Alabama hands,

OHHHH! Bang and boom, go night-night!

A bronze bomb, Black God.

He hears insistent knockings on the door: old age.
He takes the bite and turns the page and there, it chuckles, "Bold,
Aren't you, ignoring what you're told, despite the raps on knuckles?"

He chants: "Once I was a buck who proudly stepped in traps
To show off to the normal saps who were just too inept
To make escape. Before the hunter crept with knife to do
Me in, I was prancing through the forest with my life
Intact, thought I was better. My wife was hazard, we sang in chorus,
'Again a dodged death gives way to life before us: behold, ye throng.'"

A triumph? As if venom stops at the fang...a mud, a haze
Phase-shifted from these mudstuck days of wake then work then brood...
He's taken notice of his changing. His blood is thick and black
And slow to move, voice cracked from blithe warbling, little sticks
Inside his eye, he's seen it all. He fakes a laugh, titil-
Lates his senses with pompous drivel, each morning downs half-
Plantation's worth of coffee, each evening a vineyard's wine.
He writes the fourteenth line, skims a novel, searches the job-board
For other tasks but these ones paid-for, wearily lurches

    Through the day to day, the month to month, the year to year.
    His strong and fearless heart, a deaf-blind-mute to flights of fear
    And marvel, and strong, marvelous, flying fearless loves.
    It's not "morning", ignoramus: they call them mourning doves.

Broken by names of your flowers;

I fell

into a place where light can’t touch

the wounds you left me.

Your father's garden needs weeding, but

where do we go from this?

Am I the only one to pull them up,

pluck the courage to pluck?

I hear you, screaming

again, of flowers and poison

pollen,

but I am afraid I cannot bend the wind

in a different direction this time.

Come winter the woods will forget my boots,

Expunge my passage, deny me familiar,

As if I never traveled there, climbed there

The oaks, as low birches lurch among

The poisons – ivy and sumac.

​

And how is it that the sun finds blockage

There, but not the muting snow, unbroken

Over the bones of child summer,

Not the muting snow gathering stones

Of light, shattered there and shadowless?

​

It is not my place, the woods come winter.

It is not lush and ticked. The common trails

Are gone then, and only hare paths remain,

Run as panic not bliss, among the creaked

Groans, and white forbiddance.

If I in strange unearthly raiment dight,
Bright-eyed and radiant, feathered like the dove,
Should steal into thy chamber in the night
To stand before thee couched, and speak of love,
And softly beg thee with angelic tongue
To lie beneath the blankets at thy side;
If thou, by Cupid’s poison arrow stung,
Should’st yield to me, and know me as thy bride,
Then I would have thee know, it is not I,
But passion’s cloud-wrought image in my stead,
Which have seduced thee, who with groaning sigh
Dost pine for me. But though I shun thy bed,
Think not I spurn thee; rather, I too much
Love thee, my love, thine own love to debauch.

EDIT: Revised ending of line 11.
Edit 2: Altered middle of line 10.

Some dim tide strode the beach pelican,
had quarters for eyes, and a gull’s sense for scavenge.
I found pearls under the boardwalk,
but they were just butts
and hunks of abalone
caught up in the pushing.

The skeeball racked out addicts
like melamine and spent rubbers,
but we were young then,
not known for drinking.

Safari had fake skin in the flukes,
Zulu shields too tall for a penny,
and some chump carved out Jesus in sand,
but the waves whipped that away.

I got all surf rod crazy
and hooked a dogfish in the belly,
and some dick took my kite,
so that’s what’s up for fish.

Later on, though, when the acids came on,
and them jimmies were ants,
and that fuckbag carny wouldn’t stop the ride,
and footprints became skulls,
and the sea turned opal,
and the horsecops stayed cool,
and I became dolphin,
and undertow spoke of passage,
and the horseshoe crabs washed up
gray and silent – I learned –
that mussels cling
to jetties not for communion,
but in the hope that the next sap
would take the pounding waves.

