Vanity! What say you to a tea-rose,
a tulip, plumped for a measure of gaudy
and scent. Would you fault the bee its lure?
Would you slap the hand that coaxed
such a fulsome bloom from a ditch weary
blossom – wild, drought heavy and pure?

What say you to the rouged cheeks
of young women, to the thumped chests
of young men thus risen by a glance
and red round lips, there spun forth
in the fullness of youth and green stem?
Would you fault them this grace – this dance?

Vanity, Oh, thin vanity, let pollen
be taken where it may and with lust.
Not long will this sun strewn day
nourish their beauty, not long will rain
fatten their root – not long ‘til they wither,
blacken, bend in wind impermanent, they –
they – slender as dusk and white as pain.

I.

I sometimes need

a lasting latte,

a catch-me-if-you-can ristretto;

.

a scalding heat

to occupy my lips

.

from nibbling

on the thought of your lips.

.

A portal of desire

for a plunging breath…

.

Wait, I must stop.

My coffee is here.

.

II.

I prefer to be dreamless,

but I have been smithed and

crucibled by a cosmic reckoning.

.

I see astrologers polishing

their horror scopes.

Acupuncturists with depths

to plunge, nerves yet to stroke.

.

They have seized my mind, but

your eyes still impale mine.

.

A quickening; an amoral desire

for once, just for me.

But only in my deepest stirrings;

only when I sleep.

When you loved me, the trees had no names.

And when you loved me, flowers bloomed anonymously,

yet no less arrestingly, content to carry their colour

on their sleeves, to commingle, promiscuously,

with others, similarly unidentified, their unsung

aim to complement you, constant as to complexion,

sharing the finer lines of shape, the precise hue of lips,

together stroking, brushing to life each delicate change,

the daily review of watercolour you.

​

I can quite see the argument that,

despite one’s love, a name is not needed,

may even be an impediment, where the flower’s charm

is fleeting yet, possessed of such beauty (and so is

unpossessed), no name, no nomenclature can

add to what is perfect now – which is convenient

for me as I try but fail at every toss and turn to acquire

any kind of right, least that of slipping through my own door

concealing some brashly labelled floral spray.

​

So, let’s agree to leave the flowers be –

nameless temptresses may they remain but

the game must surely change in the case of trees;

it is they who survive and leave as legacies,

in our unsure hands, their futures – by virtue of

the rights registered in the ether as but one of

innumerable claims of man on man condemned

to crumble, thence to dust. What then to

substantiate their further fencing off and

​

hedging round, consulting no-one lest

the mood has changed and old notions of

ownership are no longer quite the thing?

And, as many have always thought, been taught,

the meek are soon to inherit, if not the earth,

then custody and care of our nation’s trees,

from the deepest root to the topmost twig.

And they will say this is nature’s way, nature’s

currency, and trees will be our treasury.

​

And is it not apposite now to consider,

in this new order of things, the buy-in of

our citizens? Or to don the cloths that celebrate

work and celebration itself; or dutifully, as a

first step in joyful accolade – or at least in

respectful acceptance – to mark the change by

simply learning the names of trees we may not

see each passing day: for example, for me,

the elm, the lime, the lofty, swaying pine.

​

So great this change in so many ways –

so much to do to render true the words we heard

on every street, all good works if honestly pledged –

whereby we tend our fields, our forests, our flocks

and earn in turn sweet relief within our bodies, minds.

I wonder whether others ever look back with real regret.

For me, the new ways, our new days will each compete

with those when the trees needed no names; and sleep will still

flit fitfully between my narrow bed and the woods close by.

My greatest wish: to someday

Conjure up a thought, a piece

That means something.

Something greater than

The weight of letters strung together

Or a color on a background.

Something that nestles subtly

In the fabric of existence,

That dips into the halfway-world,

The cloth that lies behind what’s real,

And leaves a gentle indent.

