top of page
Hope, like juniper
I often missed
Life's a bath
And I will sink
Writing: Text
My fruit tree
Of empty thought
A hungry ghost
Leisures, lesions
Lessons of white noise
We walk over maps
Hats, heads down
Weather conversations
Jazz hack caffeines
Soddened grim pits
My punji stick thesis
or an unwritten novel
Not a day
Not my wife
Both gone to Rome
Without pets, fingernails
Habit of madness, the
Common street sorts
Mumbling, booze
Uncelebrated
A poor Medici
My madness is lazy
It drives around aimlessly
Cheap with lust
Rents, doesn't own
His own life
Black hopes
Of grandiose arms
Unremarkable
An oral tradition
Unspoken, unheard
Thinking, if
Once a year
Fills these sails
The same maiden voyage
When less skinned
In colder waters
He fell overboard
Writing: Text
MILDRED
Poor Mildred
hasn't left
her nametag
on the shelf.
Always there.
Her mindful
ways. To be
Samantha,
Or Karen.
Maybe Sue.
That nametag
heard her thoughts,
"Wonder if
changing your
nametag won't
change your face?"
A redhead.
Purple lips.
Not mousey
or so plain
Naming your
child decides
dating lives,
jobs and death.
She, Mildred
knowing this,
has regrets.
Wants no child.
Writing: Text
PLAGUE
it's my trivial life
another trivial night
i'm a plague
i'm a headache
in the afternoon sun
it's the year of Vitamin C
it's the year of belief
it's still the year of the crab rangoon
it's the year of the mustache
or how i met you
want, more questions
how to be barbaric
tell yourself, hey, okay
i'm in a good mood today
i can't wait to be high
it's the year of cardboard
and i'm the box factory
and you're full of glue
let's call it quits
let's do a road trip
to the end of the hall
to the end of my hairline
let's go to the zoo
Writing: Text
If I were a wicked man
I'd keep walking
If I were a sad set of eyes
I'd keep thinking
Of the ways out of Babylon
Out of the sweet valley
Out of the caves
Drinking sweet red
Amongst the wildflowers
We sang songs and held hands
If it was rain we cried
Heaven is here among us
Drink to live forever
I woke up something sour
The taste of blood
The same dirty shoes
The same seasons
The same beating sun
On beaten man
The angel Gabriel, Sinatra,
Coattails, gospel
I was a cold shower
A sober sharp mind
A book to sell a fortune
We lost our minds together
A torn veil, our naked body
In those miles of pavement
A solitude to now worship
The desperate that need the fist
To teach the hand to open
Every path ends
Writing: Text
I'm undressing myself again
Defenestrating
Overreach
Abstinence
Reaching out for new rock bottoms
Am I an actor
Starring in low budget b&w infomercials
Living out of an 83 town car in the central valley
Hiding the weeks on the almond farms
And the sun leathered stretch of my withered imagination
Am I a professional man, buttoned, adorned
Firm and resolute and well-fitted
Jovial at social events and holidays
And an occasional cigarette
Am I the lost cause
The delusions outside of a tent
The naked sweat of a warm highway underpass
The vestigial organ of pride refusing to see a hand to pull out
A child to ask and to mourn
Or am I the lost youth
The lost generation
Victims of certain years and changing seasons
Taught a vision without dreams
Stuck on the island of dead habits
Am I wholly undressed or wholly clothed
Unable to move a mirror
Unable to make use of hands
A cold set of seaman's eyes
Whaling, squalor, sex, alcohol
An unbroken path of generations
Am I memory of myself
Bright hair, well-read, virtuous, thoughtful
A bastion of hope, that king of wands
Inspired visionary, capable cook,
Transcendent lover
And still, unable to move a mirror
Unable to burn a pile of old clothes
Old love letters, old cellphones,
A sorry state for drug abuse
The low tide of handwriting
Pelted by cigarettes (literally)
From a windy autumn afternoon
The same clothes, the same chair, the same coffee, the pattern of denial
A washcloth over one hour forward and timelessly backward
Warm, dripping with soap and sweat
A history of your unbathed self
Soaking in the low tide
Writing: Text
"Hell is empty
And all the devils are here"
Writing: Text
Her anvil septum
Hand wringing out
Her cold war memories
Writing: Text
There's a false god
With a black heart
Who slaps your back
And says your name
And calls your parents
And says your name
They read to your children
He was my friend
(I was his king)
There was a god amongst
Light hearts and minds
Pebbles of your unworthiness
Scraps of paper to your heathens
Writing: Text
There's a dream for those who wait
Who hide amongst the trees
Admiring well polished heels
From worrisome places
A cool eyed ocean
Jean jacket and all
Hiding some miseries
Cigarettes, all smiles
Makeup a face
Someone's name
Karaoke escapes
Blame the lame rhyme
Sugar was a year
Away from corner
Under highway 45
Counting the trucks
Yellow, blue, how are you
Weaving grass crosses
A day without dope
And nothing to sell but time
She remembered church picnics
Uncles, brisket, spring colors
and spring shoes
Dirt shined on furrowed brows
Creased lines of bill concerns
Hiding in the southern sun
The music, she remembered best
Songs of praise, the bridge to God
She wondered now, weaving her crosses
If she could bear to give away
Those pieces of childhood
Tucked away in a white plastic bag
Still, she weaved
As if there would be no end
Only the labor to weave
Stitch, cross, pluck
The smell of grass in
Her stained hands
That night, she dreamed of a house
On a lake, filled with crosses
Rising up from the porcelain smooth lake surface
Dotting the sunset with shadows and souls and memories of her hands
Weaving crosses, holding hands in praise
Those warm Sunday mornings
Those heart and lung longings
The unreachable glass windows of the church
Bronze, yellow, the trumpets of God
The song of dreams
As the trucks passed overhead
Yellow, blue, how are you
Sailing down highway 45, the road
Between towns, the swamp
Dreams of decay
The stillness of past hanging in the air
Hazy, thick, balmy hands
Holding crosses, hearing the Psalms
Pass along the space between her dreams and her lungs
And the plastic bags beneath mile 67 overpass
Writing: Text
There's no thing I'd rather be
An actor, a saint,
A blank to blank the blanks
King sweet nothing
A blank state to wear the crown
A blank face/state looking back at me
Words to fill the space between walls
Build a house and nothing more
King sweet nothing
Dry syrup, trapped flies,
Stuck in the past of
Tired of _ he sighs
King sweet nothing
Build a brick wall
Bury your heart until you fall
Climb out and look for the well
To drown out the sky above you
King sweet nothing
A poet, a pauper
A page to write your ending
In the blood of the blind around you
Roses are red without you
Violet a knife to push pain out of sight
And rise with the morning sun
Writing: Text
Feel like the last person left with time to spare
Call your wife and children if you're wondering where I can't be found
Who goes back to the ones who left you
I find myself calling out to no one in the room
The plants I left to die here struggling in their ashen roots
My heart is the moon and you're unrequited ruins
Speak to me I'm gone again hardly felt I knew me
Before I packed my bags and washed away the sins of all my last good years
(And) you don't want and they don't want a family next to you
And when I die
40 years I might as well as be a stone
No one left to laugh and cry and spit and say your name at night
The loathsome man you grew to hate while they stood next to you
Writing: Text
There's a dream for those who wait
Who hide amongst the trees
Admiring well polished heels
From worrisome places
A cool eyed ocean
Jean jacket and all
Hiding some miseries
Cigarettes, all smiles
Makeup a face
Someone's name
Karaoke escapes
Blame the lame rhyme
Sugar was a year
Away from corner
Under highway 45
Counting the trucks
Yellow, blue, how are you
Weaving grass crosses
A day without dope
And nothing to sell but time
She remembered church picnics
Uncles, brisket, spring colors
and spring shoes
Dirt shined on furrowed brows
Creased lines of bill concerns
Hiding in the southern sun
The music, she remembered best
Songs of praise, the bridge to God
She wondered now, weaving her crosses
If she could bear to give away
Those pieces of childhood
Tucked away in a white plastic bag
Still, she weaved
As if there would be no end
Only the labor to weave
Stitch, cross, pluck
The smell of grass in
Her stained hands
That night, she dreamed of a house
On a lake, filled with crosses
Rising up from the porcelain smooth lake surface
Dotting the sunset with shadows and souls and memories of her hands
Weaving crosses, holding hands in praise
Those warm Sunday mornings
Those heart and lung longings
The unreachable glass windows of the church
Bronze, yellow, the trumpets of God
The song of dreams
As the trucks passed overhead
Yellow, blue, how are you
Sailing down highway 45, the road
Between towns, the swamp
Dreams of decay
The stillness of past hanging in the air
Hazy, thick, balmy hands
Holding crosses, hearing the Psalms
Pass along the space between her dreams and her lungs
And the plastic bags beneath mile 67 overpass
Writing: Text
Tossing bricks on highway window rides
Our stepping stones to lost children
Single scrolls to wipe away reality
Tossing and turning ink jet anthems
And imagined paths to the rapture
Let it screech on a cold night
The ancestral way of hiding from the dark
Heaves of snow and something rancid
Laying still beneath layered raincoats
Who will watch me with the shovel?
