callous grain sweeps and shuffles to
the noon wind refrain, the streets
of age paved with rolling regrets. his eyes bursting soft now,
like horizon lines, vision blurred by messy tears clouding
one bitter morning's break after another quiet evening
contemplating old ends and fresh beginnings.

poison known

blow your black
values stretched to
the limits of
their strength, seasoned in the energy
it takes
to strike poise and starve,
pout right and perfect the gentle
whine, and to embrace the iconography
of an infinite return.
what little age can weave its roots across our
dewy folds, braiding
with my hair,
betrays my eyes from
the herald of your time, the aweful terror of your presence.
i now feel how it feels to feel familiar
with every detail newly known,
still requiring
the suggestion of my memories
of lovers gone and old.
i tire when i see your smile.
rows of molars lined like calendar pages hanging
on the walls of where i don't belong.

i run the pound barking down the street,
eating black mushrooms and drawing conversations out-- watching
the mindful swallow their orange roses, opening their inner murmurs--
the tension wandering sensed outstretched
along the byzantine expanses of its grain.

next

trading caesarians,
afternoon exchanges,
the sober morning meetings
following new year celebrations.
the missile-minded assembled for
another year in plague-- hearken to
the tremble murmuring its origins!
breathing its knowledge of
a manichaen dawn,
marked by the turn of a calendar page,
biding its time and suppressing its feeling, its
rage,
drifting its glowing words of warning
in the torn cotton clouds,
accruing data as we speak on
our goofy plans and master hobbies.
denser by the day,
it speaks to nights alone,
half a world away,
where subtle hearts can now be
born under a winter's white paint graying
our brains, coat by coat,
the smiling hand undulates
and seems to always know.

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.