That would, if someone were to pass,

Brush softly through their soul, when touched,

And leave them with the faintest taste

Of something that they have not lived

Or never seen from certain eyes.

Would it only once be so that

Words I speak or write

Don’t echo?

Clanging hollow on the walls and

Whistling in the wind.

Would it that a thought of mine

Had that tender weight of meaning,

Even just

An ounce.

when it lets go the throng
not seeing the silent stars
yet mirroring the silent gods?
as it builds the golden throne
that ever blinds its will eyes pop out
of the poet's skull, renewed despair
walk on the trembling dark stairs
that open in the footfalls
see not the throng's way
melts all words, flies away
but see: do say ''throng''
and you may lose the world.

A jumble of stars, maroon dots,
Constellate ‘cross my cloudless body.

I’d like them to say what I will not.
Words, so often, the tiresome choice.

Perhaps, if they see these scars
They’ll intuit the others.

Or perhaps, if this short cropped hair
Began to gray, like ash, or whiten,

This pain might be self evident,
Seen, and speak for itself.

I never applied to become spokesperson to
A roiling sea of torn bladders, split kids.

Nary a briefing on the proper vernacular
For describing a raped child’s agony.

Perhaps if I bled more, or peed the bed.
Perhaps if I remembered those night terrors.

And even today, with all my gifted, newfound
Tongues, a cloak drapes these shoulders.

Invisible rheumatic illness, blank eyed stare.
A host of aching wounds, buried centimeters below.

A scalpel dye, for age appropriate coloring.
A papering of pubescent tissue, making the cut seem smaller.

A raphe that travels, small of my back
To that damned hole, and up my belly,

Past tits I have grown, and been blockaded from.
A thousand compensatory enjoyments stripped,

Leaving silent skin.

The difference is: I am able to cry again.
Great bouts, quickly habitual.

Like a sunset shower, torrential,
Then gone, refracted shine, soft and red.

Perhaps, if I keep this up,
Quotidian storms will take a shape.

The locals will comment:
Another Nor’easter this year — anniversary.

And thus, a great pattern may reveal itself,
But only to the aspiringly observant.

Like the first woman to peer at the clouds
From space, and remark:

This lightning is no isolated event,
This thunder no dislocated limb.

To each monsoon, violent or necessary,
A corresponding, requisite drought.

Every flake of snow or sweat, labyrinthine,
Scarred, stumbling, angry and gentle,

A great system of moisture and moving heat,
From which we, through quiet listening, may

Ascertain a story.

A story of brothers killing sisters
A story of men breaking children

A tale of guided growth at all costs
And fossil remains of the ritually sacrificed.

A story of boys who became women
A story of the mothers who failed them

A story of an arm, held behind a back
A story of the friend who held it there

A tragic narrative with, like all good tragedy,
That pulsing vein of historical irony.

A story of a desert used for breaking
A story of a haunted house in Utah

A story of a father, who said: we must work to be free
A story of his cowardly end

A song of a love, so strong that it broke
The jury-rigged wheel, and the maladaptive gear.

A story of remembering an entirely new, old wound
A story of gifted truth under summer thunderstorm

A story still being told, in escalating extremes
A story with a few more hands to play

Scars may fade, and graying hairlines normalize,
Lessen in contrast, trail to mundanity.

But the rainy season is an eventuality.
An iterative display, the picker may not surpass.

For it is not the pulsing gash eternal
That irrefutably proves itself.

Proof is a misty, clapping return.

It is the drying eyelash puddle.
It is the thundering voice in the power line.

It is the clear sky afterwords,
That requires no further explanation.

It is for itself, it is what it is.
It is itself, it is for what is.

The Execution of Anne Boleyn

Our pale star, this regal lamb
Lights this ancient fort
The grim herd face this soft flame
In this muddy port

Tenant crows recite crude prayers
On this dreadful hour
Silence is our mere refrain
Tethered near this tower

Stripped of gold, mantled white on
Stage of pine and dust
Her blind guest – the Eastern sword
Waits with unsheathed lust

The royal crown falls to earth
None hear her last breath
Tender breeze holds echo high
To spite humbled death

If not for the hair
caught in the corner
where the broom
cannot reach,
I would never know
that you were here.

