Transubstantiation
We were everywhere, sent from here, sent to there, left to fade after the war.
What did you do, coming home from the wake? Did you lay down in the sun, asleep in the eel grass, creeping toward a mourning of that night, a pregnant future, dry light driftwood on a beach under the darkness of a new moon?
We drink hurricane lanterns inside your pink wax, touching each others terracotta dust, glitter and disco feeling the soft inside of cracker lips lumbering towards the west with a change of substance.
I begged that you trust your memory, unlocking the door to let me in from our close distance.
I came like a dwelling wound, eyes removed by the lamp in your iridescent space, I came home from the war, bandaged in your skin.
The Groceries
What will we do with the groceries?
It is night, tonight’s the night:the last night of our house.
The kids like pasta twice a week,
and we did for the thousandth time
and then this night for the third
in a row, have that. And then it
was movie night, for the last
time family movie night
on this purple couch with that
yellow starred green blanket and
the love to slumber under
after a bowl of popcorn,
sleeping into the epilogue.
You were already gone to sleep,
as you do. When did that start?
It must have been a night
like tonight. Maybe that night
was the last night, maybe
it was the first new moon.
To bed I carried the kids, but then
had to sleep on their floor,
as always. Friday was ghost stories
at camp, again. They believed
something would come back
from the dead to steal them
in their sleep. But now they are
sleeping. I know the sound, its
always there, your sound,
as if you were a baby,
I was here when you were a baby
and all it took was shhh and holding
you close to my heart. Then the ghosts
dissappear. Will they tomorrow?
Only for my baby, but
not for my darling.
This Digital World
War runs across my life-
from the deserts of Vietnam
and the meadows of Death Valley
to the drugs the surgeon
took to get off before
before he operates tonight.
I miss you, and me.
That's easy, so I confuse things,
elaborate, artificialize
nothing more than the curve
and shape of visible light
on desire's skin.
This digital world
lingers
and does not bring
us closer together.
There are images of bodies
in my hand, in every hand
across the Earth and Space
and back to my birth
in a river in Vietnam
for I wasn't born where my mother said,
she was drugged, the hole I came out of
was not even my father's heart
but his brother or his cousin
or the shame-son thrown through
the hooker glass and foster class
the one whose all adrenal
by the third grade and looking
to numb the knees with pearl pellets,
kids who work, floating in famine ribs,
whichever one made the wall
with a bullet to his own brain-
I mean the one's born to death-
cold rain raising their multiple surfaces
tiny hairs, tiny ridges on nipples
crevasses, curves, shadows leading down
into irregular holes
they're our bodies
in this digital world, they are ours
by a touch of glass, by the ether
we breathe, in interring the entertainment
of their death.
This war lingers in a country
addicted to heroes, everyone a hero.
Patches on their skin, the diminished
heroism of a sick nation, for there is no honesty
before a burning gasoline corpse
gang raped and smoldering,
only a cry that all the others
must be heroes. Must be heroes I see.
I see with a camera through the pinhole,
my mustard seed, the puberty of the digital earth
making war sculptures with the vacuumed dust
falling off our human footprints.
I see the lingering jar, leftover hearts,
meat drugged to numbness,
pet to desire, satisfied and sleeping
knowing the bleeding mouth is down river
and if they want authenticity
they can wear the war on their skin
and by the safest edge through an advertisement
leave the death to the dead, selling indeed
and walk on the sex sore gasoline dress, meat separated from bone,
was only that, some deed sort of sordid, the sum of
breaking entertainment news meant for the head.
This digital world lays down in me,
for I have trouble separating,
its a shy heart that is not shy
but built with hurt, a day when love did not matter.
We've built enough of these kids
to feed the earth forever.
I need my body,
my heartless body,
to have its light escape,
poured onto you.
I only see
my self with the help
of telescopes.
Every love song
reminds me Spring is mostly precept,
do not confuse my ideas with your love songs-
do not confuse yourself, my love songs are:
a rainy night, the wind and the sound of tires
that crush of noise shattering inside the right ear
and bouncing quiltedly around your gaps,
every sad song
reminds me of a question: When will this end?
We are torn apart, by ourselves and more than
slightly separated, beyond repair,
its what marriage becomes when its reduced
to a carriage of arrangements, but we are torn
and it was all from the war,
the war I was born into,
the way it lingered
by the presence
of conflict, bombs,
some scholar might say
the sweep
of world events;
yet it is back
to the feelings
of distance, the desolation
that you are
not here and may not
be, that causes
an unspoken anguish
I can share with no one, because I never know
who you are. You change with the view,
a line of red corduroy along the edge of a leg
then a curve of hair reading from a page,
the curve of the page, a parabola
of a new sweatshirt zipped, a curve
in a hood, a behind the shoulder one of these,
a lean I lean to see,
more words to hide a feel
I do not know because it landed like the Fleet
and flew away with the evening,
another thing, a distraction, something green
and the thing in itself, this very artifice
of ink where I pretend
this is all so much more than loneliness
in a blended erasure of exhaustion.