Turning over dead leaves into cider collages
Pushing young glasses over rose colored faces
In college we were taught to examine broadly
‘Feel the social fabric’ on those narrow channel walls
To say nothing of the ocean
And heaving bricks out the window
Shedding weight to stay afloat
The vastness whittled down to hands and bricks
Oars and feet
Your tired shoulders never quite able
To lift yourself to see the other boats
the other faces
Drifting aimlessly on the sun drenched horizon
Writing: Text
She said my heart’s broken; I said it’s just a big target.
Writing: Text
“O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a
king of infinite space”
Writing: Text
red-lit by face-paint
hardened smiles glow
& illusions of control
by levers of spectacle
the decadent image
and the proposition
of fear
of shame
of depression
naked answers standing naked,
askance, laughing
playing years in glass
bead games of adultery
the global conflict
of moral supposition
as distant as Mars
iron-wrought
hand-wringing
to the house
that always wins
Writing: Text
drawing meaning out of scrap paper flowers
crumpled bits of your cable knit history
Writing: Text
chewing on the peasant dirt
this is pleasure for my soul
i am worth the bag of bones
hanging on my shoulders
acid water, broken water
coursing through my veins
pants defeat me, sweaters
and holes and pockets and change
vessels drum my cubicles
owners of my ocean
salt and sweat and useless matters
eating all my holdings though
tatters to the breadst of you
show me all your tiny baubles
the ones you use to hide your marbles
basement for the rugs you love
and attics for the silken tapirs
lions of the universe
I met you and you're confused
about this ugly German
Writing: Text
“He didn’t know there were bad spirits lurking in the music waiting to be released by her playing. In the space between the notes, she whispered to me, that’s where they live.”
Writing: Text
Let’s go someday and pretend to be tourists. You’ll wear the sun hat. I’ll wear the camera. We’ll drink to curious glances and make love in strange places.
Writing: Text
THE GOLD STANDARD
sitting restlessly under the temple of words
a maze of symbols so strange in color
ritualistically sitting in pyramid corners and dry spells
like an infinite wall of photographer dementia
picturing broken crystal in my hands
my squid ink vapor oxidized by vampirism
groaning under Freud’s incandescent headlamp
living feverish dreams on a chaise lounge
letting disparate hemispheres wither on the vine
and burning the map to Antarctica
the milky haze of pleasant days
that deep throated arachnid terror unseen
holed up silent in a cave
most days it lives in my neck
the high-collared denigration of every living cell
chewing past my fingernails
laughing through the last drink
out of focus, dizzy on such high-rise tension
the same clothes for days on end
imagining yourself curled up in the basement
a naked syringe in a claw-foot tub
making moonshine out of lemons
and pining for the gold standard
another day reading of the Opium Wars
after a while the uniforms begin to bleed
into tumbleweed mile marker cycles
missing pieces from milk carton assembly
or memories of dimly lit pie-baking adages
the color of depression isn’t black, it’s brown
the color of every house, the trees, brush, mud in a silted river
the brown of your eyes, the brown of all the skin I touch
black is the color of space that is nothing that I want
the gold standard of emptiness and serene futility
without awareness but a soft glow at coma’s edge
a river Styx without end, passing into night
habitually, I will wear all my clothes at once
the weight or fog of war, wearing apple orchards
into the whittled spears fought of cave paintings
Hemlock the age of antiquity and loudest nightclub
still, there’s mistletoe in wind chimes
blowing over vaults and Creole folklore
for what is a funeral march without food
what is a bible without candles
what is my tape machine without a soul
I’ve long given up dusting objects
those Old English traditions abandoned by citrus
those tea-times usurped by progress
my advent wreath sired by Christmas
fumbling in my pockets for the keys to the airport
the one I left in Stockholm and crisply cut bangs
not the image thereof but its temple of letters
the ‘other’ temple of letters, burning next door
each silently caressing the quiet night air
adorning the river with jewels and eyes
both of them are laughing, but one without words
Writing: Text
rise at dawn
the early smoke
she spoke
roanoke
pouring water on my old growth hoax
to misquote
the edge of the earth
so I lay still
steeping tea
those alien tears
the money pit of holy years
counting cards
that I’m withdrawn
to my naked throne
and who can resist
the decadent reminisce
in skin
the curse of when
my thoughts begin
and when yours end
present tense
if I were a ghost
I would still carve your name in oaks
of golden years
roanoke
Writing: Text
photo finish me obscenely
i am crest fallen standards
place me in the hall of shame
and usurp the air that fills my lungs
when my limbs are fallow
i crawl in socks and leaves
a wet blanket of a masterpiece
talking to old penny candy
and thorned cabin bristles
fortunate has me a squire
to tiny blood vessels afar
grasp the nerves that collect
in the base of my spine
thought of the other coast
where i climb to sleep
but not here, where i breathe
this is the real i seek to leave
believe in my former but not I
Writing: Text
they found my body buried underneath a sea of bricks i disassembled upon myself. i needed to feel the weight. the honey-color of the sun was silver, from this day forward.
God is good, I would say repeatedly, earnestly, to everyone i had ever met or would listen.
my straight line thoughts are slowly undulating water-lilies. suddenly i am aware of my fingernails and my heritage.
even here, I can taste jungle from the careful safety of my mother tongue.
what does it mean to be in love, that everyone on a train had disappeared? public transportation far less onerous as an invisible man.
I am waiting at the airport, fumbling with my sign, a question mark. are you as I?
I imagine we would bump heads on the way to picking it off the floor. A pleasant reminder of the physical trappings of emotional intuition.
i want to thank your parents and watch them laugh when I drop the spaghetti. your pale beautiful and red lipstick of embarrassment at my new age mysticisms.
only the most clever of foolish thoughts release me from my logically constructed fences.
i’ve sprung a leak in my abacus. haughty stances replaced with hunched-back forehead to desk abatements. i swallowed the ocean in 3 days.
lipstick. tiny zebras. meat-on-a-stick. if you were but a ghost i would still carve your name in oaks.
can i show you my stamps rhetorically speaking, can I paint the portrait of a tragedy of errors beginning with well-adorned musical chairs
my color-by-numbers intelligentsia in lieu of machismo or should I fight someone instead
soundly press my hands in yours, fingers meant for love-by-toussled-hair or these piano stumps of mine. someday they will be black or learn to be modestly decorated.
i was previously unaware of the meaning of life and death. i am still unaware of the meaning of life and death but i understand meaning now. all those colors. all those sounds without lips.
it was as if my instruction manual, typed on a single page, was crumpled up and thrown out the window. it landed in a rusted truck bed full of milk crates headed to new america.
