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.