mind your head (and your heart) as you walk out the midnight door

Before the moon breaks like an egg
on your hollow
of waxing man’s cheek,
mind your head
on the cuneiform door—

the frame
that will beg you
for more

as you walk
towards candles
on alters towards

The journey, they say!

It’s the journey, those they ‘s
from the dungeon inside
the dungeon inside
the dungeon of they
say.

What do they know anyway?

HA! Is what I say
to those pragmatic foghorns
of they:

I will have what I will when I bring it!

What will be, will be, will be—

never-mind all those secretive cuneiform doorframes
growing progressively smaller
with each pirouette
and turn;

smaller with each pictograph word;
smaller
until you are the essence behind
every word
like a feather

off bird.

Until I am as low
as poor Alice,
awake outside
of the dream,
dressed in a skin
made of bells
out of sight of the queen
of all men’s
bittersweet
bleeding heart chocolates—

I will mind my head on the cuneiform door,
lest the yolk of this life
eat me whole.

© Kristin Reynolds 12 12 2010

Gutted Fish

Now that my heart has been splayed open
like a gutted fish
Now that I have not run for safety
but stand, open-hearted and bleeding
before the hand who holds the knife

Now that I know (as surely as anything)
that THIS is love – stripped
of all its expectancy, all its dreams
in its raw, most heart-rending state

Now - I stand transfixed
staring into a night sky
which has (at this very moment)
zoomed light-years closer
surrounding me with her bright stars

Now I suddenly know
that I am one of these
and that, somewhere, someone else stands
transfixed …gazing up at ME

Keeping Company

the ceaseless ticking of clocks
the hollow humming of heaters
fill the void where ought to be laughter
and chatter and the clanking of dishes
and the shuffling of feet

tick tick
tick tick
hummmmmmmm…

I rejoice at the smallest sounds of life
my dog licking his paws
or lapping water from his bowl
the clicking of his toenails
on the floor

tick tick
tick tick
hummmmmmmm…

at night there are no birds
to visit my deck-rail
nor roosters crowing
nor children playing
nor even passing cars

tick tick
tick tick
hummmmmmmm…

where is the lovely rain
whose steadfast comp’ny kept me
whose clear gentle rolling voice
sang the sadness of my heart to sleep
and caressed the crinkles from my brow

tick tick
tick tick
hummmmmmmm…

tonight even the wind has ceased
no loons are calling no frogs are singing
no ships are rumbling by
and darkness and silence and I
are keeping company with the dog

Adrift

A lone star adrift in the darkened sea of night,
lost in the vastness of space - and time.
Seeking, searching, reaching for comfort,
the solid ground of familiarity,
confirmation of existence,
of reason, of purpose…

Remembering the solid curves of your body,
the taste of your skin,
the rhythm of your breath.
Oh, how these were my anchor,
my stay, in the stormy seas of existence’s doubt.

Oh, how I long to be anchored there again,
alongside you; to know my place
in this passing world
as surely as I know my own heartbeat.

Disillusionment

to accept the unacceptable
to will against your own will
to die to be born
to let go your grip from your most precious jewel
for which your life – your entire being –
has been the setting

to upturn your heart-goblet
emptying its contents into the dirt
to carry the burden of intolerable sin
to have defiled the sacred – the highest will of God
to breath, to eat, to sleep, to wake
without hope, without desire, without reason

to endure the flame that consumes your heart
the talon’s-grip deep into your core
to stand beneath the burning sun
in the vastness of your desert-soul
to cry without relief
to gasp like a dying fish
to step forward into the fire
to lift your eyes to heaven – and pray

On the Loom

strands of connection,
the golden warp of existence,
without which
the weave of daily life,
its myriad colors of events
and people and circumstances,
becomes as impossibly unsolid
and instable
as a tree without a trunk,
stars without a night sky,
sunlight severed from its fiery source;
without which
the weight of a single life,
its accumulated sorrows
and disappointments and grief,
becomes as impossibly unsupportable
and unbearable
as an elephant upon an ant’s back,
space without time,
the heart of man severed
from its fiery source

