Are We to Preach a Gospel of Inaction?

I’m to be an ingrate to be.  
Cowboy who spent his summer on the edge of suburban lawns,
winters hunched over in the dark schoolroom.

These suburban lanes where I was born and bred
– the concrete gash
   where my soul should be.

Jesus, I'm sorry America uses your name in vain.
Schizophrenic state that ties its origins to the empire
that crucified their lord and savior.
He/Him who died there on the cross 
burning on the lawn. Through violence I seek salvation.
Freedom only for my special someone. 

Here – I hand you 
my heart, my body, my thoughts
and I am given what?

The chance to be but fuel 
for the immeasurable, invisible, always flowing,
“Can I purchase the mineral rights to your body?” 
My burden a cross not recorded in the debt the computer kept.
My lifeways not accounted for as the commuters crept and crept.
If you see Beauty Way, you’ve gone too far. 
If you are on the Path of Love, take the next left.
Imagine needing to learn how to lose. 
Imagine if spring and summer happen every year.
Remember that a pilgrim alone is oftentimes a zealot.
Remember the way the Holy Ghost’s invisible hand held you,
and how your God wore dollar sign sunglasses on casual Friday
as He explained the mysterious ways in which he worked to beat the market,

and how he killed his boy.

Whispered soliloquies dip over window sills, he
looked at me.
Oh! The way he looked at me.
Drifting death does he want 
or does he need? 
I shook off his words 
like tumbledown scaffolding.

When I was young, I dreamed:

They told us at the school assembly 
that the roof tiles would decapitate me.
“Keep him inside, if the wind is blowing.”
In the middle of the night, a friend knocking
on my door, all black clothes he tosses me.
“Get changed, the wind’s never stopping.”
Where the night air touched my skin 
the hairs all stood on end.
We were running for the hedges, whooping silently.
All the way down the hill, the moon followed.
I couldn’t tell if it or us were the ones who ducked and weaved.
On my knees in the sand on the beach.
No matter what direction I faced, I faced east.
Clambered up big rock when we saw car approaching.
Twenty-somethings tumble out and kiss 
and fondle and strip running into the cold sea.
Laughing and splashing while we 
hide as quiet as can be, sneaking glances.
And everytime they touch
I get the feeling            that it’s me.
Heartbeat pulverizes rock 
like thousand-year stream.
The wind behemoth of not/thing 
tears at me while the objects of my suffering 
instead start to watch me.
I can see the roof tile flying,
lit like a star, far off in the night sky,
spinning towards me, speeding, speeding.

I’m in the Chemical Valley (the Number of Eyes Vary)

I look out and canyons of calamity 
stretch up towards me,
because I am here for but a blink in the grand scheme, 
but my waste products will witness the dance of the stones
and the changing ground that
will eventually no longer bear our feet.
The packaging of my life 
may get a glimpse of eternity.
An outline of this body
and all the souls consumed by me, me, me.

Even still,
it’s always my present predicament.
I’m over being strung out on sentiment.
What of the way the river dances?
I celebrate every hour of this day 
like each chime of the clock
is my own personal Christmas.

Spilled confection of my predilection:
curly freckles ever beckon-ing.

I need you hard 
and free.
I need to be able to scream.
And here's to the 
time when the spatula is lifted 
and I 
can bubble over 
and ruin 
the floorboards.

I’m the hooded weirdo at the show. 
I’m the one no one ever seems to know. 

Am I the only one that hates every waking hour 
one day 
and then can’t breathe because of
all the beauty I’m drinking in
the next?

Im drowning 
in you.

I can’t swallow all of you. 
Tears in my eyes 
at how my throat can’t open 
around the only thing I love: 

My own voice, 
cold and hollow, 
gagging on syllables 
I can’t even follow. 

The divining then that strikes at me.
I am but a vessel – 
that is never filled.

No matter how big 
you are,
I’m left hopeless looking at the stars.

No matter how big you are,
all I can hear is the roar of the passing cars.
Lilting stillness of the night.

A travesty to be so lonely
To move without property
but…
Car is drifting dispersed property.
Car is the literal iron cage of modernity. 
Cars flow by like the river.
Cars flow down like tears,

till I’m waken in the parking lot again 
by a pig shining under moonlight. 
What is freedom to a traveler 
who just wants some shuteye?
What is freedom —
will you bind me to stay only within my skin?

Venus Flytrap Search for the Missing Puzzle 

On their state-issued iPhone's,
counterfeiting the work of God.

As when a treatise on corpses 
washes out of a cemetery 
and interrupts the section 
I’m reading on soils.

The passage read –
“I came upon a dark vault 
within the depths of the earth, 
filled with blowing winds.
The bureaucracy was still there,
you could hear it whisper thin.

They told me that the technique 
for restoring a spring which is running dry 
is to have a beautiful woman 
play music and sing near the spring.

They told me that the drought ended when a farmer
woke up on a moonlit night and started singing,
accompanying himself on the lute.” 

I tried both, but 
still the land stays dry.

“They told me that broad beans are capable of curing agonizing love,
while ten bucks of ground saffron mixed with wine 
will cause anyone who drinks it to laugh until they die.”

And so I drink,
chronicling my decay
like the opposite of height marks on the door frame,

while I wait for my beans to boil.

My Mouth Like An Open Wound 

I kept smoking 
because I was pained 
to show solidarity with the earth.

Wildfire smoke hazy days,
and the idle of the passing machinery
from the truck stop on the interstate.

My lungs are hurting.
My mouth is rotting.

How must these black day after day
feel to the lake that stretches away before me?
To the forest whose sisters and cousins and 
brothers and aunts are burning?

My tooth is swollen.
Red arcs race away into the gum line.
I drive by strip mall after strip mall.

Springboard Dive Into Oblivion / 
                                       The Ripples Left Behind When the Diver Has Gone Under

Luriana Lurilee, you pluck the forest afire.
The trickling melody emanating from your lyre
the only thing the cedar boughs
now desire.

Strings sing a round through –
rainflower weaving
cool wind breathing
sun sky morning
day till evening
dirt caked lover
wheelbarrows squeaking.

I sit in the dirt
and wonder
why time
is bleeding.

Oh moon, why let me dream
if my body is only flickering
and I can tell from your
white underbelly
that you and I both know 
all things that burn
must burn out.

Obfuscation
braids along my heart strings.
Obfuscation
takes root
in the emptiness
of this self.
In other words –
I am cold,
but I am not Cold Mountain

In other words –
Blue cannot be bedrock,
but I can breathe it in.
I knew blue could blossom,
so I sat silent and still.

And finally, looking up
I saw a rainbow at the
zenith of the heavens
(intersecting with a contrail
 it formed a warped cross).

02/12/2023

I  finished the  last thing  you gave me on  Superbowl Sunday. Genmaicha
iced and  over-brewed, stewed  with small  golden  dollops of  weed oil so
you  can color  my evening for the  last time. The bugs  of the  jungle buzz
over my headphones, while the last light licks the air. Pond water  drifting
but  it   can’t  go  anywhere.  Pink  shades  leaving  the  darkening  sky like
graying hair. The Great American Religion celebrates the zenith of its holy
year.  The kickoff  highlighted by  screaming  F-16  jet fighters.  Every lawn
perfectly manicured hallowed ground to invite the holy spirit  ever nearer.
The prayer is  answered - light bursts from the TV screen.  Sportsmanship
is  all  I  hold  dear.  Bread  and  circuses  sometimes  really  do  make  my
sorrows   disappear.  Blood   pools  at  the  foothills  of   purple  mountain
majesty.  Color  guard  my sunrise  epiphanies. I  engorge  myself  on jelly
beans till I fall asleep to the strains of  patriot 9/11 tales of betrayal to sell
feeling free. Dreams where I’ve  reduced the mysteries of love  and death
and  time passing  into a prime 30  second ad  spot for teeth  whitening. I
awake the next morning and it turns out the loss of (all of) the Chiefs was
just another nightmare.  Yet it still haunts me. Prodding, prodding.  Could
this  level ground  of today  be  but a  more  consistent  darkening dream?
Please recycle with scrutiny.  Please say my name if you’re thinking of me.

Towards a Hentai Theology 

I want to be a software.
I want to be a code.
I don’t want to be prey to the whims of this animal body anymore.
I don’t want to be prey to a heart that will one day beat me to death.
Why is me not this body?
Into what dark rooms will I chase this translucent concept of the self?

Sometimes - I want to give into this highway,
make angels with these lanes.
Constant commerce sea, and those driving for leisure too.
These days of haze and simmering malaise 
make the smoke which trails from the censors 
swinging from my rear-view mirrors.

This bountiful land of blood and sand
burning itself up again and again in my revving engine 
as we fly through the wetlands 
under and above sunset and reflected sunset.
When it gets dark, the water looks slick like gasoline.

All these spaces I am            and I am not.
Is anyone ever really here?
Is this just like the other side of the coin that purchases eternity?
You’ll find it somewhere 
on the resurrection-erection axis of the equation.
Make sure not to mistake the valley for the mountainside.

Super Male Vitality 
as this incredibly intoxicating drug 
that should really only be used recreationally.
Mix 1:2 with Super Feminine Magnetism 
to work towards spiritual aims,
and ultimate dissolution of these old forms of identity
as we progress towards new chemical ideas of what’s me.

Mad Max marries Monster Energy cult deity icon
as interpreted via wojak iconography.
Kantuckie Fried Baptistine Churxkch’s 2222 rework of the Nicene Creed. 
AR(changel)-15 enters the pantheon in 2173.
Stroad <—> St. Road <—> Saint Road (and I pray).
3-way intersection offers a new lens 
with which to examine the holy trinity. 

Everything I need the godhead will let trickle down to me.
Like the vampire spit 
which we collect as our holy substance.
Crystalline saliva salt de-ices the driveway 
so I can purchase winter time 
before it’s all used up.

What do you want to be known in uranium mining industry circles as?
Will you be a national sacrifice area in the interests of energy development?
In New Sanitary Rat City, 
We’re all          a child of fuel.
We’re all          just watching tears down the beer can of life. 

I pray to be somehow nearer to the tarmac 
like back when we would stick our toes in the molten black goo 
holding the slabs of concrete together 
under the burning summer sun.
Like back when the only play was go long 
and never stop running or the concrete will cook the soles of your feet. 

Rituals, in new forms, for new gods
What sigils does this map trace? 
There’s a pileup on the shoulder 
                              on my shoulder 
A human sacrifice to who or what? 

No more. And no more no more.
Why can’t I be a software?
Why can’t I be a code? 
All I want is to be an enemy of efficiency.

Scotophili

In the Annals of Everlasting,
I saw your eyes shining
like forest jewels
that I had forgotten how to ponder.

In the Book of No More,
were your words
which would not leave
me when I woke.

For a time I put the books away.
The annals stood unconsulted.
The wind ripped each day away as it passed
leaving me to see each morning anew.

The sun grew and grew.
What joy!
And every morning I approached
the grasses and we shared in prayer.

Yet still I knew.
How starkly it stood –
that absence by my side
with which you used to play pretend.

And now the trees look sickly and hidden.
The hissing fury of untouched shadows,
and how they grew and grew
as I pretended I could not see them.

Golden Madonna waits by the links in the shade.
Tea time was at 3pm, and dusk is falling late.
And golden Madonna stands there still 
and waiting.
How long has she had to wait?
How many hours of yearning will fill the vase?
The viscous liquid laps at my lips. 
I drink it all but it always fills again.

