WHAT CALLS

When night wraps long fingers
around the wet, budding dark,
when whole floods are reduced
to a single drop left dangling,
when tree branches and the haloed moon
conspire a rough crucifix against the sky,
when the howl you hear in the distance
is either human or canine, when it makes you
feel you’ve walked miles away from yourself,
and still have not left enough behind…

WORKS

After a quick Spring rain storm,
late afternoon, the sky slate-grey,
the factory lit up angelic
in a single hymnal shaft,
the smokestack spewing
coils of pure white…

THE FRAIL CAGE

…of self split open:
Everyone wants a piece.
Like fresh fruit on the interstate,
like blood on the tracks
tracing its’ own DNA,
like the taste of old pennies
on the back of the tongue,
I expect a miracle in a salt lick,
a sword embedded in the stone
of “How do you do?”
I expect the king to be shorn
of his mane, and standing in
a line-up, to pass for me or you…

PUBLIC DOMAIN

I was born under a bad sign
of the times, that has since
been disqualified, due to
contest rules, and had to be let go.
Portent’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
I am now a free agent, under
no waiver or threat of merger,
the sum of my parts, a dominion of one.
I am the blank slate you write yourselves
upon.

GLIMPSE

Riding the train
late at night, full moon
chasing my shoulder,
the scalded streetlights
of empty parking lots
flash by, one after the other.

I catch a glimpse
of a pure white bed
I will never sleep in,
like an unstuffed memory,
like stitches in a prayer,
gone before I even knew
it was there…

CALL

Imagine a world where we can
all read each other’s thoughts
on tiny slips of paper before
they’re dropped into a stream
and swept away….twitter.

HIGH NOON @ WHITE CASTLE

Lay my hand upon the hand
that lays upon the hand that’s healing.
Mark me present and accounted for.
Put me down for a pregnant pause,
and a dose of downgraded wisdom teeth.
Give me Liberty, give me Death.
Give me the Lazy Susan of the Seven Hells.
I live vicariously through myself.

MR. BRINK

Here, arguing with a
few pilgrims along the way,
I offered them thick words
that have never been spoken
yet may be our own worst enemy.

For reception, I received just
a rattling in the throats that
followed us out of the train station,
a mob on a bender who have foresworn
any further looks in the mirror.

I am alone among the tented
true believers, I am warmed
by the slow fuse of their blood.
I am besides myself, and willing
to put the rest in hock,

I’ve gone as far as I can.

BACK IN BROOKLYN…

The latticed chain-link casts its’ shadow
and the gods skip a shallow grave.
Zeus ran a moving business on 4th ave,
but never could get laid.
The swan died at the doorstep,
the traffic box clicks Stop & Go,
the street light’s a heart flutter filament,
and I’m nothing, a propped-up ghost
standing between two lands…

PREDICTIVE SCRIPT

If you’re so smart, how come
you don’t just say it, my love,
my offal, my premature
transmission, my rapturous malady?

How come you don’t just say it,
a trench between the sentences,
the last place you wanted to dig?

How come I’m chasing myself,
when everyone else has left me?

BLUEPRINT

I see a ghost hand clasping as the cold
winter system flashes by....
a denatured glimpse, a fulcrum, a spigot,
a dead-end god, gone on the spot...

DOGWOOD OR MAGNOLIA?

The pink-blossomed heart
imprisoned from yard to yard
as the dawn light slowly has its’ say
and I am up at 6 AM, toasting suburbia.
I have no name for what I’ve become
or the pale colors that pool around me…

MADE OF WATER

We are made of water, and from water shall we flow.
Our lungs are full of it, our words are full of it,
our eyes, aching and transfixed, are full.
We would drown the world in denial
before we could take this in;
an ocean of breath is what separates us.

TRANSLATE

A flight of geese—
broken black code
against the grey dawn sky

FOREIGN LANDS

The grit of the boot print
is seen in an unflattering
ultraviolet close-up, slightly
out of focus, a single cusp
zoomed-in on the satellite map.

Who but the prince
could lift the sword?
These stories are already suspect,
like thumb prints around
a throat that’s telling.

Who is the one who can name
names, who sent the princess
past the toll gate? Who can find
the edges of the earth and mark
it finished in the dark?

I guess the answer is,
who ever gets there first…

FRAMED

Bird song at dawn—
a melancholy one-note.
The capillaried tree branches
etch the sky into parcels
of cold white light.
My window frame can’t
contain them.