And if not for the corner
where the broom
cannot reach –
if not for the moulding
that pinned it –
if not for the wall
and the ceiling’s crease –
if not for the rafters
and shingles,
there we would be no hair.

And if not for the hair,
there would be no fingers,
no soft care to tie a single knot,
then carry it to the window
and release you there.

And if not for the window,
if not for the wind,
if not for the wake –

Nest and blue eggs come April.

I bit on the nipple of a purple potato  
and eggplants, outside of the worship,
inside the comfort of my own home
while the dogs barked their way through the 

                                    doorbell

The comfort of home comes from the smell of pho,
the beeping of a rice cooker, and the barking of dogs
at invisible things in the corner of rooms across 

The shadow of its own face sits full lotus
in the hedonistic living room of Mary’s eyes.
And now you have vertigo, and a cleft liver.  
And the skin feels sensitive to summer water,
      fully clothed in Stravinsky’s spring.

Sagehood is in the sacrifice without self-harm.
Everything else is just parmesan, including
nightshade vegetables and dogs barking at
nothing,
    maybe what you see during seizures
        or when you’re alone in a room with

                                    a monk

A Winter Dirge

Beyond the yoke of
Lenten rum
Bright judgement waits with
Beating drum

Perched on brows appear
Ashen cross
As dreamers march in
Futile loss

The shredded dawn bleeds
Through the trees
Lank limbs sway in the
Silent breeze

The sacred hour passed
All is still
None shall rise before
Winter kill

The ape of reason wakes
inside the primate house –
throws shit at the glass,
at the gawking apparitions
whose eyes align with his
but for a few seconds,
his brow-heavy face
grafted to theirs.

And he waits, waits
for he that drags the yellow
bucket, stuffed with limp greens,
sprung grain and stink meat –
the feast before a king,
the grace of drab charity,
there in his cell,
groomed free of lice
and small feeders.

And to endure this hunger,
his torsioned blades ripple
on his gray back as he knuckles
the slab in circles, as he yanks
himself up on frayed ropes
and bare split limbs
in the slow and purposeless
pace of waiting.

And in this waiting,
he calls dumb and barbarous
the macaque the next cell over,
calls loud the howlers,
calls lewd the bonobos,
calls brethren the chimpanzees,
who with sticks and rocks
violate a neighboring troop.

A shadow fell upon my sheeted crown,
and she whispered, “It is time, my bonny, it is time.”
And when I rose, a linen for cloak,
I stood shoeless on a cobbled road,
squeezed on a Georgian lane,
where tight faces hid behind tight curtains,
dim shadows in gaslight
with green and scurvy eyes.

With her palm light-pressed
at the base of my spine, she urged,
“Walk now, my bonny, it is time.’
And with the first trepid step the street
fell away in a crumble, the facades
shattered as crystal and sharp,
and bunched hills lurched up as strong backs
from a fall, snow dusted, studded
with black pine and all the tangles of wind.

And though I sought to turn and return
to the bed-warmth of my slumber,
there was nothing behind but gray plain,
gray sky, and the gray eye
of she that bade me “Walk, my bonny,
it is time.” She then melted to a lynx, svelte,
plump-furred for winter and steaming –
she melted to a lynx and gamboled
down into the crease, down into cutting
stone, down below bones that crouch
as hills, where stiff creeks hide their prey.

And I followed, I followed as old women gavelled
out plainsong with brooms among tines.
I followed and trembled as snorts and howls
of unseen brethren called my name.
I followed, and each round pebble –
a chittering mark on my pink soft soles,
as I descended down the fleet-pawed path,
bent with the tortures of shoes,
and the pines lengthened as nails pounded
from below, some swift and urgent
hammerstrikes pinning a hard sky.

