CHESS

I play chess with my cat.
She knocks over the pieces
one by one. 

She sits in the middle
of the board like a queen.    
I prefer it this way.

I am out of options.  
The only checkmate
is to be yielding to

this fur-shrouded aura.

POEM

A glitch at any stage of

seamlessness in this ghostly

cocooned state is a landscape

that a Rolls-Royce would

struggle over, going kaput.

“America the brave” in the grave,

citizens living on covered bridges

of illusion, a grave “to have

and to hold” like Percy rising

from the Gulf of Spezia

with a crochet netting

to conjure up Mary Shelley,

as if like a wide-eyed Ebenezer,

eyes as bright as lanterns,

Harriet Shelley appearing

from the Serpentine to stop him,

rubbing her still plump belly

with hands of silver scales,

a landscape moaning with

gravitation: chilly, yet warm

to the touch, like a moon

ringed in fire. Who would dare

walk it now? An expedition

for scenic flights and ballooning,

or destitute sharecroppers

in Depression-era South;

a landscape stubbled with

quietude, the bones in our

bodies undisturbed, rings wildly

for our era, naked and challenged.

HOUSE

I alarm myself
when I walk
into someone’s house

that, at first,
resembles a
sugared peach,

sweet as
Orient Miscellany,
burning incense

of air,
to then discover
radical change;

sweetness
disappearing
like a rainbow,

as noticable as
a midnight
velvet sky

that is like
the black-toned
Bagheera.

Change of air,
like walking into
a morgue,

as unsubtle as a
sledgehammer, or
like being between

the hammer
& the anvil.
It is then

that I find that
in some manner
of peculiarity

I am unable to
walk away
from the house

that is like
a putrid litter-box,
somehow

unable to move,
as if I were
standing on

a sandy isthmus,
contemplating
both sides

of the coin. 

___________________________________________

I framed another void of thought

to watch it reveal another wall

behind another wall’s blitzkrieg

where I still clutch the clinging vine.

I would like to know the dead,

to squish through that void—soft,

moist as a sponge, nearly Play-Doh-like,

eject myself from this Mental Seat

for once, for a time, not reducing

but rejoicing, like a pilot in a burning

aircraft. What is the mind without

Abstraction? If I were a bird,

I would be a clay pigeon. A Cloud,

backlit by the clockwork of the

evening light—pink-orange magma.

It is difficult to juggle what is not there,

but detachments are necessary,

like standing in a thick forest—dark

as the insects as they watch from

the trees, the animals as scattered as

pointillism, every vein in each leaf

like the anatomical remains of

Henry Thoreau—the gaps in the tops

of trees could be me, or could be

like great nasal passageways, where I

breathe, undetached, going about

like the rattling chassis of a prancer.

___________________________________________

Some days you are the unfulfilled
cenotaph, & your heart beats like
the cadaver carrier tool that is used
to move corpses to morgues from
hospitals, showering a rain of melodies
that retreats like a troubled knight.

Do you see me as one of the
alternating sequences of your life?
A filmic parallel where the sun
is really amaigrissants stockings
stretched around the dust-bones
of the universe’s “sweet spot”?

What I am trying to say is that
we are all carrier pigeons, un-extinct
like catching a ghost in a lie about life,
but you cannot always expect
the flavor of life to be extra-crispy
on the bottom, like paella.

I will be here for you, please know,
like pears in the spring, like a raft
in a river of ice used to save the
drowning fisherman who caught no fish
that day, who has, himself, become
the fish, holding on for dear life. 

___________________________________________

Two beautiful blondes
drove by in a
magenta corvette

as I stood there
on the street
where blood

had once poured,
& who knew
that this moment

made me lesser
of a pixel?
The ground

should have
very well
just opened up,

swallowing me
whole. 92 degrees
in May,

too uncanny
of a resemblance
to July, & like

that honeypot Circe
who transformed
Ulysses’ companions

into pigs,
this heat
could make

a house transform
& die.
Earlier, I saw

a couple that
looked like
they had the

battle-lines drawn,
two humpty dumplings
falling from

the wall--
about as romantic
as purchasing

a slab of bologna. 
Without spats,
some people become

a spent force.
No matter,
I am in

my din
of childhood
where I

take the place
of the texts
of the present.

