SMALL WORLD

I am forthright, forthcoming—my admission is this:

                    When I first saw you,
Beauty itself must have inherited your traits.
When I admit things to this extent, I feel that my body
becomes an anxious, nervous wreath twined from a gutted fish,
scales pierced into my solar plexus, as if inching closer to nearing
my finality, as if on the cusp of being impaled.

                    Why should atrocities be applied
to kindness & genuinity? Why should one be tensed to the limit?
What shall one “lose” in this “brutal” honesty?
                   
                    I viewed the Birth of Venus—
I saw you there. Who constructed the chorus of that night
that we first met? To blush by the mere thought of it.
            Was I re-living history? Was that I
standing from afar,
looking upon the beautiful Orphan Girl at the cemetery?
Look closely, I am there. That is no grievance.
Oh, but what grief there is
in knowing that the songbirds’ songs
will be muted in death, or will they?
Their deaths are like new beginnings inside of me,
so the birds live on singing within me,
which is what this poem must be.          Or, was I looking upon
the Young Woman Of Pompeii On A Terrace,
or the rosy blooms of L’innocence? More fair than
Lady Agnew of 1892, than Hayez’s Reclining Odalisque
or The Meditative One—You must be as the Angel
of Thayer’s creative wand; Dicksee’s Portrait of Elsa; 
Perugino’s Mary Magdalene—what else shall arise now?
                    Perhaps you are Ophelia,
having returned from the wells of a wild network of nerves
in the abdomen of the earth! as I look through this silver glass,
aching like history.

                    You said that you should have been born
in a different time & I told you that I have always felt the same way.
Gustav Mahler must still be awaiting my arrival to join him on a train.
I am not as confident as I may appear, as I may seem. I was once
quite melancholy as what a rotten melon could be culled from such
a thought; a salamander underneath a splitting rock; ragweed to the nose—
my confessions are usually repressions, never to see a page,
nor the light of day, or an air to hear these woven particulars.

                    You said that, while in Europe,
on a cold, wintry night, you stood alone on a train—serene
on that immortal locomotive—hark of melodic, soft snowflakes
falling around you, stars falling, a white hawks’ wing ensemble
in a slow-motion, exquisite dreaming, very still, the landscape
reflected the silence of the humane—how does one catch
that morning train?

                    Did you hear about the Ghost Train
in my hometown? You & I jumped off of the same rock at Sprewell Bluff,
but in a different time. You tell L. & I that you have a brick
that came from out of the wall from the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
& you hear that everyone that has taken a brick from that location
has ended up dead, & that you now are afraid that you are going to fall
into that superstitious abyss that you believe is looking back at you,
to pull you into the Reapering darkness. You want to get rid of that
historical brick
              & I want to get rid of this historical frustration,
              this fiendish loneliness
             & my God don’t ever take me seriously,
like some lad in a Nightclub giving gifts to himself—pure stalemate.

I am detached from Logic, apparently; if I were a French poet or artist
would I be more appealing? The idea of something foreign
as more mysterious, what novelties & repertories will you visit again
with your friend?

                    What does The Unknown want from me?
It always comes with a crown of iconic promises,
to seduce & amuse,
but swiftly flees, heartless, soulless, like some troubled troubadour
that cold legends told.

                    I am disguised like thunder;
the weight of the sky is veiled upon what I am made of—
The sky, that is, a starling? I just want a few moments to spare
to be amidst your beauty that has parted from my sight,
but I am trapped like a mouse in a fit of despair,
my eyes still green as emeralds, sleepy like ruby-red,
slippering on boundless oil-slicks—who or what will beckon me
to lift myself from the perspiration of the earth?

                    Some days I feel like I am the head of Holofernes.
What about you? I once knew a girl that was as colorful as a peacock,
but was as violent as a piranha. She was Judith with a sword, my head
she held in her hands, her cold hands, but she wasn’t an enemy, no.
There are times when I am the enemy to myself. I once said that
solitude is a great romance, but I just want to sit with you
maybe where the sun blisters the flowery meadows of Kashmir,
or where the waves kiss the weight of a warm sandscape,
but it could be cold, too, cold as cave-noises. Someone uncloud my mind!

                    I must be too old-fashioned,
like some stylistic concordance, but what is curiosity but satisfaction?
The only security I could provide are in these poems, in sincere love,
& often they seem doomed to starve, as I bite the end of my pen,
sip the last drop of coffee,
look out of the window surprised that it’s now dark
as I feel cat-claws clenched into the soles of my feet.