i’ll swim if i have to
Writing: Text
paraphrase
holding hands
parting gifts
and distant plans
suddenly she seemed
reckless with her fears
juxtaposed with
crossing swords
blindfold of
a trip to Mars
hadn’t spoke a word of
said nothings on a train
to breathe along a broken path
of daydreams washed up in the trash
to drinking ash of what she asked
or mumbling through a photograph
and all that’s left
is bleeding through machines
a pent up second glance
escapist at the seams
indeed I bleed
a book I hope she’d read
of apathy release
that day
staring-at-a-
rug malaise
I wrote a book
to burn the others
my sometime alibi
“the scenes of someone else”
laughing at
my faceless letters
used to think
I’d marry stable
always simple thoughts
‘to smiling at the past’
the wrecking balls, the sunny hours
the decadence of dreams grow loud
an interview for inner child
or only sacrifice inspired
it all depends
on my demons and their mirth
to ask her questions
or to swallow up the thirst
to love yourself
or something to depress
and no one to express
that day
Writing: Text
was it better to laugh or cry
if this phone were a toaster, would I get the last laugh
do I laugh too often
is the abuse of laughter peripherally aware of the laughter of abuse
would you like that ugly postcard, covered in black lipstick
would the pack of wolves that descended to eat me, having trampled over the begonias, having startled the elderly, having aroused already aroused suspicions of drawn curtains, grant a final wish before rendering meat from soul
did that elderly deserve each other, still bickering over “sides” at a moment-of-conception roadside diner, some 15 years to the day
was it all fake nails and hairspray after all
would I smash the buddha of anachronism, nestled in a pantheon of gods, to open this beer
did aforementioned ancient, authentic-cedar-smell forest gods mind the pungent chlorine vapor at their feet, or did it make their feet itch like mortal mine
was the air cold, or was it merely a chilling thought
would my spiteful loving friends appreciate the symbolism of gravy I was no longer present for
was it love, the feat of death, laughter, sadness or wayward biblical symbolism that inspired this gravy boat bestowed upon this two-bit drug empire
what was I but a set of keys “stuck in your pocket”
is it enough to be admired in your old age
will you still hold my hand when I die before you
were you aware of my crooked smile, full of love or fear, while you were crying why
perhaps
incongruously
I knew that age old secret buried with rocking chairs
year after year of moderately knit scarves
old stories in gift wrap and feigned surprise for smiling eyes
that glacial blue water to wash away
the sour taste of hospital visits
a humble pact with nature
bloodletting wisdom torn apart by those same wolves,
that fur-framed, entirely effortless visage
hair-stuck-in-mouth by the concept of vanilla
on every holiday, carving a dead animal into something resembling love
would you sing her to sleep or would she sing you to yours
quietly cleaning dust off reflections in sterling silver
Writing: Text
17TH STREET
it’s all alright baby
i’m pushing home the groceries
I’m tired
of keeping up with Elvis
and I’m tired of skipping on breakfast, always
we’ll move into a garden
we’ll live between the flowers
just like a dream
the sirens won’t come near
someday those bruises disappear, maybe
she works hard to spread it thin
her love would never end
it’s alright baby
we’ll make it out someday
don’t cry
I gave up smokes for you
to get you markers, books and shoes, see
I’m sorry baby
I feel a little rainy
on no sleep
back to the motel with the view
you’re too young to sense farewell so well
she wakes up to let her in
her love was something said
Writing: Text
The god of eating pasta
of chewing on the words and
rolling around in the colors of love
fencing off chilled suspenses or
the aberrant taste of uniformity
paisley placed and gently scalloped
stepping stones of pedestals
and dancing toward a distant music
soft letters at soft moon phases
sharing spoons at twisted hours
and reminding you to eat, please
if only for my nervous pacing
and these carefully folded thoughts
-
to wit: of eating alone
and watching your fork on the plate
parsing through human history
the meaning of divinity in food
years of memories of pleasant eyes
gathered around a white tablecloth
spilling wine, eventually, inevitably, laughter
skewering questions and milk with tea
of cutting the cake
or the weight of the future pinned against a dull knife
fending off politics for a grim 6 hours
a white-knuckled finish to the dull drone of a Christmas special
inside of naps behind coffee rimmed eyelids
-
the aftermath: of watching the dishes
growing dark and used with age, ruddy
and complacent and tarnished in youth
the color of smoking on your lips
or the cool way we grinned at each other
in sight lines through a beveled glass
to remembering the taste of a bagel, some years later
the uneasy transition between something stiff
and something light after meals
savoring the pace of metabolisms
the fondness for what was once dipped in chocolate
something like a timeless youth, indentured to watermelon
or simply something to do with love
Writing: Text
singeing bridges
Writing: Text
the bellowing
of knives in the air
of finely combed hair
immutable stances
as pennies stuck in the ground
the act of breathing
still as I had remembered
the ease of coiled serpents
woefully, blissfully inept
at reading leaves of tea
still, with sunglasses
and adoration of a sea breeze
the confined sight to autochrome
and almond pale eyes
bearing all his paper fortunes
carefully erect
the owl of vice-like intentions
scanning abject buildings
rising over machinations
and shedding erstwhile feathers
in place of empty habits
were Opiate insurrections,
carefully scripted atoms,
brazen misdirections
picking fruit from a window
gaping aortic monsoons
dammed up with cigarette butts
the brick and mortar
of black tar comforts
and fistfuls of rain
washed up mysticism
the lessons children feared
foreign adaptations
of syntax losing meaning
and second guessing pleasures
Writing: Text
A Saturday
when everything stood still
too still, and unusually warm
the panic without a breeze
a lust for lust to lust
the empty sweat in my palms
the dagger stuck in your pocket
angels in the sand (on beaches)
from a window - fervor
the fear, of mescaline
or something else
cultural, aberrant
the drunk speaking into his hand at a bar
Monday, or bitters
Tuesday, or bitters
the hot pocket missing a coat hanger
Vodka or no Vodka, and smeared eyeliner
that sad pink bow in the ire of nights
or the ides of night
it was too warm to be cold
it had to mean something, to someone
to somewhere, in a cloud, that ugly apartment
full of drugs, there, they found a thing
a thing, in a place, where things did
unto things, a Sistine Chapel
of meaning, that Godlike,
vicelike grip on a Saturday
when it was too warm for sweaters
that protective layer
sandbagged from Allied bombing
cigarettes, did anyone have cigarettes
I’m sleeping with your wife
I need her cigarettes, she needs a hand
She’s falling, falling in love
In love with anyone but you
Was your name Joe Camel?
Can I call you Joe Strummer
I feel dead, will you hold my hand
Will you miss me when I’m dead
it feels too warm to be dead so I must be just dead
The highway of 6, the loneliest highway in hell
Collapsed, on my head, the sky
Was Falling, it Fell.
The warmth, those tank tops
Their iron orchards shelled by black fedoras (green berets)
The highway overyourhead
A Disney waterfall, those soulless Axis powers
Losing curiosity in an Algerian summer
The dust dry heat of day laborers
The breezeless summer, they called it
There was no breeze to dream in
No cameras to film the brutality
Those neartofore fights outside trucks
You swore he bit his lip, Tyson
It slept with his wife, that mistress
She took her cigarettes
All the same, those warm summer days
A window, to peace
The power of picking at scabs
Blowing glass into the head of vice
The calvacade of laughing gods
Where do songs come from?
Those awful summer days
Those hideous, white trash afternoons
As if you were a raccoon and I let you into
My most closely guarded treasures perhaps
My most densely packed garbage bags
Of trash littered lawns and glitter soaked eyebrows
The pain of taking altogether more than one can swallow
Of repeatedly bashing one’s head into pavement
Of spitting into the hand that feeds you
Of whitewashing the walls of your own meager success
Your tidal fortune, or maybe just
A nice outfit.
(That poor drunken fetus)
A recognizable thing, to some. A message.
