Missing

eyes crazed with dreaming
far lights on the river water

found emptiness below bridges
and weeds growing to be bare

arms embracing bodily cold
digging into their shoulders

pens scratching till empty
paper crumpled into monuments

smoke and dim pool hall lights
lonely in sound of a break

carven stone archways gape wide
echoing a pair of boots

breathing slowed to dreaming
the long stem rose at your door

- 1996

Puddle Cutter

I remember my cherry red cracked trike and I
cutting figure 4's and 8's
on sheets of clear fallen eyes

Pedals whetted and wheeled on squeaky streets
broad strokes and stray s-s-smears
turn spots of grey to skies again

Round rubbered tires, trite and true
giggled grand geysering oceans
and tickled flat clouds to piece

I walk the graven streets of sheeted sky
Mirror bright shoes stepping nimble
and dry as my umbrella hitched arm

Cracking a secretive glance around
I cut a puddle through to ground.

Lost Kiss

I am to you a drop of darkness

Spreading across the holy waters
   of a glittering morning soul
How can one delay the destiny of dawn
By letting slip the translations
Of the stars in my chanced upon part
In the bejeweled constellation
   that prophesies us

I wonder of this curious thing
That lingers in the taste of a kiss

That first gingerly conceived kiss
Sweaty palmed contact of two trembling leaves
Sweetness tainted in nervousness
Glazed with the soft madness of anticipation
Like two roses touching in the breeze
Two fearful hearts starting to believe

Perhaps I seek that bold five-hundredth kiss
Seduced by sweet celebrations of champagne
And difficult to pronounce French dishes
It tastes like two warm hands
Clasped together in a certain prayer
Asking that they part as albatross wings
Beating to the rhythm of one heart

Wandering the raven nights within your hair
Cut from the canvas of elusive dreams
I am so anxious for the freedom in your eyes
Longing to quench a burning noontide life
To pencil the glory of my dawn for her. . .
She of eyes lost upon a sky of gems

To stay a prophet of forgotten suns
   wrapped pretty in crepe 
Bound in mesmerizing twists of fate
Can only keep me from giving. . .
   that fairy tale kiss
And seeing all the seasons
In the perfect creations of two lost souls.

- 1996

I don't hate this poem as much anymore. It used to be oppressive, not it's far enough away to just enjoy. Thanks to Rebecca Paisley for using this in her book.

Seed of the Nothing Tree

The legend of wings falling endlessly into an emptied sky
I can forever drink vast blueness
from the thin lips of this bottle

Free-basing the river of lifetimes
Into the stench of a ritual vein
Coerced into reluctant being
by the passions of long dead thinkers
Like azure skies and topaz days
Taunted by a glaze of skylines
and lavish diamond fields of night.

Now quit this world of warm carotene smiles
whispered woods of lifted souls
raised high by earthen hearts and hands

Enough of these,
the cloud wreathed crowns of my paramour hopes
life, hugging a fiery thistle
licking hot twists about the tips of my smoking eyes

Like rough scales of forgetful carnage
old photographs immersed in flames
shuddering clumps of life fall from balance
like browned out oatmeal carvings
spilling onto cold linoleum fields of human rust

With an aqueous flicker
of granite partitions and inky land
Let the fingers in my head slip again
falling as sweeping lashes of cindery fogs,
over the brilliant eyes of hungry,
amoral fires.

- 1999

it was a very good year for delusions and poetry. may it never happen again ;)

Es Sands

This the tale of fallen sand
Running past my greedy hand
There are so many who themselves
Were fated lives of living shelves
I shift the pile from hand to hand
To better hold a bit of sand
This keep of fingers clutching tight
Could not resist their shifting might
I watch them plummet down to earth
And smother men of higher birth
With fading breath I count for me
From the millions, but only three
"Bring my tale to other lands and
add your grains to another hand."

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.

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.

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.

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.

smashed in

smashed in,
fleshed out,
quartz needles
in marble veins

bodily soak, corks of dead vintage
body roped with quickened lisps of airy hemp

admitted to the diaphanous habit
art of godhead, incensed spirit eyes
so orange crushed atop horrified stilts,
propped up storms, leaning heavy leather sails

know you've been wrong in your dying since it began the eating

put it all past your carcass
and try hidden violence
on the little voice in shambles
reminding you. . .
you've yet to leave
sobriety.