POEM

Please move the sunlight to the front of 
                                                                 the fading beauty queen—

what is Old Age
                                                           =      heartbeats-over-heartbeats. 

To survive 
is to interpret gaseous vulgarity as what it is not 
with a breast plate of righteousness 
that is like neurosis-force 
as if the characters on the pages of a play that you are reading 
                 stepped out of the play & spoke to you face-to-face: 

pyramid of life containing a cone of visual divinity, 
an allegorical cathedral—

                                                            I watched as my grandmother 

tried to place flowers upon a gravestone 
inside of an image of a stained-glass window—
                                                            the archaic colors reflecting onto her craggy 
face, a heavenly banquet, 
shadows fitting between light & object: 

the body figuration of one’s whole terrestrial mass & 

                                                           l
the mind/mind               s                    p                 i                         t 

 s                                                 p                  lit

                                                                      i
                                      s                    p                  r            i           t

out        of        focus 
                                    
to touch the sonic, roaring phantom ahead of us— 

nothing but traces in the shape of Lions. 

THOUGHT MACHINE

pages of a magazine so thick that you think
that two pages are stuck together, so you rub
your index finger & thumb at the top-corner
of the page so as to separate them apart___
my pores are singing; choral Singapore___
I could be the Temminck’s Tragopan’s blue,
bluer, awkward nudity, plucked & walking;
the rancid scent of cat-feces fills my nostrils
___how quickly things can change from be
-autiful to ghastly___where is my neutral
Pronunciación?___My life is full of one
throbbing Paradox, sharpest nothings,
enter an air of a phantom presence, who___

the old Jamaican man tells me that he moved
from Jamaica when he was nineteen years old;
lived in Florida, then to California, then to
South Carolina, now in Georgia; his brother
is a farmer in Jamaica; he is returning soon,
will pack just enough clothes to get by with;
tells me that I should visit someday; the food is
delicious; he is not a slave to convention___
I once spied on a nude girl who took a dive: sat
-urated fat seeped into the swimming pool, pubes
swaying like sea-weed. I was nineteen years old,
like the Jamaican, my sanity hidden in the foot
-hills of a rural countryside, neutral, as my body
glowed like an abstract___

Where/ where/ where/ is my Leonor Fini?
my Gala? My Reality is a fantasy: two
juxtaposed positions, distant & true, passive
& vulnerable, like a wounded chimera___
give me singularity without questions, beauty
between her twixt___diverse glow, surround
-ing the Catholic bell-tower, ring ring ring!
above my skull, halo-glow golden, burning I
turned to see the figure of a fugue, dressed
like a new-comer, or dressed-to-impress, but
she walked passed me into the arms of a man
that looked like radioactive puns, light in
their eyes, the heart’s starchild. I walked away
from the scene, found myself in some strange
place, sat upon a “sharp” toilet—Am I too
young to be so worried? Paint me fainted,
academic-fungi, my horoscope is horror,
reddish obituary ink___the sun questions its
light; the moon showers in the sun’s relevant
fruit___piths entangled___the voice on the roof
gnawed my name, echoing in a que, Gothic
as a gargoyle atop a cathedral—was this a visible
dream___

every poem that I expel, it’s like I am lying
on a dissecting table, I feel it boil up inside
of my mind, & anxiety’s arching ax comes
upon me as I expect some noise, or voice,
or some sudden something to interrupt the
thoughts that arise inside of me—a toothed,
serrated blade, typhooning my poetic geyser!
___O, my grave awaits my body, but my
spirit will not see any of it as my remains
lie hand-in-hand with my love, absorbing
Death’s impact!—what love, do you say?
the one that awaits me in the middle of a
dense musculatured jungle—my ape
of nothingness, swinging to-and-fro,
my duchess of the soil, my wood nymph,
the earth fossilizing me like an Olenellus—
a permanent window, extinct, but remaining___

Art wears the Spoken Mathematics of Histoire.
Remember nervous, poignant faces___Remember___
beware, art wears us, art is an entire ocean, noted
longitudinally___are you cold in your dreams?___
Fertile jazz, adorned nerves of the Nude: anatomy
spattering circular___Our ocean, your ocean,
deep space shine, rêvieries, skull is skim,
in Play, landscape of Cartier-Bresson’s fingers___
Earlier, honeysuckle aroma filling the air,
as well as the scent of grilled burgers
mocking my hunger: the best of both worlds___
One day I will wake up in a post-Facebook
world, or, I will wake up looking into the face
of Facebook’s postmodern society;
Facebook-posts’ Postmodernism. Spiritual mini
-ature, myriad of disguises I grandeur into___
extra avant-garde jewelry that is continually adorned
in the guise of absolutely retained retina
communication___moon-ink fills my fingers___
skull, away from its light; sun’s thick passive
echoing; pinkish, like your blush___