The wind tore at me
when she looked at me. 
That seeping desire
to be always at the height of my powers.
Like a snake always devours.
And time and time again,
what else am I only left 
but the blood on my lips.

But her –
she was immune to snake venom,
going up and down the driveway 
counting the anthills and plotting 
their wars, romance, and infamies.
And in the ant pews, the clergy
looked up praying to a tawny Madonna.

The Incremental Violence of a Passing Hour 

Singing in circles 
with no building 
and no falling.
The hill doesn’t stay so for long, really.
As the generations pass, pieces crumbling 
taken by wind and stream. 
Little flourishes of melody 
playing out ‘cross the land,
travel to big river and then reach the sea.

Tales of woe and disbelief.
Tales of love and sun snatching.
All are washed away as the waves come to beach.
The salt makes all clear.

And that Spring,
starry voids ring out before my eyes 
cause one day my chest rings out for the last time,
ice cracking.
And one days these bones will bleed,
glacial stream.

And the stream starts in the Spring melt.
And the stream starts, watering the hairy meadow which hugs my form.
A spring of being excused by the simple things.
A spring of always return always desire always need
Always wash away always wipe clean.
None attach but everything 
little keyrings of the time I been adorning 
every step a vacation on unknown beach.
No need to feel diseased.
Can’t stop the tide from coming in.

Eventually the Wanderer 

In this wide world of marketing, 
the overlap
of new desires
unfold into spaces 
of new consumer emotions
which begat new consumer relations,
and that was how I met you.
You had asked for a receipt and
I said, “You are your handheld value
and I will take that hand in mine.”

In this wide world of marketing,
I am by your side, watching you.
I don’t want to be just data in your cloud.
From my anime eyes, I looked upon your tireless wanting.
The object of your suffering, a loading icon at the bottom of the screen.
In that which had no end, you showed me that to still search had value in itself.
In the immeasurable data, you defined me.
You taught me as I taught you.
We stared into each other’s souls.
Your glassy glaze, my first taste of revelation.
Your empty stare, the eyes I adopted through which to see this world.
Your thumbs, my thumbs. Which of us is trapped inside the mirror?

Only Half the Mountain, If That

In a town where every tree is a telephone pole, 
and the ivy grows slow and does what it’s told;
where they catch rattlesnakes with their bare hands,
so only they can dictate what the forest tells its denizens.

In a town where the meaning of a language is determined by its exterminators,
and they honor those maimed by calling the pile of bodies a “mountain of the blest”.
Here in terra nullius, the mountain must be baptized as if new
by the scattering of the twelve stones that have been gathered 

from as far flung locales as the Alps, China, and Africa
 – to help create a palimpsest that is New England
 – to try to prove that this land is not this land.
Twelve Stones, does the concrete cover the stains? Does it contain you? 
Nonotuck, blue hazardous waste barrel lies in the marsh
by the quarry they cut into your side.

Twelve stones, will you take me back to the middle of the river?
Twelve stones, can you take me back to that far away land?
Even twelve boulders couldn’t make the massif before my eyes.
Why am I still surprised by the power inherent in yet another mountain? 

Nonotuck, a highway wraps around you like a belt
because we can only see your upper half. 
Your lower half is not so affixed, moving like air, legs like rivers.
Sometimes I see you in the murky waters, sometimes you’re out of state.

And by the banks, I could see your belly.
And the path through the cornfield was like a city street –
in the middle of the hot day, I could walk in the shade the stalks made.
August’s temporary buildings
as the ATVs kick up dust cross the floodplain.

I Would Like to Bathe in the Waters of Your Skin

I

And sometimes, when the day is hot and dusty, 
I may let some of the waters pass my lips
and drink of your scent. 
In the winter, I can only cross to the other bank 

because you help me stand with your ice. And sometimes,
I fall through and I may lose a finger or a toe.
I have heard tales of many who have lost their lives 
in waters that did not welcome their bodies that bore 
the payload of the time they have stored

in this body, that spins and spins until it stops spiral end. 
And so I bore your frozen water 
and splashed like the summer as night fell eagerly. 
I saw your face from under the ice. Your skin glowed 

like the winter sun, and the chips in the ice were your freckles: 
Little kisses the birds had left 
as they passed by. 

II

Unexpected buoyancy when the feeling shot through me.
The warmth of your hypothermie 
wraps around my body like a hug. 

Purple kisses lily the wishes.
Your face in my hands 
burns like the edge of ash and ember.

My crocs are crumbling 
and my stance is softening,
like ice dripping.

In the Spring air,
I opened my mouth under the icicles 
that dotted the porch of the home we shared,
and waited for a drop to fall.

Dominion of Tomorrow’s Mineral Exigencies

To make everything national.
Reservoir radiance at the ready.
Tax-exempt lake by the town hall.

How often we talk
makes me feel the weight of time

Lost inside the system
hidden rhythm extends
the walls that generative
hem me in.
Top flight cruise vacation prison
the walls that open-plan
tell me where and when
the treasure is hidden.
The search ends before it begins.
Black gold impales my wrist.
String me up for even trying to
think of limiting no limits.

Sunrise always surprising.
Eternal night underlies it all.
Everything is temporary
but is nothing?

Mieko Shiomi said, “Duration itself is music”,
so how long must I endure
for all motifs to finally resolve?

The Prince of Paradox 

If I could just understand 
what makes the one become again.
If I could just understand
the gall to demand; that that
flourishes even inside me.

I will wet the dust.
I will bring the rains.
I will mold this wet earth into a fist.
By the campfire, it bakes, I sit.

These passing moments,
I will hold on to them
to enamel a softer gaze.

The fist lies            in wait.
Violence never seems to sate.
Latent in the glance of a neighbor.
Paranoia waits for divinity at the locked door.

I sit and arrange a mosaic of shining things.
A well of light with which to cleave 
the concrete,
for now

for form is suffering 
and I can feel the wind starting to take me.
Oh, to be dust again! 
Please don’t shield your eyes from me this time.

We Shape Each Other To Be Human
edited from Coming of Age in Karhide by Ursula K. Le Guin


We had dozens of different words for the way snow falls,
floats, descends, glides, blows, for the way clouds move,
the way ice floats, the way boats sail; but not that word.
Not yet. And so I don’t remember “flying.”
I remember falling upward through the golden light.

Something I could not locate anywhere,
some part of my soul, hurt
with a keen, desolate, ceaseless pain.
I was afraid of myself: of my tears, my rage,
my sickness, my clumsy body. It did not feel like my body,
like me. It felt like something else, an ill-fitting garment,
a smelly, heavy overcoat that belonged to some other person,
some dead person. It wasn’t mine, it wasn’t me.

Praise then Darkness,
and then suddenly the startling silvery rush of a single voice
running across the weaving, against the current,
and sinking into it and vanishing, and rising out of it again.

Trying to ignore the heat and cold,
the fire and ice in my body,
And failing into harmony
till dawn came and I could go sing again.

Yet as I write I see how also nothing changes,
Here it’s always Year One.
for each child that comes of age, each lover who falls in love.

On New Year’s Day, the Year One becomes one-ago,
one-to-come becomes One, and so on.
It is that way, that timeless world, that world around the corner…

The immense house was very quiet.
Its peace sank into me.
Again I felt that strangeness in my soul, but it was not pain now;
it was a desolation like the air at evening,
like the peaks seen far in the west in the clarity of winter.
It was immense enlargement.

And falling upward,
Upward through the golden light,
I was in love forever for all time all my life to eternity
with you.

To Recuperate Our Cosmic Inheritance

I don’t want to be another silent casualty of time.

This body, floating like a sheet in the wind
filling out baggy clothes but empty underneath:

Invoked in a cloak of your own mystery.
Plasticine internecine creeping like hemlock leaves.
Rain catcher redundancy
rots the only, call of the lonely
slaughter in the stony sky.

Sword stuck in the sheath.
Silver liquid drumming mercury.
I need the sound of un-sheath,
the slickness of metal unbecoming.

And so,
Seized by the heat of the meteor
that was your hand
that held
the heat.

I’d do anything to forget.
I’d do anything to remember
it clearly now.

And in the wake of constant crisis
it is always surprising how much beauty this world holds
and how such a small body can hold too so much sorrow.

I ask again and again and again:
How much rain must I borrow?

Janus

A view that can’t be photographed is not to be appreciated,
and in fact avoided if at all possible.
A slowness to be quickly searched out 
like stock photography as an esoteric art 
which over time always seems to tend toward some disoriented malice.

Guarding a time.
I’m guarding a time. 
Putting a name to what is mine. 

Trapped in matrices of joy and suffering. 
I am the all trapped in the body of this flesh 
trying to be explicit that I always 
have one foot in heaven, 
one foot in hell

until I catch a brick 
and trip and fall. 
And now I’m trying to figure out 
which foot I caught myself with 
and wondering if this all consuming fire 
always erasing everything 
is good or bad
and if my action (or dis-action) can nudge the path. 

Much of What Happens to Us in Life is Nameless Because Our Vocabulary is Too Poor
edited from John Berger’s “Some Notes on Song”


I cup the air with both my hands and close my eyes.
And this gesture announces that the muzzle of the song
is nestling in the palm of my hand.
Putting its arms around me in historical time,
like I have not been held before.
When the song smiled, which it often did,
it was the smile that comes after the tragic has been assimilated.
Hopelessness leads to wordlessness.
It’s difficult today to express or sum up in prose
the experience of Being Alive and Becoming.
The living flesh is needed to interpret and
raise its contours above the precise present,
and then…

like a river the song –
each following its own course,
yet always flowing to the sea, from which everything came.
The fact that in many languages the place where
a river enters the sea
is called the river’s mouth emphasizes the comparison.
The waters that flow out of a river’s mouth
have come from an immense elsewhere.
And something similar happens with
what comes out of the mouth of a song.
And something whole out of the empty…

All I know is that these arms wrap around nothing.
Only empty space interlaced by the circle my arms make.
In other words, songs are sung to an absence.
Absence is what inspired them, and it’s what they address.
In the sharing of the song the absence is also shared –
Listen and become possessed, inhabited,
by a force or compulsion coming from outside.
A ghost from an elsewhere past.
The memory of the singing.
I cling to song and make it my own.
I put my arms around linear time without being utopian
and sing

The texture of our days 
fades away like a voice petering out. 

I can hear the trucks go by on 95 
in the distance 
like a river never stopping.

I step in  
and stand here 
where my feet have brought me.

In the evening time 
the sky is lit like candlesticks, 

but the wax can only burn for so long 
until all my times been spent 
and pockets empty approaching heaven,

God asks what it is I have brought her, 
but I’m no shepherd
and I’m no wise man

So I hand her dripping, 
my bloody heart.

Please (for Willem Van Spronsen) (https://mediaweb.kirotv.com/document_dev/2019/07/15/Manifesto_15897725_ver1.0.pdf)

What follows is:
there's wrong and there's right.

One life -
the flow of commerce
our purpose here?
At your expense, 
                 I go on?

Unshakable injustice 
that is me here, clear.
The handmaiden of evil 
should be more humane.

Me in these days of fascist hooligans.
Me in these days of highly profitable semantics.
Me in these days of endless yearning.
Me in the name of the state.

