Hungry Ghosts

2012-01-09T19:30:00.000-08:00

THE LAST RECALL

I recall myself, for parts

deficient and memory lacking.

I don’t recall any parts

independent of the whole,

but an overall review might

be in order, to draw up

a hierarchy among the fragments.

I can’t recall that time you’re

talking about, but will accept

second guesses as assurances

that I was actually there.

You’re sure I said that?

I was that shadow seen through a keyhole?

That thin-as-a-whisper asshole?

I take it back, I take it back,

I take it back…

2012-01-02T21:31:00.000-08:00

Radiator heat

clicks on like stuttering speech

noises in the dark

2011-12-26T17:43:00.000-08:00

Bundled Christmas trees

outside Flatbush grocery

yellow cabs flash past

2011-12-20T16:48:00.000-08:00

Like a blind man’s sight
rain patters across rooftops
tracing an outline

2011-12-15T20:23:00.000-08:00

Rain thrashes briefly

then quiets to a whisper

like memory’s pulse

2011-12-13T11:44:00.000-08:00

Rain hits suddenly
as if to a stricken land
someone smiles in sleep

2011-12-08T19:42:00.000-08:00

The Braille of raindrops
falls on all our blind faces
nothing to read here

2011-12-03T16:50:00.000-08:00

A flesh-pink half moon
last mist left after the storm
both dissolve away

2011-11-27T20:53:00.001-08:00

STARVED HOUSES

The groundwork has been laid;
the drywall, the mortar, the pestle.
The frame is sound. It will stand.
It will give us this day, minus the bread,
and forgive us the trespasses
we make against ourselves.
We are less than whole
within these walls, we lay
down and expect the leveling.
We are the wasp’s thirst, dry as rain
that doesn’t know another drop exists,
we are stronger than the storm
that hasn’t come yet.

2011-11-15T15:35:00.001-08:00

Dying DVR
clicks and whirrs like ghost crickets
how new is that sound?

2011-11-10T11:18:00.001-08:00

VISION QUEST-PAK

How many times have I gone so far away
I couldn’t find my way back, and relied
on the bread crumbs of strangers to
both sustain myself and establish
a reliable GPS perimeter?

How many times have I closed
the tunnel door to the past
and declared this dungeon
a baggage free zone?

How many times have I felt lighter
than air, but cooked the molecules
till they’re lighter than that,
just to watch them burst and scatter
like soap bubbles, and know that even
less than that is what holds me here…

2011-11-06T11:08:00.001-08:00

blind white rock of moon
fall foliage blazes red
a beautiful death

2011-11-01T22:35:00.001-07:00

I gather my thoughts
like gutted animal skins
drying in the wind

2011-10-23T16:45:00.001-07:00

I’m bending toward sleep
crickets sound like cracking backs
fall sway the weary

2011-10-20T19:02:00.000-07:00

The brush of my breath
strums the broken-down guitar
that sits behind me

2011-10-15T10:36:00.001-07:00

Window-frames rattle
in the last wind from Brooklyn
yup, I’m outta here

2011-10-10T19:06:00.001-07:00

The wick still flickers
in a candlelight vigil
for the flame itself

2011-10-06T19:51:00.001-07:00

How dim the star is
reaching above tree branches
like a supplicant

2011-10-01T15:30:00.000-07:00

Blinking red tower
casts a lonely semaphore
an owl hoots his own

2011-09-28T18:34:00.000-07:00

TASK @ HAND

Oh, the Zen of it:
empty boxes piled high
waiting to be filled

2011-09-18T21:10:00.001-07:00

Fireflies at dawn
the stars are finally gone
light comes from within

2011-09-16T16:00:00.001-07:00

Release me, Brooklyn
from the skin I’ve grown
but still take me in

2011-09-14T21:26:00.001-07:00

An epiphany
can be a slip of paper
hanging from your fridge

2011-09-11T17:18:00.001-07:00

2011-09-02T12:21:00.001-07:00

How small a corner
as a hurricane rages
two crickets still chirp

2011-08-24T18:49:00.001-07:00

The night is alive
A cicada symphony
cut with speeding cars

2011-08-22T16:25:00.001-07:00

Lightening flashes through
burns a wild, erratic fuse
the stars are scrubbed clean

2011-08-14T16:41:00.000-07:00

I should walk a mile
on another man’s egg shells
before I can crack

2011-08-07T17:45:00.001-07:00

If I drew a blank
then how could it still be blank?
I got nothing here

2011-07-25T21:42:00.000-07:00

Soaked in summer sweat
can memories leave the skin
just as easily?