And they say this digital world
brings us closer together,
"they", I demand, who? who?
And yet when we talk,
I at night
and you
in the morning,
message by message,
it is only the distance
that is illuminated.
I see these threads
we make
unwinding finally,
back to a river in Vietnam,
a bear, a mountain,
drinking the cold
the rain heavy that built
and overflowed
too close to the mouth.
Sunlight breaks from a horizon
only in my closed eyes-
a memory of hazel-
water desert, brown gold
glass, hair dust
sand, and we just break apart
you're beautiful the way beautiful
is beautiful if its gone.
Somewhere a surgeon is removing
gloves
and even though those hands
were deep in the blood,
they are dry with a pale dust
that ends without ending.
This is the war.
from the deserts of Vietnam
and the meadows of Death Valley
to the drugs the surgeon
took to get off before
before he operates tonight.
I miss you, and me.
That's easy, so I confuse things,
elaborate, artificialize
nothing more than the curve
and shape of visible light
on desire's skin.
This digital world
lingers
and does not bring
us closer together.
There are images of bodies
in my hand, in every hand
across the Earth and Space
and back to my birth
in a river in Vietnam
for I wasn't born where my mother said,
she was drugged, the hole I came out of
was not even my father's heart
but his brother or his cousin
or the shame-son thrown through
the hooker glass and foster class
the one whose all adrenal
by the third grade and looking
to numb the knees with pearl pellets,
kids who work, floating in famine ribs,
whichever one made the wall
with a bullet to his own brain-
I mean the one's born to death-
cold rain raising their multiple surfaces
tiny hairs, tiny ridges on nipples
crevasses, curves, shadows leading down
into irregular holes
they're our bodies
in this digital world, they are ours
by a touch of glass, by the ether
we breathe, in interring the entertainment
of their death.
This war lingers in a country
addicted to heroes, everyone a hero.
Patches on their skin, the diminished
heroism of a sick nation, for there is no honesty
before a burning gasoline corpse
gang raped and smoldering,
only a cry that all the others
must be heroes. Must be heroes I see.
I see with a camera through the pinhole,
my mustard seed, the puberty of the digital earth
making war sculptures with the vacuumed dust
falling off our human footprints.
I see the lingering jar, leftover hearts,
meat drugged to numbness,
pet to desire, satisfied and sleeping
knowing the bleeding mouth is down river
and if they want authenticity
they can wear the war on their skin
and by the safest edge through an advertisement
leave the death to the dead, selling indeed
and walk on the sex sore gasoline dress, meat separated from bone,
was only that, some deed sort of sordid, the sum of
breaking entertainment news meant for the head.
This digital world lays down in me,
for I have trouble separating,
its a shy heart that is not shy
but built with hurt, a day when love did not matter.
We've built enough of these kids
to feed the earth forever.
I need my body,
my heartless body,
to have its light escape,
poured onto you.
I only see
my self with the help
of telescopes.
Every love song
reminds me Spring is mostly precept,
do not confuse my ideas with your love songs-
do not confuse yourself, my love songs are:
a rainy night, the wind and the sound of tires
that crush of noise shattering inside the right ear
and bouncing quiltedly around your gaps,
every sad song
reminds me of a question: When will this end?
We are torn apart, by ourselves and more than
slightly separated, beyond repair,
its what marriage becomes when its reduced
to a carriage of arrangements, but we are torn
and it was all from the war,
the war I was born into,
the way it lingered
by the presence
of conflict, bombs,
some scholar might say
the sweep
of world events;
yet it is back
to the feelings
of distance, the desolation
that you are
not here and may not
be, that causes
an unspoken anguish
I can share with no one, because I never know
who you are. You change with the view,
a line of red corduroy along the edge of a leg
then a curve of hair reading from a page,
the curve of the page, a parabola
of a new sweatshirt zipped, a curve
in a hood, a behind the shoulder one of these,
a lean I lean to see,
more words to hide a feel
I do not know because it landed like the Fleet
and flew away with the evening,
another thing, a distraction, something green
and the thing in itself, this very artifice
of ink where I pretend
this is all so much more than loneliness
in a blended erasure of exhaustion.
And they say this digital world
brings us closer together,
"they", I demand, who? who?
And yet when we talk,
I at night
and you
in the morning,
message by message,
it is only the distance
that is illuminated.
I see these threads
we make
unwinding finally,
back to a river in Vietnam,
a bear, a mountain,
drinking the cold
the rain heavy that built
and overflowed
too close to the mouth.
Sunlight breaks from a horizon
only in my closed eyes-
a memory of hazel-
water desert, brown gold
glass, hair dust
sand, and we just break apart
you're beautiful the way beautiful
is beautiful if its gone.
Somewhere a surgeon is removing
gloves
and even though those hands
were deep in the blood,
they are dry with a pale dust
that ends without ending.
This is the war.