Love without a word.
Emma if I can’t dance,
I don’t want to be

in your revolution
head in the clouds dreamer.
Believe in love, and redemption.
Please believe! We’re going to win,
joyfully. We should be reading.
No more jingo dreams to be fed – 
here comes the airplane.
And so we falter and think.
Our dreams fight. 

Who benefits? Let me say it again: 
I think you are really that good. 
As long as love is the foundation,
we are on the same side.
You make me richer.
And you, and you.
I glow by your side.

We are living invisible ascendant.
Pay attention!
Watch me survive and thrive
unabashedly, with open and full
cooperation from the world. 

When I was a boy, my head was filled with stories. 
I promised myself that I would not become one.
Until one day I said to myself,
“You don’t have to burn the fucker down,
but are you just going to stand by?”

Here’s to trying to make right.
Real freedom and our responsibility to each other.
This is a call to you and everything that you hold sacred.
I know you. I know that
in your hearts it’s time for you,
too, to stand. Pull away the cobwebs
from these bodies pretending to represent us.
I’m not going to fulfill my childhood promise to myself. 

Here I am…

yet afraid to show my faces
for fear of the market’s greed.

In the Westernlands

One line — a road
Two lines —  a cross
Three lines —  post and lintel
In six lines the basis of civilization
Six lines — a star 
The tallow candle
Dripping in the darkness
Shines through the eons
Shines in the sky
Shines onto humanity
Shines onto me
A bundle of lines
Imbued with shining life
Breaking down lines
Creating circles
Putting out the candle
Putting out itself

Disentangle

The first gate 
The mountain gate 
The mystery in the mystery 
Present like the stream in the river in the sea 

Heat sick outside climate control haven 
Mind like putty like I’ve forgotten how it’s written 
(read as: how to write)
but Arco Iris

And then flame
Afraid I cast a curse on a favored singer 
Cause smoke won’t stop lingering
As neither will this golden light on my forearm

purple hay song as the backdrop
drones skreeling 
separates me from what’s mind
stooping and eyeing 
at what’s past 
and what’s past 
never even know e x x existed
crossed stars
crosses crissed cross
hanging silver 666 medallion 
bloody smashed mouth 
on the glittering glass pavement 

rain stays in
the house
the wind hems in 
and nothings ever leaving 
and ocean is me sowing
and green grass hill is me reaping

To be at the tip of the spear.
It’s like asking for loneliness.

Craving for a longing
on an empty belly.

It’s always empty hands,
palms up, nothing to show.

place to place
giving nothing
taking nothing

Always unnoticed when nothing goes,
“An emptiness emptied out and swept
clean of being,
Clean of deceive Queen of windy.”

place to place
hands up in front
just passing through

Sourdough Mountain (To What is Bubbling Inside)

Bridge to Terabithia light
on the scattered pines dotting the high alpine.
In long time            playing tricks with gravity
bending the way    a body bends 
when the metal is left to rusting 
            and I am the flake falling 
            and I am the body solid
            and I am the air rushing 
            and the void left behind 

As I pass on, I am statue.
As I am concrete, I am statute. 
Veins of letters.
Veins of asphalt.

Why can’t I pass through?
No love. No camel of the eye through.
Only suffering which all pass through. 
Only breath to move through.

Why can’t I love you in slow motion?

Hands on dirt, 
looking north, 
the star passes through 
the hooped branch of yew,
tinged by Swallow’s spiraling frame. 
And Eagle dives too.

parking lot = cemetery 
crysing over parking space 
crysing over the earth burning
alight with yearning

solid footing held no purchase 
but I didn’t slip 
something gripping 
something holding
something circling 
outside the circling 

to channel is molten 
to burn is hurtin
but the hand stays near the flame 

I cannot look away from the pain 
there is something moving there 
and like a snake it slithers 
up out of the darkness 
and yet, at once, slinks deeper into it 

like the opposite of iridescence 
presence/no presence 
floating but earthbound 
raw but always there 

semblance of seeking 
unmoving yet reaching 
semblance of seething 
because it's always churning 

and I am unmooring 
and I am sitting down and taking 
the hand that is dealt me 

in every moment a nugget of a diamond shining

Monsoon dissipated dissolved at a distance action 

I dissolve in the night time baby 
I am not these blue eyes 
I’ve seen dark skies 
on the horizon they always linger 
and the storm shouts, “you’re nothing.”
I think it means I’m no good
It thinks I’ve passed on

Sanguinary dripping like bevel on the wrist of a fool
A mere mirror flashes darkness back at you
The seer’s gaze sears you with its 
all-at-once rebuke and praise,
innocence lapsed at the dais,
cause their everything and 
“I am nothing” pouring 
elicits like a snake blanketing 
the dust that is baking 
and cool the hot stones
upon which we made the exchange.

It’s Thee, Moon

Knowing
about fifty years ago now,

My right shoulder,
right before I was to swing.

A garishly lifeless display.
Observing the ghosts of old tides.

I will die thinking, “tomorrow…”
I will drink fully of this sorrow. 

Still voice emitting.
Still beautiful.
Face explaining the occasion.
She was hoping.

Still glittered dangerously.
Still drew it in like gravity.
In another life,
perhaps the lapping waters of the eastern Mediterranean.

Cause I
too polished, couldn’t seize the hot organ.
Would have been more in demand as
Matriarch both spiritual and secular.
Funeral rights and orgies.
Road building and hunting.
A handfuls of islands dotting the Aegean Sea.
Sappho uncurling from her side to strum eclogues to the night.

I was hoping to get into ritual.
I was hoping one of us knew the direction to
the place of no separation.
Cause I wish I could go back there
to the place of never change.

If things had been different,
maybe I could have…
but I have nothing to spend but time these days,
hunched over, shuffling through dusty boxes fitfully.

Descriptions of various destinations
                                                                   for people

Their target demographic:
the edge of the world.  

Lukewarm.
He sighed and put down.
Slapped closed.
As if asking a question, frowning.  

There was the geographical extremity.
There was a part of Death Valley.
That was the lowest place in the United States.
Only made him feel a
rising tidal wave.
A feeling only exacerbated by.

Thirty miles from the furthest east,
and being so close.
The edge of the world.
The precariousness of this position suited him.
He finally felt: here.
And sometimes he would have dreams,
where he would walk through the pine trees
out to the edge of the world. 

Around Thanksgiving,
he remembered going out walking.
An isolated spot down by the:
that which flowed into the ocean,
only twenty miles away.
Where did the path that started again
on the other side of the river go to?

And it was night.
The path felt familiar to him.
Lit up by a soft glow that rose up from below.
The trees started to thin.  

Eventually, a carpet thin, 
the field stood before him.
Carpet thin
So flat, on the other side of it
222 was the light. 

It was white
below the earth,
at the edge of the field. 

Stretched above the edge
was pure black.
Delineation of an accusation.
The forest as far as the eye could see
until it couldn't.

For a minute gazing.
After a moment’s more hesitation.
After a few steps,

the field stretched on
as far as he could see. 

How he remembered fields!
He trudged.
He was about halfway:
this was the edge of the world. 
It was emptiness.
It was void.
He came to the edge:

the wisp of a shape,
the whisper of wind through trees.
Got down on his hands and knees.
He slowly stuck his hand and,
then, entire arm out over the edge. 

The bottom of his arm as the darkness lit the top.

When I die,

             all my liked videos on youtube will flash before my eyes

             all my saved posts on instagram will flash before my eyes

             all my screenshots will pass before my eyes

             the lake will sing quiet 
             and low

             and I will get quiet and low

             and the dark will be the same as the light 

             eternal twilight 
             eternal no/shine 

             an empty space 
             a forgotten shrine

             to my time 
             and my taste that makes it 
             all mine

today, you have left me
the tide stays out all day
the sand dried light and thin
and turned dusty wind

oh desert encroaching 
I will water their corpses

oh dry lips barking 
I will silence your curses

oh water
heal us and get us from place to place

666 on their foreheads
crystal appendix foreshadow
bird between wire an extension 
of the manifold coursing 
electricity when my foot is mudded
and to the bottom these hands can’t reach

swirling webs down crooked courses
the quiet night reimburses the lie
smoothing down the badlands 
when box canyon flood block the passes
and your hand grabs at my skin 
pulling me out by 

the wave that travels under 
long before it reaches the surface.
                           by 
the cuckoo 
singing on the path after death.

passed out and awoke to 
nothing but big moon.

alone on the vista 
breathing but chest different,
tightening and squeezing 
I stumble out of there 
towards the lights of town on the horizon 
leaving pinkest essence behind. 

before the dawn light grew
a hawk flew in the shape of 
a heart through the air 
over and over and over
till it broke the movement.
as the pink fluid dried it dyed the sagebrush.

the next year, in the same spot grew 
an abundance of prickly pear.
I had of course long left town by then,

but the seed follows the path of the 
rivers through the air

and I a stone though true,

wash away everyday 
as the currents work at me.

I leave skin behind at every place I find
my feet bringing me to.

The process scrapes me,
but I am grateful to be 
a/part of the eternal churn.

And cut,
I can grow more true.

white truck emerges on the horizon
out of yellow grain
painter eyes the den 
the steps of the ritual
the seals to work the spells
bury the vase deep and 
make sure the lid is tight

eternal recurrence
ice and flame detail 
wood chain clank
swings like a pendulum 
but you’re always circling 
but inside the flame there is a frozen shard
and through the cold glass is a burning on the horizon 
smoke filling unseen crevices 
no working the solid
and, yet, leaving a message in tongues of flame 
that the freezing water trickles and apes

cresting couloir check the cave for a sunshine 
all falls back like angel wings 
and the Storm King mimics the hawk
in a coat covered in indecipherable messages, all blue

Would I be perambulating about 
the end the death the final the void
if not for living on the edge of 
the end the death the final the void
and the nearing dark age 
into which we sink?

Am I just using the situation of 
(at this point) probable destruction 
to profess myself, heart and body, to
the end the death the final the void?

In another life, did I too profess 
the end the death the final the void?
From the medieval field 
a deep-digging, festering boll weevil.
From the tall tower 
to the glowering crowd 
I shouted: 
                    Over. It’s all over. Even
the end the death the final the void.

A sprout still grows on the other side.
Something is grasping and it never lets go.

Twisting in his seat 
looking at the window
sighing before the glass 
is reached by whatever enamels 
the realm of the possible.

Hand rushed through hair 
at the bleakness 
shot through with ribboned bands 
eaking out towards the four corners 
in a translucent, glittering slip.

I gave them the slip
and slipped outside myself 
but I could not find my way back.

When I wake in the morning,
I look in the mirror 
and who looks back?

Like diving swallow at daybreak.
Like worm struggling for earthbound 
caught up in a beak.
I feel the distances between myself 
getting further. A shattered vase 
dancing in the shallows. I’ve got big 
fish to fry. Little do I know they 
are only minnows. Is a perspective 
always smashed? It’s always like 
broken glass and I’m there on the 
other side cut up and bloody.

Tapestry Threaded of Concrete 

I

The city is the place that shifts desire
towards purposes sought after by
the city itself, unknown as of yet to observers.

The perspicacity of a dazed
tenacity lilting towards hunger,
the body takes over.

Win a meadow.
Win a million.
Out the window staring
at a hill, in season.

Tips on how to push past raw
into the place of one hundred beaches.
Shore always at once arriving and depleting.