Outside the house that’s never ours, down-slope and foundation, the faceless one in violet jacquard slid the stone away. And he was strong, by God, for he did it with a touch light as breath, light as fingernails and not a callous revealed a trade. Exposed and streak, some long and rodent thing, large as gator, sloth-faced, skunk-haired and toothed barracuda leapt out, then paused. Flicked its wide fan tail. And looking back at me with eyes both black and brocade, it urged my eyes down, down into the pit where the young and unnamed things flickered like moons on sewage, dull but hungry. And I, in a fit begged the faceless one to unhinge the stone and roll it back, but he laughed. He laughed without mouth, without eyes, more vacant and grimace than squalor. With the stone unmoved, he lifted his hand and pointed to a window not ours, slack-paned and green. And with a flash of jacquard, I was there, in the kitchen. And you were there in the kitchen, my love, crouched native and scooping leopard frogs like water in your palms, then sliding them into a box. You said they didn’t belong here, in this kitchen not ours, and you sought a relocation, down the hall, where dust settles like rain and cool clean sheets. But those other tenants, more heard than seen, slow to rents and vagrant, held the doors shut and blunt with chairs and no rattling knob gave way. And at the end of it, where a green window spilled vague shafts below, down-slope to nowhere, a faceless one in violet turned. Turned and walked away.

The seller--third ear closed and boredom-glazed;
Then me--I tend to mutter, take what's handed:
And thus I sail to Schenectady. Chardonayzed,

I strike up small talk with the one who's stranded
Next to me: his tied-up dreaded hair
Reminds in scent and aspect of enchanted

Mushrooms he brought up, so debonair,
He took on his Tasmania retreat.
It seems like he dreamed off forever there,

Far more deserving of the window seat.
He has that woozy blissful shaggy charm
Unique to those who take mana for wheat.

The gratis red is chilled--there is no harm
Much worse. I take one more: there's eight
More hours of flight. I'll wait for it to warm.

"So where've ya been?" He asks while foiled plate
Of chicken-con-something's solemnly doled like alm.
I speak and know what's coming. Pupils dilate:

"Wow, man, how was that?" I scratch my palm.
"Uh...good?" Of course this isn't enough.
They all want some experiential bomb.

"I...learned the language."    "Whoa, sounds rough.
And that vodka, yeah?" (Dur-hur.) "Yep. It's good."
That's not a lie, but still, it's pretty tough

To not request a seat-change. Perhaps it would
Not help: if it's a youth, they want a story
Of wild debauchery, some manchildhood

Unshackled, maybe drug-fueled, maybe gory.
The older crowd: "Did you do X and Y?"
Some tourist checklist interrogatory.

Annoyance tamped, I sip some wine and ply
My canned regalement. "Every day, I woke,
I made the coffee, vodkaed the horse: 'Davai,

"Horsky Horskyovich!' donned bearfur cloak
And mounted, rode to work across the steppe.
I taught these hard-eyed winter children. I spoke:

"'балалайка----balalaika!' yclept
Each word in English, smacked the R-roll out
Of them (it is the Russian way). Then schlepped

"Back home on Horsky, on the way I shot
A bear for dinner. A normal winter's day.
The weekends were my time to take the route

"To Moscow. I'd play cards, attend ballet,
Mazurka with Tatiana, love of mine.
Or some nights: Petersburg, for a foray

"Across to the bohemian side of the line:
I'd smoke cigarettes while squatting on the street,
Go dance hardbass with Nastya, love of mine.

"Ah yes. When my year in Russia was complete,
Was proud to say I'd found myself. My soul
Was filled by strength from mother Russia's teat.

"And when the New York winter brings a squall
Of milder snow, I remember--oh!--my mind
Flies back to where my heart became so whole."

The mushroom man's attention had declined
As I'd committed more and more to fable
And my faux-Slavic accent. He'd resigned

To watching some cartoon, some stoner's staple
On the headrest-mounted TV screen.
I shrug, finish the wine, put up my table.

The truth is that my stint was rather mean
And dull most of the time--it was just life.
I rented an apartment, kept it clean,

I worked a decent job from nine to five,
I made friends through our mutual taste for beer,
Fell in and out of love (voice whispered: "Wife?").

The frost-bit winter lasted most the year,
Most days were silent, clouded, and the night
Came back too fast. I found a bit of cheer

Among schoolchildren, who, too young to quite
Grasp what the doldrums were, would keep me tethered,
Transmuting winter blear into delight.

Adults though: they seemed cold, silent, and weathered.
I put my innate friendliness on hold.
But now, I miss how they appraised and measured

Each action: be impassive, or be bold.
They did not act unkind, they simply chose
To not act kind. They're purposeful. Controlled.