Glazed Looking Glass, Into A Window of Looking Past
We
have broken you
we
brought you in
that Saturday
a night
with August chill
clay
and stardust started
water on the spinning wheel
and we
have broken
your heart
Did we bring you along
only to set you in front
of the grindstone?
No, we thought
we could simply
love you and enough
would be the grasp,
that bubbles reflect
the light coming
in through the exhausted
shades,
that we could resist
the dissipating days
You
did as well as
we could
as good
as we would say
with the fork
and you resisted
and changed hands
and it was good,
you got the fork
You
did what you should
and we
have broken your heart
You held up your hands
and wrapped your arms
as we asked,
you held the ball
and moved to the left
you did everything
and we
changed directions
we
let you play
with remote controls
and then suddenly
there was no television anymore
We have broken your heart
we have taken your smile
and replaced it with a long
thoughtful glaze.
We have set you
on the road to
discipline and madness.
Save your rainbows, push
the callous fingertips
through the knitting
and speak with your own
angels, bring your smile
back from that distant
place the back
of your eyes have retreated
into, bring your mind back.
I can not bear the thought
of bare art, of admitting our divorce
of admitting my part, my part was it,
it watching your heart break
across the kitchen table,
my dear son, falling
as if the Fall now is,
falling apart.
have broken you
we
brought you in
that Saturday
a night
with August chill
clay
and stardust started
water on the spinning wheel
and we
have broken
your heart
Did we bring you along
only to set you in front
of the grindstone?
No, we thought
we could simply
love you and enough
would be the grasp,
that bubbles reflect
the light coming
in through the exhausted
shades,
that we could resist
the dissipating days
You
did as well as
we could
as good
as we would say
with the fork
and you resisted
and changed hands
and it was good,
you got the fork
You
did what you should
and we
have broken your heart
You held up your hands
and wrapped your arms
as we asked,
you held the ball
and moved to the left
you did everything
and we
changed directions
we
let you play
with remote controls
and then suddenly
there was no television anymore
We have broken your heart
we have taken your smile
and replaced it with a long
thoughtful glaze.
We have set you
on the road to
discipline and madness.
Save your rainbows, push
the callous fingertips
through the knitting
and speak with your own
angels, bring your smile
back from that distant
place the back
of your eyes have retreated
into, bring your mind back.
I can not bear the thought
of bare art, of admitting our divorce
of admitting my part, my part was it,
it watching your heart break
across the kitchen table,
my dear son, falling
as if the Fall now is,
falling apart.
30/30/(9)
What were the ovens?
A miner hands grabbed a pastry at lunch.
The black dust made a dead black space
on the breaded handle. He put his dusty
lips to the crust, his cartwheeling teeth
sank their way into the salted meat.
In five minutes he was done.
In his first five minutes back at work
he dislodged the fragment of coal
that would fire away the lives
and then lifted
his tool across his body
and swiftly dislodged more,
doing so he breathed in dust.
Where everyone makes a sum
On the trail-ways to the body,
the sun rises sideways,
a fire above the pink road.
Where everyone makes a sum
On the system of death,
we become less a people
and more a thing.
What baby born looks
Into its mother’s eyes
And forecloses on its demise?
Who tells a child-we need
You to die, you must protect
Us, you are the seed
To a new life,
a seed we
send to die.
Missamari In the Seven Seas
Lost Atoll We are lost atoll
There are fading fish
But we eat them all
They are rotting,
They are drying
On the salted rocks.
Where we fade and make
Each other as much as fatal
Accidents of fate,
And live as our eyes grow dark,
Live as we let go,
Fading furthur,
End your searches
For our lost atoll.
Waking in the island sun
We drove through
The moon and slept
To last midnight
To see the wake
And rising sun
And feel the warm
Begin to bake and
Begin to shake
The earth off our beach
To feel the fine sand
And our hair,
Kiss your shirt, sleep late.
We will fade alone
Among the world,
We will make them late,
We will be late.
Our lost atoll,
We are together.
We will be
Among the world,
We will fade.
Among the world,
We will make them late,
We will be late.
Our lost atoll,
We are together.
We will be
Among the world,
We will fade.
Three Muses
Aoide
the debris, the guitar
she left was sleeping,
was gathering, the dust
trailing her sylph with
knife tips and cypress
of pink going by,
the edge of a fracturing
nail was a war
on memory, the
shifting towards
was a foreward,
this morning of sand.
easy little paste, blue flies, a sovereignty in our
salvation dispenser, noise wandering up her Persian
landscape;
she is standing in the color of the air, nowhere in everything.
her head is a receptacle, listening to
the endless beach, pieces of sculpted half-lives,
which half is inside the desert sea,
the bare stage?
Wherever were my welds,
My mounds, my wounds?
It flies under me, your picture,
A war on memory, fatherless day moon;
The night of an American sundown.
Mirrorwalls or time moving forward.
A lineal system of interruptions
Betray our indirect spin, towards
Forewords,
Darkness becoming light,
In the beginning of the epitaph
Everywhere is the face of God.
And when we become blind,
With your body in the past,
With you choreographed finally
Under grass, we put away
Your shoes under looking glass.