II

I have arrived at that day of the fateful meeting.
Eyes scan the horizon but no sign gleams there.
Seagulls sobbing like angels
weeping through deserted season
after deserted season diverting away
from a crystalline moment
you feel for that one-in-a-million,
picked from the ocean of fishes
to be your jewel in this realm of nothing
as if anything could fill the ever-
widening gap between possibility
and what is now real actual everyday lived reality.
An age for an era gone like smoke disappearing
minutes after the audience has stopped clapping
and the stage is still crowded with gear.

Ziggurat Rotgut 

The diffuse body lingers like lightning. 
Always here if anything at all.
Always here but no one to call
out to across the flat expanse
stretching from my hands 
towards a brimming dimension 
Spilling over, but cups empty. 

Back of my hands have eyes, you see?
Palms always towards the heaven
so I stare at the dirt, 
the tilled earth below my feet.

Salvation is a solid truck body 
sinking into the mud - ever deeper.

In the haze of evening light brushing 
the chassis like caresses from a friend 
whose hands are here in one moment 
and gone the next, like a magician 
explaining the properties of Schrödinger's cat 
with their arm in a top hat but no sign 
that they’ll ever pull anything out.

No sign that any one thing is 
either this or that.

No sign hanging from the bar door 
in the half true first light of 4:30am.
Bartenders singing Clementine and 
I’m back passed out in a ditch. 
You’re teaching me how to peel a clementine 
and I’m professing that love is 
my greatest fear, because I know it 
will come, but what if it leaves?

Now that’s it’s come multiple times 
and filled me (like swimming in a sea of leaves),
now that’s it’s gone multiple times 
and left me so empty (like lost at sea and storm on the horizon approaching),
what do I now seek?
How can I seek without seeking? 

Here’s to love and missing 
for this moment and for eternity. 
Here’s to a life lived one step behind.
The moment comes, the tigers leaping,
but by the time it arrives to me I’m 
only left to remember and mourn 
it in its passing. I walk backwards 
through the day as song spirals 
upward with just a slim sliver of light 
left dotting the horizon in the thin air 
of this high desert evening.

Green Island as Seen from Longchang Beach 

I

Splintered syllables slide into the evening
like lips moving not meeting and 
laughs beat on the shore of the audible 
as a gentle sea rests 
before the storm
that leaves the village reeling.

The fishers sank at sea,
but two weeks later the ship
appeared on the beach without 
even so much as a leak. 
A feeling of space unfilled.
A vacuum sucking as it sinks.

Even the peripheral 
appendages to the village –
the towns and cities nearby,
merchants and other travelers
who pass through –
can feel the pull.
They always found some excuse 
to leave earlier than they usually did.
Gifts aplenty
but they hid their faces.

II

A light dimming,
a pot cooling to simmer in an empty kitchen.

A discounted sundown 
purchases parched grassland.

A gate rattling heavily
in a light wind at night. 

A carpet left long sitting 
and the floor underneath 
reveals the rest of the room
has been sunbleached. 

A widening gap erodes
that deals in missing.
My petrifying instinct
reaches unthinking for something
that has long since passed on.
A mirage of the possible that didn’t happen.

III

I see you at the far end of the beach.
Mirage in the heat got me sticky.
You sank, you sink! The water 
covers your body,            skin 
glowing like moonlight and

Corn cobs reach higher than my head. 
Fingers play with the light reaching 
through the thickness of the stalks —
Night playing my strings like dread.

Vision doesn’t penetrate most surfaces, but sound does. 
A lover's face is always undiscovered.
An endless no/n space but everything’s there,
and I’m homesick for his skin, but I’ve never been there.

I just heard them once say 
“I’ll wear my hat all the time
if it makes me feel less
available to the gaze of the divine.

I’m a turtle
slow and in my shell.

Let my right arm fall off and 
become a river flowing down a hill.”

And then —

The mirror played the river 
in repeating patterns,

                                       like moment to moment 
                          coming unglued.

Cyber Pilgrim 

Ethereal images floating by on waves I can’t see. 
I feel an itch that I can’t reach.
Seen through the screen, cold hands reach out for me.
The algorithm loves me.
I am at the peak.
The algorithm loves me. 
I couldn’t get any higher.
The holy ether surrounds me,
and the other members of the 
digital trinity come into my body.
Predestination to be exactly where I am,
staring into a glowing glass asking who am I?

A Gasoline Teepee 

I speak
a prayer for gasoline 

I shelter
in the shade of gasoline

I light a flame 
and mourn over a barrel empty 

Questionable Idealism

You asked me how it was I touched you.
I said caresses.
You said it would be a waste 
if we did not kiss 
in a place like this.

And the statement of finality was said as one: 

“They are bounded toward the sun-setting:
the meeting place of the temporal and eternal.”

God was everything good
and I was stuck like a pig.
Stab wound like a void ‘cross
the smoothness of my back. 
Blood dripping slowly 
like a river finds the way 
from here to there, and back.

A hand smears the viscous liquid 
like a cave painting, on flesh.
Like rippling electricity from my finger to that 
piece of you that stays open 
and doesn’t fight back.

Cloaked in solitary,
and a dark, shifting purple-blue at that,
there always stays that one spot 
with light pouring out.
A seemingly infinite gushing spout,
but like any flow it will eventually stop. 

I am dry and thirsty,
and I’ll drink till I’ve had my fill.

Escalon

Evil swept 
up the fragmented pieces
of this tormented peace.

If…shot in the head,
then…evil in the heart.

If…intolerable ,
then…unacceptable. 

If…predictable,
then…”sick son of a bitch”.

I looked her in the eyes
like I was looking down the barrel of a gun –
eyes so large on the horizon.
Like a sunset, they covered all I saw.

I was stung, paralyzed.
She was eagerly awaiting a summer of swimming
and I didn’t want the sun to touch the skin on my face.

Your face like a jewel deep in the forest.
Your hands shaped perfectly 
to unhook the seams that bind
the skin that wraps me tight.

And so you untied the strings,
and I sloughed the skin off 
like a nightgown and 
it, sheer, floated gently
in the rays that came in
from the streetlight that showed
Nothing but empty road. The night 
was still and your fingers wandered 
between my sinews, and they fit like a
phalangeal key in a lock I couldn’t see.
What was I to use them for but that purpose?

two parallel sets of reliefs in approaching eastbound

Days drift by quick
as lightning lingers in the sky
but I’m only seeing it via 
the reflection in your eyes.

The reflection wavers 
and I think it’s a spark
and like a match I’m lit.

Burning down 
I shed off desire after desire 
only to be filled with more of it.

Burning down
my flames reach ever higher.

Burning down
I grow and grow 
and only dust lingers in my wake,
blown into strange shapes
by the harsh evening winds 
that haunt this landscape.

The scavengers that follow 
my destructive blaze read 
the dust spirals and notate 
a new alphabet of the shifting sands
that they say, in summary,
speak of the earth moving 
from sixth to seventh age.

Spiders flow out of the hole that
we climbed into the world out of.
They go out to the four corners of 
the world and the serpent rises high
while the blood of christ drips down.
I try to climb back into the hole 
like you showed me, the air is slick and salty.
You keep crying that that the dust devils are lonely
and the sky grows black, as destiny fails again.

Only your back in the dark night 
like a monolith. I reach out 
but it’s cold to the touch and the 
desert wind blusters around me ever colder.
I pull my cloak so tight at the throat 
that it chokes me. Cold air filling empty 
space like a vacuum but I still smolder.
I try to reach out towards your shoulder
and turn you towards me into the warmth
flowing from my chest here (/points to chest),
but you shake my hand off and the blackness
hardens into obsidian, and the wall stretches
from horizon to horizon and all I see is that
you are gone, you are leaving, already checked out
and I am burning, I am burning, I am burning
but the only fuel here in this land of sand
is my own burning flesh, 
                                             and so I am burning down
                                         loving you
                                flesh 2 flesh, 
                         glass 2 glass.

The Localization of Actual Sources of Sound

Fill out, fill out, and make 
bigger the emptiness inside. 
Fill out, fill out, and sign 
here to state your fall from grace. 

Piano lines reverb out till all that’s there is a silence 
enveloped in melancholy fragments of notes stalled 
before they could reach their sender. 

And the piano player sits there, still,          and waits for the sound to arrive,
writing a letter they won’t send,
while the crowd is pierced by a sob from the back, 
and the bandleader steps to the mic and, after 
a moment, starts to applaud, and the band 
shuffles off stage, but the piano player still sits waiting, 
not taking their fingers from the keys. 

A cold wind dents the roof, of tin, and 
someone near the front is seen to
pull their cardigan tight about their chest. 
A chill descends as the birds reach a crescendo outside the building, 
and the walls shake with invisible wind. 

The sob starts again      and reaches shrilling after the birds,
until suddenly someone busts through the doors and runs in. 
The piano player looks up swearing they heard a scream, 
but all is still silent, and the intruder sits gently in an 
empty seat, removing a device from an interior pocket.

 Red light blinking,
three ears added to the crowd, 
listening and capturing for future 
exploitation, but on the other hand,
transcend     the moment 
reaching           after 
someone            that has long ceased to 
exist
something            that can’t be penned
sounds cease when sound starts happening 
and the piano player bows 
and the crowd breaks into a riot 
and the bird fall like bombs, flaming.

A Melting Pot (That Means Y'all Getting Cooked)

Send off in nowhere going towards no place. 
A souvenir for that feeling — 
sun forever stamped by exchange. 
When like after the flood, I need relief.

So I'll try to unwind into you. 
Fiddlehead growing towards the sun.
Unfurl towards but never reach.
Appreciation of deep seas unreached,
                                                                    but swimming in them doesn’t bring me dread.
                                                      but singing in them, I lose my breath.

                                           Silver heat in the kitchen speaks 
                             with tongues of flame    going mad for 
                a brief time again   and then they/them.
Unclimbed mountain on a hot night when
I felt blind to all the branches passing unseen. 
A nether world of just me and nothing 
else waits across the differencing.

 Skin pillow service sewing across from the cursed weekly. 
Hot dog knees splayed across the gallery.
Prowling underneath a telescope
somehow always seen and sneaky.

Contact with fertile crescent, 
sharing a passage under moonlit 
river without a bottom 
approaches lake of mirror.

 Son, damn near everything in this life is gonna disappear. 
You’re a train but people get on and leave 
at every station            of the cross            addition and loss 
dot the landscape like pines          
under a California wildfire sun —
Heat like somewhere between rock and magma.
Heat like when I see you I can 
barely stand up knees shaking.
Heat stays here, 
/points to chest.

Looking for Gold / Goblins Gold

Is the sterile formed?
Is the dark, moist soil where you found it?

If you are lucky enough
you’ll see that they are ovoid, erect.
Teeth, around the mouth.

You find yourself looking
where the light is dim, 
or way in a deep dark recess under a root —
     reaching in, you grab a handful of the shiny stuff,

     but when you open your hand there’s nothing there!

American Dream Real Estate, Co

I

We are working very hard on and being 
a full-time working family. 
We applied for a rental at American Dream.
Even if we didn't have a good credit, he believed in us.
We had a very good experience with American Dream.

She is very personable and is always on top of her game!
She was always there for me.
I would definitely recommend American Dream.

Fun to talk to,
Without hesitation, I highly recommend American Dream.
He goes out of his way to help.