2011-07-22T13:29:00.001-07:00

Fireflies flit and dance
a slow, cautious teletype
erased as it’s made

2011-07-16T21:40:00.000-07:00

Oh, late-night TV
robots eating my fast food
this is what I see

2011-07-11T21:45:00.000-07:00

APOCALYPSO

Can you feel it? The sway to the earth’s
slow grind, that tight-curled magnetic
girdle trying to muscle in and hold
everything down? How much
can stay bound? I could break
a jaw bone to break into song,
I could break the last canary
out of the coal mine,
I could go with the flow
and be drowned in rivers
much larger than me,
I could sway in breezes
and watch the beats hit
like muzzle flashes just outside
the limits of prescribed sight,
I could break free and still
be left empty-handed…

This dance you do, what do you call it?

2011-07-10T18:59:00.001-07:00

TIMES SQUARED

History repeats itself because
that’s what written into its’ contract.
Check the sub-clause. It’s all there
in black and white, or sepia tones;
whatever steps of removal leaves you
comfortable with what can’t be undone.
It’s a self-generating property, it’s
transcendent real estate. You’re on
the ground floor of a value that can only
go down, and down, and down…

2011-07-07T20:55:00.001-07:00

My faucet’s dripping
air conditioners still hum
a Brooklyn silence

2011-07-02T15:28:00.001-07:00

Tethered spider web
spins and drifts, silvery gleam
from a waist-high weed

2011-07-01T18:44:00.000-07:00

Harlem Haiku

Three spotlights skitter
across a mist-laden sky
off selling something

2011-06-26T22:56:00.001-07:00

outside my window
an owl call cuts through the dark
we talk about shit

2011-06-25T19:09:00.001-07:00

Moon-bright flecks of light
drawn on scurrying current
toward dark waterfall

2011-06-22T19:10:00.000-07:00

Damn my misplaced faith
I had the key to all things
and then I lost it

2011-06-18T14:54:00.001-07:00

Uneven warble
bird song breaking out at dawn
I couldn’t name it

2011-06-15T16:14:00.001-07:00

Animals squabble
who can point to proper blame
out my dark window?

2011-06-10T12:55:00.001-07:00

Brief, compacted wind
sweeps through the stuttering trees
but does not touch me

2011-06-05T15:53:00.000-07:00

MIXED PIXELS

I’m just coming into resolution
but I’m friggin’ losing it!
I’m the pause button before
the calm before the storm.
I’m a handful of neutered
thunder claps, I’m the sound
of one hand washing the other,
I’m part of the bigger picture.
Won’t you mix with me?

2011-06-04T11:00:00.001-07:00

Chain-link casts shadows
a distorted spider web
for me to walk through

2011-06-01T21:36:00.000-07:00

Luminous city
like an afterthought rising
from the river’s mist

2011-05-26T00:39:00.001-07:00

Dawn’s dull light spills in
azalea blooms burst blood-red
a deepening green

2011-05-22T18:45:00.001-07:00

The mewing newborn
in a concussion of green
blooms about to burst

2011-05-16T19:48:00.001-07:00

A siren at night
sounds like an owl’s frantic call
if you hear it right

2011-05-13T13:31:00.001-07:00

Wind clatters the leaves
insistent fingers that reach
outside my window

2011-05-09T19:19:00.000-07:00

In this gathered night
a car parks, stereo blasting
then the quiet speaks

2011-05-04T16:32:00.000-07:00

Lost balloons sail past
pale orbs in the twilight sky
planes criss-cross above

2011-04-29T14:27:00.001-07:00

Leafless branches bloom
silver-lit raindrops at night
just a passing fruit

2011-04-25T18:09:00.001-07:00

The moist lip of spring
fresh magnolia blossoms
beneath the street light

2011-04-24T17:16:00.001-07:00

The gibbering beast
outside: just a cat in heat
or my own worst thoughts?