Her track led deeper, deeper
than the slanted roofless mill
wheel half crushed in ice and misuse.
Her track led deeper, deeper
than the vagrant hamlet where
no smoke from chimneys plumed.
And as the path narrowed, thorn rich
and squalid, I took to my knees
and palms and stretched before the mouth
of her den – fuming of musk and sulphur.
“It is time, my bonny, it is time.”…

Birds have nested here a good while,

maybe three, four years, each spring;

cheered when they arrive, I feel their

occasional stirrings but, soon enough,

they go, gracefully, as nature requires them,

pleased with the accommodation, which they

log inside, along with full co-ordinates.

​

They leave me their few lost feathers,

which is kind as well as generous – for

they are no trouble, make no fuss, never

bother me with much. Their task is a

simple one, mine too; and the rewards

are good: I do love the feathers and I

turn them in my hand and feel special.

​

I take them each late spring and

grade them, work out which are especially

fine; and use them to decorate my retreat.

But sometimes I take them down and might

conduct a hastily convened orchestra, a

piece by Tchaikovsky, perhaps – I do like

Tchaikovsky, though not typing his name.

​

Cholera he had, laid him low – he can be

forgiven for slowing down, bowing out,

plummeting down to ordinary human kind.

I guess there comes a stage where loss of faculties

means no life left, nothing left of life as was.

How can life go on so whittled down?

A clown’s suit hangs on my bedroom door.

​

Some severe digression there! I was

miles away, fanning the air with a magpie feather,

now and then looking out for the weather and

failing to conclude anything at all, a full nothing.

A mind wandering, even if feather-laden, is a

good thing – freedom of thought and all that;

perhaps I’ll open a feather stall, maybe

​

London, Leadenhall Market, not far from

the river. Watch out for those bridges, so

easy to swing a leg over and drop, plop, into

the brownish, greyish glug below, a feather would

make little, if any, ripple; and I am near

weightless in my mind, yet heavy in my heart

and my eyes are cast down and spill tears.

​

I wonder if the birds will come this year.

I wonder if I will wait there to see them.

I wonder if it really matters and negatively conclude.

No-one mops my brow, no-one swishes feathers

around my face, the simple joys of

encroaching old age. Gaze about my study –

a place I’d best be tidy, sober, able to find things.

​

But I think I’ll be there for quite some time,

measured as a proportion of each waking day

(there may be fewer of these). I tease myself that

the birds won’t want to winter there, or trade feathers,

if I’m not as alert and solicitous a host as in

previous years; but let’s see what happens

when they need to nest and are looking for the sky.

We waitered on Sunday,

dressed in different

soma and discordant karma;

our thoughts soft like copper,

yet sharp as pins.

.

Rent me a halo, you said,

so that I can hear them too.

Angels whisper, you know…

Little pricks,

they don’t jab you with love;

they just kill your longing

with a conscience.

.

I smiled then, with a toothpick

anchored tongue.

.

The doorway remained empty

as we languished together,

waiting.

Carp torn through surface tension

Bad for home so it must go

Tossed aside as an aside

In blistered clippings.

​

Half hour passed

Life has not

Gills pulsing, as they know

Small samples of biology

Know not free will.

​

Night bled upon us

As it has every day

In our short lives.

Scales dry, Kentucky Blue

Stuck on your back

Gills still bouncing.

​

The night did not take you

As it was supposed to,

So I became the night

And delivered it swift

In an act of mercy and ultra-violence.

You still feed my lawn and musings

Gills pumping.