“Your ego is swimming with the fishes”
The pleasant view, said the face to the rug.
Salty, the brine, of olives
Now washed in lye.
The shortcomings of shortcuts.
The shortcoming of a sure bet.
Undulating in the breezeless air.
Primal were your werewolf belongings,
Tying socks at home.
Knitting new furniture.
Scratching your head. Our Cats.
All the lovely playthings to build a thing.
Forget Saturdays. Forget days.
Forget the warmth in the summer air.
Humming, glowing, strumming.
Feet without the smell of dirt
Telling tales between toes.
Fortunate lovers
Idle miscues from stage left
to that anxious exit
the cool wave of melancholy pushing out from eyelids
of losing deja vu
“So - what should we do?”
And everyone stood still.
Writing: Text
CHAFING CHAPS AND DRY CONTACT LENSES
what year is it
why did I do this
goldbond, a friend
sour with old age
the cold walk from places
I woke, careless
those soulless eyes
weeping for a mother
patient saline
or something more statuesque
Writing: Text
the thought of letting it slide
of letting it go
of letting it drip down the sides
the sewer, the gate, the terrible actor
pacing, the pacing of pacing
the empty response to laughter
the maze of whispers
dripping from your brow
it fell, you tore it off, it wasn’t
the idea of grace, that grace slick
the death of smooth, his fingers
reduced to rubble and pools of ice
the small pieces, those conversations
a steel comb pressed to vertebrae
and of tension and release
if only on summer days
that hail, that green, sickly virtue
soothing tightened eyebrows
even clouds drifting aft
of Neptune, pushing on a string
careful with his grime
it seeped through his pores
the ringing in his ears
the beat of war drums
if it was someone looking over shoulders
bruised with cancer and
the weight of human frailty
minding all those cautious stares
from the view of footsteps
mud or concrete, the fog
hangs the same, floating
a music box in childhood
so what was empty?
your tepid smile or
the color of serenity
I knew but never thought to ask
Writing: Text
high on thoughts, craving matter
bending nails, or so it seems
Writing: Text
Annie Oakley pleasure of the crooked knife, moon phase blood shapes between your mouth and my hand, dripping mango across a salt Venus shoreline of gold-vein mines, the grass for the trees, those sad violins, the 5 minutes of manic laughter between sunrise and sunset, my chrome-ocean of apathy, the art of changing lightbulbs, casual naked candor basking in the sun of a wood-grain television acting presidential, the powers of a banjo and drugs in our couch fort or all the patio furniture, mirrors, scarves, sequins, and black cats we basked in that summer weight, asking for all or just some of your fears, the lap dance hazards of my vinyl eyes and the needle you dangle over me so, smiling, wicked, Sisyphean, porcelain, smoking the trails of your smoke trails, again, only louder this time, the two-bit actors drinking 40s in the parking lot between takes, their first break on real sets and real nails from black sheep at the ranch, tales we split over river boat gamblers in the woods or the town or the cities I painted on a rug soaked in wine from our lengthy time in trench coats trundling naked on all fours staring future through its pinhole sister Hope, restless, weary, hitching through nations into Xanadu or paradise or fiction or cold showers or quiet nights of fog or the back of a van howling wit or the sight of the history of the lines and the places and the memory of my hands from two inches below sea level staring back at my face or too many drugs or not enough drugs or green ecstasy red ecstasty oil ecstasy or something small or something tired or something completely unbuilt, this inner sanctuary, the moleskin yurt without a fire, or maybe burnt down years ago, the rock walls of my childhood foreshadowing the shadows of my ancestors and rocks left in places once called home, the greed of the desert at noon in a rocking chair and a cigarette with the stove on, the microwave on fire, the volatile neighbors, the faucets running, the running from yourself to emaciated versions of yourself, electric tape, clocks for eyes and lukewarm impressions of impressionists, surrealists, hedonists, and all their worried mothers, the king of nothing, his soulless clothes, his nervous tick of anxious music, the cave that fed that empty box of stars around my head blanket as I’m speaking, a microphone for drinking, and overly emotion-riddled caterwauling, spoon bending, odds-fixing, self-destructive, First-World, habit-forming laughter at the best in wisdom dripping slowly from my fingers, the gaze of holding no one, an empty gaze from the least vacant face, those wild eyes built for an early spiritual race, holding all the 13’s and none of them black, or some of them black, or the only color that ever lived was black and I never opened my eyes not even once from birth, that love of sleeping and its promise of death, that love of love and the promise of its death, the love of death and the promise of its love, the death of love and the promise of its love, even now, every beautiful, trash-filled landscape between our competing hair lengths, self-indulgencies, flight to and from visually and usually metallic places, never understanding misunderstanding but understanding misunderstanding, the colors we frequently made up to amuse ourselves, people to forget to make us mourn to amuse ourselves, the muse in ourselves, the King of Wands I’m throwing up to muse ourselves, chanting all the witchcraft from my space age love-at-first-sight, the air of my mind’s eye under a greensky Godspell before I knew what it meant to be irreversibly changed by electromagnetism, these psychic flowers there, in a field, in the distance but out of reach, the tangible of the intangible, the strength in my passion or the weakness in my kindness, cool sunglasses hiding lively eyes as love dies in them, every night, staring through that callous traffic on the eighth Camel hour mile to hurdle 70 places all at once the boulderstone meant for giving up, that imaginative spinster as a life for cats, that one time I never kissed her 24 stories as we held heights, the missing film, the walk outside, the dance you showed me in spite of Columbus, the dance I showed you in a tranny bar, the complete or incomplete lack of any meaning, for what it’s worth it meant too much too many words too many hours too many trips into the desert, the illusion of a glimpse of that sliver of moonlight, hidden in the clouds, yet knowing I can be there in a whisper, on a rocket, to this place I call to resemble a home, in love, in death, the dreams or life I live was close to penance enough to find it there, someday soon.
Writing: Text
bloated statues to
swoon your peasant heart
that fickle weight
pressed to modern medicine
silverback language
posturing this drab artifice
holiest empires
of aisle 7 designs
the ziggurat of
all our old habits
Writing: Text
that crumpled vest
sour on status
a face and name
all the same
salt and whiskers
paint soaked days
the bag, a promise
on cooler days
eyes, those sharpened features
that old house
grandparents that wouldn’t leave
floral smiles
and all that porcelain
it waits, to breeze
platonic second guesses
& hazardous apertures
dusty in the skylight
the slow weight
memories of color
your black and white thoughts
gazing further
that cold blue fortune
Writing: Text
every black throat, pock marked, vowel sounded embolism
you swallowed up and bathed in milk
floral print matters and their usual yoke,
drug theft therapeutic sympathy, migraine sour empathy,
the built and unbuilt castles of your Catholic tomb
ice on skin I generally adored
cold wet lips of anyone but yours
drinking fruit, laughter’s wedlock catheter
to wit, decision maker foolish notions
of wedding dress windows,
the house of the deep woods
burning pine needles and the crackle of its fire
Writing: Text
its vacuous mind, fresh snow, intruder’s ransom
licked clean slate of copious derision
frozen smiles, tired eyelids
sun whipped chapped skin desert madness
visible maize carbon cities, phosphoric-eyebrow pleasures
was it here to there or there to here
I found my shoes, you found your fences
that old barn tilting to the sunrise
beachfront, eaten up in the metallic process
winding gears for the trip back to your solace
Writing: Text
unrecognizable, indescribable, and unfit for words
sauce of my hippocampus, the edge of disreality
songs across broken strings, showered in oil and pinatas
je suis that fecal tongue, the fecund ocean, garbage and all.
My garage, full of coral, paint can portraiture and muscle car satyrs
blue Saturnalia, the sin of glassware,
watercolor pagaentry, pornographic Greek edifice
metaphysics, Chicken-flavored forest cakes, and Limp Bizkit covers.
