Poems

my books are my mind spilled out in pages scattered across shelves i am sifting through my ancestors the sacred and profane remembering and forgetting i am becoming my path is a line of green highlit fire I am a thousand flames words called forth from the black ink to think is to divide: each letter infinitesimally smaller: the beating of a heart god i love the fire pressed through me called forth by the word into difference yes i am fractal infinitely recursing into flaming colors books within books are written as my soul exults in the infinity of……

it is 9 o'clock in the morning and my brain is full of tongues i woke to a president's plan for an ailing economy pressed through a recalcitrant congress ground finer still by the pecking fingers of reporters stuffed into the airwaves like a sausage. my dreams were cobweb clinging in my mouth I prayed in the light as I waited for the snooze my dream persisted like hope but soured a sharp toothbrush punctures my reverie not unpleasant…

The echoes of a night drift through my screen mesh. A man explains fervent against a Crown Vic's acceleration. Crickets pulse aloof as tree branches rustling above. And why does a horn slice insistent across the rustling of dry leaves? Anonymized by distance, a dog yelps in pain incomprehensible. Our city vast as starscapes whose lights yet travel to our eyes. i am a distant hope i make no sound my ballpoint is a ninja…

the day barks: a hound set to guard by inner clockworks officious, vigilant exhaustion nine thousand anonymous lapping at the will an attriting ocean once again it bays thirsting for work and feed "i am (i am)" yes, and i am i say but less in the dawn oh the ceaseless dawn! calling me to life from wordless desire ah how it tracks me 9 thousand distinctions shattered from a single pane and the wind carries a howl through the broken glass…

I remember the hammocks staring up into the meshed leaf canopy a midwesterner in paradise still working i remember the hammocks of paradise high in the leaf canopy i strove against the leafcutter ants against the green-hued sun to build a haven where all things stay where put i remember the hammocks where i strove in my mind as my body rested…

For the Buddhist, hell is very tangible. The unenlightened life is hell. Souls continually recirculate through hellish life after life until enlightenment, upon which they escape to a state of oneness, infinite compassion, etc. This infinitely repeated cycle of life, death, and birth is called samsara: the Wheel of Suffering…

I slunk noiselessly candy on my breath past a weeping violin. I tore out my smile and rolled it like a cigarette smoldering gently. He began to smoke and my guilt subsided the smoke caught in his wrinkles and my nakedness chattered. I think I love the night with its wolfish yellow eyes the burn of anti-sleep pacing at my window smelling the rain…

He kept us there imprisoned after he constructed a facade around the the sheriff's office it was the tin veneer of a general store he sold permits and titles to goods and lands and other things he wove whole cloth from lies we existed behind it buried in the ruination of authority forgotten in the former seat of power…

the fire in my flesh a bicycle-gholem from the amputated and discarded the bionics of a thousand worlds all impossible, forgotten a lace of time resolving to now discarded limbs, all remembered touching and flexing the lost moments of departure dead flesh kindled in the fire of what was not the haunting of a limb that never was i feel the jar of steel through my hands and feet as i ride her the memories and frustrations carry me…

i am myself lived through me another's hand upon me i am in love with her she is a prescient guide past my doubts and troubled questions I must persevere as I have done for less towards less. There is no returning only the dip of oars soft in the night lapping at the stillness in my soul as i move towards the moon on the water…

I am Ahab that terrible king of self Fate a godless windup ratcheting its red arms Blasphemy is an empty hatred motored as I am a blood-turned turbine Hope a harpoon thrust towards the leviathan Life crushed to oil Fuel for the machine…

i am awake in dawn thoughtlessly alive in a stream of life past a collection of islands against a grey sea in a system of seas infinite swirling grey revolving about an black abyss that is needing i am moving in increments of eight by sixty by sixty I am moving still smaller past atoms quarks leptons bosons and fermions the spaces between things are not rules, no. exuberently tiny in godless exultation the freedom of matter in rivulets down my face…

Our God is an AK-47 he said we love with power yes, i thought a distant steel penetrating like a bullet to the heart a bang and a glittering silence…

God was a tiny speck I saw him narrow through the iron bars Thrashing in white I threw myself straightjacketed against them all I love my just so God white like me…

your love is a hard pearl set in a wound i wove it pink of my anger and blood a hard thing set in the flesh of my heart i gnaw it there smooth against my teeth i am cold clenching a pink flame blood warm in my mouth yet i am cold cold as truth in ones and zeros i am god of the spreadsheet my tiny perfection translucent with pain clenching a tiny world…

i am taking apart a world of legos color by color ink is dripping like blood from latexed hands putting together my feet slip and I lay sleeping where I have fallen i wake in bloody morning to dip my pen i make a list of poems messy as the dawn…

The dry corn clatters grey and crumbling a mocking death. the wind blows from deep within a fetid machine it is a wind of power of money of commodities the corn knows the wind. snaggle-toothed it speaks: Listen prophet! hunger it knows dry weeping for water drinking what is blown grey and dying…

A tender God brushes, gentle insistent. She asks me to ask “Where have I been?” I am asking myself less gently than She. Who could neglect Her? that tender power un-presuming I cannot speak after all, what does one say to such a God? A love so whole I must but cannot the distance She reaches to touch…

whiteness is a dream i woke to soul screaming with bad rock in an adolescent doldrum suburban night was quiet i ghosted in obtrusive black a glowing cigarette against an empty playground the night is a dark love of mystics and devils the moon a perilous mistress hard against cement would you ride her to God small man? as yet untested by the mediocrity of morning a thousand sands of day wearing the heart to a lumpy putty…

I do not exist he said nor does the agency I represent. Harken unto my absence and the deafening noise of silence defiantly unmaking…

i am falling (it's true) so far, i think a living god holding in this abyss am i ever alone? so tender a feather floats... alone but this tender furious God is holding rocking. i am none in black soft vertigo to where... is that un-knowing…

Memory is a world the sawing bow: a violin strung with humans, quiver with melody and ache forth tears. I am a world I carry with me dying a life somewhere else I am a memory. a poem frozen lipped and dead the world is this woman gorgeous, a keening wail the wind kisses her hair she is memory and I the wind. and walking back to walk the slumbering walk in this world someone killed but vexes continually the world is a gorgeous woman frozen-lipped and dead and the wind kisses her hair like memory…

On all sides we were beset By Adjectives and Nouns They pressed against relentless But us Verbs, we held our ground. They tried to hold us still To ponder where and what, But we quite had our fill! We held our tractless rut. Like footprints in the sand They wooed our formless band To mold our frenzied act Like beads encased in hacky-sacks But we proved Impossible to ride Foam stallions of the tide…