gotham wit and wisdom

some just want to bleed and eat the smoke,
thinking in the brick buildings
marching ranks towards a city of
newfound glory and infinite return.
some of them have gone too far,
and glimpsed the blinding horror of
the magnum messages scribed behind the
codes by which we manage our
contusions and emotes.

movement 5

i wake to disappointment in a foreign land
traveled by blinding blades too brilliant to
light quiet paths to ruination,
that consumerist conclusion
of notoriety and industrial health,
moaning shades of protest gathered in the
break of stain upon the wet hot clothes lining their
slowly churning belts to product, shipped off and trucked
to hug the soul of the lonely drone
pacing forth and back to
browse the linoleum aisles.

oh, look how happy she's become
this year. she's learned everything she could of love
this year. she passes fading
in and out of focus
graying red with old wounds.
can she whittle a chorus from her foreign bones, scented
with exotic spices and veiled in handwoven fabrics, a beacon of need
inhaling every strength it finds unremarkable

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.