The present
is no match
for the past,

where I have
swallowed
the awkwardness

of youth. I could
have been the wind
that blew through

the hair of a former love,
but the burn-spots
left in my eyes

pierced through me,
everywhere,
the Great Core of

every matter
always stretched around
the clock,

a great fidgeting
of the mind,
lissome as

an unfull belly,
where the cache
keeps mounting

in shiny fallout,
disjecta membra.
Love-loss as

an art-form.
In the early 60’s,
Forbes was

attempting
to help prove
that business

& artistic expression
were not
mutually antipathetic,

& perhaps
it’s like the hero
that always refuses

an offered happiness,
bringing hardheadedness
into flower,

as poignant
as a flowerchild
in a wedding,

as vulnerable
as an egg in-hand.
& then there is pain.

Pain, like the
white rib
of a blue whale

lodged
into one’s pink
stomach.

This poem will
never end, like
the Pollock-movements

in my jumping-spider
body.
Will you wait for me

to release the snail
from my hand?
Will you catch it

before I drop it,
before the shell cracks,
before the eyelid

of this moment
blinks out?

___________________________________________

The clouds,
white-grey,
thick as a

Slavic accent.
The upward tongue:
imagine a cowlick.

This is the sun,
behind the overcast,
or a deleted scene

from a dream.

Some people
are soured

beneath breath,
leaving trails
of fallen stars;

a wounded elixir.
If we could
merely squeeze

the horizon together,
forced to a tunnel,
would this be

where Method begins?
Imagine expanding
to the limit

of your eye.
The way that
fog “holds” light.

Lozenge under

tongue, I am
the lozenge under

Tungsten
this night
like a still-life

& every time
I sit here,
whether incidental,

or consequential,
there is always
a purpose

for misleading
the eye, as if to
temporarily censor, to

add spirits, to
squeeze the citrus
from my heart,

a brewery for taste.

Out of the window,
cloudcover-low.

If the fog
gets any lower,
heaven will become

a halo
over my head,
Language tearing

through me
like the power
of hydraulic rams’ horns,

& there is no city
of comparible size
to that of the

poet’s heart;
his swollen crest,
universe-wide,

panorama-vast,
everywhere in motion,
in one guise

or another,
feeling as strange
as Hiroshima Day.

The light
within my soul
is far different

than sunlight. My eyes
sweep across
the sky

with tender ovations.
It is as if
this air were

vox, et praeterea nihil,
& that very voice:
as light-heavy

as a wishbone
tweezering
the heart.

__________________________________________

My heart reflects the colors of my brain.
I would rather have a broken heart than
a broken tripod. I enjoyed it when our hands
were like tripods in our hearts,
like new pressures, like a bodyguard
falling asleep while the gun is being loaded
in the distance.

The face is a camouflaged makeup where we
vanished through the tremors, leaving leftovers
for aimless objectives. I am often a typo, a static,
an interval veering into rhetoric supercedings,
therefore why should I ask myself what
I resemble & reflect when your third eye
always tells me what I do not ask for?
like a paranormal television turning itself
on & off, waiting for me to “make a move first”
& secondly:

I feel strongly about your spookiness
like a desire that reverses itself because you have
forgotten what it meant. I feel clung
in the teeth of a star, while you glide by on a meteor
resonating with retinal-blinking, your limbs
like taking apart an umbrella, like admitting
the bandaid didn’t work

& my heart still reflects the colors of my brain,
as if a rainbow sneezed, letting go a mass extravagance
that nipped every person on earth, turning their
darkest secrets into multicolored reminiscences of beauty,
enveloping the senses, the way that you elongated
every horizon with your smile, where I found myself
in those moments between image & self.

___________________________________________

What time should echo is the thing

that lets there be no mistake in the intention,

as last worst seen, barefoot.

In the woods I left the light to walk its own path.

Like Geronimo, I made no attempt

to count my own footprints. There were none.

If these windows breathed by comparison to

the flower's breath, we would cut ourselves

on the motionless surface of the night.

