Alter

Long tendrils of grass, bent
backward by loving exhalations
of air, right themselves
like unhurried ballet dancers
between falling curtains
of spring sunlight.
He sat in their circle around
the pool of mirror glass,
watchful in the low lamp’s rays,
to grasp the instant hesitation
and guilt would wash away
as easily as breathing.

The Six Chords I Strummed While We Lived

You, a peen hammered sculpture of woman, tuned by an athletic & perverse ear both formidable in its endowments & toyish in its tasks, whose shadow could no longer accommodate my pluck & pithiness.

Anticlimaxes flow like sex in a tub brimming with insecurity. That was the last thought in my mind as we fought, you, bare to the hips, & me, only bare, as your words burst like pox behind my eye lids.

“I’ll wake up early, is all.” Drunken calculus flew between us, under-armored bombers, spotlighted, on night raids over Berlin as we closed our eyes & fired shots until the stockpile was spent.

What was I to do with a red box of 2200 bright orange snack crackers? Who could know with 15 beers under their belt? Going out your 2nd story window with them, just to spite you, was not my best idea.

I watched you fuck her; granted we all wanted a piece of Lizelle that year. I never waxed prolific as I did that night, but the problem with having a Crayola heart is that the agreeable colors tend to run out first.

“Quick! Eat all the tangerines before they open the door!” Wednesdays were the best; do you remember those as clearly as I do? Clear as Sunday’s sun breaching Saturday’s tented & rain washed scraps?

Sheet Metal

Sheet metal, like white silk whipped away in a sea gale.
Sheet metal, like glass dribbling from the lips of a polished glans.
Sheet metal, like malice poured from the heart of the black god of pestilence.
Sheet metal, like marrow drawn from the veins of Mt. St. Helen's bones.
Sheet metal, like purpose forged on Fujiyama by a contemplative hammer's blow.
Sheet metal, like a tapestry in the weaver’s dens of Hell’s neglected corner shops.
Sheet metal, like arrogance marching lock step on foreign shores.
Sheet metal, like tanned hills, sprinting to the cliff faces of the Atlantic.
Sheet metal, like sunlight turned and cradled between unwet breasts.
Sheet metal, like the pounding heart of an iridescent and midnight city.
Sheet metal, like the cobblestone path, moss broken, beside a brook.
Sheet metal, like pages torn from books unwritten.

Recalling the Affair that Precipitated the 4th & Final Divorce

I am the clocks hands;
the movements
first,
second,
and ever lastly.

Take to me your heart
cased not in glass
that every quark, gluon, and muon,
might cleave to me
as blue molten lead
riddles through fibrous and fatty drapes.

Press that furnace,
your folded and flaming tensions,
against my fields, my endless white planes
and burst into vapors my red veins.

Beat wings of cancer,
leper,
and decay,
and bring like the quick silver tide
half lives coursing our names.

Under the Kitchen Sink and Looking for a Raise

(For Charlie. A cat.)




You can’t send faxes with the lights
Turned off, can you Charlie?
Working seven days a week
And the ends still don’t meet.
Cursing your lousy and lukewarm
Lot won’t get you any closer
Will it Charlie?

Making next to nothing a day
Though you’re at the office
Before the sun and after the moon.
And the ends still don’t meet.
By candle light you write to clients
To grow the business, but
Will it Charlie?

You are missed at home,
Please send word that you are okay,
We are worried for your sanity,
And the ends that don’t meet.
Pulling down six figures is your dream,
From where happiness comes, but
Will it Charlie?

You’ve been at that adding machine
Marking, middling, and mlexing
Through the morass of figures
And the ends still don’t meet.
We’re pulling for your venture and
We believe in you! Keep your spirits and
Will it Charlie.

Good fortune will shine someday
And if it doesn’t, just remember
You still have us, and we don’t care if
The ends still don’t meet.
We’ll spend whole days in bed.
You say a white collar makes happiness, but
Will it Charlie?

Fristening

Would us feel any more natural
Any less like apologetics and pastlicks
Of a strawberried tongue to a hot iron
And nothing but raw pounds of wirey
Lactic and festering flesh to eat?
would the air we share equally be
breaths slipping and surging in every knot
and bulge of greasy stony pink blackness?

Would the left hand of righteous
Nestle close to the tiny lines of little bones
Of the half dead and humorless hare heads
Held fast to earth by long past drivers
Crush what the right would save?
Would our clasping fingertips feel the
Breaths slipping and surging in every knot
And bulge of greasy stony pink blackness?

Would we believe me if I said
“I was alive in the fristening moment-”

We Are Connected

We are not all made of primordial soup.
Some of us are made of anti matter,
but not the quantity of smoke.
Some of us throw off muons and gluons
and little non particles until we dissappear.
Some of us burn with blue heat.
Microwaves exciting the atoms of water
in everyone around us until they explode.
Some of us are made of heavy metals,
and break every bone we clasp with grim
pleasure.

We are not all made of primordial soup.
Some of us are made of trifling
flies, grazing beside resting ears.
Some of us conspire with the devil
to snatch a body to call our own.
Some of us dissolve into spittle.
Acid blood eating us away into slicks
that cling to the soles of everyone's feet.
Some of us are made of fleas,
and sip from holes torn with ardourous
hunger.

We are not all made of primordial soup.
Some of us are made of calculations
that keen like sharpening knives.
Some of us moan in the heat of daylight,
like victorian hulks waiting for the eve.
Some of us rattle like cold teeth.
Knashing down and down into luxuriant
grief that fills the naked bellies around us.
Some of us are made of bubbles,
and swallow the soapy gristle with mouse trap
laughter.

Walking The Dog Some Summer Nights

The sweet smell of rain is what comes to me
when I break blown out light bulbs on the midnight
side street that shines like water with bits of reflective
granite and clicks and taps like a rusted metal drum
in a down pour when my dogs claws scritch and scratch
across it with every paw stroke of his excited trotting.

The sweet smell of rain is what comes to me
when the bulbs pop like a child's gasping after
knuckles are struck with disciplines ruler and the shards
settle like stars winking out just after a baseball
strikes the bridge of your nose and you understand your life
doesnt flash before your eyes unless youre really going to
die.

The sweet smell of rain is what comes to me
some dry summer nights when i walk my dog around
the empty cul de sacs and the trees lean over real close
to catch a taste of the rain they've been thirsting for
or perhaps
to take a swipe at my dog as he lifts his hind leg again.