A Stone's Dream

Sail dream,
Soar upon gossamer hopes
That breathe with every wind

I am wrapped up ever warmer
In wishes of you and I
In a nursery of windows
From the library of sighs

Sweet lilies are like envy
Singing of those storms
Lone raindrops still echo
With my utterance in tone

If sculptors chisel marble to life
Then let these words be chisel and life
And we the beauty they shape.

Tyes

The heavy touch of a sweaty palmed sun
Summer kisses like autumn leaves,
First warming your flesh
Soothing your eyes. . .

They're smoldering, steaming
Hot pouring downs,
Like parachutes of torn, silken ghosts

Confusing your nose.
Battering anger at your lips.

Pouring into your swollen eyes
Engorged rivers of concrete soot,
Flooding your paper clip nostrils
With burning, boiling grass, bark
Sun©dried beers and stale smoke©breaths

Your eyes climbed to the fall
Like stone birds through liquid sky
Fallen on green tufts of shotgun spreads
On the mongrel back of a mangled earth,
Like jade ringlets heralding sickness;
The wasting wit upon dull skin.

Ben

Life burdens me with these wrong colored eyes
Rusted fire escapes watching city streets cry
Lovers entwined through a stain glass mirror
The mu-shu poultry has a better life than me
"Sail again!" cries my soggy Viking soul
Tethered to a laundry line, longing to be free

Has©been whores beckon,"Pay me. I ain't free"
Visions of pigeons satisfy covetous eyes
Threadbare boxers bind a dirty grey soul
Membranous walls vibrate with an orgasmic cry
O.D.'ed on msg,"Wish it were me..."
Carelessly waltzing razors delight my mirror

Union of vein with vampiric mirror
Tortuous crimson interstates gush forth toll©free
Red armies issue from deep within me
Defiling virginal white fields before my eyes
"Retreat!" I, a fallen general, cry
Dizzying runoff enchants an imprisoned soul

The bottomless pit draws this naive soul
"Squares fit poorly in small, round holes" mocks the mirror
"Quit bleeding on me!" angry floorboards cry
Upsetting a roach motel, setting captives free
Firing skittering forms before my eyes
Broke a scattering mind within this stinking sock

- 1995



This was my first and last try at conforming to a tight format like this. I gave it a shot at my friend Ben's request. This poem was written in collaboration with a friend.

words

What lies in words
but absurdity's turds

grow fence and frieze
round a heart weary poet

despair the first
drowned in dead necrotic days

pity the twin
bound by eons crazed and cursed

abhor the terce
cloaked by laughter dense as sin

Why bear dreams that cannot not scheme
And dream tattered but without sleep
Why keep mine mortal yet so fierce
but to pierce an ache deferred.

a sonnet three lines upon it

Why trifle with this thing of prose
where words are beaten into heart
and weathering, withers to english pose

perhaps it better suit the part
a reign, I meant in poetry
my only musing art

as I am certain lechery
can rattle more than little springs
oh... and suitors bent on butchery

counting pool with finer things
a skill of dead, degenerated time
and angled, pointed dealings

and what indeed can rival rhyme
or image lain in lines that free
decieving ears while hours while and chime

what sinner knows better love than we
when it is ourself that sinner be

One night, I found myself again

One night, I found myself again. I was scouring spidery old crevices of bureaucracies for an outdated treasure. I longed for blue screens and frantic blocky cursor. . . the faithful scalpel of creaky clerks, who scuttle for shade in the belly of governmental dead-letter offices.

I was drawn to the early glimmerings of technology that stealthily, stubbornly persist to this day. Such things are heavily watermarked with sweaty familiarity, an in-bred allergy to progress, and long forgotten sacrifices upon an altar to genuine usefulness, made by long discarded grand-sires.

A writer of a decade ago would have sought an antique typewriter. Something spindly and frail in its architecture, but famously reliable by reputation. He would have accepted the various quirks of such a machine, like adopting an old hound that likes to circle and prowl after the stooped little old ladies walking home from market.

There are the vicious junk peddlers who pretend legal sensibilities when offering these expired baubles for their original list price. Certainly, amazing given that the moment you drive a car off the lot, its value crashes. And yet, software suited to monochrome orangey, greys and greens. . . for this they ask a premium. No matter. I haven't yet cracked my skull enough times to corroborate the tweed day-dreams of software's used car-salesmen.

Then again, there are the delinquents, with their perpetually black places of business. They offer in a breath, the object of your desires, surely obligation free erotica, and a wholly unrelated set of undesirable infections to co-opt, corrupt and kaput your silicon consciousness. I often have trouble getting over the enormity of their hospitality.

But this is the preferable path, to tread among the spare razors of sharks and self-mutilators; that the right bloody trail will float by. . it seems inevitable.

King of the subway

He sat
on his time-eaten,
bring-your-own-beat-up-sofa-throne
eating
Campbell's New
England Clam Chowder with a bent
fork from some Chinese
take-out place,
directly out of the can.

His fork pillaged the contents
from the rusting can,
returning white gobs to his
dainty
sore
cratered lips.


- 1992



The New York City subway was and likely always will be an excellent place for unique character studies that don't lend themselves to repetition. It is a pity the millions who ride the silver dragons every day so rarely ever give a rat's ass.