As a boy, the train tracks were a way

to meditate on the strangeness of youth.

Fastened to their intrigue, somehow

they always revealed new sets of

thought-patterns, as if with a spectral analysis,

the words still, even now, linger like thorns

around my ankles.

______________________________________

The obscurantist doctor
replaces the word Death for Life

with a resonance that builds
a framework of immediate

positive reaction,
but changes his tune

like a corruptible
one-man juggernaut,

taking on physical thrills
by ignoring wholly emotional

vulnerability, re-arranging
a room's glee, watching it flee,

& then reporting the real news,
then listening to all the shuddering,

the inner-vaccuum that
spins the energetic wound

of the Moment, like
a burning star, erupting,

unspooled from the cosmos.
& then, like a new gear moving,

there is a bright glow
left in the hospital room

where the loved one's spirit
has left the body: a perfected relief,

a pin-on mise-en-scène
where heart-thumps are assaulted,

left in silence, a memory
like a papier-mâché mask

incapable of being feverish
like family & friends

that eventually resume
their daily routines, a void left

like abandoned railroad tracks,
or like the branches of a fern bush

left bare from the sliding pinches
of a child's unknowing fingers.

__________________________________

It is difficult to take the heat off

if you are in the line of fire

but you can always keep the light on

underneath the coffee pot.

No matter how things shape up

the ruling class will always be

kicking around theory after theory

like some modern method of

fortune-telling. One could dig up

a mountain of gold, but one will be

mistook for a prowler, always living on

the other side of the tracks,

fraught with danger, like a child

riding a glass bicycle in a dark alley,

like being awake in a nightmare.

It is said that one shouldn’t run away

from something unless one knows

what one is running away from, but

often times when one takes the liberty

in finding out whatever it is,

it is like inserting one’s head into the

jaws of a lion—one enormous nuisance,

like trying to break through a

padlocked door. Danger often lurks about

in silence, planting distrust in one’s heart,

the way that a mosquito may land on

one’s flesh during the night, sucking

“in peace.” In this modern “dim age of

barbarity,” I just want to cut an Eden

into every home, quicker than the blur

of an ancient raider’s blade, giving one

something better to look at than the

daily decay.

______________________________________

There are a lot of things

that slip through the fingers

& become like vacant lots

where later you say,

I knew her when...

but you are only speaking

in riddles with unwavering

accuracy if you think that

the spirit of the past

does not remain. It is true

that things that come easily,

go easily, but sitting around

waiting for the photo to lie

is like touching the bottom

of the swamp, as if it were an

arrangement made in heaven.

POEM

The man-in-the-moon has been worn out

with trying to sleep with one eye. The sun,

giving him a hot foot, the way that the sweet

milk of romance will often curdle, or the way

that a groom or bride gets cold feet before

the wedding day—the use of last year’s brains,

deflaming, fleeing, & say, the bride, just standing

there in expectation like a stuffed owl,

looking as if she had fallen into a barrel of flour.

One must be careful to green-light romance

or else you may end up with a pocketful of rocks.

There are people that would rather be put to death

than put to shame, but at least they are controlling

their own tempos. On the contrary, there are

those that look to always be holding the canteen

in the blistering desert, that keep their “rank”

in a shrine, that build around their values.

Then there are those that will say, “Welcome to

my neighborhood” but are unable to remember

their house number. Yet still, through it all,

someone is thinking, “Instinct is usually always right,”

& the sun still shines as brightly as ever

& the moon’s illumination still ripens the night,

& most importantly, the moon still has her man.

CUT-OUT

Seeing an old girlfriend’s

new boyfriend is like looking

at a shadowy cut-out of myself

in a maze of similar avenues
& I think, “Do they compare the good
with the bad? the bad with the good?”

Time steers from our sides, is often

at a standstill, yet moves onward

the way that Good News

never comes too late; the way one

may look past you as if you were

not there, arousing a peculiar passion.

I see them together in a beautiful park

on an occasional shaky video—

sudden laughs; their eyes:

absent, grave & empty?