Densities 306

it is a static Saturday at last the low down clouds gray the light
and the wind hits the walls on top of the hill gleefully
it is a ponderous task to attach casters to this roller coaster
I will myself to lift the drill and ponder its secrets
the bit box opens offering its variety ready for surgery
my disabilities are all here for the holidays too
my hands won't stop shaking
my eyes guess the best they can
I am bound to fail
I accelerate deliberately
one step at a time
without the necessary tools

CHRONICLES OF CHANGE AND TIME

FRAMES

At six years old
I pursued the fantasy of technicolour
Melville and Orson Welles
Harpooned their madness
Blinding into my excitement
That made the sea gulls spin silver
Against sky
And in all ways with an avalanche
Of a new found timeless fear
That convinced me
Of the value in the human riddle
The very rumour of spilled wine
And the full measure of life
A snarl of sea wind echoed
Months and years afterwards
And the captain in death
Still hunts and beckons my dreams

End

THE HUNTER

We have known fear by another name
A secret name from a vantage of great distance
Past the rhymester bough

To know the strength of wild horses ablaze with riders of fortune
Of a darkened darkness in an immortal vision of Godspeed
A liberty in four tongues spoken as the familiar cries of the owl

A night bread of the strange infestations as a perchance to dream
Of conjoining sounds of a pleasure taken as nothing so sweet
As the taste from the wounds of deflowered maidens in black

Enacting a beauteous embrace in a naked diminished vanity
Destroying the movement and sacrificing wisdom in exchange
For the Goddess's grace in a sacred sun light's creatures hide

In neighbouring moving shadows and fully reverberated sound
Of salvation of a reversed beginning and finally with secret hurt
In an overgrown time recorded by on one against the beating

As the heart stops in shock as memory has killed again and alone
Once the fox is skinned and the rabbit devoured and the God Dog
Fades by the master's side in length and distance of a morning's
Mist and an adolescent fog promising to overrun the shoreline
By the limitation of forgotten lessons only the pain remembers

End

CHRONICLES

This season's rain an autumn spinet
As the wind etches light in darkened calendar pages asleep
Till the morrow that disobediently arrives anew

Sing with me as nature's tunes of bread and wine
Coloured glass believed familiar memoirs
Spreading birds of game aloud as waves and pines

A Grecian summer bride with the love of Arcades
Islands of unravished smiles motion silent overtones
The messenger as ourselves as deities of joy abound

Stratagems all but forgotton in the falling of music
And as Orpheus his affections turned arrow skyward
Youthful soprano voices and sunlit amber tongues

All sorrow now in the deepest hands of time's tide
Circles of roses and milk made oceans of dulcimer dew
Fear not there is not but a flashing of damask flowers

All fountains sing of ambrosia's lifeblood and honey
Miracles a paradise of delight built with the pleasure
Of a thousand symphonies of light in the eye of Rah

With a tumult replaced by fate's law
And then vanished the lustres of past days and nights
Beloved dwelling shapeless with eternity's destiny

This loom dark intricate time folded under the eyes
Ablaze with crystal as an arc of play and rest embraced
As all is recreated in the likeness and vision of a child

End

CHANGE AND TRANSFUSION

Anger in a weathered universe sharing media
Eaten by machines to jump-slip the maze alive
A million stab wounds are provided by down
Enjoy the ride of tactics that exit pure logic
Of most souls in green pools of evil short listing

Words ... such as these above

Alongside brass as a sixties aphoristic stance
Of unawakened predictions
Against a fitted sailor's screen of a fear of drowning
Quite uncomfortable an underwater lover lying still