POEM

       I’m a slaughtered lamb, one would think that I had gone under the knife.
I let the blood of my body empty-out, becoming a crimson river,

what soft allure, what grotesques we all are? We all want warmth, 
but foul water, foul, sickening, sickly, air particles sucked into our lungs

is all that we have—timorous toadstools sprout, charming me like a woman 
that has forgotten how to charm but instead proportionately chooses to “hate”—
 
I know of a woman much older than me who truly loved me, years ago—
old enough to be my mother—Georgiana. She loved frogs & had frog statues
on her front porch.
       One hot, muggy summer afternoon I helped her move away from the boondocks
& her dog nearly grated my leg into repulsion— Thus Spoke The Angry Dog! 
She told me that she wrote a lot of poetry but was always hesitant
to let me read any of her work. I felt that she was lying to me, but I did not 
reveal those feelings to her,
       & one day—a hot, muggy summer afternoon—she brought to me a scrap
piece of paper with a poem by her on it. “Finally!” she said, as if it were a relief.
I could discern that her poem had been written quickly, perhaps even the day before.
       Later, on a hot, muggy, summer afternoon, she said to me: 

                                                                                “If I were 
                                                                    a younger 
                                                         woman, 
                                      I’d definitely be 
                                                                 chasing you!”

       Georgiana made spaghetti with sugar mixed into it—she called it her 
“New Hampshire special”—when she was younger, she was a hippie,
& she hung out with the Hell’s Angels & also rode saddle with
Mafia gangsters in New York City. 

                                                                         “One of them 
                                                              wanted me, 
                                        but I just wanted 
                                to be friends—
                                                  but he wanted me 
                                                             to be his girlfriend, 
                                                                          but I never 
                                                         took it that far.”

After she overheard one of the men discussing a plan to knock-off a fellow 
on the East Side, she knew that it was time to hit the road, 
& what a rocky, turbulent road it would become. . . . 

                                                                         “I was beaten 
                                                                  by a pulp 
                                    by all of my husbands. 
                                 I would call 
                                                   the police 
                                                           on them,
                                                                     but the police 
                                                       would tell me, 

‘Ma’am, that’s not our problem—

  that is your problem that you will 

have to deal with on your own.’”

       Release the RoboBees! I’m waiting for 
espionage to hop-along-Cassidy beside me,
make a long war with robots & watch everyone beat one another to a pulp. 
Well, this is what “they” want.

       In the Age of The Sage, my crown would still be devoured by migraine attacks—

& when L. & I were in a café one evening, the older, attractive woman
who would tilt her head down so that her eyes looked up at me sensually,
said to us: 

                                                                         “Oh, you guys 
                                                    are such intellectuals.”

       L. said: 


                                                                         “I don’t know if it’s 
                                                                                   that, 
                                                          or if we just have 
                                                     too much time 
                                                                    on our hands.”

POEM

Equipped with disinformation before speaking

is like saying to oneself (while looking in a mirror):

“My appearance makes the mirror look better.”

Freud is still exploring collisions in the Pipelines of Time

& it’s true how our thoughts wander,

especially when we’re wounded like pups,

for it is on this very night of May 2nd, 2013,

that I thought of a particular game of chess with L.M.

I feel that chess pieces “die” in every game.

Shall we play by not moving a piece to keep them “alive”?

Chess pieces die & are eventually resurrected; they become zombies,

the living dead! The king never officially “dies”; he’s “mated.”

Mating, without a mate? What a horrible ending to a love story

when the queen is captured. What of this horror?

like the Lady of Shalott floating down the river to Camelot.

The king is always surrounded.

He must have a perpetual, nervous twitch,

& thoughts are often like mental throat-slits.

I learned today that my father wanted to fight his brother

a couple of years ago, over their mother’s estate

in a sleepy town in South Carolina.

It is creepy what people do over money,

asphyxiation, grounded, barbells to the gut,

behooves the beehives full of buzzing,

just want to keep Sleepy John Estes playing in my ears,

let the bluest blues wash away the blues,

let everyone else feed the seed.

