Sunday, December 19

Even the orchids deceit

Even the orchids deceit
I trusted to be truer
than any human rule

Friday, December 10

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

Saturday, November 27

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

Friday, October 8

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.

Saturday, October 2

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.

Saturday, September 25

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

Thursday, September 23

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.

Friday, July 23

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.

Friday, June 18

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.

Thursday, May 27

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.


Wednesday, May 26

The fogs dialogues

Because spring is nearly here enough,
every means is justified
by the frogs dialogues of desire.


Tuesday, May 25

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




Monday, May 24

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.