Covered in furs, grounds and coffee parlors,
caked-on concealer wedding gowns
tailored chutes and wine-stained ladders,
paper thin collars at naked undressing tombs
licked on tattoo dreaming leather boot sympathy
chalk-pressed ecstasy and noodle-armed love affairs.
Affirmations of your tasteless hips, your Chuck Berry pitfalls,
chewing on glue sweet flowers,
drinking liquid wax, Burlesque fistfights -
the bliss of animal medicine.
Writing: Text
sitting on the train watching old age in the sun the reckless fissure toothless grinning at the wild-eyed young as if the stenciled outline of your shadow against the plastic fixtures grating skin the furs you fostered for your home the one amongst the mountains of the desert in its naked shores that humans captured was it you the troubled one that swallowed up the earth to find regret to fill the empty nested feeling malice of your conscious name the price to build a saviour the one whose back you broke with labor tell me what it is you gave a second wind or truth abatement slowly dripping words of wisdom rolling from my wax-like surface summer air a dry scent burning staring blankly through my ceiling clouded by my violent third eye floating on its magma sea
Writing: Text
Writing: Text
as i am waiting for the rest, watching the vines grow from my chest, i pace the flowers that you plucked across my spine
despite the wrecking ball in plan, the words that tumble from my hand, i want to face the man who’s laughing from his rags
i want to be a bag of drugs, along the stomach of abuse, to lick out every sinking moment that i’m floating
at least the lynchpin of my sleep, the soil that cracks beneath my feet, believes that I am nothing but a man hanged upside down
so why the which that fills what asks to me is second to the past and stammer through to your beliefs beneath the broken skin
to be a man inside the boar, the place of bliss and nothing more, I find that all my laughter fed into the silence
mistake the bliss inside my lips, the body burning at your hips, my smile awaits the home i built for myself in the highlands
Writing: Text
wine that steels the least of me
callused lands, hands of mercy
old and threadbare and nothing to say
carved into rock the worth of a nation
Writing: Text
stranger with the last laugh
dry palms against too cold skin
too many spots, not enough sex
strange colors and fictional powers
psychic, metallic, obtuse, wicked
vain, worried, liquid ambiance
torrent, tepid, unkempt when kempt
lurid when lost, always bored
never bored by boredom, fingernails
pious drunkard, listless favors
stutters when poor, wealth a veil
caught rolling around in the mud
generally ugly, snakelike
but without charm, senseless
a man of no small fortunes
fortunate, still breathing, twitching
nighttime anxious, cluttersome
delirious fantastical notions
grandeur a scheme, distant
the horizon, only South Dakota
straw hats and wool socks
laconic, wasted talent, amateur drunkard
repetitive nonchalant half-wit
sentences strung together by tape
huffing glue for bloodsport, selfish
reptilian, lizard brain, mercurial
delusional gambler, graceless hack
unfocused, lavish, terminally lucid hypocrite
and a hapless, shoddy dancer
a fool, standing alone, and laughing
Writing: Text
AN ANCIENT FRAGMENT
the only clock begins at 1
matches sticks and stones for what its worth
bare bones,
feeling strong
when it starts to pull, tired eyes
when you awake i begin to sleep again
too much left for me to drink
around you
i must leave if i am to stay alive
to me the burning bush
had found a way to life
repeat the given curse
that hanged fools stand as one
i am what you told me to
that i was once a bore
Writing: Text
DOPPELGANGER
mirror selfish laughter on your tinsel Adams memoir
left-eyed glances, axe in places you suspect I ponder
watch your staircase, woolen friend, I admire your crooked aura
partial to the portion you built to admire your
washed in greys and blues and dreamer’s fictive parcels
closing on your neighbor’s quarters, Russian dolls of nothing more
than silhouettes you placed on altars sworn to restless phantoms
dried with blood the sticks of leather belts around my necklace
Writing: Text
cool night in paradise
Writing: Text
crumbling through his fortune teller
the moon abyss and witching hour
tangent to its wedding gown
white smoke blackening his crown
what of fate, the crooked tree
bare your worst in front of me
daily bread to bear your fruit tree
kissing all its broken seams
Writing: Text
lemon tea and solace, sternum displacement and tired shoulders, bruises, the flash of a camera from a tree, upside. cold sand, warm sun, seacliffs and forest, the waves of memories still felt in joints and smooth rocks thrown into the ocean.
another time to remember against the grain of history, teeth smiling and knocking on your doorstep - a hand on the doorknob, knowingly, waiting on the hedges from inside the maze. blankets, the places to hide, hands and neck deep in all the dark places. the metal, the fabric, bark stripped bare, warmth in veins that never approached the surface, crackle, fissure, and the truth in lightning, wincing at the sight of every red light, every hill, and every stop in the motion of the modest desert around us.
Writing: Text
Swimming in an ocean’s unsaid Neptune rules her mortal threadbare word-stale notions vain would beckon pleasant hours to swear by fiction
Drinking from her golden powers restless thoughts still breathing louder stacking rocks the God-like city not the last nor hand of friction
Vineyards and their laughter star-eyed children lipstick patterned dreaming of your headdress and its statue sleeping on the ocean floor
Writing: Text
steroids and the space of needles
sharp, razor, bloodback leather
pantless, face down, French adandon
scruples singing high of alpine
strings of steel and lines of powder
black high heels, his yellow jerseys
fucking hilltown syrup nothings
plastic, plastic, tar and feather
your fine tips within the spineless
living strong or murder she spoke
speed of all my drugs absolve thee
dark shoal eyes the cancer’s mercy
Writing: Text
AQUA VITAE
“Helen, would you leave it alone?”
He took off his glasses and rubbed his already bloodshot eyes.
“Where is the waiter with my goddamned drink?”
“Honey, let’s try to be pleasant before we let Alex go. We sure are going to miss you, baby.”
She pinched my cheek. I just wanted to get out of this hellhole.
The waiter strolled casually to the table. He did not enjoy his job.
“I got the pasta fagioli here..”
“We didn’t order that. I need my manhattan though.”
“Oh I’m sorry, sir, I’ll be right back with that drink.”
I wondered how these two would survive the ride home in heavy traffic. I was nervous, anxious, and thrilled to get the hell out of my house and into some dorm to live with a complete stranger, who may or may not masturbate when he thinks I am sleeping. It had to be better than dealing with these two. If they didn’t get a divorce when they got home, I would be shocked. They never enjoyed each other, and only seemed to keep up with appearances for my sake.
The smell of this place, this Aqua Vitae, reeked somewhat of mold. It seemed to be on life support. I noticed the ramshackle motel and chestnut trees across the parking lot, symbols of the past left to die in the 21st century. This restaurant was some vestigial organ from the 50s, and still smelled of cigarettes.
Just give me my caesar salad and let me go, Sinatra. I don’t want any trouble here.
“Where the hell is my goddamned drink?"
Writing: Text
she walks in a new dress
carries her old purse
close to her chest
hiding her new looks
she wasn’t sure
of the sidewalk, or her footsteps
all those dark places
her lashes a nuisance
nothing ever seemed to fit her
black the only color she could bear
staring at the ceiling holding all the guns she’d never feel
bullets blessing altars under daylight and her broken stares
all she ever did was care
all she ever gave stripped bare
peeling all the diamonds from the charcoal
Writing: Text
the men of every hour but yours
hands in your pockets and no one to blame
electric blankets, amidst your diamonds
finding only the colors left in your bed
How far do you walk, strictly for pleasure?
they ask, tying and untying their shoes
the mercury in my veins won’t drink those cold showers
those tired and too cautious places
wary of growing restless, he was restless of growing weary
perhaps thirsty, grown sour on all its milk
Handstands and children, trapped between your walls
and my tongue whipped, sagging fences
Lived ambitions coarse and grain and twisted
and just enough the words for another poor actor
My patience is your virtue
the imagination of a bullet
Writing: Text
“Mystics are thinkers who cannot detach themselves from images, therefore not thinkers at all. They are secret artists: poets without verse, painters without brushes, musicians without sound. There are highly gifted, noble minds among them, but they are all without exception unhappy men”
Writing: Text
i crawl back through your window
i woke up to a new life
those were the days
i found you worse than myself
bodies at war we found them
the ghost in the room wouldn’t dare them
twist my words
i smile every time you break them
i’m standing there at the ledge
staring at the face of death i see
there’s one of you nineteen of me
i’m going to have to wait
speaking of lies, i saw you
speaking of cries, i told you
i never thought
you could hold my head beneath the surface
stolen away what i knew
with heaven at bay, i’d take you
you are the end
of all the stories i’d like to tell you
Writing: Text
Q: Is that your fantasy?