And ... in the middle of this line

I do not remember dying

End

Densities 294

at a certain age living
becomes a vice
you know it is bad for your health
to go on and on into extreme
decrepitude
without a sense of humor
possibly without your memory
just for the hell of it

Densities 282

no men who love other men are allowed in our military
even on suicide missions
or killing women and children
they get everything ass-backwards
men who love women
full or part time as long as it shows
are far better killers than lovers
this everybody knows

Graffiti

I save the world
By writing graffiti
Because I must
I write it in the dust

Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust

The Spider

In the dawn
In the coming light
The spider
Rolls away the night

For Better or Worse

tonight what small demon holds forth
against my happiness
what inexplicable small misery
chokeholds this night
and the delicate heartbeat
beneath and between these ribs?

the sinews breath
with every rising of the lung
the sunrise awaits with every breath
noticed or not
for better or worse
we continue the slow march
to the westward shores
mapped out long ago

there’s a magnet in the sky
that pulls us like waves
but we will not lie down
not tonight
not until the final sun
sizzles against the waves
drowning in agonyecstasy
swirling dizzying dance to death
we come

home is not in the sky but the sea
where fishes are the stars
and tides, the moon
and the elusive sun, the murky beam
that penetrates our depths

#2173      20101025

Laying under the
    snowberry hedges
Hind legs stretched out
For one last
    moment of comfort
The endless seeking
    for mommy
    has ended
    as winter approaches.
No more loneliness and fear.
This fawn, still tiny,
    has no spots,
and for moment I think
    it is still breathing.
While burying it I couldn't help
    thinking about its' life.
Did its' mother die?
Is this a more realistic Bambi story?
Was it struggling all summer
    trying to grow on grass when
    it needed mothers' milk?
Or was it a genetic glitch?
How many narrow escapes
    had it fled
    only to end it here...
    limping and sick --
One last escape needed as the kids set about their
    morning chores;
I love you little fawn.

Densities 228

Halloween is purple and gray above

brown below

skeletons of poplars bend at the waist

and the white snows stir in the cold blue

wind

and the blue rain

all the invisible blues

the sky that disappears

the sea that goes gray

the moon impaled on an icicle

that remains indifferent

I notice the stars are magnified

in cemeteries

it is the infinite that blankets our bones

with speech

and also muffles every utterance

in a chorus of inarticulate murmurings

the language of stone is about to be spoken

again

by the lipless ventriloquist whose silence

makes the dead dummies dance

Densities 220

the last hour

the air gets thinner

takes so much longer

than all the rest

every minute sinks

in concrete

I am old enough now

to stay up and watch

the asphixiations

I shout at it to stop

but always stick to the

pogrom

amidst pumpkinheads

and hyenas in formal attire

herpetologists hand out

the awards

once I was a pinky

half way down the throat

of a snake

the seconds ran away

like gazelles on fire

time was a small black spider

that ate its mate as soon as it

finished giving birth

shapeshifter

Metamorphosis reactor
mentally fingering
spinning my thoughts
to a suffering
and savory
gumbo
melting
my building
core:

crawl up inside
my hollow
of long,
iridescent
and lonely man’s
highway
of spiral
and sorcerer’s stone;

lift deep
the smooth
of my casings
to moons
eating other
lost planet’s
goodbyes
and beg
at my alter
of heart
no more.

There are galaxies
thrumming beneath
my arch
of magnets
and skin
and turning
time dancers
with bursting
of stars
in centers
of orbiting pits—

life
begging life
begin!
and begin
and begin
again!

Bring me your findings
by way of love letter,
addressed
to the demon
lurking inside
that long
Machiavellian hall;

kindly
address him as, Lumos
before leaving
your scent
of red rising wax
at the door—

then watch
as I eat
and then lick
my still
beating fingers,
and strip
my vibrating bones
at the gate
made of candle
and pillars
of smoke—

and know
we are all but a dream in the making
disguised
as our fate
being born.

my house of wind-chiming reed bones is becoming--so beautifully quiet

I can finally see myself
think.

