RUINS

Look---There’s Rome
in my ashtray! The photo
of a ruined coliseum
beneath the grey-shaled
dust of cigarette butts,
shifting & snuffed-out.
I’m like a slave, who bought
his freedom, smiling…

HOLY ACCIDENT

Torn breezes
settled air
an impact I can breathe
Crickets after a long rain
the leashes of a distant hurricane
briefly eased
& me left guessing
at the thrumming engine
that goes on beneath each breath

WE ALL KEEP TIME

this roadside is
a snake swallowing itself
and we are one

for lack of air and water
and light, for lack
of what is left

give forth a still born
who sings in a voice
of clear, untrodden underground

for the rest, I wrap around
me like a cheap hymn
we all keep time to

INVERTED HYMNAL

I draw my dark ancestor
into a dance through
my own many mistakes

A cheap hymn we all
keep time clumsy fingered and
I come back to bite

A cheap hymn we all
are drowning and glad for it
rising off the dashboards

A cheap hymn
the hungry hunt and peck
A cheap hymn

When radios sing heaven

CONSTANT MAP

Map is what they
call your face
I remember a time
when we didn’t precode it
when the altars would break
upon your breath
when I was willing to be lost
on these broken shores
and not ask for any shard
to replace it….

COLLECTIVE

Summer collapses upon itself
We hold up torches in protest of heat
The burning ember-ribbed monolith
The quiet cupping of the hive’s eye
The lightening bugs rim our scattered sight
We beat the ground in unison
A tide ferociously dry
We have lived past our hour
Now we are just a rattling
In the throats that follow

TRAIN STATION, 1 AM

Oh, the scabrous humanity,
the hunt and peck, hungry
for an afterbirth. Faces
mutter to themselves,
study religious pamphlets,
Us and People magazines,
schedules and missed connections.

Between the thrumming
of trains coming and going,
a lone cricket chirps
amidst the trellised iron work.