He, tugging at her negligee,

the reflections of the camera

in both of their sunglasses,

mimicking my “four eyes.” It is as if

cameras have been rigged to capture

all answers, to expel all mysteries,

like a house with secrets, walls with ears

& search-lights.

Many of these boyfriends appear

as if their wishes have been granted—

the girlfriend, on the contrary,

surrounded by a grayish-grim imbroglio?

What a treasure to have as pure a

conscience as a babe’s—my curiosities

& observations, like great thundering boots,

& when I see one wearing an iron key

on a ribbon around one’s neck, I think,

“That may be trouble,” like a false rumor,

for it is from Experience that I have

often caught that big bright eye

peeping through the keyhole, & I

cannot help but to wonder if there

are always saucy rogues

suspended around every relationship,

as if struck by frost, like a meaning

that never intended to mean anything.

POEM

Some days are like

bringing rabbits out of a hat.

Some days one must

hide one’s light

in a barrel. Some days

one’s heart doesn’t want

to to stay where it belongs—

it keeps going

flippity-flop flippity-flop.

Some days there are

unexpected pleasures

that leave you in a kind of

impressive pause

that lasts long enough

so that any random sound

will make you jump as if

gazing upon the nucleus

of the neurotic.

Yes, unexpected...

like over-hearing

someone say, “art gives me

the willies” or like tonight,

while flipping, or flopping,

through the Complete Poems
1913-1962 of E.E. Cummings

that I had recently obtained

from an antique store,

I discovered a pressed

marijuana leaf on page 776,

covering a poem titled SONG

where lines from the poem

such as “precisely ours /

is the now to grow” & “our summer

in fall / and in winter our spring /

is the yes of yes” befits my

inflamed discovery just as

“strolling slowly(mind in mind) /

through some green

mysterious land” caressed

the underside of the leaf

on the very opposite page.

& then I grew anxious for

more discoveries

so I flipped through the

thick book where I was

thinking that perhaps

I’d find money? a tiny birdie

with golden wings? & suddenly

on page 383

I made another discovery:

a four-leaf clover

that had perhaps been aching

to be seen again after thirty years

like a corpse that longs to be seen

in a wax museum.

ACCENTS

My thoughts are often thrown

through mill-wheels,

treading like

a secondary accent,

like one’s wisdom teeth

never cutting through.

The way that certain people

breathe, it’s like

they are telling fibs

through their ribs.

What could alter a voice

when one

“has a strong foreign

or regional accent . . .

the individual with the

less obvious accent

will naturally try

to mimic the stronger one”?

Was it the Toronto-native’s

eerie drawl that I mimicked,

or was it because

I sounded like

James Mason’s accent

in Lolita 

when he attempted

to delicately illustrate

his “mature depth”?

I speak in minimal scruples

when I am anxious,

like peppermints

melting on my tongue;

pearly taste where

taste-buds dance

as if at a polka party.

What of the accents

of eyes? Mental glottis, like

sweet scents of gardens.

A Beauty that is out-of-place

“like discovering a prim rose in a swamp.”

What of the accent of change?

the way that I spun around like

a frightened lamb this evening

as the dishes shifted like

the grounds underneath

a nuclear plant

after a major earthquake.

Should murderers be dipped

into radioactive lakes?

This poem may be about

accents, but it may not be.

This poem could be about

scaling up a wall

towards a window

(if I were that tiny)

where a fly buzzes around,

sounding like a dozen ‘copters.

The fly lands on the window,

cleans its antennas,

its legs moving as fast

as hummingbirds’ wings,

producing winds

that nearly throws me

off of the window sill.

However, I scale further

to get a closer look

at the phenomenon;

the fly’s multi-colored eyes

glistening off of my face

like a prism.

Has every accent been betrayed?

Perhaps Yogi Berra would take it

a step further, saying,

“It ain’t over ‘til you’re buried underground.”

Perhaps with a tooth

-y smile, like

a cobblestone road?

Accent of disappearing

from your body:

new verbiage for your

eternal destiny, passing

through, becoming

a “rookie” in the

Vast Unlimited shape

of it all, where

we are mere fibrils

in the

Universe’s body. 