I must be the ideologically backward-type—some days

I see a dog with its teeth in another dog’s throat,

or friends turning to enemies, same thing, or rubber bullets

that need to be wrapped in rubber—“stop gap” to violence,

separating lovers, decoupling, destroying progress—

families torn in knots, my receding hairline

abbreviated daily, where do I go for justification?

Rabelais’s Carnival, that’s where! The deluded barbarians

envy mathematics—class warfare, Truth or Dare?

Content of nonchalance. No one reads these poems

& I’m content with that, because the collected words read themselves . . .

ALL TOGETHER NOW! sing sing sing O you choirs of Futurist characters

that readily fit the pre-existing glimpse of . . .

Interruption: someone asking me if I want to play cards.

My hand is always dealt. I bend the corner of an Ace card—

the streetlights grate the sky, airspace spewing chemicals.

My lament has already passed, so I smile,

smile wide with wider entails, like a mannequin

smiling, or wailing, behind the glass box

where dialect “interpenetrates with public space”—

& with all of these pent-up feelings, how does one face the world?

TO BUILD A TIME MACHINE

To build a Time Machine          then kick the dirt
in another generation         
                    Then build another
Time Machine in that time    Time within time?


            Forever wanting to be
Where Silence is      & I mean peace          I’m there
In my mind where there is no loss of speech
        No status to gain in the rancid detergent
                    of the world
That which ignites the quiet earth
of our sojourns
                Like a “soundless explosion”

in the middle of the ocean
pushing fossils to the forefront


To build a Time Machine       bending the air
Like a gift            Summery shield in my eyes
Hidden from the spirit realm


I could accept silence         stuck between stone
No ears to hear?
            Like a funeral without a body
            An unreachable piñata


To accept the silence of impunity
        Is to shake the dew


From the roses in the cool of the morning
As if a former love had left them there


To fiddle with your hope
        To savor those blessed memories


In a silence             that’s like poison
in the belly of a cruel king

M.Y.O.B.

In one wholly memorable symbol
What is sound-proofed is “let loose”
& it happened (imaginative claps of thunder):

In what could be eponymous
as                 A Famous Occasion:

My sisters are minding their own business
& I’d rather be talking
             into a wastebasket
Waiting for Godot      Rather be disrupting a train
of thought          

            Dear cold-blooded goblins:

Why are you both so credulous & critical?
I live in a love           conscientiously aimed
Unwrangled like a Ruth & Boaz-like enrapturing

            Within the Eternal        my spirit
is clothed in colored light            like Adam & Eve
before The Fall         In my ears I hear

The sun   moon   stars   birds & Nature of all
like celestial strings radiantly arranging tunes
of unprecedented awe

Both of your criticisms are inner-miseries

        To S. :     Our father comes around

                    flaunting his            
                    illegal money        
Yet he's your "hero"?

To be beyond criticism          I deduce as ignorance
Mere folly          
                I go hup-two-three-fouring
along my own dreamy walkabouts     Why not
stay focused on your own?         

SOMEWHERE THERE IS A FEATHER

Somewhere there is a feather stuck in one’s nose
                                No
what I mean is that                Spring has arrived

& amidst all of this color
        there are bird droppings
                on vehicles in heaps

& the skies are clear
        except for pollination
                & spores & armed blue jays
ready to attack

& all the peoples of the earth seem to be
                                on the edge

& maybe what they need is to be
tickled with a feather

(Late March 2012)

________________________________________

i.
Scratching out the face 
in a mirror. My face 
in the mirror scratches me 
out, warns of noxious substances,
before I beg to differ 
with the reflection’s plan 
to reveal what a camera eye shows:
the lie that does not exist.



ii.
Restore me—mimic a blur 
without motion
like the invisible fluidity 
of The Mozart Effect on plants
& animals that turn into 
airy nothingness
like the final flap 
of one’s alveoli
before death’s well-spaced 
assemblage.

___________________________________________

Why must you stamp me out

with your cloven hooves?

You’ve rolled in the mud for far too long.

Then,

artificial, simulated,

conventional wisdom popped

in my head

& no one formulated a response

to free my body from those stormy conditions,

deprived of secondary importance.

Spooky is your way, dizzyingly so.

Come back over: I have grown hoarse,

clutching your photograph,

screaming at your silence,

shuffling in place.

Come back & hold me to your breast

with absolution. Swing me around like jazz.

Destroy me for the purpose of

replenishing me.