Terpsichore
Sonnet #2
Uneven in exact poetic terms,
We are old liars, our parents bed lice.
Immortal as I myself have done two
Pedestal declines, two and three, princely
Those principles, this point, orbits by this
Head, between artifice and style; by an
Audition pleased me with wood melting tongue.
Manner method, an old legend of flat
Rounder worm in her anise seed center:
Ceremonies of conium: someone
Said before my feet cut short our words:
Air or breath?
“a cock to Asclepius,” Socrates is dead.
Twelve pieces of skin around the earth.
Sunium to Phasis in Harmonia,
Twelfth piece of skin around the earth.
“Brethren, the pleasure indeed of my heart, and my supplication that is to God for Israel, is -- for salvation”
September 8, 1981: Adelphos, listen! The beast of Revelation is nothing but alcoholic eyes and dead skin. He came from Indiana to Las Vegas with no other purpose than to shit out his last days in a path of paper gold, plastic misery and cheap tar junk. A cream neon cross with Richard Chamberlain eyes sits restless and bound, stumpy bloody palms nestled into the auburn hair of a demon’s chest. Beware brothers, of the concessions and confusions within your desire.
He peels his multiple eyes into his white neck fat. He pulls his blue collar shirt over the alien mass of dried milk. He grunts and walks away with your money.
“We was painted grass, a pack of cigarettes, and you sit there in your fucking piss and shit, you don’t fucking work. If you wanted, the girls’ll get off in the morning, give away a free one on yer’ walk. Run them errands, take yourself down a little bit. Fuck everything you can, you ain’t goin’ nowhere when you come around here. Cat houses and liquor, look around. I suggest a sweet kid walk up Sixth from now own.”
He rises in erasers, playing in the sand, serrated cans, crossing the stoplights with receding acrobatics. The divine have lost interest in keeping track of the little pieces of dust, a pollen womb of eyeless headless flies. Your church basement mouth, a fucking souvenir.
I saw a blind man leading his dog, I saw a blind man leading his dog
Face her in a blue downtown, artificial sodium light,
A brown part of a tooth sticks out of her face,
Asymmetrical lipstick, the smell of wax on
Violated yellow nicotine air, spoken bicycled voice,
A throat smoke sore, caked toad hands, and
Cannibal waste on a
conquered plate, my eluded
elongated medulla and
mechanical fingers sit on necks, come by
bar lights slivering out of the windowed corners,
Grabbing clothes and running games:
Waiting, to go waiting, silence.
Waking nicotine air
Scarboy, I myself have done
Two and three, just
Violet mumbling and humming
And disintegrating.
Ice-covered proverb abandons your pride, sightless gentleman lead a history plague
Down your thighs, and you surmised…red roses to survive.
I saw a blind man leading his dog, I saw a blind man leading his dog
Wood Sugar
When we too parted in blind reflections
Better as ideograms, left out on a thread.
Better as ideograms, left out on a thread.
Have you tasted the mild
milk in the red cup, drifting down
your side, always in an Eastern arc?
I put it on my lips
And breathed
A Dog Spring,
collapsing in slivers
of penetrating rain.
We said the letters over again,
Spelling flower and petal strokes.
Your lips I left covered,
And what was left after
We our hour then upon your chest?
The light rain of this day
Only half past,
the violent gray of memory.
I have thoughts that escape me
upon your angular paper thin flesh.
When we two met, it was in,
In warm Easter skin, facing west;
I come to you now, with a prayer upon the mast.
milk in the red cup, drifting down
your side, always in an Eastern arc?
I put it on my lips
And breathed
A Dog Spring,
collapsing in slivers
of penetrating rain.
We said the letters over again,
Spelling flower and petal strokes.
Your lips I left covered,
And what was left after
We our hour then upon your chest?
The light rain of this day
Only half past,
the violent gray of memory.
I have thoughts that escape me
upon your angular paper thin flesh.
When we two met, it was in,
In warm Easter skin, facing west;
I come to you now, with a prayer upon the mast.
“Transmitting light but causing sufficient diffusion to prevent perception of distinct images.”
Wood Sugar
Have you tasted the mild
milk in the red cup, drifting down
your side, always in an Eastern arc?
I put it on my lips
And breathed
A Dog Spring,
collapsing in slivers
of penetrating rain.
We said the letters over again,
Spelling flower and petal strokes.
Your lips covered in a thick wax,
And what was left after
Our hour upon your chest?
The light rain of this day
Only half past,
the violet gray memory.
I have thoughts that escape me
upon your angular paper thin flesh.
When we two met in
In warm Easter skin facing west,
I came to you a prayer upon the mast.
The sun rose to a song between our voices.
Sonnet: I saw a blind man leading his dog
Uneven in the exact terms Platonically
We are old lies.
Immortal as I myself have done you on
Pedestal declines you do two and three of
Those principles and this point on
Orbits by this head an artificial style of
An addiction that pleased me on
Manner but not method, an old legend of
Flat or round in the center:
Ceremonies of conium:
Someone said before:
Air or breath?