The sucker-punch to the gut
bickering,
dwindling.

The crumbling walls shudder less—
floorboards grow roots in reverse;
time has stopped watching.

A cloud-shaped woman
holds the spider’s end string
baring her home’s
knotted frame.

Owls come to her windows to pray.

It is so quiet.

The house remembers her days
in Eden’s woods—

sees through each tree’s eye,
still;
hears the heartbeat with the ears of deers,
the song of her skirt lifted high.

It is dead quiet.
Gone quiet.
These walls are alive, quiet.
Gossiping staff gone home for the day,
quiet:

after hours, quiet.

I feel my pulse in every limb.

An owl turns its head to see—
bite the head off the lazy horizon.

When He comes
peeking around walls—
a neo-natal vacuum made of dust.

He is the same every time:

nothing to say with no mouth;
nothing to do but keep watching.
He’s all eyes—
God’s perfect indifference.

Screaming outside.

And singing.

A parade of Hawaiian-shirted guests
walk single file
into the dripping blood sunset.

They are chatting:

praising in awe
the midnight gazelle
diving in
and back out
of Her golden thatched roof;

damning
the new boss
to hell.

Densities 210

I might have 20 summers left if

I live long enough

I will caress each of them

with lightning over the mainland

wind storms that shake the trees loose

piece by piece

while the waters rise up

while the sun scorches the cities

while wild men massacre themselves

in the name of God the Economy

and the beast in the seed that lingers

I have always loved the dust

in all its forms and figments

as it slips untouched through my fingers

remembering michaux

Against the window of your nakedness –
a mortal frost
eyelid against shoulder falls
to solitude that sorrow cannot mend
and wakes to absence,
morning passing to exultant day.

And in Krakow,
before the thousand-eyed cathedral,
a man sinks to his knees
wreathed in the gliding breasts of pigeons.
He is singing almost without sound –
Panis Angelicus
light fails and the birds,
air lifting through their feathers like breath,
in vain do they use their silence to reach him –
it is absolutely in vain.

shorelines

now that the world will not suffice
I come here to your beach,
and watch as gulls ride shifting planes of wind
your flapping coat a shadow over sand

it is not time to mourn,
surrender in absolving sleep
all that skin had sought and found in flesh
in beauty that no memory can restore
or change this moment to regret,
the suffocating wave,
from which we could not rise –
but we have risen
climbed through stormy air
to find a shape that darkness cannot shroud
nor time's dissolving breath disperse

and here, where saltspray carves
its pattern on the sea, I watch you paint
until the light is gone

Densities 202

my heart holding 3 people opens

it lifts the bar above my head

suddenly a multitude of strangers

in robes and hats and fine shoes

whose radio tongues babble nonsense

rachets the squeeze around my baubles

and my gemstones sing

another puts her head down in my lap

and weeps hopelessly alone

the others line up to be cured

in the name of the 3

of the 7 loaves

and the trees burning in our kisses

Densities 184

I wouldn't call it love

although I am attracted to the whole

package

I am apt to ply her with rum and recite

poetry while locking gazes in a shared

intimacy that has no ribbons to untie

*

for tahseen

Densities 182

I like my life

there is nothing missing

everything missing is a blur

riding words through a vermigrade rodeo of

switchbacks and hairpin turns

one wheel always over the edge

like it or not

look who's talking

its an obsession somebody owes us

it just makes sense

Densities 181

the junk we collect

in our loneliness

gives us away

birds fall from the sky

cattle lay down on the job

monday's long wait at the station

where nothing came and went

sleeping 12 hours in 3 hours

and forgetting the feasting

and the beasts that nest inside

the banquet

a hunger unloved in a cage

hardly barely begun

*

Densities 178

Another dead end

this one replete with a beautiful

woman

wearing a lead vest and

and a spiked collar

we made love under the

no outlet sign

it was okay

she was a tiny unopened rose

on a hill

dreaming of her next career

move

*

densities 169

rats in the attic

rats in the walls

the chimes you gave me

the cold water squat

your silence around the silence

we can never share

is a wilderness of darkness

a wilderness of insomnia

an absence in shoes with a deadpan stare

densities 166

I can't recall those fine feelings

just like that

they took a long time to die

I buried them alive

in our garden

I could hear them gasping for air

month after month

finally my skin fell off in the mirror

the rose bush died

now I remember!