2011-04-08T09:31:00.000-07:00

Train’s lonely whistle
rides the mist @ 2 AM
closer than it seems

2011-03-31T19:28:00.001-07:00

Misty halo moon
black tree branches’ tendriled scrawl
flock of geese sing past

2011-03-27T20:55:00.001-07:00

Sunset skyscraper
sends a gleaming path across
the river to me

2011-03-26T16:26:00.000-07:00

Seagull reels through mist
river buoy flashes red
rain speckles my sight

2011-03-21T20:04:00.000-07:00

Perigee full moon
a white, blazing gaze stares down
close as it will come

2011-03-20T16:41:00.001-07:00

BESEECH

Oh, the various & virulent spirits we beseech!
We make faces into the great unknown, & hope
the cutting edge of our smile is immortal...

2011-03-14T23:04:00.000-07:00

After Japan

My friend asked me for a prayer of peace
but I can’t give words to contain such suffering
and everything I offer is less…

2011-03-10T16:06:00.001-08:00

Jet squalls past above
turning the night inside out
I still watch TV

2011-03-07T21:38:00.001-08:00

Headlights seen through mist
like choreographed rain drops
lit up as they fall

2011-03-03T22:39:00.001-08:00

Riverside oil tanks
grey against a fog-grey sky
the day is fading…

2011-02-24T18:59:00.001-08:00

Sidewalk newspaper
pages flipping in the wind
no one to read it

2011-02-21T17:12:00.001-08:00

Suburban Haiku

motion sensor light
this privileged motherfucker
has a sudden stage

2011-02-18T19:35:00.001-08:00

DRACONIAN ERROGENOUS ZONES…

…have been established throughout the city,
hoping to defuse the current social climate
with a self-activated shame cycle, accomplishing
what tear gas and a reflexive leaden thumb could not.
We ask you to examine your own bodies, and their
corrosive agenda of base desires, and wonder
if you don’t come up short. Further, we ask
if a loop can be established, a closed circuit,
between achieving those desires and the white noise
we are currently funneling into your subconscious.
In conclusion: What if Play Time was Work?
What if we could make you strike against yourselves?
What if love was the inverted spearhead
that ended the heart?

2011-02-15T19:42:00.001-08:00

Sirens rend the night
dark windows splashed in red light
some stranger’s problems

2011-02-13T16:15:00.000-08:00

Flash from my window
rumble through the whirling white
that was Thundersnow!

2011-02-07T12:59:00.001-08:00

the hawk lands heavy
before taking off again
empty oak branch thrums

2011-02-02T18:59:00.000-08:00

Snow falls in Bushwick
M-train rattles overhead
sparks and snowflakes mix

2011-01-28T15:30:00.001-08:00

another late night
moon muddled through windowpane
I should be asleep

2011-01-22T15:15:00.001-08:00

My glass is half full.
I don't remember drinking.
This is not my glass.

(Poem by Doug Roussin)

2011-01-21T14:48:00.000-08:00

I saw the future
my friends were busy texting
I was left speechless

2011-01-14T22:14:00.000-08:00

APPLY THEME

Rampant Tenderfoot
Current Protector
Inaccurate Lingo
Leisure Removal
Forward Thinking
Ash and Fire
Ash and Fire
Ash and Fire
Dark Wood
Deep Ocean
Magic Paper
Drinking DNA
Black and White
and Red All Over…

2011-01-07T23:38:00.000-08:00

WHITE MILK SUBSTITUTE

Am I a shadow of a man if I cast none of my own?
Are we the sum and total of eight essential ingredients,
minus emotional baggage and excessive wear and tear?
If we can split the atom, the logic goes, we should be able
to gut the infidel and point his entrails to
True North. We should be able to find ourselves
on the face of the compass, by the bias of magnetism
alone. I’m all for short term myths, but we’ve
got to get the order forms right. One slip can lead
to a simple paper cut, which in turn could lead to
the slow, onion-like unraveling of my cover identity,
and since I don’t go much further than skin deep,
that’s not a view I want to keep.

2011-01-01T14:03:00.000-08:00

INCOMING FEVER DREAM

The eyes may play tricks,
but the mind’s got its’ games
rigged; one way in, many ways
out, and it’s up to individual
participants to rend the veil,
to ignore the hallways filled
with unemployed centaurs
and harlots, the avatars being
stripped of their momentary mantles,
crucibled in fire and restarted again.
What is really real is really
not the point. It’s how you
navigate the system.
It’s your fever. It’s your verdant
forest to burn to the ground.
We supply matches, blowtorches,
even premium vintage napalm.
One way in, many ways out.
Proceed.

2010-12-29T21:30:00.000-08:00

to-do list has me

approaching paralysis.