“a cock to Asclepius,” Socrates is dead.
Twelve pieces of skin around the earth.
Sunium to Phasis in Harmonia,
Twelfth piece of skin around the earth.
We are old lies.
Immortal as I myself have done you on
Pedestal declines you do two and three of
Those principles and this point on
Orbits by this head an artificial style of
An addiction that pleased me on
Manner but not method, an old legend of
Flat or round in the center:
Ceremonies of conium:
Someone said before:
Air or breath?
“a cock to Asclepius,” Socrates is dead.
Twelve pieces of skin around the earth.
Sunium to Phasis in Harmonia,
Twelfth piece of skin around the earth.
Orpheus after the war
Orpheus after the War
was a thought upon the Beach,
A veteran with a dispense and a reach
In to your dress, love is gone.
If there were no war,
Milk would drift down your sorrow,
Lifted from skin graft
And inhaled
Under the dandelion sky.
Our early March was
Evergreen coated in snowflakes,
aching backwards
And arcing sideways,
You moved like glue
On a window screen.
Where can I go now
But to the memory of
Driftwood hands stained
In this comfort of ink?
Goddess, in a psalm kennel of adrenalin.
Water foam shoreline
Inhales the roots of wood,
Your arms,
corpse flowers among
Vibrations: the sound of the ocean.
Lonely din and hum
of memory,
Cold in a crowded waterfront.
Blackbird sky, gasoline eyes,
A city of crowds
And magnetic density,
A shelter for warmth tonight,
soup made of hot dogs
and leftovers.
Homeless and waiting
Kent 1992, the words don't move
for Thanksgiving kindness.
was a thought upon the Beach,
A veteran with a dispense and a reach
In to your dress, love is gone.
If there were no war,
Milk would drift down your sorrow,
Lifted from skin graft
And inhaled
Under the dandelion sky.
Our early March was
Evergreen coated in snowflakes,
aching backwards
And arcing sideways,
You moved like glue
On a window screen.
Where can I go now
But to the memory of
Driftwood hands stained
In this comfort of ink?
Goddess, in a psalm kennel of adrenalin.
Water foam shoreline
Inhales the roots of wood,
Your arms,
corpse flowers among
Vibrations: the sound of the ocean.
Lonely din and hum
of memory,
Cold in a crowded waterfront.
Blackbird sky, gasoline eyes,
A city of crowds
And magnetic density,
A shelter for warmth tonight,
soup made of hot dogs
and leftovers.
Homeless and waiting
Kent 1992, the words don't move
for Thanksgiving kindness.
This is Sacred Ground
This is sacred,
flooded room empty but for water boards,
dry, rubbed with black ink.
This is sacred ground,
page floors, a book of hours filled
with anxiety and despair.
This is sage and daisy,
disconnected by death
from the white world.
Noon prayers,
this is more than darkness, bearing in
around me, where the tree stood.
They laid the man down,
from the white world back into his sacred
Mother, and the world was
made of sound again,
spirits singing of mind
and mushroom fire.
This is sacred ground,
disconnected by death
from the white world.
The Iraq War
Strange piers angle deathward
From Manhattansand....
What are cold naked swallows doing here?
I say, but my throat don't,
Featherless driftwood
Of this Iraq War. Birdskin.
Child flesh embedded in mother skin
The transplanted invasives,
paper thin
Sunday supplements,
mortuary streets,
rosewater.
Before I was nothing,
your head was
Going down and pulling stains
From Damascus unprepared, unfolded,
playgrounds of a wooden
automation.
They will be forgiven
after they are
forgotten.
I am a four-handed
Sybil, a miniature of faith
And DNA that defiles this
Hollow earth.
.jpg)
From Manhattansand....
What are cold naked swallows doing here?
I say, but my throat don't,
Featherless driftwood
Of this Iraq War. Birdskin.
Child flesh embedded in mother skin
The transplanted invasives,
paper thin
Sunday supplements,
mortuary streets,
rosewater.
Before I was nothing,
your head was
Going down and pulling stains
From Damascus unprepared, unfolded,
playgrounds of a wooden
automation.
They will be forgiven
after they are
forgotten.
Abu Graib body
unfucked and folded,
served with
maggots and celebration
at a State Dinner every September.
What death fertilizes your
Anniversary impulse this Tuesday?
Sybil, a miniature of faith
And DNA that defiles this
Hollow earth.
.jpg)
The Sun Kings
When we were
air foil and turbulence,
sun kings
upon dust
covered hills,
a green machine
of slow gyroscopes
and black magenta
metastasized.
Our words slowly roll
up the beach,
salmon poetics
and dried tubes
of cellulose.
Brown pieces fall out of my mouth.
I look with red eyelids, backward,
a gilded survivor.
air foil and turbulence,
sun kings
upon dust
covered hills,
a green machine
of slow gyroscopes
and black magenta
metastasized.
Our words slowly roll
up the beach,
salmon poetics
and dried tubes
of cellulose.