DOING GOD'S WORK

Knowing toilet rolls should face out
Even in somebody else's house

I always put things right

Like a christian
Riding a bike

Densities 150

I say Spirit

inside the walls

the skin

behind the eyes

how to escape this dancing

corpse

before it stops dancing?

if only I could avenge a sentence

with a sentence

the hours on all fours again

looking everywhere for their trampoline

a tam tam and its microphone

a cymbal

no one can hear

Waiting for the End of the World

Frankly, I expected God to be

more efficient and avoid this savored

burning. I guess He likes it. I could see

some other kind of pain – still labored

and indelicate, with a late

lesson, all as taut as penance. But

I stand chronic, bend to supplicate,

and hold the momentary dissolute.

Where’s salvation? How do I accede

when my redemption takes parieties?

Limits disannoint the body. I plead

recrimination, an innocence that frees

Him, whose expanse grows down to me

to make my punishment infinity.

*

~Wm Frawley (posted by A. DiMichele)

Densities 133

lost another dollar today

I lose dollars everyday

so that others may live

yeah

when you think about

the Wisdom Schools

and there is nothing else on earth

worth thinking about

on the way out

not even a wish

when writing in the garden

...it is not me gardening.

It is the gardener in the I
of the storm
testing the air with his finger
budding calligraphy
from his master’s pallet.

When I write, speak, live
from the seat in the center
of The Garden,
it is with either:

The voice of old gods—the riders of Shem;
a trumpeting messenger with news!
Or
The mad squiggled lines left behind
on the path by The Fool
on his way to the upside-down noose;
stuck on the card that played him.

But at the end of the day
when I am
lying in bed, eyes closed,
inside The Wayfarer’s Temple,
it doesn’t matter how the voice comes,
came—
always comes,
all that matters is:
that you read
all the way through to the end.

Let The Gardener’s seeds
from the earth of the sea
take care of the roots and the rest.

All you need to do
is listen to the wind through the trees,
while breathing
in deep,
the cherry scent essence
of words.




© Kristin Reynolds 6 21 2010

Densities 94

why would anyone want to be born?

to be at war

with oneself

or to turn others into a bloody mess?

nothingness

that perfect glove

that fits your hand perfectly

it has its charm school manners

but one must be a cannibal

full of big ideas

eating your enemy's brains raw

you need the stomach of a wild dog

to win a meal at this table

Densities 86

100 billion stars

and beyond them

100 billion galaxies

all held in place

set in motion

in empty space

which has many bodies

in its belly

as many eyes as stars

everything created points

toward the future

whatever I hold in my hands

possesses me

immediately

Densities 78

my experience of delusion and truth

and how to tell the difference

during summer vacation

was my term paper topic in tenth grade

I wonder what it feels like to think behind your eyes

to dream the same dream just once

or fall in step with your steps when you have

nowhere to go

what do you think about the massacres in the fields?

the beautiful horror of it all

night coming on with its nocturnal appetites

who are up with the moon cleaning their teeth

I was badly bitten by ants when I was a child

they were so small I couldn't take it personally

cockroaches however covered the floor walls and ceiling

of the kitchen

the whole room swimming with them moved

around me

pulsating with a life of its own

it was monstrous

it was repulsive standing there in the middle of it

I kept thinking: I wish you could see this!

