in my head it's already the weekend
and even though i remember she told
me never to do
what i'm always doing now,
i remain
incorrigible, misdirected,
not too good, but--
believe me--
better off than otherwise

eventually, a pattern emerges

who mourns the fading aftermath
and commemorates old acquaintance
with the rumor of her presence

no more visions of myself married to the christian women
without friends, amongst old enemies and despite themselves
so bothered in their moral considerations and germane illusions.
capitalcapitalcapital, old pal; every day comes the closer destination divined
by our folly doomed to fall.

i build my representations before exiting stage left
and raucous movement masturbate
the obsession of a gentler climate
in the last throes of its only revolution
of quiet obedience and happier times

teethy mouths
that spit their rage
wear their pain
like cheap feather boas
and gaudy jewelry

Les fous de la reine

run through with world views,
Ciné-transe
is my
aching objective, the mise en scène
my only guide--
happily your Actors block and
mediate the aftershock,
in lengthy dialogues
and ontological strife
that symbolizes
my divide

how can a "master race"
express itself
in recessive genes

note to me at this "crucial" moment:
remember lessons as you've learned them and not just as themselves
you've done
all right but
im a vestige to you useless folks i resemble
but future times dictate
the passage of importance more
than actual meaning memorize

mad

somestimes i explode in happiness and laugh
that ive been able to conquer it all despite
how many people have drawn their eyes in sharp circles
arrogant though but i secretly despise the world
love despite myself but me i dream about despite
the hopes of
academics alike
im gone to the common man despite
its stupid vanguard bullshit i embrace
but i know i know
i can learn more forever and die
happily unlike these
uncertain drones
in heaps they pile
like machine parts theyve held it
in their heads theyve seen
the fantasy they know

goodness

i dont know what to make of the fact that
some of my most happiest conclusions have
come indirectly or directly from committing
the exact acts happily that
They told me not to do
by law or otherwise
isnt it all so artificial though?
moral codes and boring old
sets of something valuing something
beyond that
which we've already been told?

whatever

they slim down to get hitched, punctuality is key
for monday night confidence workshops
and friday night fights: manifestos galore, spoken from podiums
in slave train cliches and midlife regrets,
unsure and soft in the ways of the world he holds onto
in collected poems and letters from 86 on.
i hear tomorrow too often but it never quite ends;
forgotten the time
and everyone else.

im still learning nada surf breezes down the
easy street lemon trees

forgive me, i forget to believe:
like morning light nun eyes split wide
still uncrested with the deep grooves of christ's thorns
and daggers in her side

those are marks that his eyes know that
suffering inside them grows until
she dies inside his arms again
their blushing sweats entangled
with the scent of that unimagined

opposite the tracks the clatters train down
hawkishly sped unveiling
wet petals spread across more dark crackled benches.

humor us, another moment;
another story of gold and glory
and the fabulous fates of folks we hate
in lunch table rounds old
prejudices we can't relate

rivers

i build better fences in my sleep
because greasy talons
grasp and clutch but
no twist of grip
without seeming it;
me (unlike
the music climbing
in my ears)
keep my secrets
guarded by dead
memories
and riddles
of personality

all these lines are shithouse fare, ground out
plumply with supple digits worn white by
childlike sexuality, done festering in the vaulted
hollows of wounded pride and driven into the
blackrock arms of weary streets with theories to spare
and a doughy surfeit of stupid memories

i never say no to lady white:
she often dresses black and blue in fond remembrance
of finer things blank summers saw despite you.

my leaves uneaten in gutter pipes white
sprighted unignited lining window frames alike

i encountered another vessel counting
fresh cut pages binded with blank black covers
drifting through dunes and whispering passages

onward

and now i've finally untangled myself from the
lingering notions of admiration and loyalty that
had once shaped my earlier ideas on love, or anything that
brought people happily together in my mind:
i've laid my eyes upon a new american landscape of
slavish adherence and lost transaction, dredging up
false memories reinforcing simple rationalizations,
and all loss of value and worth dressed up in
a newly stitched suit of excuses and bullshit.
all i see is a carousel of fools chasing birds with exploding lights--
a race of sick men carved raw with hungry words,
running barefoot on moonless nights
towards the dream of a horizon sinking
slowly with the world
to the bottom of its glass foundations

i only think the new winter nights
remind me of the older ones
when my
eyes would shut thinking about
a walk around empty shoreside towns
suggesting
gaping hollowed faces with their crumbling remains,
wind strewing sand
through teeth slowly disengaging
to make with some old memory or unraveling rant
on the depth of human misery and
its correlation with violence and exploitation;
or how you could never really trust a person
to know what they should want, which was reason enough
to never trust any of 'em:
maybe he's put his car keys into too many baskets
to even know what to forgive and what to forget.

i feel like i could sit sun baked and staring
at crackling brown hands fingering the stoic non-faces of
black and white chessmen, listening to
them argue about
where we should have gone or go, or the
various merits of the
girls they fucked and
girls they've known;
how little it means to whisper something
always told to someone else;
and just how well they've done for themselves
despite the odds they're stacked against

gone

new(,) old i found you stuttered
unshuttered and from you couldn't tear the everything
golden, broken, and unspoken that you held dear;
at times like these, i tell myself
that aren't we all just constantly running away
and don't we all just
intertwine and drown us out
and overtake us while we
scream and claw
something horrible again?