OPEN PALMS, A PRAYER

Such a tired god who labors
between our pauses.
The ground is wet and green;
tufts of color arise
from the rain’s sacrifice.
When I run my hands through it,
it comes up empty.
The shape holds for a moment,
but it is water, after all--
a sliver, a rivulet
to bind us here.

CRUCIBLE

Arms can lift the air
and the dreams we sleep
are bigger than any one
chalice passed between us,
its’ healing work to fill
in the end of the sentence,
a smile caught unawares.

May you carry the goblet
that provides for the rain.
May your cheap hymn set
the roots to rush the next horizon.
May the barrows turn brittle
when you are thrust upon them.

IMPRINT

The full moon hung like a bright
frozen explosion, seen from the tip
of a telescope, or the barrel of a gun.
A birthday was a party hat stepped on
near a puddle of a booze. A smile
was a river that had to be waded through.
The black pavements gleamed with their
secret etchings, the heat of the day rising
up, dissipating. The last light to be turned
off stayed on, a little bit longer…

THE PULSE’S THROAT

…is open for business, and taking no
prisoners who aren’t willing to shake
their money-makers for a greater cause.
This is a free economy, after all.

The pulse’s throat is looking for the beat,
like a deaf-mute by the road side, about
to break into song, like a second cousin
second guessing the second coming,
and the pulse’s throat is really more
a matter of suggestion than law.

Please act accordingly…

SUBJECT LINE

Press the compass to my forehead,
select the GPS location from there.
Oh, did I say compass? I meant compress.
As in compress all this into a proportionally
acceptable segment. OK—Derek did it,
with a claw-hammered family heirloom
in the back garden. Wait—who’s writing this?
I got dibs on the man running out the back door…

COBALT BLOOM BLUES

Strike my eyes from the record.
Put my tongue in rehab.
Wipe the smile from the face
I haven’t made yet. Have me
be born asunder, halfway between
a lamb’s ear and a petal’s slow withering.
Lift me toward the heights that plunge.
Deliver me, an incomplete package,
to the door of my maker, insist
they sign for me, inspect the scrawled
blue ink of their signature, the DNA
bloom upon the page that proves,
“I am the one, I am the one…”

NATURAL’S NOT IN IT?

Why am I not surprised?
Contents implode upon ingestion?
May cause Digestive Armageddon?
Was that part of the social contract?
When the wood was stripped of its’ grain,
when whale bone found its’ way to
spear head, when the princess phone
could dial up a cluster bomb,
I stopped asking who you were…

TRACKS

Well, apparently, Jesus left a few
on the beach, but so did Toucan Sam.
I’ve been tracking them both,
and I’ve got plans, man.
I’ve got plans…

THE TALISMAN MOON

…spoke through many nights.
I found a friend in front of a church.
We were both eyeing the same guitar left
for trash beneath a tree by the street light.
It was fret-less, unstrung, gutted of song.
“Probably full of bed bugs,” you muttered.
We debated the meaning of the night
and then each went our separate ways,
leaving the guitar behind.

EDIT

I figure the final edit is up
to committee, that as one hand
clasps, another one cuts,
but I am porous enough to fit
into what’s missing,
to turn an awkward segway
into a great entrance or exit,
depending on what’s asked of me.
I’m the fall guy.
I’m the burnished saint.
I’m 25 minutes of
you-wished-you-never-asked.
I’m the tin star and the black hat,
cross-roading at an undisclosed location.
I’m a recipe for disaster, and a discarded
dress for success. My interests include
soft focus close-ups, and a starvation diet
of 20-second sound bites. I’m already
getting word that this is going on a bit long.
I can take a hint…Cue the music…Fade…
Cut away…

THE MAGNITUDE…

…of this beast is vast, but its' nerve
endings can be stretched to the finest pitch!
You, too, can speak fluent Off-Shore Account
after our 90-second tutorial, you, too, can isolate
the thermal stress points of the melting pot
and predict appropriate economic fever zones
from within. Congratulations! You just made
the best of all possible vacations.
Your windows are shuttered, all mouths
are open, and the vociferous wind is blowing in…

CURRENT

Are you so lonely on that far shore
that you can’t even answer yourself?
Are you so sure of the shadows
that you can stand up between them
and say you found a channel through?

Is your throat the one tide
that is breaking?
Are you saying what I think
you’re saying, that I’m past
all that, I’m beyond you?