Brown pieces fall out of my mouth.
I look with red eyelids, backward,
a gilded survivor.
Sonnet at the South Aral Sea
An Ecological Disaster
Trespasses of water in the very
Action of spring, air accompanies the liquid
Into the being, disturbed the gathered
Subtle placement of a vase upon a
Mantelpiece, war bed general helix.
Slickers and anglers at a reception
Of impeded questions with a sense of
Thing. Soaring, eyes, like a sky scraper, right
Here before I was nothing, mixed blood kid
Milk in your organism, that September.
Now, at the South Aral Sea, calcium
Dust, our words are entering, conflicting.
How do we walk homeward, in these circles,
And recognize while wanting renewal?
Trespasses of water in the very
Action of spring, air accompanies the liquid
Into the being, disturbed the gathered
Subtle placement of a vase upon a
Mantelpiece, war bed general helix.
Slickers and anglers at a reception
Of impeded questions with a sense of
Thing. Soaring, eyes, like a sky scraper, right
Here before I was nothing, mixed blood kid
Milk in your organism, that September.
Now, at the South Aral Sea, calcium
Dust, our words are entering, conflicting.
How do we walk homeward, in these circles,
And recognize while wanting renewal?
October
October blue and faded
past the Saratoga Pass
into the siren
between me and the island.
It blue and then it red.
The confusion despair
of submission
and publisher rakes,
inconsequence awaiting grace,
but automatic vision,
you...Yeats...
and fingertips taped
don't feed the saintless
and his little broken
pressings.
past the Saratoga Pass
into the siren
between me and the island.
It blue and then it red.
The confusion despair
of submission
and publisher rakes,
inconsequence awaiting grace,
but automatic vision,
you...Yeats...
and fingertips taped
don't feed the saintless
and his little broken
pressings.
War Runs Across My Life
This digital world
lingers
and does not bring
us closer together.
I only see
my self with the help
of telescopes.
Every love song
reminds me of sadness,
every sad song
reminds me of a plastic
radion. When will this end?
We are torn apart,
slightly separated
by the presence
of conflict, bombs,
some scholar might say
the sweep
of world events;
yet it is back
to the feelings
of distance, the desolation
that you are
not here and may not
be, that causes
an unspoken anguish
I can share with no one.
And they say this digital world
brings us closer together,
"they", hmmm, who? who?
And yet when we talk,
I at night
and you
in the morning,
message by message,
it is only the distance
that is illuminated,
a trembling, quail distance.
I see these threads
unwinding finally,
a bear, a mountain,
drinking cold
too close to the mouth.
Sunlight breaks the horizon
water desert, brown
sand coming out of
your brown hair.
lingers
and does not bring
us closer together.
I only see
my self with the help
of telescopes.
Every love song
reminds me of sadness,
every sad song
reminds me of a plastic
radion. When will this end?
We are torn apart,
slightly separated
by the presence
of conflict, bombs,
some scholar might say
the sweep
of world events;
yet it is back
to the feelings
of distance, the desolation
that you are
not here and may not
be, that causes
an unspoken anguish
I can share with no one.
And they say this digital world
brings us closer together,
"they", hmmm, who? who?
And yet when we talk,
I at night
and you
in the morning,
message by message,
it is only the distance
that is illuminated,
a trembling, quail distance.
I see these threads
unwinding finally,
a bear, a mountain,
drinking cold
too close to the mouth.
Sunlight breaks the horizon
water desert, brown
sand coming out of
your brown hair.
I Will Believe When I Am On A Graveyard Train
Bridges:
In the realm of obligation, despair
Avenues down the moon glow.
Love mourns in death cults
and straw votes.
You’re Face, book, illuminated under
the deerskin, foretold
A migrant population
Eyeless in its hunger.
Parts of skin, separated colors blue deep
and rope tows, are what is left of
executions and sanitized television
mourning: outrage, revenge, depositions
of after the fact awareness
as if the war
hadn’t been broadcast
twenty four seven….
Churches:
Sunrise across America:
trapeze and transept,
peeking through the flat weather
with cold parabolas.
An invasion upon my surface tension
the dew and the itch lay again
over my red eyecoats
and heavens of character:
a soldier walking with an
uncertain synesthesia
upon an oblong radio,
inhaling the obligate lumps
of the low-armored type.
Sulfur feeling
dust legs
painting the shapes
a crescent moon
from a cloud of earth.
Graveyard paths:
There it is,
an epitaph,
A cross,
America, all set in
a desert
of memory,
prone
to the leaving moon.
Alone at the ocean, in the eel grass, healing:
Seagull bodies float weightless into the settled crater,
A Gaza-like sea foam hides
the excavators,
planting
the winter crop in coffin liners.
In the realm of obligation, despair
Avenues down the moon glow.
Love mourns in death cults
and straw votes.
You’re Face, book, illuminated under
the deerskin, foretold
A migrant population
Eyeless in its hunger.