MALE CHAUVINIST PIG

       I saw a male chauvinist pig today
with the distinguished head of a piranha,
wincing, fickled, adult-headed enfant terrible,

spouting utter nonsense beneath

an uncivilized veneer, Lord Chesterfield-like

in the eyes of emotional ignorance

like the government shutting down farms,

force-feeding their muscle-power.

       I saw a male chauvinist pig today:

his icy eyes glittering, an idol on a

giant cliff he placed himself, doffing

his cap in plainest language, like

The Department of Defense that is on

the offense, twisting every door knob

before tucking oneself to bed.

       This is our animal reality. The way

one's face may burn in the company of

strangers. Every chauvinist, male or female,

is stumbling towards a disaster; eyes

that feast on oneself like a narcissist Tsar,

"scowling like Jupiter."

OVERLEAVES

Overleaf

A distant reflection cast with classicist leanings. 

I wanted to borrow that woman's eyes for a moment: 

viaticum for vestige. 

Overleaf

I am staring at you from across this page.

I am a cyclops with two eyes. 

The "Cy" in "Cy Young" stands for "Cyclone." 

I am a cyclone with two eyes. 

The Alphabet, in clusters, is jumbled in my gums. 

"On the double, let's go!" 

Overleaf

I see my great aunt sitting on the front porch fanning herself with long bony fingers. 

I still daydream of dozing off in a field of cotton. 

Every piece of cotton, like tiny cumulus clouds hovering inches above the earth. 

I must remind you that this poem is for you. 

This poem is a well-fed ox. 

Overleaf

How strange to see wood that would not burn. 

Old habits are kept like sunscreen that gets skin-deep; 

a re-charging of the body, as fresh as islands of green.

Overleaf

I watched a yellow butterfly flutter majestically over the top of a red car. 

Visions, stretched like dough. 

Overleaf

Is anything ever actually 100%? 

Overleaf

Too sudden our time slips away, like slashing off the heads of flowers. 

An oyster choking on its pearl. 

Overleaf

I could give you my knees. 

I want you to stand tall. 

I want you to hand me your arms as we witness the alpenglow sweep over the city,

like the tolling of a bell speaking of the passage of time.

Overleaf

The fervor of violence coupled with a thrust & counterthrust of the hearts of Men, thirsting. 

Spiritual throats swallowing all of the sorrow from their Tumultuous Whole. 

Overleaf

If our little lives are "rounded with sleep" why then do I keep awake like a giant colonnade? 

A fiction? 

A frenzy to be so alive like moods of Bach? 

Overleaf

I attempt to live in two worlds at once; each interpenetrating the other.

To turn a new leaf will be glossed at will. 

To tear a photograph out of mid-air. 

A work that is fragile & too quickly forgotten. 

YOU FACE THE DAY

with the radio on

the night before

is as silent as unrented rooms

No

make that

an ever-invisible satellite

scanning the heart's desire

in every room

"the only place not being occupied is the ceiling" 

I face the day 

as if blackbirds

beat through Bach

beat-boxing

The night before:

broken vessels

tissue-soft looming

tree's root's circulatory certainty

Flags might be flowers with ventilators 

Uncertainty

perfectly pancaked 

between your day & mine

We ripen the chosen parts

Everything else is rottening like momentary planks

except Light

Light is its own soft bee

glistens like orphans with a new family

Deathrow is lifelike

a weak arm like a broken window

An actor always "looks like"

someone else

blasphemer of life's emitted death

Take aim and be me

be me

To take every moment

as a galaxy

leading you into a waterfall

quite clearly

Arousal

Our Bio's are perfect circles

but who listens?

This is ironic

&

Irony is a Christmas crook

slipping on crooked frozen mistletoe

AN ATOM OR AN ATOM OF ME

"Catch" detail. A place where

light peeks into contours,

unexaggerated by a "fool's gold"

of mind-trickery, but rather

like a cup nearly falling from

a window sill; all of invisible

weight keeping it put, or like

a chair, half-turned, light

on its back; all bite

& no bark. Cat had my tongue, 

my wrist in her majestic mouth,

my hand on her soft belly

the way clouds lay low on a 

dewy ground. If detail

exceeds eyes, study dried fruit

under a microscope; train yourself,

the way things come alive for

different tastes. Blandness of blind

beauty. I noticed a man polishing

a silver leg brace; the loosening up

like an unraveled bow; a gesture

dangled from his eyes; his mouth

curved into exercise. Anatomy of 

every still or unstilled thing

is an atom of me. 

