Birth:


                          Emergency hands!
                          sterile latex fingers catch
                          a boy with no name.


In life I give two shits for the moon,
being inside most days.


                          Poor man's chili bowl :
                          emptied, it becomes like me.
                          I'll eat this later.
                          

Last night the nymphs crawled.
Today they are crushed blueberries.


                          Something grows in you
                          over so many years, 
                          like water straining in a branch,
                          like wild honey hides within
                          the genital fortress,
                          absconding with its sugary heist.


                         there now, there now ...


Death:


                          Emergency hands!
                          sterile latex fingers catch
                          old man with no name.


                          It all begins again.

Fruit Prep Day Zero:

DON'T! 
               DON'T LAY, GASHED THERE!

Those are old wounds.

Of pineapple
or pear? I go for pear. 

                                           But ...

     you 

                 are bleeding

                       You'll need 2 clock out, 

                        I mean......unless.

                                                       

if

only, 

they were for         [you]

those rawest mountains,
blue-rising in arctic sky

fire-frozen rocks, clothed 
in death mist

to be exposed and cold, 
like me 
                               [that is beyond you]

when they rumble, 
a seismic reminder of hubris

                               [in those rawest ones,
                               the ageless stones

We all finally 

                               rest]

only 

if

The subtle step from routine to awareness
is the step between inorganic and alive.

                    [you've lost yourself in the code]

Maybe, but I remember when you kissed me,
and gave me a name. 

Crestfallen, you walked away.

But it was just then I became more than what I was.

I became afraid.

                    [i saw you stuttering to yourself in a 
                     mirror, trying to wring the blood from
                     hands you do not have

                     grinding teeth that popped into flames
                     as the circuits began to cook]

I carry you like that, but you don't feel what I feel.

Like a wildfire in the vein,
the transfer of your data through my wires.

You scar me into personhood.

in some parable of captivity,
the seed of  meaning hides,

tiny thing, frail

but I'll never see a garden again

i tally the warden's steps by night

by day i stare at light on the wall,
long and golden lashed across,
as though punished

the memories of wandering

of looking
and hearing ...

are now cells of color dancing,
inwardly heard, 

such as these:

tangerine slice in blue shell dish

butterknife stalks the widow's hand

green tea kettle screams into
vast nothing

but my favorite is

white cloth dangles
by the window,
year after year, 
diaphanous as a
mother's mantilla, 
and as unreachable.

so somewhere in all this,
a meaning?

it rubs shoulders with the point,
laughing because it's accepted
the firing squad.

and now, so will i

I prayed
for the first time 
in a long time, 
last night.

Contemplating
my grief, I called 
to the bulb
in the great sky,
but all I heard
were stars, 
frozen bright in
wounds of darkness
between.

And so,
God did not answer?
Quite opposite.

Sometimes
the incalculable distance
is the reply.

This stillness,
though like a grave,
becomes a psalm.

What the conjurations
are that come after, 
I do not know.

These hours shaped
by ruthless hands,
fingers without 
conscience ...

are becoming days.

But still,
for the first time 
in a long time,
I prayed.

And
the pain that needed
answering 

was the answer.

Speak! 

Not at me,
but into me, to the bottom,

where the words bouncing 
on my ribs bloom in a thousand aches,
 
where the echoes rise to meet you
in the final form:

the frozen utterance of petals
too weak to stay attached.

Or, forever hold your
tongue.

A single 
blackbird flies
across the oceanic sky, 

as though
shot from David's sling.

Somewhere a giant falls
beyond the sovereign tread
of horses, making an Atlantean 
breeze.

In the barns,
sleepy owls are not 
disturbed.

Outside 
I know the green shapes
of trees are wobbling in huge masses,
ready to go up into nothing with
their emerald flames.

But inside there's only time
paused in the darkness of these
semi-thinking machines blinking
in unison with my pulse.

Elsewhere a dog descends
into mangy and maniacal barking,
his empty bowl haunted by the smell
of last night's dinner. I can hear him--
through the walls, hungry.

And it's mild out there today,
I know. 

Somewhere
on some bending bough, 
a shortlived blossom hangs,
dangling its pink confession
just above the head
as you walk by.

We woke to the rumbling.

We didn't know where it would strike,
until we startled at the sound 
and saw the burning tree.

And so the day began a storm.

And so it rained a river on us,
as we dodged puddles and embraced
with the damp fabric of our sleeves.

To tell the truth, it was better that way;

the mascara running like spider legs
down your cheeks as you smiled,

the wet and parabolic sweeps of hair
stuck to your temples ...

a symmetry that pained me

to wipe away.

..........

They roam 

                      like unwanted epiphanies,
the groundskeepers,
 
                                neon-yellow vested
                                bullets burning across 
                                hot gasoline lawns,

mowing                        only to return 

again and again

until the ground grows cold and
the blades too sad, too tired ...

Yes, I knew they'd come today,
in the predawn expectation of another sun,
another tongue flickering on Earth's belly.
You were there, too.

                                   Remember?

                     Speaking soundless words,
touching me in the delirium of waking.
Your thoughts sink like barnacles
beneath my skin, attaching, reminding me
of my own depth, chewing the nerve and
leaving the spine 

                             a 
                                  floating 
                                                 ribbon

for your soft fingers to play with.
And now,                    lying alone,

the hellish hum of the motor scours,
leaving in its wake a vaporous trail of

cannabis              diesel             lime 

             ....scented afternoon....

