REPULSE HYMN

We could start again, free from the pale gaze
of nostalgia or newsprint. But our nerve endings
can't stand the blank air, they glow like threaded
coal when released from the skin.

I will sing tonight as I heard the drowned
mistress sing, freed from any repetition
of remorse, a carol to the choir at arms,
a soldier with an innocent smudge
on his cheeks—Oh please! I’ve been waiting
to break through for weeks. Just let me speak…

ARTIFICE

I still worry that this arts 'n' crafts camp is just
a pretense, that I am its’ real exhibit, that simply
by counting, I am creating some soundless,
idiot-savant arithmetic that lulls the rest
of the world to sleep; their concerns eased
because my concerns seem so limited.

I solve the newsletter’s cross-word,
and suddenly, you’re slipped into a more
aerodynamically ordained grid,
satellite-friendly and free of questions.
You wince, and crush the single pamphlet
of orientation material---Apparently, you
were looking for a higher tax bracket bump.

I’m crawling the walls, I so want to whisper.
You tap the paper, and I receive the latest
tattoo to be beaten into song;
a death march, a jingle, a wedlock of breath
and formless function. But I’m done.
Close this heart, and hands, and eyes.
Wait to make up the next encoded sunrise.

LEGAL BRIEF

Perforce, subsiliquent

Perforce, ballowdahlia

Perforce, thukhalanigh

Perforce, indulfeckistan

Perforce, abborathon

Perforce, validaphrate

Perforce, anon

The neighbor's air-conditioner rattles
all night; I dream
of crickets

Asleep in the wheat field
ears full
of a brown whispering

Petals stuck
in the lungs
of the withered river corpse

BLANK TESTAMENT

Stars flicker, and the planets are steady.
Or is it the other way around?
You try to remember, staring up
at your own wedge of cold night sky,
crowded with a testament
you couldn’t begin to decipher.

It’s easier for you to imagine
an army of flesh-eating zombies
shambling down the hill-side
off the back deck, than the deer’s
pricked ear, or the quick-sulfured
eye-glimpse of the fox.

You go inside, take a piss, come back
and just like that, the stars are gone.
Out of the black now tumble
glistening lisps of snow,
like the stars had come unstrung
and were swarming down

gasping ashes desperate to tell you
the story that you missed, turning
a blank white as they hit the ground.