A: No, that is a fantasy of mine.
Writing: Text
the camera and its lips
find yourself and what its worth
what finger tip is this
the loom or what it felt on skin
Writing: Text
the end in a pillow
motionless slumber
hushed tones and lines of concern
the cold, a blanket
the chamber of light
under the weight of all your empty thoughts
the blank slate
the dusty mirror
a vision faded by 10 years
layers of Absinthe and mildew
denizens of the Oaken wood
An old man, draped in the golden cloak of moss
smiles, in the visage of your reflected face
whiskers, salt, obsidian rocks, scars and woolen eyes
frayed by the edges of your secrets, only eclipsed by the depth of the ocean
the molten core
yesterday’s clothes
the sound of the past still breathing life into tiny crevices
the faceless void,
of old age wrapped in furs
Writing: Text
kiss me with your edgar allen poe
the heart of sin when no one’s looking
Writing: Text
a headache of all my misplaced notions, powders and liquids and the crushed hopes in my child-like dreams, a plastic straw removed from reality. darkness, always kind, the pawprints in woven rugs, and the pitch of the air - out of step and out of tune. smiling faces, empty hands. my hands are too full of my plenty sense of selves, equally misplaced and underwhelming. couches, tired eyes for tired conversations, dark corners of light that strive for a place to nestle, the warmth at the back of a cave. there, for tea, to clear the fog of murmurs, throats, and faded visions of tangled fabric in broken skin. what is the smell of the color of my blood i wonder as I lay young, cold, my jacket, one sock, and pants found in former lovers. to be a pile of bricks, the vacant lot, the foundation surrendered at your glaring behest, a typescript you invented that i never cared to inverse in my own mothertongue. blankets, thirsty, nails short of fingers short of your rope-like intentions, hair, my ingracious servitude to that selfless armor of your iron design, a fire closed to the borders of your own skin. i swallow, air, hoping the rest will go down as smoothly as the last, borne of the ashes in your footsteps. I trail the smoke of my own, gilded snakes and all, suffering for the least holy and most absurd, the crumbs, the meaning of paper, book bound but not a thread of turquoise in sight; the robin’s nest, the chain at your neck, mahogany glances, black bottles, and peace in the romance of my blue-lidded emptiness.
Writing: Text
hand of the maker
the brownfield erasure
the lord of the acre
and queen of the sea
I am nails in the road
holding my stones
Ash my union
This clover tongue
Writing: Text
“I don’t like this.”
Every heirloom looked out of sorts. There were vacancies at the Bates Motel of our apartment, and no curious onlookers to fill the blank floor stares and bare blue walls. A couch, lilting in the summer heat, hung listlessly atop clean swept wood. There was no warmth despite the wet heat of deep summer. I felt the chill settle in the base of my spine. I wiped my brow and turned to her,
“I don’t like this at all.”
“This was your decision. I’m not going to start feeling sorry for you, now.”
“I’m sorry. You know I have to do this. I just hate this part. Can’t we just burn this place down?”
I had dreamed of burning it down the evening prior. We stood in the grass, jars of water and marital bliss, and watched the wood splinter and crack in the blaze. The moon was full; we walked along the park in the light of the fire, the hiss of electric lines measured by the cacophony of nighttime denizens. I held her hand, loosely; it was cool as the dew on my feet.
“Didn’t you bring the gasoline?”
“Oh, you’re right, I totally forgot the gasoline. Maybe next time.”
“Maybe.”
Writing: Text
Ginger was to blame for every broken tape deck I had left in the back of my theological Volkswagen, brown and fettered from every direction. Macca, recycled wooden viziers, faux marble top counters, and laden with smoke; doing the usual function ceremonial burning of incense over the american flag. Three hang soullessly in my mouth; I can’t see mel gibson in front of me. The smoke feels worse for my brain than the alcohol dissolving higher level structures. Sun Ra told me to say this. Nothing left in packages but packages, packing tape, the idea of boxes left behind in cold basements, your childhood trains, astroturf, sawdust, and coffee stained yellow fans on the flower meadow of concrete. The heart of Scrabble beats behind plastic bars, alone in the woods, wondering if you had ever remembered to call to the broken trees. The roots turn rocks to sand to dirt, yellow and green eyes that watched stairs come and go with the rain, ice, and thoughtless footsteps, from blue to tile to the warmth in the dead of winter, a place for spirit gatherings of the unwashed and confused, optimistic and laden with the weight of nature amongst lava, the music swept in orchards and the silent hum of every season. No voice was ever so clear among scratched cabinets, dim lights, the strained and thoughtless past to feed the clear and present future if not for the bruises and the cracks in the pavement so smooth in those days. I wrote the song to explain the voices I had always heard, laughing, curled up into blankets under the floor of patient wolves’ feet, the deafening silence in empty spaces, violins, stained glass, teardrops, chivalry of golden scripts and iconic images of images of romance, dried bulbs, crossbeams at every waking hour. Text and collection would settle the air, the consumption of consumption, the transpiration of waking life, moving to avoid the traps beneath my fingertips, the lobe a specter of my dismay. What beauty we fled, by design, to face those past visions of our silent corners. White walls but not smooth. The impractical doors you admired. Floorboards, dull and brazen, the knots full of words you would learn to forget, the sight of jeans, the pulling of hair, the promise to swallow pride for losing keys in the marsh of debauchery. The war of cards dancing on shadows, the horses of velvet on the wedding night of a victory in glass, not that it could stop the blessings of that hobbled road, years later, a place to carry the children of our own, that woven, inimitable laugh that all the good things had their time, the collective history smiling at your hand, revealing the mask of love in hips and shoulders, no longer skin deep in the dead leaves of our home but fed to the nature of warm sweaters and vibrant green gossamers, the smoke of clear vision along the heights of silent masters above the clouds but still in the mountains. On a blanket, we rest, the air heavy with the light touch of youth in our fibers, even as a stillness of white would set in our veins and yet still beyond breaking the backs of our fortunate labors. There are many steps carved with the handiwork of bitter enemies and lovers, language impossible to bear with eyes alone, and in the woods, those many years of darkness, you can feel the patterns in the night, the empty needles, the place a moon once stood against your rummaging feet, shuffling along, not knowing why, as wisdom grows through the soles of your feet and through your empty chambers, the vessel for a people you will never see or hear but always belong. As flesh turns to stone and haphazard ashes to math and fashion are hands that no longer weave but still breathe passion, and every motion, collapsing into disaster and every loving rapture.
Writing: Text
The bottle I grew up in colored the world I could only see past the glint of my own reflection in the round hall of mirrors that would only take the world of lifetimes I didn’t have to drip out of and onto your skin. Potions I only dreamed could lend my reasons the colored fabric that dreams weave you stitched at the mere suggestion of modesty. The air grows dense with my own anxious empowerment as the walls grow closer to my strengthening wit and ardor you seem to force out of my hidden most pores I barely knew existed. On that fateful day when the bottle broke, the road folded up into self, turned into a mountain I would die climbing, a snow pass I would let embrace me until death do us part I managed all in the first blink of silence we shared in each other’s passing. I wrote all the music in the unborn colors of the vines in our ancient home where time dared not pass in that one second of air evaporating my self on contact with the third eye you opened past desire and towards the magic of the blue empty. There, we sat, in a field, starting at the clouds as the children of dandelions from the cave of mossy history, holding hands, promising more than just the mountain tops we had to offer our naked rivers. The sun bled a majestic hidden notion that humble would do, our lines have crossed irretrievably, unequivocally, vocally triumphant shouting wild blessed half mad stark raving love kissed curses at the sight of our hands buried in each other’s wild beautiful mess of hair. Yes, we would be tangled, and it’s only today. I do not know tomorrow but it feels warm as I watch the stars fold into the blanket you covered my head with the crest of the sunrise melting into the passing night sky. You could say I died smiling.