I did something else.

(haiku by Doug Roussin)

2010-12-23T20:30:00.001-08:00

THE MOON AIN’T NEW

the rust-colored moon
grown old in a brief eclipse
I almost missed it

2010-12-11T20:36:00.000-08:00

REDO/NEED YOU

I keep hitting the button,
but nothing ever happens.
Or, rather, it keeps happening.
The uninterrupted flow, the intake.
No pause. I can’t find the pause.
I want to hire a security consultant
to look back at our less guarded
moments for points of entry.
I want to second-guess my third
personality, I want in.
I want a frame, and some bubble wrap,
and a one-use tranquilizer dart
to help capture the moment.
I keep hitting the pause, but
nothing ever happens. Or, rather,
it keeps happening…

2010-12-03T16:09:00.000-08:00

MEMORY CHECK

So many of us gather at the checkpoint,
our fingerprints frayed at the edges,
smudged, indiscriminate, our identities
already a muddle, currency a second guess.
We hurry through, busy shadows inside
a larger frame work. We are afraid
to be empty, but we had to leave
so much behind. Memories are what
weigh the most, dragging us beneath
the roiling tide. Now, new ones
are being supplied, to anchor us here;
entire stock photo galleries of family
and friends, pinned to our tattered collars.
There are PowerPoint back story presentations,
seminars on the ties that bind, helpful hints
for awkward small talk around the kitchen table.
It is dizzying, a burden and a release at once.
To be able to point at a blank spot on a page
and say, “The story starts here…”

2010-11-22T21:24:00.000-08:00

BESIDES

Doing yard work for my mom
a heron swings past the treetops
its' heavy wings tipped dim red in sunset
I stop for a sec/besides myself

2010-11-17T22:51:00.001-08:00

BETTER NOT…

Across the heat-stricken Afterscape,
the bodies scattered in cindered embrace,
widening out in concentric circles
beneath the looming, blank-faced monolith
inscribed at its’ base (in the finest of print):
“Better Not Named”

2010-11-15T19:33:00.000-08:00

TRICKSTER 2.0

My spirit guide got lost
on his way to meet me,
huffed glue for visions,
and was the most flat-footed
dance partner I ever wobbled
across a prairie rug with.

He left my pockets empty
and my eyes like tea cups,
awaiting scalding intake.
He claimed to be the latest
hybrid model: Trickster 2.0
but I had my doubts.

He left my sore-toed and thirsty,
my forehead a blazing billboard
for lack of thought.
He left me folded up
like a lozenge to lay
on my own tongue…

(PS: I tasted terrible)

2010-11-05T20:17:00.000-07:00

JUBILATION JUDAS GOAT

Amen. Wait, you didn’t hear the ending.
We left their throats cut, we thought cash
up front was pretty self-explanatory---
pillars of salt and golden calves, et all.
Call it on the job insurance, a few false
idols swept under the carpet.
Call me anything, but not
late for dinner. So you’re saying
the DNA corrupts the crime scene?
Get in line. Don’t believe, unless
it’s been left out to die…

2010-10-30T13:26:00.001-07:00

A RELIABLE FICTION…

…just showed up, batting her eyes,
sporting surplus war paint,
saying, “I’m nothing without you, baby”
and me racing to recall whether that’s the code
to break this chance encounter, whether
my credit card # hasn’t already been
compromised, identity theft a forgone
conclusion, and I think,
“Better you than me, mate…”

2010-10-25T19:19:00.000-07:00

THE GLOWING IMPERIALS…

…which are just the next door neighbor’s windows
lit through the shadow of fir trees at 3 AM,
which become, briefly, B & W stained glass,
then totem pole god heads carved
from the bone of our memory
and then, at last, nothing more than
what I actually see…

2010-10-20T21:43:00.001-07:00

RADIO SILENCE

The wind spins like a derelict surgeon
seeking a scalpel point.
The satellites sputter, a sudden
blind-eyed chorus with one push of a button,
and all that’s illuminated is now dark.

All the cell phones just lost
their charges, all the servers down,
all the wire relays garroted
by larger wire relays
and so on and so on.