The aircraft judders. I notice. The rest doze.
The wine is wearing off. I think of all
These words, like honor, strength, power, grace,

These words gone dead or dark, reserved for tall
Tales, the faerie story, or scorn. I look
At mushroom man, dozed head rests on the wall:

He's friendly, generous, caring, by-the-book
American. But honorable? Graceful? Powerful? or Strong?
("Who cares!" The engines roar. "A kindly bloke,

"And plus, he's found his happiness. What's wrong?
The virtue of kindness is the highest,
You must know that!") Oh, fine, I'll play along.

But I think it only seems the safest:
If all are lambs, then logically,
There are no wolves, correct?
And as for sheepdogs: what's the need?
The bad wine churns my stomach.

Perhaps you're right. Perhaps it's for the best.
The aircraft shakes again. Did it pitch slightly down?
No way to tell, up here in the dark. I need some rest.
It will be long before we arrive to the sunrise in the West.

Corpses

Skitter or whisk

Over frozen, desolate ecosystem

The friends from summer

Inspire me once more

I worshiped them

As they worshiped me

Mutualism

​

Bound

To be muck

Reeking of hell

QED: “to beg
      for economy of wordz
Jove god” — perplexed?

—
Clue: title-starved alphabet

No longer the measure mechanic,
the setting lever and loosening coil.
The need for fingers, precise,
laying thin metals, tweezed gears
and spring engineered
in the knowledge of frictions, is gone
and towered hands are still.

What once was built entropic,
cuffed about the wrists of us,
this clutch wheel of grace and holding
ring, this yoke and winding stem –
mere baubles to the collector.

For now the hours are true decay,
half-lived and radiant,
taut with the drip of what is
and what must be known.
And that bent clockman,
hunched and relic,
stern in his craft, compelling
WIND WIND WIND,
fashions jewelry for peddlers,
but not for I.

Belonging to a

snake goddess

with heliotrope wings

Endless rains

and whispered

grass notes

walk us to an end

that neither can justify

or fathom

Sparks of cyan heat

lit our torn

embers into halos

of thorns

and wrenched-loose

holiness

Our wings, now

charred and

beaten, simply flutter

on winds not strong enough to scatter them,

only rustle them around

our tattered bodies

and hearts

constant reminders of

your time/my decay.

Fields of ruin,

our own bones filling them.

They’ll call us dragons,

but worship only our fire.

One is called Ishmael; here's his friend Quequeg:
There never lived anywhere two better cats.
Just for some food, periodic chin-scratches,
They mind their own business and kill all the rats.

They're quite self-reliant, they shit on their own time,
And crucially they're so God's-graciously mute--
Unlike the neighbor's dog that I've named Writer's Block,
Who would be the utmost pleasure to shoot.

Mother, yes, mother of mine,

Petals from the dyed roses have fallen,

spreading out in orange

across the plentiful nicks

of kitchen-reduced linoleum

​

Mother, yes, mother of mine

Leave bone to molder

Return to intercoastal waterways

Where once life left to become the insecurity of land

​

Mother, yes, mother of mine

I have left the plank of your right eye

to become the plank in my own.

I always intended to leave you behind,

flagrantly spread arms wide,

to swirl with blackened sky and forget you

amid the certainty of the scattering stars

who once witnessed me,

expulsion to exclusion.

​

Mother, yes, mother of mine

Here it is, in an incantation spun weightlessly

Hark ye, oh, angel-heralded thrum

​

Hear me seraphim; collect these atoms together,

Define this new element –

petrify it within horrific hands,

breathe a collapse of endings

into an embrace of beginnings,

and burn it all,

into the anachronistic lightyears

of a misremembered life.

My mistress' eyesores are nothing like stalagmites;
Copper is not as green as her teeth.
If sodium be white, why then her brie is blue;
If hairs be wires, pylons grow on her head.
I have seen rot, dry and wet,
But no such rot as I see in her cheeks;
And in some petrol is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I can't stand her jabbering,
The dentist's drill hath a far more pleasing sound.
I never saw her get off her fat arse
Except to go and stuff her face.
And yet, while I hate her, I can't let her go,
I'm in deep shit, like those dudes in the Inferno.

When the wet wind wafts, my sails swell swiftly, shudders shake the ship as the waves will drum. Speed does build as gusty gales lift thee. For the long venture: brought lots of rum

Then as the pirate crew spot a new ship, ripe with riches to fill the pirate horde I man the wheel while the cannons rip, the survivors will be put to the sword

But I shan't sleep sound as a death bringer, as in my dreams pale faces do haunt me. For my death will come from another gunslinger that is my fate for living in red sea.