HELIX

I was once released;
the brace of fresh air was terrifying.
I once held hands with myself.
It was all I could do to let go.
The multi-tasking heart has not yet
been documented, but I foresee it
as an evolutionary inevitability.
What once bound us has come undone,
but that old caress had a razor’s
insistence behind it.
Come with me, as we trace
the shadow that crooked smile sent…

CLOSE UP

My irradiated love interest has left
the sound stage, my dog has flashed
the paw signal for “Panic Room”
for the last time. He’s through digging
for lost isotopes, for the golden handshake
that burns at the touch. He’s got his biscuit,
and he’s done with it. It’s a matter of trust.
Now, he’s running toward the event horizon,
winking in and out of focus like a cheap
TV signal, gasping for reception,
just a little bit ahead of the rest of us…

CHALICE

We come here delirious with thirst.
All we ask is already too much, that
the poison be lifted from our lips
as bitter hymn, that the band
strikes up a little bit toward the end,that the chalice is passed, and beginsits’ healing work, that we fill it as it fills us.
All we ask is already too much, all we drink
more than any could give, but still,
our thirst demands the cup…

EMPIRE OF SLEEP

Its’ shorelines are jagged,
its’ inlands smooth,
just like ours, but there,
the impressions make impressions
of themselves, and the leaders
are endless; the handshakes
and name-checking lasts forever.

There, knives draw milk,
and the pitchers pour sorrow.
There, they light up tent stakes
at dawn, and say goodbye
to the insect-winged shiver
of shelter’s promise.

There, they pitch funeral pyres
into the surf at a newborn’s
broken wailing, and consider
every alphabet sanitized
if it can get past, “Hello.”

There, a smile is like
the whale’s rib, curving
continuously downwards,
until its’ very weight
is the point of breaking

RECAST

Can’t you see the horse-drawn cart
before your eyes? How you traded
in your elders for some flash and pan?
Can’t you see you’re a stone’s throw
away from being recast as the first
stone ever thrown? That you’re
the missing link to the misanthropic isotope?
That the narrator constantly re-shuffles
the deck and starts again? Can’t you see,
my fine, neutered rebel, that you’re already
part of the bait and switch,
of this hollowed-out shell of a game?

SLAVES

The slavish wantons are already claiming
that you’re a lost down payment
on what we hoped for,
that you’re already the sum
that’s less than its’ parts,
already a discard, a mask,
a skin better settled,
a gift that breaks apart.
The slavish wantons, with tongues
tied like rust-gummed railroad tracks
to a past they haven’t noticed is behind them.

JOE THE DECIDER

I don’t live in a straight line.
You’ll never trace my scent.
The arc of history descends
wherever I says it does.
You’ll never take me alive.
I never said that.

I’m somewhere between
where the flame starts
and the seal is set.
Don’t give up.
You’ll forget me yet…

SPUTTERINGS

Has my tongue been registered
in the coming convergence?
Has its’ oscillations been properly
adjusted for? I keep hearing you
named in the wind, off in the distance,
howling like we were born to do.
I keep wanting to parse one second
from the next, stripping you down
to the barest signal, that teletype
between breaths, that lip
of a grin just abandoned,
that structure I wrote off
as unsound…

DIAGNOSIS

I am willing to accept the diagnosis
of my most maladied doctor.
His pacemaker runs off low-grade
plutonium, he should be able
to hum a few bars, and keep a tune.

I am willing to accept scurvy
as an unforeseen side-effect,
and degradation to the outer hull,
that social niceties are the first to go.
I’m willing to accept that.

I am willing to accept that I’m less
than completely on message,
that escape clauses only have room
for one, that this sickness
can’t be wished away.

I am willing to accept that
as I’m tied to the mast,
plunging into storms that only
know my name, I will be the last
one left speaking it…

POTENTATE

You called me the golden calf
but I ended up with a silver tongue
where the knife has started
that’s where I’ve begun
no shortness of breath
no palpitations
this corpse immaculate
upon inspection
I speak no further than this body
and I need no further reach
I’m the bankrupt slaughter
every fear that’s ever slipped past
I hold the lease

BANKRUPT

I am the father of many skins;
I wear them duly, in the procession
they were meant to be seen in.

I can’t abide a wayward son,
stripped to his skivvies,
and guessing the capitol of Mexico.

I am a free-range thinker,
and it’s thirsty work out there.
I carry the goblet, you provide the rain.

I’m a miracle worker who’s lost
his devoted flock, I’ve gone bankrupt.
I am the father of many names…

TURBULENCE

You are beside yourself on the tarmac,
taking an illicit snapshot as evidence,
proof you should be at work, or home in bed,
anywhere but here, arguing
with a switch-bladed matriarch
about the very validity of a claim
to “the Friendly Skies.”