All for this moment
of silence, so I could hear you…

2010-10-17T21:24:00.001-07:00

DUTY NOW/DUTY FREE/DUTY LATER

Penniless at the border, I recant my last cant
(Wait a minute, is that legal?)
And didn’t you just move the border,
according to convenient product placement?
I’m stuck out here pissing into the wind,
while you’re busy keeping warm
off kindling from all the shaved angles.
I look at you, and don’t know you at all.
You look at me, and know me too well.
And the wind howls around us,
measuring spaces…

2010-10-10T21:15:00.000-07:00

INTERNAL DOCUMENT

Forgive me. I was busy applying myself
to the fundamental principles of Manifest Destiny,
knowing that everything is free until you take it,
when I suddenly find out I’m interfering with an ongoing investigation…

[This conversation is presently being rerouted.

Everyone is innocent, until the new app is finalized.

Papers, please.]

2010-10-03T20:58:00.001-07:00

STARING INTO THE APPARENT DAWN

The veil of air lifts,
shadow itself is undermined.
Out of the mist, a tree trunk
writhes its’ limbs like Gumby
in a passion play on the Cross,
which makes me think
what a pagan bit of clay
we all are, after all!…

2010-09-26T23:20:00.000-07:00

WHOLE SALE NIGHT

The moon, immutable, punches
tin-plated grey calligraphy
across the swaying tree tops.
The slow rotation of the electric
fan like cars shushing
down a distant desert highway.
The words can’t be read, or even
said out loud. The night will close
us whole, if we just let it--
leaving us reduced to our essence.
Like the quickly ticked-off items
in the police blotter of some
small town newspaper, random
acts of petty larceny and
drunken vengeance,
the ink of mingled lives
coming off on our fingertips,
as the night’s heat disperses…

2010-09-17T13:13:00.000-07:00

VIEWFINDER FINDS HORIZON

All the cowboys have been scalped.
All the Cities of Tomorrow a cindered prayer.
I am back on that 2nd grade shag carpeting,
oversaturated afternoon cartoons
spilling from the wood grain console.
I am aware of the treaties
and foreclosures of the past,
a tired trail whisking me
into its’ vortex that fills the screen,
the blood of every footprint
reduced to a color cell;
undifferentiated background detail.
I will streak my cheeks red
and play the Indian in the back yard.

2010-09-12T20:47:00.000-07:00

EPITAPH

After a day of steady rains has ended,
some one plays a warbling, mournful tune
on their flute by an open window, 2 AM, Brooklyn.

2010-09-05T18:58:00.001-07:00

CAPSULE REVIEW

The Garden Mother lifts her skirt
and hence, the verdant plains.
I stand at attention
deficit disorder,
and generally miss the point,
which rests on a much-needled
voodoo doll that the angry mob
has taken a sudden dislike to.

I will take religion as a mouthful,
and want it reduced to an even
more concentrated capsule;
one slip under the tongue
and it’s done.

Salvation turns on a dime.
A neck thin enough to break
between two fingers,
like a wafer.
Hence, the verdant plains…

2010-08-24T16:34:00.001-07:00

NAMELESS ZONE

The red war paint of the van’s reverse brake lights
washes over my apartment’s walls as it pulls in next door,
casting me in momentary blood and chain link shadow
relief, and suddenly, I am nameless, in some forsaken
war zone that will also remain nameless, and they’ve come
for me and I feel the weary resignation in my bureaucratic
bones, sitting on a front stoop late at night in Brooklyn…

2010-08-19T15:15:00.001-07:00

ALL I ASK…

…Is that the elm tree cast its’ shadow
(writhing in wind) on the apartment building
across the street. All I ask is that
the imposing matronly silhouette in the ground floor
window doesn’t mark me down as “suspicious”
as I smoke a butt on my front stoop
and enjoy the incongruous night winds of Brooklyn.
All I ask is that time opens up
and you can step in.
All I ask is that I’m not mistaken
for who I actually am…

2010-08-13T20:40:00.001-07:00

TEST GROUP

Bird song has been decoded
as a complex, orchestrated algorithm
intended to lull the human senses.
Tweets follow a similar pattern.
White noise has been proven to be
Mozart’s greatest symphony, left unimpeded.
All we can hope for is a conspiracy of silence.
I’m ready to join. But how will I ever
know if you are a part of it?

2010-08-08T14:23:00.001-07:00

CLASP

to come undone
to ride the tension conduit
out to its’ farthest reaches
a kingdom stricken and bare
to annex the virgin territory
of an open palm, reading too much
into what is already there
to grasp for the essentials
and find them on back order
your very need to hold on hold
to clasp, to come undone