Crush me in your arms & I will hobble with you

like a crippled, worn-out farmer.

WINTER SKY

                                                December 2011

It isn't communication that I seek with the stars
this frosty winter night;
no, it is being aware of their brightness
that interacts with what I reflect back to them,
a sky so full of light that it is blinding
to even the lonesome vine
that hides itself, darkly, resonating in harmony
as if firmly rooted in secrecy.


I etch this black glossy sky
into a German Expressionist woodcut.
A cloud of mystique appears as if prophesied.
The sun soon to create sharp contrasts
upon the sky, the animals with mixed feelings,
unfragmented like a mnemonist's memory,
like the stag that is said to love music
so greatly that they suffer themselves to be taken.


This, a hungered vision? Or, a dream
that is so whole that it bends
perfect rainbows? This sky
is as clear as the mental eye of Aeschylus,
the chill rising as I vanish in its magnitude
with an intuitive grasp, confirming
my course, floating delicately upward
like inverted flakes of snow. 

POLAROID VAMPIRE

This poem is from my latest book, WHEN OUR CHEEK BURNS OR EAR TINGLES, THE TRUE LOVER’S KNOT IS VERY MUCH UNMAGNIFIED, which you can buy Here or read it for free Here.

In the forest, I ventured upon a strange figure
that was wearing a black cloak that was long
& flowed down to the grainy earth. I said Hello.

He remained quiet. His face was obscured,
his back turned to me. He turned around, looked
at me with a burning fever in his eyes & with a

quivering bottom lip that resembled a ripple in a
pool of water. He said: “We both look rather frightful,
don’t ve?” After speaking, I saw the glistening fangs

barely visible under his lips. A vampire!
I chuckled & thought, I’m going to tease this vampire.
I told him to hold on, that I’d be right back. I fetched

a pale of blood, returned to the forest where
the vampire still remained, but now stood as if
uncomfortable, anxious & expectant. I didn’t care

about gaining favor with him, but I simply wanted to
win out against heavy odds of not getting fanged.
The idea would be that I would become a vampire

& therefore could say Goodbye to this “land of milk
& honey” & rely on living a new, secretive, inner life.
It was a big risk, but a risk that I was willing to take.

A risk that, quite frankly, I desperately wanted.
Most boys want to be a baseball player, an astronaut
or fireman when they grow up. I wanted to be a

vampire, & now, in this moment, this was my great
opportunity. I had put myself clear into the face of
burning wreckage, like getting struck by tiny debris

from a volcano. The vampire was motionless, stood as
erect as a light pole, frozen like a shadow. However,
he had goosebumps on his vein-bulging hands.

In his eyes hung albatrosses. I began teasing the vampire.
I dangled the blood in front of his pale face, saying,
“Here, vampire, here, vampire...” & all of this happened

just as day dawned, burning brightly above the horizon,
the sky lightening in an incomprehensible frenzy.
If you do not believe me, I have assembled footage

collected from a DV camera (I thought to bring a
camera along after fetching the blood, thinking that
no one would ever believe this Cock ‘N’ Bull story).

Surprisingly, the vampire had other thoughts in mind.
He said, “Ugh, vait a minute!” & he pulled out a polaroid
camera, snapped a picture of me as I dangled the blood,

laughed aloud like vampires do, retreated soft-footed
like a silk domino into the darkness, screaming,
“I do not drink blood! I eat developed polaroids!”

His gradual diminishing echo clashed against the
cool breeze. I threw the blood to the ground, flashes
randomly appearing upon my flesh, as if my blood were

being supernaturally transfused & treated as
the developing chemicals for his polaroids.

___________________________________________

Fatal is my machine which draws its own sword,
swarms in the air above, cold as an Antarctic vein

in the shriveled ground, effortless & down to earth
like fallen autumn leaves, a kind of sport for physical 

expansion, reduced & wrong. Grounded, are we?
Grounded like a magnetic field, or a biologist, salted 

by a nothingness galaxy of electrical rotating roots
underneath humanoid plants. In monotone, the eternal 

pencil sketches magnificently where angels camp
around me; the insects glow: gnats form around my 

face like crystals; fireflies gather around the top of
my head in the shape of a halo. Cell phone suddenly 

vibrates as if Voltaire were calling or texting to correct
my errors via cattiness, renegadely. Light is saved 

in my eyes. No correction is needed. This is a poem
about unyielding every savage thought, a story of 

diminishing evil like black hats, granite-colored
weather clouds hang above, redbuds & yellow blooms

along the creek-sides, sluice of unlimited opening,
venice fly traps with a kind of "engine" in their bodies,

streets hunger for the descent of fervent earnesty,
honesty in the middle-east ceases to exist, peace as 

wayward as spoiled meat, diseased within the shoulders,
hooves of citizens stomping the lands as Egypt fell,

Syria fell, Ethiopia falling, gassed out in tempo; comet
Elenin reserved for The Hunt for Red October?

