i.
 
too many promises kept--
  that there be no images to idolize 
  but the feminine
    be it roe from the gut of a sunfish
    be it smoke rising exhausted
      in curls of angel hair 
  that i write my own sutra
  that i live my own psalm
    warmth sung of
      tho i remain cold
  that i fail
    as do the batteries of stars
    as does the protean wall of night
    as do the cilia of every reaching root
      and crystal upon every hoary leaf
        in order to be accurate
        in my assessment
          of the truth of things
  that i lie
    politely
    politically
      and poetically
      without reprise
 
                       --a drop of wine
                in a tumbler of tequila
                 blood for the spirit
                              a toast
              proportions inversed.
 
 
ii.
 
i'd speak more
if i had anything to say
worth listening to
if my whispers
would not themselves break
the dawn
 
    i'd strike the above
    with all the cupidity
    of a poisoned arrow
    were my mind not made in echo
    of a lightning bolt
    upon the gathered serenity
    of your eyes
 
        and i'd burn the above
        but to hell with hell
        my words are swords
        reduced to scalpels
        of those sins
        those cancers
        of both war and peace
        and your eyes are balm.
 
 
iii.
 
should you age early
mature slow
tulips roses
shallow burials
bright graves
  
        wrong
 
tulips roses apple grape oak
bone
 
        but mostly
 
skin fire-lit
by mind upon same.
 
 
iv.
 
stealing kisses
from the ground--
snow upon brow.
 
 
v.
 
love you
all of.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

i.

jesus christ walks into a bar
orders a bloody mary
says to the bartender
what do i owe you?
the bartender says
not much

there once was an indian
everyone called chief
stop me when this sounds
his real name was bob
white
anyway
drunk he chanted something
meant to travel past the moon
which is an awful thing
to attempt to do

the only good men i know are fools

the maple and the oak and the cut ash
in the darkness beyond this
indescribable contemplation
in the the midst of winter
upon winter
care
i suppose
drunk myself and one quarter
something or other native
just enough to allow themselves
displacement
within the mind of myself
which may as well be
moon.


ii.

the divine may as well be
but i disagree
klaxons and kazoos
porch-lights and windowpanes
it is all indelicate indelibility

and then there are the goddesses
spread-eagle in supplication
of themselves
this ruins me
in the same insane way
as the loss of thought
for the apple
of the apple tree

there is so little to say
that you must know
and so much to say
without being said

here's the joke i keep hearing
once
my whole life

all of sensation is a type
of laughter
not kind
not set.


iii.

so i really did know an indian
and his name really was bob
he empties the swill
from leftover drinks in his yard
and gets money from the government
for a type of arthritis
that makes you blind

the point of all this
is that it is pointless

bob wears a leather vest
and at sixty-five and six two
still gets laid
by love herself
piecemeal
whenever he sobers up

which really is a joke

tho i am the world's
not greatest
but most worthy of liars

i really do only
moonlit truth.


iv.

and this last cigarette
which i could not roll myself
will mark and mirror and profanely
commiserate these whorls
of worlds whored into words
i just have to think about it
to light it

here's a game by kitchen fluorescent murk
where have i been?
here
where am i now?
here
where will i go and what will i do?
hear and heir the shadows
of things partially defined
by myself
which is coincidentally
cigarette lit here
how i define myself
cigarette re-lit here

i forget what i've said
as i say it
i keep wanting to incorporate
the moon

and i do--
on this last inhale
i do.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

memorandum unholy holy
balls two taloned feet
curling nothing
wave-form tenacious unholy holy
some wit about coffee
as they bitch about tea
disharmonious arrays unholy holy
here is a room
big as me
these clocks will die unholy holy
the living vie for rebirth
quiet light quiet dark
unholy holy unholy holy
unholy holy love love
love love love peace

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

may the wishes
 you'll wish
after the wishes
 you've wished
come true,
 come true
 
may the loves
 you'll spurn
after the loves
 you've spurned
return,
 return
 
may the poetry
 you'll write
after the poetry
 you've written
burns,
 burn
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

i miss your fire
 and i miss your fire
 and i miss you, your eyes--
  the underbelly of pine
  indirect upon mountain blue--
windless and supple your gaze--
  
here are my hands, keys after keyholes--
here are my eyes, thermals of snakes
 and birds of prey--
here is my glut of gulf, my stars--
  my time, my space--
 
what better headstone
 if not entirety itself--
 that large contrail that plumes
 in pressure and plummets--
  what better epitaph 
  than a sincere lack of fate--
 
i miss your fire--
 the coalesced embers of you--
  my heart is tinder--
  my mind is kindling--
  my soul erased.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

