If I drew a blank
then how could it still be blank?
I got nothing here

Soaked in summer sweat
can memories leave the skin
just as easily?

Fireflies flit and dance
a slow, cautious teletype
erased as it’s made

Oh, late-night TV
robots eating my fast food
this is what I see

APOCALYPSO

Can you feel it? The sway to the earth’s
slow grind, that tight-curled magnetic
girdle trying to muscle in and hold
everything down? How much
can stay bound? I could break
a jaw bone to break into song,
I could break the last canary
out of the coal mine,
I could go with the flow
and be drowned in rivers
much larger than me,
I could sway in breezes
and watch the beats hit
like muzzle flashes just outside
the limits of prescribed sight,
I could break free and still
be left empty-handed…

This dance you do, what do you call it?

TIMES SQUARED

History repeats itself because
that’s what written into its’ contract.
Check the sub-clause. It’s all there
in black and white, or sepia tones;
whatever steps of removal leaves you
comfortable with what can’t be undone.
It’s a self-generating property, it’s
transcendent real estate. You’re on
the ground floor of a value that can only
go down, and down, and down…

My faucet’s dripping
air conditioners still hum
a Brooklyn silence

Tethered spider web
spins and drifts, silvery gleam
from a waist-high weed

Harlem Haiku

Three spotlights skitter
across a mist-laden sky
off selling something

outside my window
an owl call cuts through the dark
we talk about shit

Moon-bright flecks of light
drawn on scurrying current
toward dark waterfall

Damn my misplaced faith
I had the key to all things
and then I lost it

Uneven warble
bird song breaking out at dawn
I couldn’t name it

Animals squabble
who can point to proper blame
out my dark window?

Brief, compacted wind
sweeps through the stuttering trees
but does not touch me

MIXED PIXELS

I’m just coming into resolution
but I’m friggin’ losing it!
I’m the pause button before
the calm before the storm.
I’m a handful of neutered
thunder claps, I’m the sound
of one hand washing the other,
I’m part of the bigger picture.
Won’t you mix with me?

Chain-link casts shadows
a distorted spider web
for me to walk through

Luminous city
like an afterthought rising
from the river’s mist

Dawn’s dull light spills in
azalea blooms burst blood-red
a deepening green

The mewing newborn
in a concussion of green
blooms about to burst

A siren at night
sounds like an owl’s frantic call
if you hear it right

Wind clatters the leaves
insistent fingers that reach
outside my window

In this gathered night
a car parks, stereo blasting
then the quiet speaks

Lost balloons sail past
pale orbs in the twilight sky
planes criss-cross above

Leafless branches bloom
silver-lit raindrops at night
just a passing fruit

The moist lip of spring
fresh magnolia blossoms
beneath the street light

The gibbering beast
outside: just a cat in heat
or my own worst thoughts?

Train’s lonely whistle
rides the mist @ 2 AM
closer than it seems

Misty halo moon
black tree branches’ tendriled scrawl
flock of geese sing past

Sunset skyscraper
sends a gleaming path across
the river to me

Seagull reels through mist
river buoy flashes red
rain speckles my sight

Perigee full moon
a white, blazing gaze stares down
close as it will come

BESEECH

Oh, the various & virulent spirits we beseech!
We make faces into the great unknown, & hope
the cutting edge of our smile is immortal...

After Japan

My friend asked me for a prayer of peace
but I can’t give words to contain such suffering
and everything I offer is less…

Jet squalls past above
turning the night inside out
I still watch TV

Headlights seen through mist
like choreographed rain drops
lit up as they fall

Riverside oil tanks
grey against a fog-grey sky
the day is fading…

Sidewalk newspaper
pages flipping in the wind
no one to read it

Suburban Haiku

motion sensor light
this privileged motherfucker
has a sudden stage

DRACONIAN ERROGENOUS ZONES…

…have been established throughout the city,
hoping to defuse the current social climate
with a self-activated shame cycle, accomplishing
what tear gas and a reflexive leaden thumb could not.
We ask you to examine your own bodies, and their
corrosive agenda of base desires, and wonder
if you don’t come up short. Further, we ask
if a loop can be established, a closed circuit,
between achieving those desires and the white noise
we are currently funneling into your subconscious.
In conclusion: What if Play Time was Work?
What if we could make you strike against yourselves?
What if love was the inverted spearhead
that ended the heart?

Sirens rend the night
dark windows splashed in red light
some stranger’s problems

Flash from my window
rumble through the whirling white
that was Thundersnow!

the hawk lands heavy
before taking off again
empty oak branch thrums

Snow falls in Bushwick
M-train rattles overhead
sparks and snowflakes mix

another late night
moon muddled through windowpane
I should be asleep

My glass is half full.
I don't remember drinking.
This is not my glass.

(Poem by Doug Roussin)

I saw the future
my friends were busy texting
I was left speechless

APPLY THEME

Rampant Tenderfoot
Current Protector
Inaccurate Lingo
Leisure Removal
Forward Thinking
Ash and Fire
Ash and Fire
Ash and Fire
Dark Wood
Deep Ocean
Magic Paper
Drinking DNA
Black and White
and Red All Over…

WHITE MILK SUBSTITUTE

Am I a shadow of a man if I cast none of my own?
Are we the sum and total of eight essential ingredients,
minus emotional baggage and excessive wear and tear?
If we can split the atom, the logic goes, we should be able
to gut the infidel and point his entrails to
True North. We should be able to find ourselves
on the face of the compass, by the bias of magnetism
alone. I’m all for short term myths, but we’ve
got to get the order forms right. One slip can lead
to a simple paper cut, which in turn could lead tothe slow, onion-like unraveling of my cover identity,
and since I don’t go much further than skin deep,
that’s not a view I want to keep.

INCOMING FEVER DREAM

The eyes may play tricks,
but the mind’s got its’ games
rigged; one way in, many ways
out, and it’s up to individual
participants to rend the veil,
to ignore the hallways filled
with unemployed centaurs
and harlots, the avatars being
stripped of their momentary mantles,
crucibled in fire and restarted again.
What is really real is really
not the point. It’s how you
navigate the system.
It’s your fever. It’s your verdant
forest to burn to the ground.
We supply matches, blowtorches,
even premium vintage napalm.
One way in, many ways out.
Proceed.