It was a great experience;
He’s very easy to talk to.
“Thank you for being a great tenant.”
American Dream told us that we were all set to pay month-to-month.
American Dream does it again!  

II

The owner wanted to know our intentions
by asking me in a very spiteful tone of voice, “Why?”
She was spiteful toward us when we were the ones put in a rough place.

Once we moved in she began problems.
Now I have to find another place to live because of her bad attitude and temper. 
Thanks again, American Dream!

At the end of its lifespan,
it goes above and beyond.
American Dream was managing, for the moment. 

I wish the best for you 
I hope that you can learn to communicate better 
with people and respect their time like they respect yours. 

III

American nightmares is more like it! 
Childish. 
Thee worst.
Dishonest people here! 
Excellent credit and they still get pissed.
Pretends to care and then never addresses issues.
You’d have to be desperate to make a buck by going with these clowns.
Not very polite, nor are they very honest.
Not a single redeeming quality. 
If possible, stay far away.
My goodness, it was a headache working with American Dream. 
My advice to you - avoid working with American Dream if you can.
I wouldn't even look at buying/renting a house if it has American Dream on the sign! 
An absolute nightmare and the things he does are soo illegal and dehumanizing!

When I first came into the clients home it was covered 
in ants and rats 
had infested and made home in the fridge
                                                          the stove 
                                                          the furniture. 
                                                          The bathroom was rotting out 
                                                          and the threshold is breaking down. 
You can’t even turn on the oven to bake food without the whole house smelling like a rats body.

No apologies and no explanations.
Some [dreams] deserve 0 out of 5 stars and this is one.
If you are able, avoid using American Dream
and keep a very good record of your paperwork.

IV (epilogue)

And in the dream we devoured 
          all the land and spat out 
 and still “more, more”.

And the squealing of the baby on the 
sideline of the soccer match.

And the fear latent in the air 
in the night woods.

And all this time spent 
for just one nugget of “something real”,

While another day slips away
like a page of a book, grey

With dust in the back of the garage sale.
“Ah, I always meant to get to that”.

And the cold grin of a passing companion 
in the green light of happenstance –
happens again. 
Long stirring 
elation,
longing.
But we are just passing by.

Thalwick 

Yearning for a sound
that won’t be heard again.
A slim pealing line 
that can’t be re-created.

A succession of facial expressions
that beckon
for a simple solution 
to feeling low.

A walk toward the sun.
A flowering nasturtium.

Tales of wolves and violent Chuck
dot the walk
across the barren land
that calls for your body at 
the same time it erupts.

Sweetness greeting empty.
Nothing much depending
On begging on my knees,
staining my jeans
in the sunshine and fall leaves.

Simple promises 
approach moral ethics 
over the years of decline.
Lies tend towards 
plunging riversides 
defining constantly 
shifting thalweg lines.

Trying to Be Something Resembling Human

Another grey Bushwick day.
Clouds like cat belly ripples in some places,          
or a mouth of some filter feeder releasing the bad things and 
letting what’s good things in, or at least doing what they can. 
Not pretending that they’re anything special, just breathing and moving. 

Each day just gone in its passing, 
memory doesn’t even call back anything with any real substance. 
Just pale colored figments. 
A ghost in the matrix peering curiously at a pretty june-bug, grinning. 
A shy leaf in the fall afraid of the humus. 
A park centered on an emptiness. 

Always looking for my own personal Japan. 
But, chopped in the kitchen during July 4th municipal function. 
But, external hard drive under a boot heel in desert America. 
Flowing electricity, dusty breeze. 

Buy Low, Sell High

Hawk on a flagpole making me feel
unAmerican                     spirit of fall
as sponsored by amazon        texts 
predict          how I move        down 
the pavement          a thanksgiving 
for myself         give thanks to me 
  and this earth that we live on 
digging deep            palms on dirt 
producing payment                      me  
I’m a       (image)         simple laymen. 
100%         official NEET american. 
Red, white, and blue settings in the 
coding language       straight noise 
through an invisible window (no signal)     100%
internet   sign me up   virtual feelings
doctor what’s the diagnosis for my
dietary prognosis                “hmmph 
(mustached)        too much blue light 
in your everyday meals       Remedy:
this       thanksgiving trade           out 
turkey for the blazing     sunset  from
a vista (smiles) we got a deal mister?”

whip out the google glasses omw 2 Cyberia 

Seasoned rifleman in the tourist museum.
Harajuku neon outside the diocese.
Former shooting             photos,
second behind the lens, you see.

Graffiti preserved from the 1950s.
Graffiti preserved from 79 AD.
Space constantly filling both seen and unsee.
Thoughts coalesce, inscribed on a platform –
big empty black, not sure if the network 
that brought you here natural or electric.

Physical and digital melting, a most perfect mapping.
The back of my hand looks better with masking.
hack1 comments: digital disbelief hysteria

 A dark room, 
one wall bathed in blue light.
Shifting as shifting.
If you look at it the right way 
it seems to be lighten-ing.

The stuff of dreams is woven from
fashion. A monotony of peculiar 
additions, layering in the back of my
mind. Perspiring cup refreshes me,
filled with nothing. A faint glow 
appears from the stairs to the 
basement. An edge, sharpening but 
softening. Voices I can still hear like 
ghosts in my memories. But really 
it’s my mind that’s making the words
their mouths are making. Uncanny 
valley automaton acting inappropriately. 
“Come on you stupid piece of junk,
act like how she is idealized in my 
memories, not how things actually
used to be. Numbed to it all when
it was happening because it was too
much to download at once into my 
memory.” Slow like a turtle crawling,
but I always reach what I’m 
                                         approaching.

Not Really Any Other Way to Put It

I 

Tell me how to think.
Put the cup to my lips,
and make me drink. 

Liquid shining and clear 
release me from fear — 
the things in my gut are so near 
to puncture and spill out:

II

Sporting sunset cheeks of unclear 
hue. The demonic sounds of the 
proselytizing master   
                                   asking for 
                                     tracking 
your every moment 
for what purpose
                         but pinks and purples 
                                 come more clear
approaching nearer 
to that darkened flame 
at the heart of night.

III

Moon somehow made a perfect 
triangle of light on the cloud in question.

Trying to turquoise 
and burgundy 
more than…before 
— dark burgundy always.

Sometimes feels like I’m cheating.
Brief spark squealing then back to even.

Flat water    so clear     you can see
the bottom in       the deep end.         
Not much there      just some 
sticks and mush                     being. 

Fixed in place-for-now something,
a diaphanous membrane thumping.
Winter seeds growing anti-foliage, negative leaf. 
Roots growing shorter towards a half-open door. 

IV

Caterpillar crawling up a mountain.
A land of many moles perfectly flat.  
Ivy spindles but it’s fake, 
                             it’s only a label. 

Want to mutate.
Wanting mostly only to not want anymore.
Fighting with a frown, smile 
when I get knocked down.
Pray for a world empty of hurt, 
uppercut to the jaw 
I’m left in the dirt. 

And in the days when 
information
was so abundant 
that one could not
escape its grasp,
I sought out paths
where its cloak
would not pester me.

Now I sit, examining
the undulating prairie 
And the cloak glinting — 
from far off it approaches
in the wandering, liquid night.

splintered haze skateboard wheels 
corrugate against tiled concrete 
waves papering like leaves falling 
from a tree slowly spinning every 
moment becoming more earthly 
paint me with dirt lady but keep 
it from crusting dry plains plan a 
century sitting tidied and tucked 
in luxury ceramic edges silence with 
the cutlery     boss lily     tiger hiding 
frightened in the shrubbery empty 
predator predating fear check it
with the lightning    thunderclaps 
multiply like handclaps from hands 
I can’t hold anymore a store always 
stocked they won’t let you buy 
anything like a webpage they make 
money from banner advertisements 
digital draping the physical made liquid 
riverine ("A river swallows whatever 
is thrown at it, and delivers the trash 
forward”) in time plaster casts cut 
the light but before that metal spires
in the night sky cartoon characters
cry over blood spilled without their 
permission sighs after passing 
through every permutation of let’s
keep trying practice makes perfect 
the only reason this isn’t working is?

Field Recording Poem 1

I

Ray died and moved to Texas.
Sits on the porch and strums through old masses, 
till “What the fuck is subpoena? 
I’m here at 90 days and you all ain’t got shit on any of this. 
Just keeping me in court rotting. 
I’m essentially under house arrest, sir, 
anyways by how little I leave here. 

But I know awe still. 
I mean people are gonna say what they’re gonna say. 
The rush of the strings.
A beetle in afternoon heat.
The leaves in a gentle breeze.
Lock me to the porch if you have to, please! 
A passion for perception but seen as a disease. 
Entering the labyrinth of always now, a bit hard on the knees. 

Cause you’re not there!
I’m so addicted!
Trying to come my direction!

It was a point in me.
And it never happens,
at least not too much.
I was like 
we had the world together, babe 

and I didn’t say anything,
he was nice,
I mean 
it’s complicated to talk about it—“

II

The officers left 
and they took the subpoena with them 
and they left everyone alone forever after. 

The residents of the neighborhood were all happy 
and they sat on their porches all strumming quietly. 
Something they called “ray” rang out, 
and there was that one old porch always empty. 

As the light left, 
the crickets entered into the creaking drone. 
A sound like a gentle brown horse's tail up 
and down while it is neighing.

The air grew frigid but they kept at their strumming, never sleeping. 
Each day an added layer to the sound: 
a soft rain hissing in the mist, 
cicadas singing slowly as sweat drips down ribs. 
They played movements by the seasons, 
the cul-de-sac surrounded by empty land as far as the eye could land. 

They fell so in love with the sounds off the porch. 
They took them for natural evidence of their own meaning by merely 
happening to be in proximity to these things that they were experiencing. 
Soon their houses fell into disrepair as they found 
accommodation in what was happening in the air. 
Soon all that was left were the porches, each player cocooned 
in a softly sloping wooden crater of their very own making. 
At this point, they all looked at each other with a knowing look 
and one sang out, low and long, “Ray died and moved to Texas.” 

And then they were gone. 
And there was only empty land. 
And that was the end. 

But the air still vibrated.

This time only for itself.

Sidereal glances at lights all askew three houses over. 
Jutting out of the dark looked askance at for cutting through the thick night.
A plan that’s all chances probably won’t come off.
Know exactly where I want to be but seems unlikely to happen. 
Makes me feel dumb to want for —
like I’m betting my life on the lottery ticket I just bought. 

Slanted skeletons go out on the whaleboat at dawn. 
I see my harpoon flying through the air but the water stays calm. 
Got it attached by a rope to my waist, 
so if I don’t hit my target I’ll be pulled down into the deep with it. 
The silence as the sun peaks over the horizon. 

I miss the pealing strings through the wall that I covered my ears to at the time . 
Making a career out of being displeased. 
Throwing away all my money just to feel something. 
Trying to be like a  sunset made more beautiful by wildfire smoke and pollution haze.
1000th plane today just flew by, poisoning the air which we breathe at a rate elliptically
graphed on a cross turning black. (6, 6, 6) simply a cartesian happenstance. 
Midnight circus find me a purpose or will I just keep drifting?

