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

*