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