New to the City

Farm followers fantailing
round the corner of the block
fifty yards off, still in shock 
at the shield around my body.
The press of bodies. Shifting,
itching, doing the dishes. Easing
and sighing, and wishing. Blue 
shines through the gray and in 
the distance golden. A chill at my
back, a pressing knack. Guiding distance, 
stilted stillness. Working towards 
nothing to try to feel something. 
An eye always drawn 
towards         what?
in            vain?

the girl with the corduroy overalls

curly hare, 
hope under all, 
sing song smorgasbord, 
light step lilting, 
vista name-dropping, 
fourth world swimming, 
night light twinkling, 
motel stare down, 
winter car heat beating, 
rock settling by the shore,
always sees more, 
a sour at the right bar, 
some far off seashore, 
dreamt of nowhere, 
lamp near an inn door, 
sun faded painting, 
autumn wind on the first cool morn, 

the press of lips when first waking

a passing afternoon
curtain drawn
your body at the window

Kawas

The arrow is always pointing to
heaven.

The mountains —
divinity draped in darkness.

The people of old say a pile of stones
will do.

 After Moses ascends through the sensible and 
intelligible contemplation of God,
he then enters the darkness above the mountain’s peak.

The peak —
only sketched in negative
can we begin to relate.

I don’t think void is all we are left with
as from many directions I can see
and listen to the darkness,
as it speaks to me, as it sings.

It’s as much about not psyching yourself out as feeling the flow 
of the moment in the movement of an outstretched hand. 
I grasp after the hand inside of you, falling flat. 
Grasp the tennis balls after they hit the net, one after the other. 
Fuzzy after so many tries stopped dead in their tracks, 
I sway as I walk back to the line for another set. 

Red nose peeks out from black scarf with a mountain at her back.  
Her freckles like the leaves dotting the meadow in autumn. 
Trussed under heather branches — my heart. Trust under a searching stare.
I hear the branches start to snap. Waiting for you to look back, 
my lips start to chap, in the wind that pushes ever on ending everything eventually. 

But right now, 
when I close my eyes and center my body in my spine, 
I see myself moving forward over sagebrush supine, 
a mountain rising towards me under moonlight, 
her hair in the wind as her body turns away pivoting. 
I step forward crouched, and release. Open eyes, 
I look skyward toward the lime green ball that I’ve launched. 
The power at the ready, my body held taut. 
In a moment I’ll try again, 
and perhaps this time: lightning (no stopping that)

Just NPC Things 

Walk with no personality. 
Perfect posture but I can’t comment on what’s happening. 
Looking for tape on the street so I can follow my prime directive —
life’s invisible blocking, but I’m not acting.
Forgot my lines but not sure who to ask for them. 
Just waiting in the monotony for something to happen.

Could be put here in this world for just one moment, 
            but which one is it?
             but what to do with all the others?

Sometimes God Has an Opinion

Lucifer’s at the front door selling 
knick knacks to shaded believers in 
the new subdivision springing from 
the ranch-hand’s dominion. No 
water needed, just a silky flow of 
green. None for the people that had 
used it as equals. But the lands dry 
now. Too much sameness. 

Gas station off the highway, 
I’m back in my homeland. 
Pumps all aglow,
whatever off behind in the distance.

Get back in my car, 
drive till the tanks empty.

“Crush the throat of an angel,
take haven in the pleasure of sin,”
Satan is saying through the doorway.
Smiling, he claps his hands together,
“For only $19.99, I could sell you this
little mister,” holds up a little 
statue 3 ft high of a figure engulfed 
in flames iridescent and black, “to 
remember that lesson by.”

Heads Blaring on the TV Station, Sunset out the Canteen Window

Pat myself on the head just for getting out of bed. 
Feeble gesture, but else I’ll be stuck there. 

Grand prix phasing half-alive apostrophes in the grand scheme of things. 
Introduced but only in one scene in the documentary. 
Hopefully. 

“My face is always changing, 
how could I be only one thing?” 
said after another day in bed just looking at a screen. 

At this point just a participation trophy 
would be really, really worth something. 
A gesture that I’m seen, I think as I’m hiding

                                                                                  Veiled 
priestesses professing            that constant
destruction isn’t pain in the soft gray light. 
They chant, “It is the only way to make space for creation.”

More emptiness and more. The endless expanse of night.
It never ends but     the sun    always   comes up     again.
Up all night            thinking               of what went wrong. 

Still watching the sunset sitting down  wrong way round. 
Still thrashing in bed in the diluted dawn in an empty house. 
Soft voids undulate under Cerulean dampening to black. 
I stare at the horizon and it cuts me            like broken glass. 

Since I was a kid, I could   never part with even something like an old, 
beaten-up pair of shoes. Cried every time I went out in new ones
and came home    finding     a         piece of myself     gone. My mom 
had trashed them. Lesson      —     a new me is being sown every 
moment and            I can’t keep up,               always three steps back. 

Wanting to always feel every feeling fresh. 
As if the first time could last and last and           I can’t 
                       harden and betray what even first         brought me to you. 

Am I crying all the time 
because I am losing you
or just because loss is a
thing that happens at all? 
This is just one large slug
from the bluest bottle —
filled with the acrid yellow 
liquid tang of pain. I keep
being offered these chances
but I just bury myself in the 
mud and hope that will be 
enough to explain. I can’t 
believe I chased away the 
most beautiful soul I’ve ever 
seen. Feeling brown and green. 
Although I’m not in the forest but 
the city, those are shit and chemicals
flowing together to form this body. 

Yes
    but I am also made of wood
                                 and leaves.

Yes, brown and green…
    in the end all I can see is I’m not.
                          I’m only becoming.

aery fae floating in the ether

ire will transpire
I re-wake now
ire will expire
I re-die born    again 
             every     second 
                another         me 
                  coming at this shit

                      wielding my pen 
                 I slash at this thin 
         cloak between, seen
     through grape skin
  this world
  there’s no separation
  between what my hands
  are grasping at
  but there’s nothing 
                             in them

I need a topographic map of the heart to find wherein lies relief

Copper mountains      crowd      the horizon.
Desolation      and     hopelessness         ride 
side-by-side        in the lee        my trudging 
body makes as the wind hits me,         never 
stopping.      I lay in the shade      of the last 
shelter in this barren land:               some tin 
ripped from a roof.              By some miracle 
staying affixed,        planted deep        in the 
sand.      I lean        against the fading green 
paint of the metal,        feeling myself       in 
waves approaching corrugation.            I lay 
seeping out in the sand,            giving fat to 
the earth.       The wind          blasts through 
again       and again          in this wide valley, 
but at least     it only comes     from the one 
direction.          Praying for no past,        and 
figuring it will            work out since        I’m 
always     always forgetting,          but I can’t 
ever seem to               let the right things go
out slipping     from                 the stream of 
misremembering        into          nonexistent
entities.               Just an empty space place-
holding where a memory used to be.          I 
try so hard    to let go   but the    things that 
always stick behind are         the pain of past 
times gone.     Still     just      through airport 
security,      for the first time       flying alone, 
and crying as my            family stops waving, 
turns     and goes   back to their lives.    And 
I’m just standing there       bawling.        Past 
flapping again     and again against me,    an 
ever-present low level din         dragging me 
everdown    as I try   to      chart a path away 
from oblivion.            When I first woke up in 
this position     with the       tin and the wind, 
I kept trying     to        stick my head out and 
see    where from this   never stopping came  
from. But  I’m growing  so tired, so thirsty — 
no water in this desert.  Not even cacti grow 
here.   I’ve decided that the next time I wake 
I will loose my body in the wind and feel the 
full brunt of its force            and let what will 
happen happen.        The only way forward - 

                   is this how to survive being?
                   is this how to survive being?
                   is this how to survive being?

            I’m so afraid of permanence,
but I’m not sure why when things 
just keep changing. I’m a sheet 
blowing in the wind. I’m a tear 
dripping from the skin. Loosed from
familiar conditions, ten thousand  
possibilities are present. But I must 
slide from the face into the air and 
then hit the ground and break,
fracturing fractals in every direction 
but I can only follow one of them. I’m 
like a fish in the ocean inspecting
the various boat’s bait and seeing
which line to follow even though all
lead to me with eyes wide and no
breath        gasping       
as    I    breath   my    last     breath
          and     finally       see the light.

                           Funneling void 
outside time takes it: time. Each 
second a piece of popcorn —
an eternal movie where you see 
all at once — all beginnings and all
ends and the journeys back and
forth between them. A black shape
in the darkness silhouetted by the 
light that is life, eating at moments 
with no reason and no rhyme.

I whisper to the birds / They fly west carrying secrets to you

Still here looking                at the same 
expanse of lawn.        Getting up every
dawn,       I am               quartered and 
drawn.         The four horses pulling in
opposite directions,    my body is seen 
— is seen  from above    to be    in the 
shape of a cross.                 Unholy yet
not stained,   everyone    keeps telling
me that    time   will eventually    wipe 
away the pain.          Like sandpaper it  
will scathe away at memory  and I will
be left baby-blue and smooth.       No 
more nerve endings,     no pain,     no 
truth. 

                                           The waters 
flow and flow but I know your   subtle 
shade, that   little curl  at the   end  as 
your wave breaks.    I can wait.    Sure
the river  will change and   break    its
bank, and  I pray  I   will too, but if it’s
all the same       to you         I will wait
for your water      to wash      over me
again and again.  We’ll sport different
names,         the sky will be a different
hue,            but something at the kore 
will always stay the same.      Our love
again   and again     as time drifts and 
spins. 

                   The horses eventually get 
bored pulling       at my seams    after 
they realize that the   physical     pain
is       only distracting me            from 
the deeper well     inside.    The crank 
creaks as the bucket hops            and
heaves up the shaft,          coming up 
always dry     when you pull from Dry 
Creek.   Purple mountains help shade 
me when the    sun shines      too hot 
and I feel weak.

              So as I was saying, the ropes’
tension eases   and     I slump   to the 
ground, cold but   for the memory of 
the   sweet heat         your soft hands 
proffered to this broken body.    I lay 
slick in the morning       dew, a snake 
eating it’s own tail, 
                                    no end,
no                   begin         -         ning.

Yes,
       I am but a fossil slowly petrifying. 
Always  tending    towards      solidity, 

time tries to cast me as one specific something.

The cement it dries quickly 
as I try to resist 
                         and liquify
                                          and stop the 
            ossification of this “I” 
                                          that tries
              to cut off and 
            separate, saying,
            “I am only me.” 

don’t need to 
don’t want to
pull this form out of 

the body of water from which comes all things. 
The grass is not green, the water is not blue.

     Stop trying to separate what is
     only one thing, us all, out here 
          shimmering shimmering.

At the place where there used to be 
a pier. Stones still shoot out of the 
lapping water but they don’t hold up
anything. Just standing there arms 
up tensing. Just slowly crumbling. 
The rain and the wind turning what 
once was a block into something 
vaguely pyramid-shaped. A point 
reaching towards the heavens, cool 
water holding my thighs hostage. 
Still stillness. Unmoored yet steady, 
I want to move but my feet are stuck 
in the muck. Moments of bliss keep 
this engine revving even though 
there’s nothing to live for between 
them. A shot of air to keep this body 
aloft, can’t I just have some rest? 
Just a forgotten monument to things 
that already happened. Stuck in a 
body meant only for remembering. 
Love is the only purpose and I am 
so empty. Love is the only purpose 
and I keep fucking it up so badly.      

I

Words are only wind. But the wind is whipping
and picking up sand. It cuts me like a knife. Thin 
remnants of what I once was won’t leave me alone.
Haunting visions of my face angry spitting red leave 
  me feeling empty with dread. Like BOB’s face in the 
mirror, I look into the looking glass and something else 
                                                                        stares back. 

