NAMELESS ZONE

The red war paint of the van’s reverse brake lights
washes over my apartment’s walls as it pulls in next door,
casting me in momentary blood and chain link shadow
relief, and suddenly, I am nameless, in some forsaken
war zone that will also remain nameless, and they’ve come
for me and I feel the weary resignation in my bureaucratic
bones, sitting on a front stoop late at night in Brooklyn…

ALL I ASK…

…Is that the elm tree cast its’ shadow
(writhing in wind) on the apartment building
across the street. All I ask is that
the imposing matronly silhouette in the ground floor
window doesn’t mark me down as “suspicious”
as I smoke a butt on my front stoop
and enjoy the incongruous night winds of Brooklyn.
All I ask is that time opens up
and you can step in.
All I ask is that I’m not mistaken
for who I actually am…

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…