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…