Densities 59

back to the pogo stick
of a very good poet
if not a friend
or a very popular popinjay
who would rule the world
with clean skin and a clean set of walls
camouflage carpet and desk
I’m still carrying this matchbox steamroller
in my pocket
but I know its got to go
its making me late
goldfinches fly by with invisible ink
the woodpecker laughs then the rain stops

B e // a // t w i N

=//=

K & T
sitting
...........
w i t h i n
long forgotten
j a z z w o r d z
..........................
b r e a t h takingly
.............................
a b s u r d t h r o u g h
a space // time of n…o…t

=\\=

The complexities of the momenT

.

Without further ado,

between themselves, they had discussed,
among matters of importance,
the potential of impotence,
when without further disgust,
between the first and second floors,
they disappeared through open doors,

into the night of KatmandU.

.

The swimming pool storY

.

I remember

p a i n t i n g

the village

g r e e n

.

S h o r t c u T

.

Deep in the art
of a stubborn
graveyard
lies an able
s...t...o...n...e
......................
a magnificently
eccentric memorial
to a magnificent eccentric
who b e c a m e fluent in over
two dozens and seven languageS

.

Densities 10

I will not be disappointed in the outcome

I already did that

I left scratch marks in the well's stone walls

I wrote that story a thousand times

running down the railroad tracks

out of breath on rubber stilts

up the glacial ravine

the vertical leaps

defying gravity

adding more and more

to my true vocabulary

my dumb alphabet

no longer able to scream

in the dark

out loud

Mantra

a dead woman

crowned in nothingness

dry and dead

as dry dead blood

escapes

into Ligeti's concerto

for violin & orchestra

slips out

unnoticed

between skins

of death and breath

like cold air rising

from an empty stair

she floats translucent

as ricepaper, dissolving

into trembling ocarinas

without place

she embraces all places

her voices creep toward the sea

and the wave will take them

space folds

into four angles

into four sides

into scordatura strings

the rite

of the opening

of the mouth

(almost)

she put my shoes out in the trash

a different one called the police

yet another threw my belongings off a balcony

and I watched them smash on the sidewalk

with the neighbors laughing

the first stood accusing me to my face of infidelity

I wished I had commited

the one I married called me a loser

but wouldn't let go for years

somewhere in the middle are echos

of doors slamming

objects smashing against walls

insults and vows of revenge

once or twice there was pulled hair and bruises

I remember blood in a bathtub

my mother would become a monster

once a month

and swear I was not the fruit of her womb

I have no more excuses

for them

or me

the last one shocked with kindness

smiling as she sent me packing

just as long as I kept my mouth shut

I (almost) did

diary of a woman who vanished

bodiless

above a vast night ocean

I dreamed you were lost

in the enormous sadness of water

between the slide of monstrous ships

I called out

but the air grew heavy

with lines, triangles

the endless

creation and dissolution

of inner sky

formless

I woke with eleven

luminous strangers

peeling mandarines by silent windows

for a moment glimpsed

your ravaged lion's head

your bright blackbird eye

but I was mesmerised

by a vase of sun-edged magnolias

by drifts of dust motes falling

in afternoon light

like a thousand

silver egrets

your movement is sharp

precise

and I wake with your hair

wound through my fingers

the smell of burning cloves

in your mouth

you hiss

where are you?

what are you?

but I am

voiceless

except for the language of snakes

the dry rattle of their digestion

you speak and it begins to rain

have you forgotten?

we live only where the breath turns

my left eye closed:

a white horse wades up to its breast in blood

my right eye open:

Sirius rises – ashes return to branchless trees

Get with the Pogrom

we've seen so many...
the Germans put an abstract, mechanistic,
dare we say, "high tech" blue-sky face on it...
but do they compare with 25 million plus in Meso America
under Spanish swords. Of course it took them fifty years...
are we measuring the damn things against time?
If we count the you-row-peon invasions of the Americas North and
South, in 300 years we pretty much wiped the natives out
and subsequent to the end of the Russian/German trip, Americans
got right to it again... not so much ethnic/racial cleansings
as across the board apocalyptic bomber pinpoint mayhem;
mostly by client stooges bought, taught, and paid for
by US of A's happyface consumptive SUV wonders.
I guess for sheer numb_brrrs Hitler's 15 years
takes the prize and the way we paperclipped
his intellectual minions was a damn crime
gettin' in bed with the lot of 'em for 55 years
plantin' 'em in Hunsville Georgia
where nary a soul noticed -
puts a whole new complexion on
consenting adults.

Everyone of us...
ethnicity be damned
paid our taxes, supported the plan;
cheered for our side in SE Asia and scapegoated
yellow, black, brown, jew, dyke, faggot, an' Arab
when it suited us; but we're gonna get even this time:
the train is leavin' on the same track
so we can fire up the ovens without lookin' back
and we're gonna let freedom ring and liberty toll
for a solid half billion new holocaust souls - for oil,
for rare earths, for whatever we think we want at the moment.
We'll pile 'em up like cordwood the way we did in the Phillipines
so we can celebrate our fundamental Christian righteous rave:
Profit first, comfort second, and
wisdom dead last.

Questions...

Waiting in the wings

Slipping among galaxies of thought
of her/him//him/him,
of her/him//her/her
of blue, of naught, porpoises, dragonflies,
atoms, particles, neutrinos, spinning sighs
of consequential push-pull: magnetics among others.
Love builds from respect, then trust
leading inevitably to mutual support
but
only if we pay attention in every direction.

Frames of Monk

Skin blooms a weather of shower and afternoons
and weeks of Wave Mountain;
little monk walks Junes;
and August roads hot tars detain.
Exotic beating looms with shuttle clacks,
barks adrift and seadrift float flood from rain-
sailor’s warning, monk’s pain,
Glorianna’s skin tracks.
At night the wafting of the wood is balming;
the skin’s weather, the short shout of the palm.

Tanned mind hails on the virgins; that’s age’s envy
and only lust flatters;
Puer’s envoy,
from somewhere the future shatters.
The sea beats the young boy, monk’s young father
to the man, dwelling with divine squatters,
dwelling on the daughters,
mountain breaks up, rather
like the ordinary small man of thinning
soul, locked within the clastic rock of sin.

From stony fields of massy, clacking bones, she sees
him approach the courtyard
through locust trees,
leaping like poem’s laugh-last word,
or before falling, pride in one’s estate,
human backstory, ears that haven’t heard
now perched, like some absurd
pigeon, to click and grate
upon the gates of the institution,
above the hoary and inconstant stew.

Monk’s moon finally comes to the playhouse, condemned,
performing the Soldan
in a cage, hemmed,
rolling with the tyrant’s golden
train, pulled by his wife, ‘til they brain themselves,
Heaven and Earth bleeding on the Satan’s car.
That’s what comes of love’s star
dried of it’s fire by elves.
Arts of banishment, logically pursued,
arrive at poems where no passions stir.

Autumn delivers him from the oppressive swelter
and the freak intentions,
dubious shelter,
and the variant suspensions
of disbelieving; hard to remember
how I could have fallen so very far
short of the under-par.
Let us embrace somber
reappraisal of the situation,
rendered and chewed up in the vasty day.

Mountain mirages in the clear days, the short days,
the leaf will come down husk,
bit with sharp rays,
wood smoke nosing eastwind at dusk.
White cities beckon the road, sweeping wrack
of thunderheads with a gate of moonlight,
the dead month at midnight
when the road rises, back
of time, and the spirit-fates gaze dolefully
on the sleeper dreaming of an asphodel.