Parts of skin, separated colors blue deep
and rope tows, are what is left of
executions and sanitized television
mourning: outrage, revenge, depositions
of after the fact awareness
as if the war
hadn’t been broadcast
twenty four seven….
Churches:
Sunrise across America:
trapeze and transept,
peeking through the flat weather
with cold parabolas.
An invasion upon my surface tension
the dew and the itch lay again
over my red eyecoats
and heavens of character:
a soldier walking with an
uncertain synesthesia
upon an oblong radio,
inhaling the obligate lumps
of the low-armored type.
Sulfur feeling
dust legs
painting the shapes
a crescent moon
from a cloud of earth.
Graveyard paths:
There it is,
an epitaph,
A cross,
America, all set in
a desert
of memory,
prone
to the leaving moon.
Alone at the ocean, in the eel grass, healing:
Seagull bodies float weightless into the settled crater,
A Gaza-like sea foam hides
the excavators,
planting
the winter crop in coffin liners.
Some Lies
Departure at Terminal Similarity
Sunrise,
Fritz Lang, 1999
“I, in one of those buses filled with people you could never imagine to see at the beach, wonder and wander aloud about the conservative danger, have in my hands a black plastic dustpan,
And I, busboy,”
I, bus boy,
Isaac Asimov, 1933
“have, in my hands, gathering dust, Pan, pipes, flutes, small Greek children drinking in queens, playing the Gypsy Moroccan lingering melodies left-turning hat wearing face of God seeing, playing through the coal black speaker system who is allowed to talk to me, against some corporate policy or another, who is allowed to talk, first I throw away the food and it begins:”
The End of The Night,
Nikos Kazantzakis, 1934
“in ink spills from the plate she left trying to eat with a smile food becomes the reflection of shopping, strip mall full choice menu’s on the highway by ways of the gas guzzling emotions, choice cut stripper drinks with aesthetic-sized vision-minister server give me a tip, get back to the fucking country she says”
And I’m Back Inside The Apothecary,
Theodore Dreiser, 1935
“Dustpan with scratched black edges (plastic broken looking glass gatherings backward narcissus [a whole more vast than the Nebraska sandlot and the empty distance to Mars] leaning back half tasted caramel tart of drastic youth): two girls voices at the edge of the restaurant: what if the wow-ness is over and its like boring, they did it at the beach, how could he ever like me, like I’m not going to do it at the beach, I used to love shopping, lets go to Dexter and transfer to the 358”
Congressional Record, June 18, 1936“Pan, dusted moment: sweet worth less nothing, scribbled in the air of the diners who thoughtlessly thought no one could listen enough to hear their sweet worthless nothings (you never loved me, you little fat fuck, how could you, I never should have been [we hold back laughter] can I get a new fork, I can’t believe you are treating me this way on my birthday, why are such a bitch, what, you asshole, I don’t like roses, [every breaks up after a number 4 with a side of eggs] I think I’m pregnant, that’s not possible, if I had known you, are you done eating that, you should watch your weight, how about you watch my ass walking, oh like the day we met?, when the world was so much younger, the day had so much more potential energy for regret, I just want you to say something, something more than this silence, this sweet worthless nothingness that never should have been”
Untitled Screenplay,
William Faulkner, 1937
“lipstick lids left when impassioned embrace was the opposite of hate [baby vomit filled shoes, does he miss them?] discarded memories too difficult to keep all these swept up notes tossed in disgrace, forgotten retainers and tourist maps now gathered in plastic black bags with holes, a mop, and bleached floor washes away those infinite shapes made by drops from angered tears held back in the back of heartbreak:
or
more precisely,
an evening of preludes,”
Napkin Conversations And Stained Remains On Formica Floors,
T. S. Eliot, 1938
“When She Kicked It
before walking out on him at five
and her coat check and check
passed by
the front door horseman
so desperate to unbreathe
such suffocating supplication
and its complacent continues,
the parabolic curve of his clean
clean eyes”
Lipstick On A Half,
James M. Cain, 1939
“glass of wine, is there any less hope any where in this vast moment becoming history? Maybe in that tossed phone number of unsolicited intent, adding up, as always, to a negative. Maybe in the pencil left by the old lady who tips a dollar every two beers on the third Saturday of every other month. Maybe, in the detritus of wonder, where all chaos goes, is the great hopeless form from which all desire crumbles like coffee cake remnants uneaten, maybe may be”
Into The Trash, A Hat,
Muriel Rukeyser, 1940
“the wet sweet smell of a small dark spot whiskey’d away by a colorful beach towel, the smell tells me it’s covered in a teaspoon of bleach and this night will soon end as I wander outside the outline of my simple book of a job with a listless lean and wait against an exterior wall, just out of the street lamp with it’s fake gasoline smile, against and beyond the pale, wall, listening to the last cellophane caller making notes in their departure about the service and the smile and the closing music getting louder, closing past eleven, and there inside sit that last couple of two
peephole
in silence coming to their end in a bottle of red to go off into the black night, where”
I Am Waiting Outside, Eye in Their Eventual Departing,
Steven Spielberg, 1941
“the nicotine swirls in lines out of wind
against a hundred backgrounds
of milky shooting stars
and distant red lights of airplane flights
back inside my mind, the mice are making
another midnight run around
the unlighted restaurant of night
hoping for some unbleached spark
dropped off the half-eaten
dinner role
under table 6,
feeding his children poetry good night,
The Small Rain Down Can Rain,
Wilfred Owen, 1918-1942
Venom and protein,
in her bed again.