In the same way, I want to be so deep within your mind
that when people look upon your face they see my face

as if superimposed over your face, a stranger
to them like a reluctant, languid murmur, tender 

vehemence in the mystery where Understanding needs
not a connective thread. Precisely the metaphor 

buckles. Today, I found myself in a peculiar dialogue
with a dark-haired woman that could have stretched 

to every state, my mind was the chorus, could have
been nudging mountains with my shock, unstaining 

stained glass, spazzed through Dante's imaginations,
& what is it about people's propelled recounts, 

their "puns" that they consider paradises of glimpses
into what their very minds see? If this were color, 

I'd fail to see the rainbow, but the concept of speech
is like a living mammal, or Dorothy's view of Nature 

& Law, peering through abstract symbols. This woman,
she said to me, "You don't want to know what that bottle 

reminds me of"--as if to say, "Ask me & I will definitely 
tell you," as if I did not already know. 

___________________________________________

I hover
natively

without
being deleted.

Time
is a busy

little reverie
that lifts you,

despite divisions. 
The invasion

of an etcetera
bruises

the texts
that aches

for a better
Good Riddance. 

I duck
when fate

flies towards
my head,

that attempts
to transform

an old desire
into

a new
reality. 

___________________________________________

I walked outside
this morning

& a bird
said my name.

It had
your voice,

& apparently
your eyes--

what will I do
now

but let it
repeat

like a heartbeat
in my mind.

I see
your eyes

as distorted
caricature prints--

all ridicule
& strain

bending scarce
proportions

of your
physiognomy.

___________________________________________

She had
butterflies’ wings

woven
into her hair—

this is the
barrette of the future.

She had become
calx

in my hands,
my patient legs
still aching
to run
to & fro,
back to her

arms, back
to her arms
again &
again,
for a desperate
resolution

had entered
my mind,
endorned

by all
that cannot
be undone.

___________________________________________

As if to bracket thoughts;
words diminish to red,
then to a cobalt sky;

clouds work off of limitations,
full of affordable verbs,
adjectives, thin are my thoughts;

thin as Frank O’Hara, thin
as a Persian jacket, or a tiny
Asian woman holding flowers

on a pier, foggy is her mind: 
an earthquake underneath
canvases of her love,

a dancing star through
her heart. Today, I inject
inspiration into what the

overall picture cannot give,
where it has died, &
the overall picture is

a search, a funny joke
to shock oneself into a
nauseated, baroque surface,

massive; authentic as
one’s mother, as authentic
as the grass is as white

as snow during summer
droughts; a paradox?
Inevitably, I adore the flame

of one’s eyes, like a
jack-o-lantern, except that
those flames must splash

through the pupils
with kindness, like
the brush strokes of Matisse,

the “end” meaning to be
free-moral agents—
no excuse not to believe in God:

nature confirms it.
I paint what you dislike.
I paint with the mystery

of a monster within a
beautiful human body.
How dangerous is popular culture?:

every “lower east side”
dirty as a sewer,
a very serious thing to observe,

or to ignore, like a bridal shop:
that kind of cliche’,
that gown of interest,

a little doggy in the window,
a specific person giving you
“the eye”!—to restrain as if it were

dictatorial; to aid the homeless
& to be given awards sevenfold,
spoiling the evil of things,

like instinct in the gut of a lion,
rhythmic as wave-like obscurity
hanging on to analyze my every

structure, & what occurs next
is already occurring before
it’s ever thought of.

___________________________________________

I thought

of our dead

relationship,

how it was

once

a sensible thing,

bright,

gleaming

like heaven’s gate,

but then

becoming

like a

venomous

snake,

or a death

like Caesar

on the floor

in a pool

of his own blood.

___________________________________________

If the moon’s

pupil

opened a bit wider,

the sun

would gasp

with rapt attention

& reverse

every memory,

every photo,

so that all light

& life

would become

an absolute

anfractuous shadow

sunken

into the infinite mire

upon the pressed lips

of the universe.