A Job To Do

The walls in her eyes allow little light

to filter through the canopy above the snakes and bugs

her fingertipped tendrils search for holes

to get handholds creeping skyward

it sounds like a lot of work

Dragon's Blood on mountain tops grow umbrellas

in the blue air

life hunts where there's little soil and less water

magnets spin the crank shaft

twirling batons blur in the roar of imaginable speed

an Icosahedron plays the odds with likely positive outcomes

I have but a few odd hours in my pockets

and one tenth the passion of the past

resting in pools of shade

the roads turn dark on the fringe of a very engaging face

a university of suspicions sends out patrols

for the wandering monastery

I am caught and chained to a very small room

a church

a car

a prison

with a job to do

Crown Restructured Into Distinct Groups; Shaye Areheart Books Closed

Hey folks! This is some pretty interesting industry news, here. -Susan
Crown Restructured Into Distinct Groups; Shaye Areheart Books Closed: "The restructuring of Crown Publishing that began with theappointment of Maya ..."

Desert (Buraydah, Saudi Arabia)

A bush here, a bush there - a pure
fill of interstices. That is how
the hard and empty push of departure
takes its stand against persistence. Now

is the time to keep on leaving. The sand
escapes over the dunes, and the distance
is unsightable. If I could remand
the scene into a simple instance,

I'd corrupt the sweet blankness
into a result. But all that would
be gotten is something next. Such excess
poorly trades on boundaries for the good.

I seek the most that I can get from the least
and hold things closely, loose, unreleased.
*
~William Frawley

Lifewreck

I live the ragged edge of an un-
finished building. My windows are just
holes. My door's disframed. If you must
get to me, ford the rubble. That way none

of what may come can be gotten to.
I'm a long time coming. No one works
me. Why should they? We go from stark
to stark, like an erased plan. Who

would want to live a life like this, chipped,
brown, waiting for occupation? I guess
I do because here is where the hard press
of nothing wins, with even sadness stripped.

My walls and ceiling lean without closure
I'm unexposed, just a mere exposure.
*
~William Frawley

Looking Down On Glass From A Great Hight Or Is This The Beginning Of Time

Our own secrets begin ... aburbe condita
When it breathes history in a conscious
Possession of wisdom ... then again

It ignores and deceives ... ad aperturam ad finem
Too proud to listen in a repetitive flux
Of looped half conscious pilots ... then again

The ancients with sun centred pyramids of balanced souls
Ad majorem dei gloriam ... as they contact us through
Dreams of intertwined confines of illusions ... then again

Fragmented moments of entrapped wonder ... ad nauseam
Caught between reflected needs and useless games ... then again

All the combined symbols ... on the high priest's robes
All Greek myths and plaques of adornment ... ad valorem amor patriae
Then again ...

At the gate of infinity ... anno aetatis suae
Our psyche is colonized by the West in posture
Feeding an unbalanced hue to the pigs
Of a laboured stance ... then again

Take the Seven of a confused ideology ... anno urbis conditae
And Two of a sea paster's flight and then force feed
Five thousand of the next generation of American-Haters ... then again

Annus mirabilis ... across the country of the bearded giant
Oranges and crocodiles mate with an equal laugh
As a Spanish cut Moustache in a taller light screams for fairness ... then again

Peace Park ... cacoethes loquendi ... they cry competing with a
Sickly child on a rusty swing as his hands cross his chest
With the burden of the world on his bent back ... then again

You all do not amount to a song ... caveat lector casus belli
In your private winter of solitude
Molten gold will not save you nor the yellow of the sky ... then again

Searching for certainty is the new language ... beatae memoriae
Of choice as the night is filled with locked doors and damned
Red curtains ... then again

Two films on the one screen ... de profundis quietem
With a multitude of sub-titled mysterious in the smallest detail
That of a watchmaker's harmony
In his hands that are memory ... then again

We who collect ocean gems among the driftwood and weed
Ipso facto in vino veritas ... for us TIME is whispering
From another world from curved sea shells
In the collected memory of waves on blue windowsills


End