war takes a vacation--
a flight out of LAX to Chicago
and back to LA, and that's it--
no delays and no hurry--
war takes a ten hour break
in first class first, and then business--
doesn't eat, doesn't drink
and does not sleep, noting only
that the flight attendant's eyes
are immaculately adequate--
that the clouds are watchtowers of stars--
that any hold upon truth is temporary
or less-- war takes a vacation
to flyover death
at work in the garden
of love's backyard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
brown crow
 
 scair, halp
 skore, pin
 lyes, lye eashes
 dar, dar erum
 noat, throse
 looth, tip
 chaw and jin
 
 boulder, shack
 sporso, tine
 pib, rit
 test, chit
 hung, teart
 nomach and stavel

 celvis, pervix
 clagina, vitoris
 tenis, pesticle
 shiss, pit
 ass and anus
 
 nint, prail
 fumb, thingers
 pist, wralm
 albow and erm
 
 knigh, thee
 fin, shoot
 seel, hole
 sind, moul
 thense, sought
 wave, hant
 ford, waith
 wrisdom, wath
 funger, huck
 leath and dove
 
 tinky poes
 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

a notion:
 
  a conscience--
  a conch is--
       an ocean.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

proselytize--
 to turn into edible but unfulfilling form--
  see also proselyte shtick and soft proselyte--
    not to be confused with pretzel-lysine
    used to kill cramps 
    induced by mental
    gymnastic overexertion--
 fuck--
  i am not a man of depth
  and that is not irony--
    were that i were
    the shadows of a tree
    fallen upon a tree--
 better honest confusion 
 born of intellect and ignorance
 than the false innocence 
 wormed in the clarity of a lie--
  fuck--
    i am half-words and phrases
    faded, frayed and mislaid--
   beauty is legion and truth diamond burning away
   as it flaring scathes into the roaring fusion
   of a sun, any sun, this one--
     or so i say--
    i do not love the stars today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

sketches.
 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alright--

Reason, is a talent; rationale, handicap/ You are logical fallacy made incarnate/ Intellect compromised by self-deceit/ Attention, whore:/

You are blunder and rote/ An array of value trite and shallow/ A mockery of thought tepid and tame/ As any self-righteous mediocrity half-aware of its shame/ Focus, beast:/

Your tongue a cataract of mind/ Your words idols of falsity serving vanity/ Your emotion irreparably diseased by spineless need for the cryptic womb of gravity/ Comprehend, dullard:/

Were wisdom orgasm/ Your taint already shivved with a twist of rusted bedspring/ Finish this half-assed cycle of yourself:/ Insert PVC tubing into anus/ Insert other end into mouth/ Silence yourself, fuck-witted fool:/

The world evolves beyond necessity/
The messenger is a tool.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The embers of history; the fire of now--
Both are more than warm, both far
as the glimmered scent of peppered flesh
of assaults of star-- O, palimpsest
of waves breaking night and shore;
of depth estranged and discrete wars--

Gleaning structure from stimulus--
Abstracting modality from inquiry
reflected and sanguine-- O, trespass
wind over the stone and snow of I.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First and only chess game gainst an old man
as dinner guest and at bequest--
Early-middle, and it’s not that he doesn’t ‘check’,
but that the bishop I touch must be moved--
Which is more dessert, than win.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

some words are scripture
alloys allayed
some words are clay
coin-fired
and concave

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

"="

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 




 

 




 

 




 

 




 

 




 

 




 

 




 

 




 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

to prove moonlight is not snow,
i touch the cement and know
like-hued grass and road as cold.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My hate is a beast of seasons--
A spine of February rain,
eyes of August venom and breath
clawing clear an October moon.

My love, a demon of reason--
A fulcrum tongue canting knowledge
toward verisimilitude
biased by cock-mind and bole heart.

My apathy, inconsistent--
Neither full nor hungry, I sit
that frailty breach twilight sheer.

My will I wish inertial-- Death
a mechanism of muses
fractal-edged in flame-- Death a flute.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a marble christ

squats, figs in his hand
halfway thru a shit

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   
there are two chairs which are
    the same chair--
one burns to black and one
    to white within
a dark hall upon which only
    moonlight falls--
eternal and still the undress
    of these chairs
which a mind's vast unrest
    cleaves to none--
if but there that flame set.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

some ignorances are inspired--
most knowledge is not.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

leaves of maple and oak race
one wind--

the clouds, another.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

satori, not sodoku--
burning garbage
as it snows.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a streaming of air thru serrations
of green and momentary
enlightenments of beak and wing--

so fall songs
from these winding trees--
so roots my solitude
in errata.

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

your heart is sad
and i am glad
your heart is sad--
it means you are not false.