Writing: Text
I grow weak in the knees at the mere suggestion you would give in to the mess of agony left in the kitchen, between a fork and two spoons. They were dishes unseen unheard and barely remembered. You were a glass waiting to shatter at 400, and I couldn’t hear 440. As a child I saw monsters in the dark because I couldn’t really see; I needed glasses and a new haircut that hid underneath a hat I wore to protect myself from scar tissue. Yet scar tissue never happened at night in the dark by the hand of the monsters that fed me. It came from the cats that felt soft and scratched to show their affection. I breathe deep the mercury that made me the hero I stand before you. The top hat isn’t visible, nor is the pedestal. It bled through my skin, orange, past the red I bled into the river like ink across my sweared palm streak. As I grow older my handwriting grows worse, so I use a typewriter. My diction seems to be getting better but I don’t want my parents to find out so I tell them scary stories from the abysmal failures in my most expensive years. I never smoked as much as I did when the books seemed to fly off the shelves into the corner of my room to watch me fuck breathe eat and hide under the covers when no one was watching. I dreamt erotica and you were always there. I hadn’t met you yet but I met you as a child. It was raining and I stared at the bricks of the misfortune I had done. I tripped over my worse intentions and found a bloody knee my only apostrophe. It was pride and I felt shame. Between the crevices in the pavement I saw your reflection, 30 years later at the depth of the ocean.
You should get used to the fact that I am unruly at this hour. I am sex and you breathe it in the crisp fall air. Your nipples were hard as I danced through the leaves I made you wear atop your head like a bushel of apples we spent the day picking. The sun was high and somehow I was cold. You took my nose and wouldn’t give it back until I fed you my half eaten cider donut. When I pet the baby lamb you cried like the movies in the 20s, when we rode in a zeppelin to early democratic resolve. I would never share you with the state, then or now. Yet we are the state, the cross, the holy books written by hands like these, etched in the cries of every living soul’s passionate fury, birthing children, and solemn ritual. Every time you raised your glass to take a sip I felt this in my abdomen like the beating hearts of one thousand dragons you slayed with the flick of a wrist, the turn of your hand. The sleight by which your eyes batted the worst fears away seemed more holy than every church I had ever seen. Yet there are churches unseen and you could be the alligator beneath the surface of the water I feared, the warm slick surface I once saw in the everglades. A man with the stick poking his enemy seemed a fool and yet I stood there waiting for him to die. And somehow, you were there, the bird in the trees, watching my mistakes and the wisdom growing in my veins like the resolved chord of the operas you sent me at night. I’d write them for you if I knew how. You can sing and I can dance, yet together we made the earth and the moon, and I’d be damned if every book you wept that stood on the edge of the painted black surface wasn’t written by these two hands you gave me. I’d have three if you’d let me. I’d forget the hands and cross your legs with mine and tell you my life was meant for this moment, so lay silent and breathe. I am you. Finally. Love.
Writing: Text
show me the color of your skin
it’s all I ask
cold and wet and pleasant dreams from
sitting in the grass
are you the last
this homeless path
it’s over my head
You have a found a way inside
A place I left too old die
This is how you found me sleeping
Still not the man just a man
and you have found
my old soul
it’s funny how you’re smiling anyway
my glasses rose for reasons
I fear the worst
my pulse is twisted by your lack
of breathing false
you fear me too
I’d fear me too
it’s not too much
you may found I’ve run away
Found the letters from my grave
Pull me from this coffin place
Black of beauty, hands of lace
and we have found
the hole in the ocean
your eyes
in my eyes today
Writing: Text
today a scarf was made
of trapeze and filament
magnitude and purpose
woven of my finest intentions
you were a beggar
trapped between ugly haircuts
unfortunate and mispoken
drier than my shoegum
we settled our broken stares
peace and alcoholism
the blessings of a redcoat
my scurvy to your cancer
Writing: Text
Slowly unwinding the boldfaced typed letters sent to you in my worst celibacies, those age old aggravations gathering moss in the pit of my denizen stomachs, I am rendered speechless by my own ancient aspirations for your feathered hand. What vines we climbed together, that, even now, I still remember to taste, even if only by habit. Yes, you struck down the chambered visions that hollowed my youth of closure and candor. The floodgates were unleashed, and I held no remorse at swallowing the key that opened doors I never knew existed. You did all this, and I never thanked you. Between the spitting, screaming, shaking epileptic visions we held together, I forgot to thank you for holding me in one place.
Writing: Text
as it rains
so it begins again
to wash away paint
dust and stale air
fix it now, fix it now
furnace the clever
unfolding tacks
of marshmallow fever
fortunate, boldly
swallow the axes
mending your fences
bending in places
pleasant and unexpected
say it on your will
‘to grin and bear’
teeth, crooked and all
mincing the madness
the rock in a stream
anchor, the wind
the watch she bellows
the nest, a flame
and flickers the smile
of handsome pockets
hands on a string
pushing and pulling
and the puzzle is lost
high in the tower
and alone at the sky
strength in your shoulders
the coldness in your spine
the salted heart from salted earth
ocean apart and still entwined
Writing: Text
Daytime nap. Giant man eating cobra attacks on Cape Cod. On deck, see the cobra - a 50 foot black rectangular alligator. Slides like a lemon seal. No danger, but some danger, at a distance.
