Even the orchids deceit

Even the orchids deceit

I trusted to be truer

than any human rule

Barney's Joy

I.

Teleplanos and Patmos,

the blood orange,

and the salt, salt sea.

The precision of the winds syntax

and the cactus tree.

A mind full of sunlight,

but the mind of night

pushed you passed

the past's bloody fragments,

and the wild blue yonder's ruins

into that strange fire in a cedar's heart

and the wave's tongues

as they lick their granite teeth.

So the black perl fell

through absent minded fingers

that can't recall

where they'd dropped all Barney's Joys.

Among which set of stones,

what grains of sand?

Maybe east of the point

where the half buried bones

of that broken backed skiff

dry white by salt.

The white whale's ribs.

against the seagrey of sky and stone

that ignites Ammophila's green fire

Dreaming of Havana in Berlin

(an angry fragment)

I was chased by the rain

and a dead loves ghost

south of the Vineyard,

out a thousand fathoms

to a bed full of books

and all that wasted flesh made word.

It left me baited breathless

by the traces

of hocus pokus

in the burning ballots

holy smoke.

and sent me dreaming of Havana in Berlin.

Of the past centuries cursed grievance

plucked like the wildflower tooth

my grandfather stared down

full of contempt for his dog body.

But imagine the havoc wrought

by the first guy to figure out fire;

like that first girl

to glimpse her image inside of you,

who was so certain you'd made an exquisite mistake.

So don't give that city you burned a second thought.

Even the smart red fox

chews off its leg

for one more glimpse

of the world's hard beauty

it's only just barely endured

My alibi

While I looked for an alibi,

this verge announced itself in sound not sight.

In the rain surging all afternoon.

In the ocean sharpening its claws

on an otherwise silent night.

On Long Beach Island

for MPW

Finally, this morning the ocean asked

“Come and be my lover”

louder than the herring gulls protest

of a few roadside crumbs,

that fast moving car,

its hungry belly.

But much to my surprise I replied

“Let me sit here listening to the wind

just a little while longer”.

even though I'd loved her

my whole entire life.

To a girl I don't know who asked me to select her scent duty free in Berlin

"What other venue?"  I asked
"Nantes next year"  She relied
Nantes?  Hmmmmn


Well Nantes is much to far away for me
at least this time of year
because here, now
either coming of going
the sky is full of twilights dragons
and the swallows,
like the summers ashes,
hurdle low over the dunes
through columns of spectral light
fattening up on the last of the insects before the go.


You see I've got nothing left to leave anywhere else
Its all here
and really I don't give a damn about anything else

Twilights prism

Twilight prisms on the horizon I identify by the lights of a few boats fishing the dark and a cruise ship lit like a city. Yesterday I rode the bridges crest as the ocean opened to the sky as its lover. I nearly collided with a gull gliding impossible sideways as shameless of its greed as its grace. Like this grief it kept doubling back. I've often expected the next second to contain a catastrophe, but this afternoon when I asked “make me a river” I was sure I deserved to be made one.

A Dreams Vertigo

If not for the amorous frogs

I would have crossed the pond in my dream,

and that violin sitting at the edge of my bed

would have brought me into my senses,

and these are the words I will have never said.

Summertime

The sea breeze whispers in the screens,

rising to hoarse whistles,

as the temperature drops nearly 10 degrees.

The brown flesh of her arms is warm;

her scent, sweat sour.

The sunlights splinters in the pale blue sky ,

ricochets off sand and water

to make the pain in my eyes,

“Hush now” she replies, thinking her blues

that my daddy's rich and ma's good lookin'.

But thats a white man's fantasy of a black woman's blues,

and there's love in her voice in every case.

But what I can't hear is her heart stretch

100 miles west into a Philadelphia ghetto's heat

where she's left Lil in the Old Bag's care

who's only arms I remember,

brown above the elbows,

but button white

down to her fingertips

from the business end of bleach.

Her heart breaks for Lil

every time it breaks for me.

It's her white noise.

Like this sea's ceaseless beat,

night and day,

beneath the pop of the screen doors,

dulled by the sound of the wind.

Because winters always twilight

Because winters always twilight colossalized the sky,

starlings river into the wing sliced light,

like sand,

morning, noon, and night

to drown the sound of this silence.

The fogs dialogues

Because spring is nearly here enough,

every means is justified

by the frogs dialogues of desire.

Springtime

Today when I asked

to be passed the salt,

out poured the talk

of 10,000 birds.

They spoke in muted tones.

They know the lengths

to which springtime will go

to achieve itself,

as the grackles rudder

from afternoon to indigo;

their eyes as yellow

and as full as the moon.

Dead Reckoning

What's the difference between destiny and fate?

A holy adventure

dead reckoned from a dreams vertigo

and any bit of beauty you can steal

from all of autumns dazzling light

Kristianna

A steady rain.

This inbound river.

Sometimes what's required

is not a human,

but a creature comfort,

and I haven't a clue

what all this means.

Except during the drive

to my sister's funeral,

my silent mother's body's mind,

got out of it's paddock

like a panicked sheep,

or that man's penis.

And she witnessed her womb

rise, roll over white, and retreat,

as ceaseless

as the ocean coughs up a corpse,

while it gave to her daughter's angel it's birth.

Bats in the Belfry

In the apse of oaks

stained glassless

by evenings indigo

the shadows of bats

flash cinematic,

while along the river bend in Bethlehem

the universe of crows

peels off the elms

like all of the angels ashes.

But at half past twilight

this ocean,

full of its furies,

roars into the ears of this house,

it's cathedrals

ring into harbor's mouth

like a coronation day

Epiphany's Gift

Hopping islands in the hearts archipelago

who hasn't refused an epiphany's gift.

Because along this road its just as easy

to stop to worship a pole dancer,

as it is to watch a god.