Sunrise,
Fritz Lang, 1999
“I, in one of those buses filled with people you could never imagine to see at the beach, wonder and wander aloud about the conservative danger, have in my hands a black plastic dustpan,
And I, busboy,”
I, bus boy,
Isaac Asimov, 1933
“have, in my hands, gathering dust, Pan, pipes, flutes, small Greek children drinking in queens, playing the Gypsy Moroccan lingering melodies left-turning hat wearing face of God seeing, playing through the coal black speaker system who is allowed to talk to me, against some corporate policy or another, who is allowed to talk, first I throw away the food and it begins:”
The End of The Night,
Nikos Kazantzakis, 1934
“in ink spills from the plate she left trying to eat with a smile food becomes the reflection of shopping, strip mall full choice menu’s on the highway by ways of the gas guzzling emotions, choice cut stripper drinks with aesthetic-sized vision-minister server give me a tip, get back to the fucking country she says”
And I’m Back Inside The Apothecary,
Theodore Dreiser, 1935
“Dustpan with scratched black edges (plastic broken looking glass gatherings backward narcissus [a whole more vast than the Nebraska sandlot and the empty distance to Mars] leaning back half tasted caramel tart of drastic youth): two girls voices at the edge of the restaurant: what if the wow-ness is over and its like boring, they did it at the beach, how could he ever like me, like I’m not going to do it at the beach, I used to love shopping, lets go to Dexter and transfer to the 358”
Congressional Record, June 18, 1936“Pan, dusted moment: sweet worth less nothing, scribbled in the air of the diners who thoughtlessly thought no one could listen enough to hear their sweet worthless nothings (you never loved me, you little fat fuck, how could you, I never should have been [we hold back laughter] can I get a new fork, I can’t believe you are treating me this way on my birthday, why are such a bitch, what, you asshole, I don’t like roses, [every breaks up after a number 4 with a side of eggs] I think I’m pregnant, that’s not possible, if I had known you, are you done eating that, you should watch your weight, how about you watch my ass walking, oh like the day we met?, when the world was so much younger, the day had so much more potential energy for regret, I just want you to say something, something more than this silence, this sweet worthless nothingness that never should have been”
Untitled Screenplay,
William Faulkner, 1937
“lipstick lids left when impassioned embrace was the opposite of hate [baby vomit filled shoes, does he miss them?] discarded memories too difficult to keep all these swept up notes tossed in disgrace, forgotten retainers and tourist maps now gathered in plastic black bags with holes, a mop, and bleached floor washes away those infinite shapes made by drops from angered tears held back in the back of heartbreak:
or
more precisely,
an evening of preludes,”
Napkin Conversations And Stained Remains On Formica Floors,
T. S. Eliot, 1938
“When She Kicked It
before walking out on him at five
and her coat check and check
passed by
the front door horseman
so desperate to unbreathe
such suffocating supplication
and its complacent continues,
the parabolic curve of his clean
clean eyes”
Lipstick On A Half,
James M. Cain, 1939
“glass of wine, is there any less hope any where in this vast moment becoming history? Maybe in that tossed phone number of unsolicited intent, adding up, as always, to a negative. Maybe in the pencil left by the old lady who tips a dollar every two beers on the third Saturday of every other month. Maybe, in the detritus of wonder, where all chaos goes, is the great hopeless form from which all desire crumbles like coffee cake remnants uneaten, maybe may be”
Into The Trash, A Hat,
Muriel Rukeyser, 1940
“the wet sweet smell of a small dark spot whiskey’d away by a colorful beach towel, the smell tells me it’s covered in a teaspoon of bleach and this night will soon end as I wander outside the outline of my simple book of a job with a listless lean and wait against an exterior wall, just out of the street lamp with it’s fake gasoline smile, against and beyond the pale, wall, listening to the last cellophane caller making notes in their departure about the service and the smile and the closing music getting louder, closing past eleven, and there inside sit that last couple of two
peephole
in silence coming to their end in a bottle of red to go off into the black night, where”
I Am Waiting Outside, Eye in Their Eventual Departing,
Steven Spielberg, 1941
“the nicotine swirls in lines out of wind
against a hundred backgrounds
of milky shooting stars
and distant red lights of airplane flights
back inside my mind, the mice are making
another midnight run around
the unlighted restaurant of night
hoping for some unbleached spark
dropped off the half-eaten
dinner role
under table 6,
feeding his children poetry good night,
The Small Rain Down Can Rain,
Wilfred Owen, 1918-1942
Venom and protein,
in her bed again.
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