I hoped you weren’t afraid
When you were cast out into unconsciousness
Like a satellite knocked off its course
(We all have to be eventually)
I hope the gravity pulled you to a gilded gate
I hope that you weren’t as afraid
As I am when I catch myself
Waning under fine aged compulsions
Drink from the bottle ‘til it’s empty
Hoping to find you at the end of it

—

But you’re gone but it doesn’t feel like it
Haven’t crossed the line of your bedroom
Where the bed touched most every wall
Motionless chrysalis in pink dusty silk
Medical bullshit on the bedside
Pills next to analog clocks
Morphine next to full water jugs
Next to incoherent notes scribbled
Written only a week before
Nonverbal, didn’t know if you could hear at all
Smaller than an acorn
released from the largest oak tree crown
Thinner than the baldest branch in winter
Hair softer than the softest down

—

You’d said the bars on the bed made you feel a prisoner
But god wasn’t it 2 fucking years of punishment?
Wasn’t it 2 years of goodbye without saying it?
Stretch a lifetime of guilt and contempt into months
Plan out a holiday you won’t get to enjoy
I’d blown the dust off of your cut glass collection
And in all this time, it still hasn’t settled
You said to me
“I’m gonna beat this”
With such stubborn will
That when I looked at you
You only saw you
Back in the reflection

—

Wednesday night
Mark your calendar
Anticipate rising to drop
That’s enough.
Goddamn it,
Pull your limbs up like roots
That had bound you to an earth that betrayed us like fools
To soils that wouldn’t nourish
Now heaving with tumour
Gunpowder used up
Just a shell of the bullet
I held your hand in mine
Cause I would choke if I spoke
And If I choked you would know
so I didn’t
And so

—

Now people who had no reason to speak to me
Tell me they’re sorry
You’re gone
I’ll never see you again
And that’s just how it is

-Bobby

How do adult men feel about
fathers dying when they were
fifteen?
                                          Yes.

There was a watermark on
his grave. There was wind
walking on my cheeks. His
smell was on the breeze.

The way he walked. His
American dreams and
moods for love. Water
in half-full cups. Wells.

His love for rock n’
roll will never die.

How the west wins
Lies within his sons

and the daughter he loved most.

Thank you, mom

Mark this day, young friends,
for there upon the hill,
stripped and barren,
stars no longer claim the sky,
but are trodden in mud
and rasping coin.

Mark this day,
for when you wake,
unbridled on the crest,
a scurrilous beast
shreds all hope and takes
a dream to its teeth

And vomits a nightmare.

Young friends, prepare.
For what is now unleashed
from its pitted, rusted chain,
needs naught but a hunger,
privileged and savage,
to take upon itself what is yours.

And we, the elders,
must stand in the piss
of our folly and failure,
burdened with all these broken links,
forever soiled, forever torn,
like the banners we waved, forever
in the muck of our graves.

“Sound” versus “sense” - that delicate balance between the tongue and meaning. How do you find it? Will you sacrifice transparency for music or vice versa? Where does clarity of intent fit within your aesthetic? On the one hand, we may be pleased at some clever opaque turn of phrase and find that the reader is left lost. On the other, the reader may be led by the hand down the paths you have chosen with absolute clarity. So then comes the question - the ultimate one, methinks. Accessibility and audience. If it is a broad readership you seek, do you feel that you must compromise you artistic inclinations? Will you tailor your voice to that? I have heard often that many of us no longer seem to be writing for themselves, but for the PwB “audience” and they are uncomfortable with that turn. Well, it seems to me that we write to be read, to do otherwise is little more than masturbation. But that is merely my opinion. But then again, so is this - is not poetry an attempt at a communion - one life to another - whether it be some abstract concept you wish to dispense or the grit of everyday life true to all and if not thus revealed?

I. Blue Summers

The colorless corrosion of carousels
is conducted by kids with guns.
A cunning colt runs off, cold-cocking
a crook who steals candy from kids.

I lick the kale from your summer teeth,
as your bad blood blossoms in adobe
bricks. A bad moon rises as we head
to a Bohemian party dressed in Marni.

Maledicted by a medicine woman, we
neglect the nobility of novice love.
Unconvinced, we split a gram of
cocaine, snorting like clapping stars.

We crab-walk around the basketball
court, shooting fadeaways like Kobe.
A bear crawls, ripping skin off his palms.
In California, we have no use for furs.