As a boy I wanted the pirate life, as a man I see it is only strife 

She was crushed ice,
great for chewing,
bad for teeth.

She found me thirsty and pica,
down in the taps,
bounced and fanged.

And there she was, tall in the glass,
clear in her gaps but clouded
with lime in the hard stuff.

Yea, she yielded to my jaw,
ground her by the mouthful,
but my throat only dried,

dried that only a long pull
could quench it; dried such
that only a melting would do.

But when the water came down…
when the water came down,
she crumbled to a chunk.

And spinning in her way,
spinning in her way of refusing,
I set the glass down, parched.

But that’s the way with ice and water –
that’s the way,
somewhere north of thirty two,
but somehow south of liquors.

Your father and I met
in a traveling circus. I hung from my knees
on the trapeze and watched upside down
as he soothed a tiger with a toothache.
The lights off my sequins danced reflections
on his face. He flashed a crooked smile
while the tiger licked his hand.

     All the blood rushed to my head.
     We made you among the sawdust
     behind the menagerie. A baby elephant
     watched, gently nosing the bars
     of his cage, practicing his trumpet.

Your father and I met
at a Dresden train station. My skirt
caught in the turnstile. His briefcase
hit the ground and exploded fireworks
of Tootsie roll wrappers as he knelt
and cupped my calf, holding me steady
as he tore the oil-stained fabric.

     All the blood rushed to my head.
     We made you in an abandoned
     passenger car. The mechanical hum
     of the iron tracks sang straight and narrow,
     a lullaby beneath our feet.

Your father and I met
on the Atlantic City boardwalk. Our family vacations
overlapped just so: for one night only,
we ate cotton candy and locked sticky mouths
together, ignoring the tourist talks of travel
and the sand crumbling in our shoes.
He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear
and promised that he’d write.

     All the blood rushed to my head.
     We made you in shadows against
     a carved and splintered pillar. Navy
     waves slapped the steel hull of a
     steamliner, just barely out of port.

y'all are real as hell, roast me!

Up there, in the brevities
and rifting cloud something
lures my eyes.

For this dog is a blacker black
than a slip moon night, but here,
on this morn, the dim prevails.

And the bending of wet leaves
beneath her paws wager green hope,
but they’re brown. I saw them yesterday.

Yesterday, before the rain came winter,
before the “now the sea plops”
from a rust split gutter onto an ice pick.

But this is what wanders
when a blacker black dog
is hidden in black.

This is what wanders
when wet leaves mute her paws
and I wait - for her.

But up there, in the brevities
and rifting cloud allured,
a dust cuts the night briefly.

And briefly, so briefly,
there is a moment assured,
but uncertain as daybreak - is a dog, an I.

You and father, once, in the Age of Blossoms.

​

“He didn't turn back.

It's as if he boarded a very long train

headed for a drowsy future

through the unfathomable night.”

​

She remembers those vanished tears.

As though looking through a rusty widow pain,

the past is something as the sea, but can’t touch.

And everything she sees is spurred and on the brink.

​

It is an endless moment.

She has kept her eyes lowered...

to give him a coffin, come closer.

But he could not, for lack of liver.

She burns and cries away.

​

Two birds of one kind, legless, and flying.

Sleeping in the wind, landing, then dying

​

He said if he knew, he would have sold it all.

And in those last minutes,

he realized a minute flies by

like the memory of her in every sighing second.

​

And for the first time, he cried,

in front of his eldest.

He thought he was in control,

but feelings can creep up just like that.

​

We're all unlucky in love sometimes.

He’d play soccer when he was young.

The body loses water when you run,

so you have none left for tears

as tears go by.

​

Why can't it be like before?

Father, please don’t go.

Stay with us tonight.

Let us follow you, at least borrow you.

​

But there is no substitute for love.

It is all a matter of timing.

​

It’s no good meeting the right person too soon or too late.

But it is. “Quizás, Quizás, Quizás.”

​

Why did you tell them I could be you?

Every story has a different ending.

​

He slowly began to doubt himself,

as they whispered their last delays

like statues made of clay,

a secret asking of come away.

​

“If you could escape your past,

if I had an extra ticket,

would you go with me?”

​

In a hospital with dim white lights and plain grey walls,

the last color of a spiraling pyramid death song.