Writing: Text
left for
sand and paper
blackwater taffy
fiction former
please do me
free this scapegoat
smoking disaster
jungle of laughter
familiar measure
how about yours
please do me
tell the cackles
face the silence
love and empty
Writing: Text
you talk in your sleep
the peach of your tongue
you questioned the strangers
crowding our room
the man who approached you
wasn’t aware
today was your wedding day
the church loft we slept in
didn’t have air
the loafers you dreamt up
didn’t have hair
the was paper was coming
and no one was there
and I just held your hand
you watch as my mask unfolds
the rain you gave colored words
that would build me
that would build you
I gave you my dream things
to put you to rest
the madness I swallowed
I shudder, at best
and somehow these whispers
bring warmth to your veins
and sets me back in two
I play a piano
alone in my cell
I climb through your eyebrows
the vines in the well
I watched as my ghost died
from outside this shell
and you kiss the worst of my fears
you watch as my mask unfolds
the rain you gave colored words
that would build me
that would build you
floating in the pink breeze
Writing: Text
my skin doesn’t fit at this hour
when smoke rises through my spine
across the desert I left behind
in old homes and brown leaves
I am cold on all fours
the dog of me broken and wept
tired of laughter and grass and wine
nothing fits anymore, old clothes
tired hair, washed up and useless
drying in the sun, it curls
the light stays in, stays out
foot tired of all the places
bottles, plastic, hammers, blankets
matches in all the wrong places
no fire grows pink from the vine
the brown, the rich
the beginning of death
age is a color, a number,
a useless apron to hide stains
tar and coffee and motion
my child never saw these mirrors
a place to hide under the bed
dark, a growth in old sockets
the demons that give life to your dreams
faster, and faster, the string is pulled
a musicbox, gears of bronze
the kiss of wisdom, sears
faith is nothing to the ladder
I stand at the top of the stairs
looking down, covered in paper
staring at my own footsteps
Too young to be a man
Too old to be a child
Writing: Text
I burn the nest
the rose inside my chest
arrest my sleep, the peace
freedom from this heaven place
crumble, ancient bliss
the statue of your former grace
the touch of thirst
sand between our crooked fingers
to curl up our toes
clothes made of separate stitches
the closets, hangars empty
people scattered, loosely fitting
the clatter of desire
life in motion, still life in glass
windows shuttered, rain
flicks across the windy rafters
old and winded, hangs atop
my tired shoulders
your open robe
wine and nothing more
Writing: Text
cutting money into paper
swans to hold your hand
i flushed the roses
by mistake, that look
yolks left alone
we burnt the toaster
and you laughed, thin
despite my twisted pulse
your hoopskirt, a color
I wasn’t used to, proper
These plastic hands
Weren’t proper English
My nails are grazed
and then ungrazed
I scratch at everything
but you never seemed
to mind the smell
Writing: Text
people walk and stop to sing the weather how you do and where you been
though i often blink with film script eyes
speaking all the time I gave the half mask to the sinners, too
until you decide it’s alive
teach I nearly reach the calling of my second nature card
until I am a blind man, the oak of trees
too much to hear about the cities left to hear her voices
if you weren’t so proud
holy motion stream at least a strand of your hair
pieces of liquor to reach the lonely self at last
its though we were gods
coffee all i drink i sleep to stay inside when all is well
yet my hands are cold
if i had a dream i’d sleep the storm away, guns away
with glue, my steel, even bed
my violence is near the back, the undersides while i hide
fiction would be so strong when I’m thinking
photograph the extra frame i blink, the sigh, behind my eyes
when i watch the words that built you
drown your prayers; give me the flame
laughter to drink and sorrow to blame
Writing: Text
patience let me breathe
further now than endlessly
to be a shark amongst the weeds
the tiger wept inside of me
hunting for the lowest form
what is it, I ask of you
the tiger born or bloodless coup
eat your dinner, so they said
until your dreams are made of lead
Writing: Text
Jasper had a way of speaking
Chirping light and slowly blinking
Bat the eyes of strings lay sleeping
Holding close the secrets keep me
Spots we may absolve but fractures we ally
watching chilly rafters float along a fingernail
Nervous walking forward to a land
People and the lives we had
Love we knew as dust speaking
Whisper of the barely breathing
Writing: Text
licking off the ashtray of yesterday news
asking for cold and wet leftovers
shoe shine, black polish and velvet
pearly gamuts of vexing accents
chew and swallow, chew and swallow
folding out your old umbrellas
the mud within the cobblestones
drifts beneath our sacred homes
sirens watching, sirens caring
tearful of the crooked brow
the soothe that spins the foreign blisters
dimly lit the grass hills drifted
dream the clouds, slow of hearing
combing with the bone of plenty
the water drips, slowly, slowly
sitting in my kitchen
Writing: Text
the whole awaits
we turn to stone
wall me to sleep
i speak alone
bright lights barter
death or the pill
the sober whispered
each other’s dreams
trouble laughing
watch its faces
trouble walking
try your neighbors
hang the man
for his ten cups
love forgets
what judgement took
wrapped in paper
clay resolve me
film the kill
the headless whisper
Writing: Text
blow me a picture we whisper together
and show me to drink the knife
I envision rusted iron seas
like sordid chains on my arms
what god screams behind diamond lives
and dresses the sky with ire
weaken my delirious spring
and elaborate my still bare road
my mother tongue is a black water language
and the gift to write a void
I worship the flood my shadow casts
those smooth places on the ocean floor
on the television I watched a star die
the moment most would ache I ask not to stand at all
smear this languid use with sleep and pouring rain
manipulate my skin so I might dream again
Writing: Text
painful folding for the rest
of my days
i am lost at sea
holding on
to memories i can hear
working long
its hard for me to see
the end of my finger tips
stretching my old age thin
it tears
the grease that charred my palms
fighting for
a glass that never fills
walking through
the church that makes us bleed
cross my broken heart
Writing: Text
feeling the tressels tear my restless few from the lap of the sleeping beauty
we crack the floor lipid less and a corn husk stale
masking our distaste for ammonium lines sent whiskey musket blues
that lick the ears of the black weeping gentleman
A teepee from colored furs wrapped our pleasant train passage
Stood naked and painted to anoint love itself
caravans rode west, grass trampled, wheels broke in the slew
ironclad captors with pens of blood and black and paper
the giant along tree lines finds diamonds among the anthills
picking clean the bones of the holy unmarked places
I hand the shovel to my ancestors and watch them teeth
Grind the grist mill of succession with foreign smiles
And feather the dust we stand alone
Writing: Text
its time to hide out in the hills
live as banditos and banditas off uncles sams back
because when you say america
i say fuck you, i love you too
because this old heart just has too much to live for
big elk and rainforest alligators, swimming pools
and all you can eat restaurant buffets
cowboys and indians, way out west
shooting each other drunker than a band of gypsies
(you know)
the ones driving around beat up vans from the 60s
getting high until they believed in the american dream
i never thought they stood a chance out there
sunbaked dreams more likely in a place like this
you’d have to be wretched just to try livin’ out here
a cactus make good company, but they don’t sell tickets like the Super Bowl
horseshoes and bingo try their luck in the land of the past living
they don’t seem to mind, but then, no one does
they lost it in a dust bowl of memories from their golden years
that’ll have to keep you warm at night, because the campfire won’t do
it just keeps away the ghosts at night, the ones who remind you
we’re out here, waiting, and we don’t ever sleep at this hour
if you stop to listen, way out in the great dark out there
you might hear em shooting up to let it all roll on by
the tumbleweed sighs of broken american homes
not a spot of dirt in sight and they hardly livin’
and they wonder why they never felt so comfortable
than under a great blue blanket of stars
curled up next to a smelly boot and a mean drunk
who’d sell you in a second if he thought it might do
a man on a horse doesn’t wait for a potato famine
he robs and kills a man in a drunken knife fight
steals his wife if he can, sells his pistol, and trades it in
for a brand new jeep hummer, they kind they used
in the great plains of Milwaukee and Detroit
the humble beating heart of American virtue
between smoke stacks and crack addicts
you’d forget this was the Wild West, at some guy nature’s place
they didn’t catch him as he was walking out the back
to go lay in his own vomit and tears and blood
dead by the next morn’, they dragged him off to the county office
wondering how they got into this mess, and leave him at the door
they didn’t like to miss their poker tuesdays, and Denny’s Grand Slam Breakfast
it upset his stomach and it unsettled her nerves
and they didn’t miss those days; I heard stories
about men starving in the street, or maybe that was somewhere else
neither of them remembered, and it didn’t really matter
the point was, it was nice to have the security
of a life that truly didn’t matter
Was that the American dream? they thought at their polish halls
their outing club adventures, their jousting matches
speech writers and poets and popes couldn’t tell you
and neither can I.
And maybe they just forgot.
And If that isn’t America, well, then you can just get out.
Writing: Text
rust color water holy fabric motion forward under melons orange sun pillar ruins across the sea.
sketching curtains lawless questions people swaying asking notions left of mountains.
canvas stretched temple we adorn sweet brandishes lay wreaths in our chambers
leftovers passing judgment cannon fired addicts we wash ourselves (by stream)
bless me clay beneath attic blue mantle clasped white truffles promise hushed release
lighting motion boulder jarring eyelash sting the battered in the wind
caskets on the jagged strep logic in a god hands callus the fountain
Germane the felt tip voids molted ivy of our most ancient selves
Palm in the hand of greatness we are not
Writing: Text
THE WRAPTURE
Spilled coffee and spilt milk
Dark blood cut into chalk lines
Cum stains hiding between curtains
And Life moves on.
Oceans rise, nations fail,
People die, motions fail.
Ecstatic cries, and sorrowed wails;
Life was never the same again.
Writing: Text
pieces we are thru the symmetry of blue
hollow I absolve the nature at a loss
Writing: Text
bottom of page