LOVE ME BEFORE

Love me before all of the snow melts,

Before the Great Sewer

Washes us all away,

Before the car bombers

Give their indications.

I squinted at a rooftop

Across the street in the October sun;

The dust behind me, tornadic.

A red truck had passed.

A shadow moved in an opened window:

     my aching heart.

I could have waited for a sniper's bullet,

The way Spicer said that the Plague

Swelled them all to dizziness in Berkley;

The way Ferlinghetti was charged with

Selling "obscene literature" in the mid-fifties.

If you love me

I will leave a crevice open in my chest.

I will be standing after the nuke hits;

A skeleton, a white-wash board in a desert.

Rush to the scene, gather me up

Like the dust that I am; hang me on

Padded Hangers.

Love me before all of the snow melts,

Before the Great Sewer

Washes us all away,

Before the car bombers

Give their indications. 

SCENE

Do I exist outside of a photograph? 

Does a fisherman exist underneath the flat-bottomed

boat?       The moth drew to a flame

                to escape the confines of clustered polluted air. 

                The flame in my heart this moth vibrates. 

You are there; a radio, blaring in my chest.

You are there, as a moth is there, or as seagulls

                      explore a vast shoreline. 

Sunlight glistens off of the docks of my heart; 

dew-covered boards as if inlaid with diamonds. 

Outside on the street I see three boys throwing basketballs

upwards towards a powerline where a lace-tied pair of shoes

hangs. Their failed attempts make them slump-shouldered. 

The sky, duck-egg blue; 

spotted feathers of clouds,

like white ceramic. Blackbirds

hang, soar, maneuver quickly,

leaving traces of sudden blurs

as if scratching words into the 

calming blue sky with goose quills.

Winter trees, barren, with skeletal

fingers nibbling this scene to 

sharpness. 

Contemplative. Meditative. 

I exist outside of a photograph

giving breath to all that I envelop. 

ROOSTER

Mysterious motor in the rooster's throat. 

The sun, rising over the horizon, blinks,

twists the ignition, installs itself into every

screaming shadow; the rooster waits in 

any weather, beardless, could hold lambs

on its shoulders, nothing able to crush its

projection, this platform of crystal morning,

& like a dam breaking, at first, a soft silence

reflects the storm to come, like a flower

floating in the wind, comes the rooster's 

great crowing--atomic lungs, breath 

splitting dust--like an epochial alarm clock 

for someone, deposited throughout the

vibrating verisimilitude of the land: Living 

wax works coming to life, feeling the rooster's

howl lending its song to the wolves in one's

nerve-ends. 

______________________________________________________

Does one not brood over
whatever mayhem comes
abducting coarsest sub
stitutes to the coming

of nearest Fact not yet
seen? Staked out—like
lingering fingers unstitching
one's coat, like touch's

nectar—this runaway love
having gone through every
horizon of one's heart,
spoiling the thus-and-so

of one's delirium with the
intent to shake the prairie
into unclear space, hobbling
along like a horse with a

broken leg, pushing through
pretending to progress neatly
without a devastating pinpoint,
like squashing squash blossoms.

______________________________________________________

I refuse to make a prediction, so I'll tell you a story. 

A man & his ego walk together hand-in-hand, until

he's humbled by what he had feared the most. 

He's now bleeding on a gurney with a bullet in his

stomach while police officers beat on his wrists. 

He's tied down to a hospital bed. He begs the officers

to stop the abuse. They refuse & keep hitting him

& and the doctor rushes into the room. "Stop them!" 

the man on the gurney yells to the doctor. The doctor

responds by telling him to shut up. The officers keep

beating him, spitting on him. The man on gurney begins

spitting back at the officers; lungsful of blood 

directly into their faces. The officers run out of the room. 

The man passes out.