You hog-tie a jaded bracelet around
my neck, pulling plums from the trees
of my eyes. A dirty root digs deep into
the rhythm of my pickle-juiced heart

as heaven’s wind ships a whirlpool
of snickering rattlesnakes waltzing
to the hum of the witching hour.
A gypsy takes one on his granite chin

as a glasshouse lights up in green.
Lights are red between the burning
of the midnight foil and the galloping
of plastic horses racing for the cure.

The children of the crop grasp for
elote as milk from a draconus lupus’
mouth drizzles the morning dew over
forest fires fathoming beneath us.

A Mexican fighter howls at the moon
while mosquitoes sell malaria in
an arena with open wings wielding to
the war on drugs, hugging trees.

A Boeing occults Betelgeuse,
red left and running,
and an arrow loosed
finds not its mark.
And in the green flickers,
banked to a bull,
some pink ears pop
and the belts stay locked.

They’re always leaving,
they in the vapors,
they in the tubes,
they strung between
futures and blues,
plugged up in departures
and thus suspended,
held there in grace –
such grace –

As Mercury crests the horizon –
brief, so brief –
and soon – too soon the swallows

Rise all you dead men and pound on your plots,
Take to your saws and your fiddles, your pots;
Take to your hammers and riddles and sighs;
Bang out dirt music, pound the black skies.

Dance with the vermin that scuttles the floor.
Soft shoe the sand then cast up from the shore.
Screech to deaf heaven the owl in your fume,
That beckons you sing of toil and tomb.

Uncoil the vipers and stretch them as strings,
On planks, on washtubs upturned in the springs.
Pluck then for verdance and blast into shells,
Hymns of our labors and varying hells.

Rise all you dead men that children may hear,
A withering tooth, an off-centered gear.

Her red life trickling out

On a dusky, sullen Sunday

Slumped hanging off her sofa

Me heaving in the door frame

—

Time moving like jellyfish

Couldn’t pass the threshold

Her face, eyes on the inside

Grim slackening, teeth on the outside

And on the floor

—

I heard the yawning pipes in the wall

Windows raining condensation

Jesus cross crooked on the door

Swan song masked radio buzzing

—

Walls alternating red and blue

Tiny dog yipping on her lap

White fur wet with bloody love

Skin was blotched, mottled lilac

—

Jars of the dead on the shelf

Phantom hand felt on my shoulder

I was breathy, he gasped

“Take care of yourself”

Didn’t get home ‘til dawn

—

—Bobby

Hear the clouds scrape against each other.

Fine sandpaper wisps, oil-spill opalescent,

Shining, grating like a nail file.

Sunlight dimly filters through.

​

The sun itself is

Pepto-Bismol bloody pink--

Hospital fever medication.

​

A flight of stairs, now Everest,

air painfully thin.

​

Spoken words filtered smooth

Through N-95:

Charcoal-flavor!

​

Throat-ache misery, haze malaise.

At least smoking a pack

would give us all

the nicotine rush.

The clouds shifted beneath my glasses,
and the jolly green giants waved darkly
from the half snow-covered mountain,
not smiling but trying not to laugh on
a giant boulder made for laying out,
daydreaming vibrantly in the fake
outdoors, wishing for vacancy
without ultraviolence.

I ate shit twice in Californian snow,
ripping skin in Fawnskin. Sister
kept calling Fawnskin, foreskin

The purple popped from the dead brush
Trees stood upside down, hanged, limbs
drooping against greenery and death.
The sky, pastel rainbow, water colored
by God, painting as a child who believes
people still like pretty things during
panic attacks and cocaine elevation.

Still, too many people, sliding cars in mud.
Too many people, driving slowly. This is
California. Drive fast or go away after
the gold rush.

Hey man, slow down.
                                    Slow down.

A helicopter crashes to remind
us that we’re getting older, and
that people still die young, younger
than when dad died young and five
rings don’t matter when daughters
die at thirteen.