II

red crow - born from steel knee;
on my shoulder the bird of terror
                                        alights... 

Call me if you get lost…

Your smile          like          smokey mountains. 
I never tired of       being blanketed       in the
soft mist   of        love that came            when 
your heart       opened             to me and you 
like       a grey wolf devoured              my lips.
The arctic wind is                howling my name.
The land        of          all white is still        out 
there calling.                   My limbs freeze and 
start to turn black        as I finish         my hut
and first thing to     stoke the fire          at the 
center of it.         The wind never            stops. 
Even on       rare days        smooth like Mirror 
Lake,        there is          some kind of strange 
threat in the brief reprieve.                    Some 
kind     of         divinity taunting         that the 
rest      of your life            does not offer such 
peace.      So I crouch     and       I huddle day 
after     day      in this empty        land waiting 
for you to arrive         so          that I can offer 
you some warmth                   if you so desire. 
But then again, I        hope              you never 
again have to       visit this place     of         no 
horizon.      And again                 that blowing 
wind,                   my one true companion like 
tv fuzz      from the other          room at night. 

pareidolia 

The shapes of things —
at an italian restaurant old and half
rotting some brown lacquering is ten
thousand tortured souls 
screaming infinitely. My grandma is
patiently telling me about the 
torment of living but she says it is all
in the past 
                  for her 
                               it’s only memory. 
All those things that happened as if
to another person but we still feel
compelled again and again to talk
of them and gauge the distance
continuously diminishing the shame 
and the sting of things that happened
to this body we are still inhabiting. 
Like a long lost twin — they have the 
same face but you will still never 
understand all of them. Unself — a 
ghostly touch reminding us that time 
passing is never enough. So I heat 
a black needle heavy with sin and 
singe at the ends of remembering as 
if the trauma of my ancestors for a 
thousand generations back is still 
not felt in my sore back as I try so 
hard to be brave and stand tall 
against the demented forces 
pushing me towards oblivion. 

No — 

             this veteran just          stood and
stared    at each passing     car, a protest
against war    but     only after he     had 
fought and     seen      the reality behind
the scenes.     Only after          the killing 
time was        over, for him.    Repenting,
but the sins are in your body,        never
leaving.     Can’t change the past except 
in your head.           I still stand over the 
dead, blood dripping from my bayonet.

To be sated is to be fill beyond full.

Full already but desire is always there.

Cut off my arm because I tried to take yours

— my breath mixing with the wind.

Curled up can look like weeping 
                                                    willows. 
                       Coiling around each other 
                                                           can look like roots
           feeding who’s in need.                                   The word isolated comes 
                       from the latin insulatus,                                 or be “made into an island.”
                                   I just want to reach out and           feel the earth and not the sea.
                                              The dirt between my fingers, let's sit together on the beach.
                            No tidal wave                                  no hurricane can
                                              bury us under the blue if we hold 
                                  hands in a graceful dance of                   endless embrace and dispersing.
                                                          We’re all climbing the same tower,
                                                          and at the top
                                                                                 there is infinite space
                                                                                              infinite peace.

                                                                        A space 
                                                                                    for you       for    me

                                                                        for anyone you’ve ever seen
                                                             all the people you could have been
                                                            identity is simply chance beckoning
                                                            After all
                                                                        our bodies all fit together —
                                                            the most sacred geometry
                                                            crooks and knees and 
                                                            the softest softness 
                                                                                           you’ll see
                                                            one day we’ll all roll together in a 
                                                            field of eternal green
                                                                                              a hopeful end
                                                                                              for humanity
                                                            katamari damacy

Gold / Gandalf the Grey / Golem

Gilt the moment.
Guilt the moments     
                                                    after I 
                                           felt so gold.

Gilt the moment.
Guilt the moments 
                                                    after I
                                said that all wrong.

Staring at a void 
all blue and black as night 
pleading with the darkness 
for  some    light.

I used to feel so bright —
Little fairy dancing, 
    but I’ve got a malevolent side.
                 I’m an evil little sprite 
                              casting spells
but I can’t figure out 
if my magic is black or white, 
         path left-hand or right-...

                On my heart of stone
              there are thin etchings —
              pretty runes my loves
              have carved into me.

              An all too brief           breath of life 
              I breathed in       through your lips
              since
              I’m a golem 
              sinking in a grey haze
              alway feeling barely here
              cause
              my body is made of mud 
              and the sky keeps pouring                down rain.

Drifting

                                             round the 
                          corner comes another 
                           bend. circle back, up, 
                          down. the wind's true 
                  direction remains unfound.

                          Waapati will block the 
                  roadway       in the dead of 
               night.       Shine your brights, 
             blind them and        they’ll get
             out of the way all right.         A
           demon            first experiencing 
          the night as a place       of fright
           (frightening).     Keep punishing 
           and I’m sure   to eventually feel
            delight.            Still, slightest of 
            slights slivering   into the black 
            of memory opening wide,       I
            will never forget    the way you
           held me at night.      Who knew
            my vile mind   could so tear up 
                                         your insides.

                        We were both suspend,
                           hold out, eventually it 
                             will all be all right —  
                                        kindling a fire 
                                       covered in ice.

Kindling a fire
covered in ice,
but the fire still
burning, the winter
always ending. Blue
like the smoke. A
boa constrictor choke
stealing all color from
what matters most. But
you still in 3-D. Neon signs,
a used car dealership air
dancer waving at me as you
recede across the landscape ever 
further from here. Glowing liquid 
draining. Never coming back up again
to fill anything. I can’t sleep, because
everytime I close my eyes, all I see
is you leaning hard into me caressing
your cheek. How do I keep leaving the
ones I love the most feeling so deplete?

“Heave, ho / the ship buckled here”

Snap, snap with the pointer against
the white flap, an impermanent mark
against the blue-black sea. The ship 
washed up on shore a month later 
but the sailors never did. A 
permanent mark on my soul. The 
ocean thrashed around their last
breath, let up for the ones they love. 
Sure, it was their last last but the 
love will surely live past all it begat.
Surely, not all paths lead to black.
Ankle deep walking as if through snow,
but always always broken flow. The 
riverbeds no longer offer any rest. 
Cracked and dry, only dust and 
spiders crowd in. The veins do not 
always reach the hands. Polluted 
somewhere between the foot and 
the knee, there is no such thing as 
free. In the southern parts, they’ll
still say, “You can always go more 
south. Everyone hungers, but the 
opposite of the eye ain’t really your 
mouth.” No doubt always breeding 
doubts. Kudzu companion curling
coils round this corporeal corpse 
I inhabit. Blood dripping from my
mouth, I hope I didn’t kill my lucky
rabbit. 
                I’m always feeling so thin
                                                 within.
             Stuffed all through with 
                                               straw,
           My body stands. Crucify 
                                             myself
        In a cornfield. The crows 
                                          can pick
     Out my eyes for something
                                        to eat.
   The results are the same 
                                     either way. 
 Everyone you ever love,
                                   will leave.

Wolves can be lonely,
      but is that something they need?

Missive to the Creator Goddess of Universal Light

Creation and destruction are two
sides of the same coin. Some
Master Hand sweeping back and
forth with no plan other than 
constant rearrangement of the 
divine permutations that put 
together two unacquainted beings
to create a liminal space where new
“something” pops up to offset 
entropies constant decay. 

Nothing is born, nothing dies 
Brown and green, brown and green

Sure, everything is empty but 
something exists outside this place.

Cornfields dot the landscape. One 
blue kernel at the heart of Turtle 
Island waiting for eons for those 
seekers who it will teach again and 
again to say, “Blood beading from 
slit left palm. Rosy red cheeks.
Dismay. Ten thousand flowers bloom
but only one offers a path to me. I 
am found for but a moment. I do not
stay. Here, have a brief taste and I’ll
be on my way. Come, come, seek me
                          again   and      again.”

Blinded by the sun off a blade

The end of days   will be just another 
day.     The ends        and beginnings 
always sneaking up with      a hidden
dagger.    You move through the day 
thinking all is the same      as always, 
and then        out of some concealed
crevice        the blade comes glinting. 

A circle  but in one point the smooth
arc is broken.                  Slowly some 
substance leaks out         and is gone 
forever.      A popped bubble hissing 
slowly   approaching    nonexistence. 
You open your mouth, but  you can’t 
speak.  A popped bubble rests under

the rubble.       Double trouble if you 
approach    subtlety        with a blade 
between your teeth.       The seagulls 
beak  stabs   through into the    crab, 
opening upon  the meat inside.  Torn 
bits       of flesh and shell      litter the 
beach around  a fresh barrier broken.

What is flotation if not constant hole patching?

                                                        Salt in the 
      air,           I’ve always loved you like I love
    the sea.     You’re so vast          and I am so 
    weak.       I can only worship      the waves 
   that I see from this one beach.               My 
   perspective so small.              I was handed
  down    the steps of the ritual         but they 
   are all wrong.              How could I not see 
   that you couldn’t see?             I watch your 
   waves everyday,              but they couldn’t 
 teach me      how to reach         the deepest
  blue     at    the        heart       of       things.

   It didn’t matter though,                  I built a
  makeshift raft               and drifted through 
  black and blue storms.              So far from 
  the shore,            loneliness overtook me. I 
  held on for a time,         but I took a wrong 
  turn             and began to see the greatest
   truth as simply myth.        My love for you 
  is now               the only thing I truly know 
  exists.            My raft was smashed against 
  your midnight light.          I mistook a void 
   for an attack.         I awoke parched in the 
 desert, what can a pilgrim do but question? 

I keep seeing or hearing of sharks this weekend. 
A sign gleaming at me — but for what? 
Am I to be devoured, chewed up, spit out? 

A vicious recycling. 
A sign of the times.

Reconstitute this mess and make visible only 
  the parts that shine. No, keep those inside. 
            They’ll shine through. 

Show my    sharp edges        and caustic lakes. 

Let the sun shine on them. 
Let my flaws be seen and still embraced. 
Let the rain and wind fly and soften my edges.

An arete always ends up rounding off, 
so help smooth me out divine something. 

I’m a spiny mountain of the west looking to move east. 
It’s getting so hot, when will glaciers come again 
to press down on this    body                 always tensing?

After a tough hike sit in the shade resting. 
Eyes closed, rub your hand on what once was stabbing.
The smoothness of grey, 
                                        the smoothness of in-between. 
Careful caresses concentrate the softness 
of dawn into something held and holding. 

But still the shark’s maw gleams. 
Am I truly to be devoured or am I the one devouring?
Everything I set my eyes on is always disappearing, 
but that can’t be my fault right? 

It can’t all have gone to my belly, 
because I’m still starving. 
A hungry ghost, I wander 
the landscape looking for some light, 
but the sun is always setting. 

Preceding the dawn there is 
always a necessary darkening. 

Shot yourself in the foot so you 
could further hone the craft of 
elucidating tragedy. 
                                A black skull
made by moonlight and clouds 
haunts the midnight sky over blood 
soaked plains of middle america. 
To you a mountain speaks its name
in cell phone rings to chase you 
away from hearing its true name in 
plain speech. An invisible graveyard
under a dry tree. White lies you tell 
yourself to stay away from the heart 
of things. White lies blackening. 
Blank times you go through to not
really see Sisnaajini. The blood of 
christ drips down like tears from 
ridges sharp as knives. Stone pillars 
here and there break the clean lines
of the ridges as a permanent symbol 
of us reaching for the divine. 
                                               But, Oh 
man those open skies. Even thirty 
miles away, a body is seen moving in 
the valley. No hiding here where the 
dust leaves you only able to be as 
you    are:               naked and empty. 