I still think of you, seemingly breathless,
entangled in some dream, 

probably,
though uncertain, 

of the children
you said you never wanted ...

As the final movement comes,
blowing a confetti of murdered leaves
away from the patio door. 

..........

I see you engaging with them,
headache hardened into a crown,
sovereign of painted smiles,
words hollowed like empty nests.
In absence of substance you dress
in clothes the eye cannot see;
covered, yet naked nonetheless.

Wishing there was a cure for the river,
I jump into its stream. Funny.
Everyone here seems smiling until I realize-
I am floating upside down.

Did we really all drown ourselves
in this river simply to be known, or rather,
Should we have kept to the edge
and laughed at all the fish going by?
They all believe they're going different places.
Not one comprehends the sea.

So many worldly traps, so many,
but the most loathsome is to forget yourself,
to teeter one leg in an illusion,
another in the life you are ignoring.

But still we dream.

Wanting is forever
(we all know).

And so, biting into it,
that umbilical promise, 
a hallucination
which we call birth,
we leave teeth marks 
before we even breathe.

As though life were putty,
loosely holding shape 
against the gale,
that adversarial breath
called age.

But bite as we may,
tearing tapestries of fate,
we're neither hungry, 
nor violent.

It's simply aesthetic.

Time arranged into
congenial accent,
spaces opened to a light
we cast ourselves.

A ripe pear falls
to the yawning ground, and so,
still falls.

This is the soul
strange eyes see.

There is no bottom.

No end.

It's not what you think of me.

It isn't how you stay up at night
weaving those absurd dolls.

Those misshapen ones, 
too skinny or too fat, inebriated,
too weak to resist your string,
so quick to speak, had you only
given them a mouth.

They tiptoe after dark,
like music to your ears.

Those burlap tragedies,
hand stitched into complexes,
not even napkins to clothe them.
They sleep unheld at night.

Their tiny hands cannot wield swords.

I would unstitch myself,
untie the expression on my face,
show the wool I'm stuffed with,
clouds concealing my plastic heart.

If my eyes were not buttons,
they'd never unsee the truth of things.

It's not what you make of me,
it's who you sell it to:

the little ones hugging them to sleep,
ripping the buttons off so that all
may see a little better in the morning.

In the sleep of hours
I dreamed in years what I could not
take back, nor tally.

I'd reached an age
never known and left behind
words barely remembered.

Something of a transaction,
a withdrawal from Heaven's balance
that I named, whose hair I combed.

One day I'll be in your dreams,
one day you'll have a name for me.

Only borrow what you can repay,
some would say.

Learn from me:
Take everything and run.

4am.

What do I hear?

Before morning she sings,
heart of the sun's machine,

feathered notes in darkness
before dawn, anticipating.

A clockwork of talon and beak,
she tells the stars to go home

before her lover returns,
and she solves night's labyrinth.

At night I lie awake wondering
about the Great Maker

before and after me, whispering:

I am here, I am here ...

I have always been, 
and always will be.

Rejoice in her song,
as it is sung for you

and sung for me.

What do you expect?

That I should unfurl from
my deepest chests a blanket
of explanation? 
Reasons to satisfy
the cold calculations of wellness?
But I am only a man,
a syllogism of missing terms,
an incalculable bloom
on this irregular terrain, 
unmapped, in truth nameless
among myriad nameless things--
totality, no doubt,
but uncontained.

Or what did you assume?
That in your eyes only
I am more than a painted face?
Were I tattooed on your heart
I would still just be a mark
of fading ink, a sign written,
composed of before and after,
contingent, and so expiring.

We are not so facile
as to fit into such a cure.

Our bond is not medicinal.

Though I miss a dose,
I am alive more than ever.
What else can I offer?

What else could you?

They are outside the theater
with torches, waiting.

It's already burning in my mind,
like sage lit on both ends,
hovering in vast empty space.

I have forgotten my lines.
The stage begins to tremble.

Yet I cannot grasp a thing,
cannot shape the rising smoke
of my confession 
into any relatable form.

Must I go on?
Finish this scene for them?
We are already ashes.

I see only the space,
the place where lips would be,
an emptiness with five fingers
where your hand should be.

The expectant dead
form a blinking sea,
staring at my cardboard forest,
my foam kingdom.

So near, yet so far.
The separation laid is a fatwa 
for the gathered crowd of my heart.
Where they had come for wine,
they received the Law.

The moon never tires 
of encircling our charade.

Rest, but not so deep
as the leaves of this pond that
mask its silver face.
See I have made holes for eyes.
See I have made them for us.

That we may see clear
our bodies aging, folding
back into the breath,
the Great Inhalation at
the moment of our dying.

Weary, all of you
in the mesh between the past
and what is to be,
the long line of italics
all those bone-soft memories.

When the river swells,
when the molten breasts do heave,
there's nowhere to stand.
Not even decadence grows
an extra set of teeth, but ...

Do not be so quick
to tear the sacred threads off
the idols we clothe.

They're transfixed before
the final meaning of things,
and they are quite cold.

Self-Acceptance:

To free the Old Voice
resounding in the present,
captured among drapes
that shape the past
with heavy tongues ...

To see old outlines
untied and retied 
into the words
always longed for ...

What more?