We’ve all been robbed.
Saint Peter’s in foreclosure.
We trace the tainted line
on the map closer and closer,
drawing our breath to match
the wagon trained limits,
till we get to the red scrawl
at its’ center, the arrow that points,
“You are here.”

You are beside yourself.

XENOPROBE

I erased that last phrase from
the official transcript; you might
want to keep track of that, it was done
in your honor. Though your tail wing’s on fire,
you’re coming in for a perfect landing,
courtesy of my immaculate muttering.
I’m sure you’ll understand when I say
you must be quarantined and kept
separate from the general populace.
You are the beginning of something
that can’t be said, a delirious silence
that starts now…

SEMAPHORE

My arms are blind, but can’t you read them?
I have achieved Downward-Facing Spiral,
but all you do is lightly perspire and shrug it off,
like it’s none of your business, like your business
stretches out to the outer rings, where farmland
lays wisping in the limp breeze and the occasional
highway light winks on and off. I’m way past
that fly-over zone. I’m done. I’m coming
in for a landing, my arms spread open,
collecting bouquets of empty air…

REENACTMENT

Marie Antoinette, re-headed, says,
“Let them eat yellowcake uranium!”
The Civil War re-enactors stumble about
blearily in the pre-dawn battlefield,
hoping for a second cup of coffee.
Nixon, being Nixon, pretends he’s Elvis
as he daydreams about robbing a bank.
A billboard in Brazil is torn down.
Someone in Hanoi wires the Paris Hilton.
The word “love” is tracked 4,638,000 times
in a single hour by the NSA.
Sleep is declared an Olympic sport;
dreams are disqualified.
I’m taking my position.
Are you with me on this?

MONKEY OMEGA

The last monkey will not know
he’s a monkey. He will shoot himself
in the foot and count it as a blessing.
He’ll consider his tail a be-all and end-all,
a line in the sand that’s already been erased,
the last shell game played on a block
condemned to demolition.

The last monkey wouldn’t think twice
about shanking Darwin in the back.
He’s writing crib-notes in the prayer books,
selling his spine as a holy relic
on the street corner of his ancestors.
The last monkey wants nothing to do
with himself, just wants to jump through
some tired hoops, be done with it.

NOTHING HOLDS ME

The sky lashed tight
to bright-stitched stars,
a glittering skin that cups down.
Off in the distance, a late
clatter of geese calls.

We never know what holds us here.

My breath steams against the cold,
snaking away in grey-shoaled shards.
I pace back and forth on the back deck
and watch the sky grow darker,
the stars bright.

Nothing holds me here.

CONCEIT

Are we not men?

Far from it!

The milk of human kindness?

Excuse me, do you have a 10% off coupon?

The airports are full of detainees.
There’s a scratch ‘n’ sniff form pertaining to their release.

Heaven has been violated.
The rest of you, just file through.
Nothing to see here…

FECUND

Don’t you hear it,
in the sea-shelled howling of night;
a single bloom unfolding in its’
flesh cup, a withering of tendrils,
a grazing of fingertips, a brush
like seaweed against the cheek,
a hush in the breath
of the oldest ocean?

CHASM

Wine-jug moon, misted incandescent through the twining strands of rain that want to pull me in one direction, then the next.
No Jesus, no Buddha out tonight
on cat’s feet, to lend a hand,
no scribbled scripture
to hold this skin together.

Oh Chasm, old friend,
you’ve found me again…

PROFILE PIECE

This fever passes from one to the other
like a tainted bake sale.
This roadside attraction is now
an independent republic
with a banana-based economy
& me a tyrant worried my imported
tin plating will not pass inspection
& may contain trace elements of lead
which could endanger the very children
I swore to protect on this, the eve
of my blood-soaked inauguration,
where “allegiance” is now both
a state of mind, & an accessorized
cologne, & that down payment
on those dowager virgins is actually
none of your damn business---
Did I mention this interview is over?

LIBERTY ASHES

…rolls by, emblazoned on a truck outside
my apartment window, right when I’m going to step
into the shower. Absolve, absolve me!
Of that grey-sheened dusting, parchment-thick.
Let me speak words that haven’t already been burnt.
There’s just a smudge left on your cheek,
in the last grasping rays of sunset---
Excuse me, do you mind? Can I reach?
I want to wipe it clean…