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?

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

COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS

You mean for today? OK, let’s see,
after weeks of heat, the rain finally came,
the humidity broke, and the early evening
was suffused with soft, gentle light:

Through a chain-link fence, sea birds
dive for fish over an inlet of the east river,
the tanks of a fuel depot station
and the Manhattan skyline behind them.

A misted full moon rises against the black silhouette of a disused smokestack.

I’m lifted for a moment out of myself…

OK, that’s it.

THE DEAD ARE THIEVES, TOO

They’ll pick your pocket clean,
like that Ozark you left by the river.
How many times do I have to talk to you?
Taking up double-time in the mirror…
The bones I carry are the bones I’ll throw.
I’m ready to forget—
What have you even left me to sell?

THE FANFARE…

…has left the building,
and donated us an exquisite corpse.
Far be it from me to suggest set dressing,
but the cheeks are less than rosy,
the pupils not quite marble-like in their focus.
If this is not one for the diorama history books,
then why bother knocking?
The scene of the crime is still innocent.
Let’s make something of this…

GHOST TRENDING

In an effort to expand our existing
marketing spectrum, we have recently
tapped into a previously un-mined
demographic resource: the dead.
Who better to hot-spot the future
than the restless spirits of the past?
Whatever’s old is new again,
recycling remains a moral imperative
(stick some “Go Green” copy in here)

The 80’s are back, if the recent spat
of hauntings in the Hamptons are any indication:
big hair, shoulder pads and “Members Only” jackets
were there in abundance.

Perhaps not being able to let go
Is where our consumer stream can buy in?
There’s no accounting for taste
(can ghosts taste?)
but we can account for that.
(note to R & D: Please look into ways
to make ectoplasm go viral…)

FOXGLOVE
Digitalis purpurea

What can make the heart grow stronger
can also kill it, can also be a tall, belled bloom
in my mom’s backyard garden. I ask her the name
of it, she can’t remember, angry with
the encroaching fog of old age.
She calls me later on my cell, as I head
back to the city on the train.
“So, you remembered the name?” I ask, as I pick up.
“Foxglove.”
“Foxglove?”
“Foxglove. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”

And the connection is broken, but remains.
There is something so important to us
in the naming of things, especially
the smallest of things, till they become
the code for something else, the vines
that bind us here, the trickster fox
offering palms full of poison
and salvation, and we can’t help
but shake both hands at once.

THE SHADOW’S TATTOO

The wind coils a succulent rind
out of nothing. It briefly lifts
the raspy skin of my T-shirt.
I stare into it, and I see nothing.
Invisible currents, coding the light
with their touch, relays within relays,
the way a tree sways in the dark
leaves no mark on me.
The shadow’s tattoo could be chain-link,
could be the last inscriptions
of a pure-born medicine,
could be…But why would you want
to finish the wind?

FALSE BOTTOM NARRATIVE

Sorry, where to begin? I’d see myself
out, if I could find a way in.
I was about to pull a parlor trick
in the portside stateroom, when
you suddenly reared your ugly
two-timing head, and stole the action
right out from under me. But I knew
I had to buy into your cover story, that
all storms are washed up with this one,
all slates wiped an oily sheen, am I right?
As the ship goes down, the bottom becomes
the top. I’m working overtime, I’m trying to see
clearly here: What’s my part in all of this?

ACTOR/SUBJECT

I bow before you, loyal only
to the level of your sustained scrutiny.
My life is an open book---please read!!
I would offer an abridged version, but
that bridge has gone too far, and left me
without a proper hand-shaking arm.
I fear I cannot survive beyond the sub-viral level,
that I’m not about to catch on.
This nation continues without me.
I’m a slave to the impulses
of my ghost limb, a nub glibly reaching.
I can’t hold onto this smile forever--
Catch it while you can!