finish

none born in a snow storm, their hearts racing negation,
like riff raff tallied at the line for their food stamp
generations alive or just dying slower than ever
in clever jibes and headlines
everyone's a hipstar
down rocking on the sidewalk for pennies in the tip jar
dreams they had made get dashed like old spaces
winning past wins for the sake of old races

ever

only mornings with their hint of mist
can publish that refrain you breathe
when you speak and say nothing to me

egrets part 2

i blew a rose from its sour petals
and felt the fold of its velvet lips,
encircling close around my sight,
smother me with its endless kiss

i felt it go when my hands held on
and muttered wishes against my goodbyes
it slipped like maps from parapets
and fluttered down to the ground from high

i keep the rain in mason jars
and tap its sides on arid days,
counting droplets down its walls in
my wish that all the passed would stay.

the truth is

that no one ever wants to fall in love,
despite the deadly call of siren's falls from across the
murky silent depths offending
bridges and seeking lives to claim with
the driving sighs that rend our minds
and upset the carts that would have held
our precious fruits and grains, all of which goes let off,
soaking in the river's walls, down the mountain path and carving
ruts along my back

again

now permanent frost, tomorrow i can smile
wide and radiate like shoots of the sun
breathing through the cracks in the clouds sluggishly lugging
across the ovoid firmament, swarming the crowd with
puffs and struggles that bring them from day to day and back again

lines

i am just so nicely stained
and relaxed in fit against some grain
by shepherds' flocks they slow maintain
the shearing wind their fleece enflame
in curls and knots, some miles high
the clouds whirled by mills touch
errant sky,
propriety reflect upon
my generic eyes
jeremiad sought in so
few lines

oscars

come get the new remove
clean like shadows, from wall
to wall,
in made-up eyes and glib lips proved
the next year's echoes
from down the hall.

revenge

SWEET RAGE sustains me, crisp from the lick of
silent flames that drip black from sieves of steel and flesh
and renew the force of my contempt.

for the piddling price of a quiet corner
are Prometheuses finally free,
gleefully indulging their lust for fantasy
and violent visions chiefly wherein
more miserable rubes fall from and under
the crumbling towers of
their own ruin.

sleep lightly by your lies to spend
on days where loose tongues betray
their whims, flaunting vice and all your sins
before they find their refuse bins as fuel for future retribution.

m-ness

a vague, swirling depiction
of slow motion dying in a smile
crooked so beautifully, all
tucked into the corner of its cheeks snugly,
wonderfully wrapped up and
all in saddest commercial ever,
which
almost whispered the colors it
loomed around the shadows of the room
to sink the walls with differing rays
and bless us all with
natural eyes to blink
and simply drink it in for days

curling misery, i steep the
slow synch of my sleeping brain in
curves and words that wrap my feet and
bind my sides in splitting refrains, like toothy laughter
conjured up with fences and shrubs, dimly lighting,
spreading on these sheets and streets like rusted cargo trains
in heat,
so i can feel the back of my teeth
and slowly go insane.

ulcer juice my calves
cry out from behind straw fences, boarded in
with ceilings flocked by photojournals,
eyes so sober, stomach curdles,
breaking throats with coughing fits
and steaming wet by noontime.