Diffidi

1.

i am dyed in silence.
i sit here and drown in the drone and din,
the hurt of curt keystrokes.

worthless conversation,
flatulent reconstructions of nothing into words
elegance of thought,
air sculptures of the tongue. . .


carving inconsequential holes
smiling siege engineers of mind
and calligraphers pen the glyphs
of a make believe mythology
and nothing.

only the dead are blameless

2.

this only hurts in the chest
and out to the finger joints
back when i came into my life
i used to get bad. . .

i couldn't breathe and my joints in my hand on arms
would ache . . and i'd just cry and chew on them
that, was bad.


compared . . this is daisies
the kind we handle with hands full

during the chance reunions
when we gather together
to count.


- 1999

written shortly before graduation and all that ensued.

Slim Grin

I picked flowers grown in the dim breaks of a wall
faltered peaceful over dreaming slinks
like old starlight and broken leaves
smiling through me at old midnight

and when i go mad, the grass will linger over my temples
little Grey lines, all that's left of our world
worship-fully tracing out constellations and other aberrant shapes
distant searchlights, surrounding and hounding our eyes closed

glitching off a red brown tin,
the violent banter of swollen wings fixed with starlight pins
the feeling awful, the missing
the far away sympathy of wind turned dust piles on the floor

amid this frail lattice of adhesion and illusory smoke
hush my dear and use your lips for something else.

Tri

there were five geese en-rapt in dreaming

their dappled browns, and elegant long black gloved necks made for spare faces
they didn't used to fly. .

they would swim about a little green pond, beside an ivy-eyed gazebo
their feet turn storms below, when sunlight cuts deeply through
the glass green water;
little oars, slipping motion onto waves.

they had no need of song.
Braved out the whites of their chests (when rain fell in spirals)
Held their wings broad as the hour of morning

and one day, before the heralds of autumn, the sky emptied of flight.
there were only feathers, tracing the lips of a wake, ripples and wavelets.

i held too tightly onto the last goose.
i feared she'd disappear like the others
unreeled into air, without a trace of reason
they didn't used to fly. .

i wished for the sounding of voices amid her wings,
i could have understood as they did, in silence.

and perhaps fall asleep,
they didn't used to fly. .
but most surely i fell.
she had parted when i awoke. . .

Untitled

When sleep beckons
I want no pillow
but your arm,
and no cover
but your body
wrapped around mine,
and no dreams
lest they should
steal me away from you . . .

I can feel you
even through the heavy veil
of sleep.



A short piece on the comfortable, sleepy nature of love.

Chalk

And it was on the written hundred feet
of open chalk that i found tears to cry

because my white letters would bleed
with more eloquence than they were shaped

because i could not help eyes to find a quiet
to fully fill their droughts

it was the wet shoulders of an end
attempting to bear another

beginning, new again, to be fogged
with time and evening talks

to hold the glisters of gathering dew
as they bundle loosely again

on the edges of the dreaming world
lashes webbed with oceans

stickling new wholes
in twins and trines.



The best possible thing on a summer night in New York. Just keep a friend on lookout as it's entirely too easy to become lost while writing.

After the rain. . .

Ministers of life grant leaves of peace
So we can watch others bruise their little
paws on mean tempers of steel gilded fleece
Empty needles litter floors like spittle

Voodoo liquids eat like experience
Hot barracudas swim our flesh-waters
to screaming pieces, peaceless, for penance
for bits of data, never for martyrs

When our turn to tumble came, we broke
Flung apart, skin beneath a lashing belt
Scratching bars gilded by tin waves of coke
And all the dreams that ended, torn like felt

embody this night in a cobbled pane,
where two can match one star, after the rain.

- 1997


There was a part of mercer street that I loved in the village. It is where pavement fails and a bit of New York's cobble stone spine peeks through the asphalt, as if to gleefully remind cars that this wasn't their city once upon a time. On this street was a store called the enchanted forest. I'm fairly certain I've only ever gone in there once, but their signage, and wistful window dressing always inspired me, particularly on rainy nights.

BW Life

White sand paper, pueblo walls
Baptized of a moment's wrath
Shingled hands of woven clay
Suns hold grains of sullen white
Days guard the sleeping form
Children couching their flaccid heads

Reaching toward brilliance, a moment
Confused by the theft of mere image
Flourished by cheaply sibilant moments
By artful sharpers of the eye

Limp, lulled limbs of little ones
Holding button-eyed saw-dust dolls
As cooing mothers who first gave eye
to whom on cool hospital sheets do lie.

Less Than A Memory

Times of fools and passions fall
In pace behind a kiss
As tear and time stroll by
I saw these dreams only made me lie

Standing by a tip of pen
Less than a memory. . .

Now I'm less than a broken word
We lay prone to each other
And supine to the world
Oh. . . to taste the tears
upon your skin

Balancing on the edge of my mind
Less than a memory. . .

Can the mind forever remember
While the heart fades and forgets
Losing within the faceted faces
Life in lives and the blood of words

Here at the ends of means
Less than a memory.

This Sonnet Sucketh

Resentment of such stifled craft and crapped,
Can bellow louder in no heart but art.
These terms of wild endeavors roam within
the malcontent of fevered pens entrapped.

We toss our muse upon a flame to start,
And rob the sweetness of a line with twine;
For no words sing imprisoned by cement
and mortar made by dead men, stern and tart.

My pick of tongues but speed a swift decline,
For frames of meaning I had never meant;
lay twisted playthings to a metric bent;
Stealing dreamers' idle and iron spine.

And suffered through this torturous weighing,
We speak, "I don't miss hating my writing."