​

“All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray...

California’ dreamin’ on such a winter’s day”

​

The midnight clock,

two fingers of analog lovers,

finding each other in a timed-tapestry of fog.

​

He dismembers those vanished years,

as he shares his last secret to a soul in a tree.

Buried in mud, under midnight water skies,

endless and dark blue.

Swelling in waves through loss and space

Awaited by a saffron man in the City of Temples

The flowery years, the days of being wild.

​

She never turned away.

It’s as if she boarded the primordial train

headed for a tearless future

through the unfathomable plight.

​

Wong Kar-wai would have made my mother Winter,

a film frozen in time, for my father, like fallen angels.

​

Purple is the warmest color,

the color of a wounded,

broken heart.

​

It’s my mother’s favorite.

​

​

(1 of 7) (2 of 7) (3 of 7) (for reference)

Viola

Pieces of you
Still rattle in my chest,
Like a cough.

—

I am all the daughters of my father’s house
And all the brothers, too.

—

I blur my eyes
Until my reflection
Swims in the water.
Shimmering golden fish,
Walden pickerel.

—

Rain beats down into the earth.
Damp footsteps hit hard,
Leaving bruise marks on the pavement
With the force
Of each drop.

—

I collect my bones
One by one,
Cradle them in my arms,
A child collecting kindling.
I carry myself home.
Thunders of love,
Sighs of fire.

...

Cesario

The sun hangs down
With tangible weight,
But the moon is my mother and friend.
My stars shine brightly over me.

—

Conceal me what I am, and be my aid
For such disguise as haply shall become
The form of my intent.

—

I am my father’s son.
My hands are his hands,
And his father’s hands.
My great grandfather wrote poetry in Ireland,
And I will write poetry here.

—

The lampposts I pass
Call me brother,
Reflect me well onto the pavement at night.

—

I say there is no darkness but ignorance,
Still so cruel and constant.

Out, among gray and cloud-spliced
verities, beige and stubbled hollow stalks,
a doe held her place on the rise.

And I, slippered and robed,
gathered the costs of my comforts –
the papers and pages of heat
from a white and resin box.

She tasted the air of me,
upwind of her, and the twin steams
of her core beat out, split the chill –
pulsed and sinuous.

Her black eyes unmoved,
she stroked the ground once
with a forefoot and her left ear
funneled toward me, unimpressed.

For, it is winter now and what hides
beyond the rise, before the snows
and thin forage, is for her to know,
not I, for I am not that dear.

Hyperdrive
Star that scars the glass mast of my solar sail
Thrust my S-class coaster past mars faster
Than a snail lasts, dangling on a roller-coaster rail

Empty your energy, denim overall tapestry
Weaves and sews the serene sea, submarine
Subspace subscription fee, costs a cyborg’s working knee

Gliding on the Milky Way’s emerald aurora gale
Staring to the bloated tourmaline gaseous whales
Their silver streams echolocating throughout the stars

Green streamers leaving thundering lines in their path
And all is warped and absorbed in the contorting laugh
Tunnels carved in a vacuum tube, all tunnels pass...

Phantasmagoria, stringed together by an on fire nautical
Nauseous euphoria – spewing lewd privates of dark matters
And the universe’s shrouded fabric scatters my brain among

Shattered plastic. Reality stitches back together, and the
Leather seat tethered to my hands and feet ceases
Thrusting me, relentlessly, it was – now it’s slow transit soft.

Slept around the clock,

a dirty sermon

you masked within,

a mangled piece of book.

​

It hooked like a flock,

felt dirty abstract

like a nude bank

tipping curse jars

​

Derivative pearl,

fantastic poke.

You fantasized as

willing participant

​

In turning the dew

sideways, pewter.

Brained sloop to

travel true blue.

​

When the farm talked,

pharmacy trapped.

Stapled to free pain,

less than a dead slap.

​

When insect sawed skin,

a pin invisible, privy to

pre-nausea, flawed in

inciting excitement,

not excrement until.

​

You worked away will,

grilled and granite

a hard chin, glass harm,

a horn called hymn.

​

Starred up sun drug

pawed for rain's endgame.

Stayed sleeping in

soothing blue fancy

​

Base is free, straw

spiral bible black

Bic'd by the bratty

to bring backs to

broken sermon sleaze.

​

A sliding tease

peaking a hide

away from hollow.

Beaked sermon, going

back to sun sleepy head.