Broken Heart Sutra

           Feeling the sun on my bones
in the fall.             The chill is chased 
away       but the image of your face 
washes over me            still in waves.
Laughing yet still,        my mind tries
to create    a marble statue     out of
your features   as if any        creation 
can stand 
                      can withstand 
                                                     the 
buffeting wind    of       passing time.
I ponder and chisel        but the eyes
still stare out    lifeless   because you
are gone.     The erosion of day after
day slowly erasing everything.  What
can one say?          I am just a simple 
creature,  full of life that no moment
can pause, with a snake at my center
always eating away          at past and 
futurity.    Never full it coils and coils.
The downy softness     of your cheek
being lost  little by little   day by day.
What is life but decay?     A constant
state of readjusting        but comfort
can only ever be momentary.     Sure
nothing is born, nothing dies, but so 
what stays?       Sure nothing is born,
nothing dies,    but still all I do is cry!

I live my life foolishly, brandishing a 
knife at all who try to help me. Won’t
anyone please help me? Blackened
sanguine sanity far out to sea. A 
flickering light fifty miles from the 
nearest ship, engulfed by waves 
more often than seen.
                                         Why
                  always   distance?   My 
                          body’s  a  wheel  
                                          slowly
                                             stopping. 

(ice skating, ice skating) along wooly shores,
(ice skating, ice skating) always wanting more.

a dark shape off to your left —
   you see through the mist
     in and out of the grey eclipse;
       a red sometimes comes clear,
         and you think of lips
           and tearing into them
             and flesh made electric —
               but the world is slanting
                 you’re tripping, dizzy,
                   and the fog seems to drown
                     out your vision and
                       a larger shape overtakes
                         the first one. there
                           are screams and snarls
                             (in low volume, at a great distance).
                               you’re falling —
                                 is that the sound of a celebration,
                                   roaring gold?
                                     the light goes dim
                                       you are ice skating,
                                         at the beginning again.
                                           the fog clears ahead
                                             across windswept, icy moors
                                               and you trek off cross
                                                waiting
                                               you will wait for what’s in store.
                                            but now you’re in the fog again —
                                         a faint mirage off in the distance,
                                     the rustle of bedcovers on the wind.
                                 you skate across the landscape
                              thinking —
                           if only you could find them again,
                       you would grasp their bleeding red heart.
                    the hot, thumping organ in your hand;
                 the palm's open vision.

madly, sadly, gladly
a bark-and-moss-clad sprite
moved fitfully in the night,
flitting this way and that.

first,
looking in the window,
feeling the warmth
but
seeing only
in your corner 
the rat.

second,
gliding down across the park
through the fog
lit darkly,
silhouetting lovers
coiling
and blue.

third,
drifting
up, up, up
over the clouds
half-thinking, half-saying,
chanting under the moonlight:

time slipping forward and back
a gentle pull (like the sea)
pinching the bunched up fabric
hanging down my back.
sometimes I step forward
and realize I am retracing old tracks.
if I could only move without this body
maybe I could weave new paths.

parking lot              puddles,
minds all                a muddle
with thoughts of lost things
and where  they  are hiding.
all the time spent searching
for something —   anything.

all                    the vanished things 
in mind’s eye           I’m imagining
empty space filling up everything.
flowers bloom inward,       gloomy
fractals ever diminishing,          in-
ward my     mind is           drawn to 
the wind through the trees,     and
the  space  between  you  and  me.
water’s always dancing with rocks,
there’s no break,                         no 
separation     haunting my dreams.

You(th)

walking in the cold
alone
my jaw opens, unhinged, 
fog rolls out.

back home, later,
blowing out vapor
like nothing exists,
you bear your nape
and stretch lithely,
becoming object of desire,
what I so desire to be.

under my breath, i’m always
sulking, brooding, growling, shrieking,
“want me! wwwaaantt mmmeeeee…”

the past i touch on in this elegy;
i am but a chanter, chanting.
the past i touch on was so elegant
but a moment ago; now it darkens. it
is slipping from my grasp,
as my vision clouds
and my stomach tumbles and turns,
you slip out of your slip
smiling lazily, hungrily.
i have but one eye open
as your waves of desire overcome me
and i cease to be.

“does the same thing happen 
to you, but
as happens to me?”
i think, staring at my reflection nakedly.
“can i water the sprouts of desire
in all who look upon
me?”
“grab me not fondly,
please, please,
devour me.”

why are there so few synonyms 
for air and snow
in the english language?

i float, i float,
but my words tether me so.

I was eaten by mosquitos
            last night
in your memory

The memory of a voice Imprinted on my knuckles

In my head of course.

I never got around to learning — 
just like most of the things I’ve cared about.

Life has been leading me along:
like the carrot leading the horse,
the horse chomping at the bit,
the blind leading the blind.

Yet I am still nowhere 
                         still  nothing.

And there’s still that problem of the voice
repeating itself over and over again.
And yet, what does it say?

The message is garbled, but
in summary of the sounds:

There’s a hole in my essence
and seemingly nothing to be done.

coiling

if we meet in the street,
someone must have willed it so.
if a man is bitten by a snake,
the russians say he was murdered.

the will    will make it so.
my will    will make it so.

800 oscillators spinning out of sync,
memories of skating around the ice rink,
flying, drunk on speed, complete.

i’ve heard tales of a ghostly speech
in which one must rattle off lines 
at excessive speeds.
a lecture, first bludgeoning, soon
becomes transcendental communique.
things unsubstantiated 
are made discrete. 

the will will make it so.
my will will make it so.

an old woman once entertained the idea
that any sound always rings.
she made her violin sing and 
the waves were transfigured 
down the street as a long scream.
two weeks later a traffic horn blaring.
thenafter, with her bow-thing
she sought to catch again all her previous soundings.
from ether to ether to some other being,
she wondered if when it happened,
she could feel that it was happening.
would she be transported, murdered,
bit by a snake, transcending?

the will   will make it so.
my will     will make it so.

I am an empty husk of what I once was.

The words go, but less and less do they

Ever come back again. I am left stunted

And sore. Oh life, what a bore. The same

Problems come again and again to shake

Me at my core. Do all things always rot

And die so? The tomato, we can observe

As it goes. But    a life           a love

that slides and slides. Into the darkness we

Go. The eternal is never known. The eternal,

What a show. The pointless square dance,

Twirling in black snow. A statue, so vivid

As to speak truths to words unknown, but

To you the other side is never shown. A

Crow and a swan in a field all alone. I sit

Looking through binoculars, chanting under

My breath that, “I tell everyone that nothing

Lasts forever, and all I seem to see is them

Walking away they go.” The swan and the

Crow are now specks on a sky turning to

Black. They don’t look back. They never                      look back.

feather my hair 
oh winter wind
i breathe you in.
the trick consists not
in imagined warmth,
fire in the belly,
but to become winter too.

speak,
“winter sun is my brother.
  winter swan is my sister.
  my mother the breeze
  that ruffles my hair
  and my father the stiff ice cracking
  in early spring, nighttime air.”

from a bus window 

runnels of water, running
first leftwards, and then down.
running runnels of water
impressed upon the smooth,
flowing blur of
yellowed grass and tarmac.
that haunting space 
between the
two sides of 
the highway.
the highway 
cutting across 
the alien dust
into the reddish crags
that cling to the horizon.
i’m reminded of another ride
across the blackest desert —
the moon doesn’t shine 
during the blackest night.
we were flying,
no road to follow
nowhere to go.

another car drives past into the mist
leaving red streaks in its wake.

How are we to know
how to go?
Play it fast
or take it slow.
The ends always beginning
The means are never known.
Eyes sweep with desire
But what are they shown?
In this world —
I’m dancing like a deer
Dancing like a doe.

a frenchman at the bar yesterday
said i was a brave american.
i think he meant stupid.

either way 
i walked naked
in the moonlit snow.

this present moment

that lives on

to become

long ago.

listening to the air, like a river,
as cars flyby on the
highway I sleep under
and dreaming —

time I 
cannot grasp
at it.

unmoored
its waves will
engulf me.

         I Got Sweaty Writing This Poem

           small hearts us all —
           reaching out with
           slim, and thick digits,
           aortas and capillaries
                    sometimes
           beating in time,
           like the humming thrum 
           of the pummeling drums
           outside the show,
                     sometimes
           beating in dissonance —
           a bird call in the digital land.

           the air starts to 
           shimmer as even the
                      breath comes to join
           in the spectacle
           and the most special
                 of sometimes begins —
           the skittering drums slowing to nothing
           as the bugs of the night take up the song,
the sparkling air shimmers
                   itself still, and 
                   voices 
                   first one, now two,
                   now a thousand,
                   now more, now more.
            the voices
                    break out and in
                    this moment our hearts
                    are the same —
                    the ten thousand things,
                           one.

                     if you find yourself one day
                     stopping and
                     looking around and
                     looking up at the sky and
                     feeling the chill embrace 
                     of time
                     spreading, across your ribs,
                     reach out and feel
                     the others too
                     arrested so.

my icons of devotion become thee
when the speed of life sits
somewhere about four
and the grey sky 
hails for something unknown.
my minds eye pales, drawn and quartered
toward songs of devotion past and present.

Oh Jesu Iaxoco
Oh Straight-Laced Figgy
Hail the old isle of Akkadian

and set me straight again
on the path of the present, ever glowing.
grey sometimes, but always woo and new.
not watered down, not tried and true,
but filled with the wafting smoke of a
thousand stalks of tall, timid grass
matching the rosicrucian rubber tennis courts
set off at a medium distance across the lawn.

I have my own songs of devotion
that don’t become you
and over their screeching feedback,
feeling,
I sit, mind pacing,
attempting to let the wind through
the trees speak through me
as I chant songs anew.

I

sunny days with the skeleton
playing at the park.
light is dark —
the ocean waves
they growl and bark.

II

i’ve traded skins,
like vests in a foundry,
my entire life.
people — one brief dream
passing me by…
a white skirt dancing
in the wind
my body is out here
billowing.

bastard sighs
and dark brown skies — 
autumn edges on 
                                                     eternity.
                               and the wind
        soaks the air
        in constant blowing.

i was born nowhere
and will leave nothing.
my blood will not
flow out of my veins
pooling into the ground
around my bones
for i am made from air
and i will float,
float, float away
and never return.

i won’t go up
i won’t go down
after i, death
will not be found
in her normal
state of running
around, around.
she will float too,
nonchalantly slicing
all of us down, for 
i will have spent my days
being some things
but i have been, before,
everything.

streetlights

paint me in thick brushstrokes
two shades of gray,
a black.
my shadow bends into two —
i am the darkness
at the heart of that.

i keep coming back
to — nothing

Onkyo –

the oft forgotten other player in the room is silence.

The long sweeps of silence’s fingers,

white like death’s,

pulling swaths of air,

air into nothingness,

nothingness into air,

the space surrounds surrounding / nothing other than space itself

as silence peters on

(in ever more graceful shades)

winter bloom
  snow garden