Hearrtbrreak

i.    constellating

Loving anyone may hurt you bad.

Why then take the risk?

Those of us without agendas

know we do it

for a constellation of spirits

who have existed

who have yet to exist.

Poets and mothers and perverts and lovers

whose hearts they do not stop

erupting love

making for unity

islands to join.

Therefore I write not for her

but a constellation of spirits

who began my tradition

and claim the precedent
to what end no one knows.

I write not for her

but for everyone

who has existed

who has yet to exist.

For no one, though she is.

-------------------------------------------

Destiny is not to be

is just a word we say

when something right

is out of reach.

I said it all to silence

in essence.

My metaphor,

ultimately

my unicorn

ultimately

you destroy me.

ii.   as a breeze goes by

Liquor stress and love

have pushed men

to rash action for forever

and all three tonight

make me say

I've made my jungles, watched them wither.

People love you don't love them

I love people don't love me

make me say

I've never felt

this way.

Blue butterflies and brilliant streams are waiting

somewhere hidden, within reach.

Why not take the risk?

--------------------------------------------------------

Romans of the decadence never had so much

anxiety to keep them moving.

Black hair Crystal skin Venus lake Why you?

My metaphor

ultimately

my unicorn

ultimately
you are everything.

iii. a golden dot disassembles the day

All the polite things eversaid undergirded

with unspoken knowledge men pretend

they do not know. I know

double love, silent deception,

et cetera et cetera.

The birds followed me like reminders

of who's missing from the rain.

It has been that way millennia.

What events could change

millennia, desire?

the woman who could save the world?

iv.        porcelain don't say so

Beauty frailty and a little danger--

all we want
hung before me like a silver spider

with swooling jaws 
promising paradise now.

How could I feel less deeply my dream?

--------------------------------------------------------

Empty streets where I would wish

crowded streets would quiet down

became the stage dejected humans

gorgeous humans

protected by St. Mama Cass

entered so sadly

promised things-to-themselves
late in the day—

chocolates and shoes, reliability
without commitment, attention
without looks.

(Love me don’t want me.

Dream me don’t need me.

Garter belts silence raspberries rain.)

Destiny is not to be—Destiny,

or what you think it is

not to be

just something close

you must surpass.

How could I feel less deeply

the one who touched me?

v.    right for a moment

My metaphor

with thighs in boots

makes garbage islands

afterthoughts.

The seconds do rock faster now

around the clock

blitzing the danger where rules don’t apply

somewhere in the quarantine

of midlife coupons

violent survival

extraneous desiderata

et cetera et cetera.

-----------------------------------------------------

I don’t like Fate but consider the chances

people fall in love

even today

with dreams just dreams and dreams

if she slips into your mind

when her lips look up at you

with dreams just dreams and dreams.

Feeling thinking living on them

til Oh shit, I’m not wrong

all borders between

what's classified as health

and danger take these pills

dissolve

into a fantasy

her love will solve the world.

I let go of the cliff.

vii.    extrapolations on a soul

She is the reason for flowers. She is the reason for murder.

She is whatever you describe. She is whatever you decide.

Such thoughts will launch consideration

of destiny and chemistry

the population, odds

the flaws in one’s own engineering

then a grand casting off

what it means, face to face in the night

finally to see

in one's eyes

something that says

Because of me.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

But evenings still ended when the LCD won.

95 degrees and purring like an engine

tuned to the heavens’ rotation

of ancient ideas:
How can I?
When will I?
Do I dare?

My wife knew nothing.

Lies egos and mirrors—

my instruments of navigation.

Crazy as an animal in such a daze

to be the genes and kings of Cleopatras

crazy to the end of cruelty

the brain blacks out as killers and the ill

in mind must testify

my life as insignificant-part-of-destructive-entity

a swamp you dredge

for evidence of crime, misfortune

the remains of friendship.

-------------------------------------------------------------

I wrote these words in a habit I can’t break

on the cutting edge of histrionics

and thought they meant the world.

Yes, I wept too

at the cataclysmic cancer abduction

of unborn sociopathic

coral-dieoff

anal crash victim

but when I stopped

I wondered why.

And all I do is wonder why.

There is nothing but that question

when you have given up

on understanding.

viii.    and i began by understanding

In a way

I've seen it all

and she is all

that I remember.

And everything is not enough

to keep amazing one who sees it all.

Even the swoon of tears down the torso

melds into the quiet Sunday

I drink to the scorpions--

Hit me with your wands
make me something bland

so I can aim for something better

at the bottom of the glass

------------------------------------------------------

As a bottomless forest disheartens

the search for intimate gold

no longer human but a set of senses

scanning meaning in her laughter

barbs and generalities

a poem with no end began

full of truth and myth and misconception

webbing me in patterns

I began by understanding

and came to detest

til spinning in eternity

I wished that poem

found a place to rest.

ix.        little death by reptile

Almost past devastation devastation again.

Afraid to initiate afraid to reciprocate

ready to outlast the everlasting

I said I could do nothing.
Instead I acted and my actions

yielded nothing.

So opposites became identical.

I was ordinary and so wrong

and I killed myself a year

with the same old song.

--------------------------------------------------

Crocodiles, come drown me in your sea of love

Blue scarves stir the freezing breeze

and disappear into the tartar air

where conversation’s tough and dull

and the windows of sedans

carry her reflection

toward delusions I am prone

to live from time to time

as I see myself

from up above

saying Don't do it

as I do

indulge in illusions

that blow up in my face.

Slowly thusly

I learned how Destiny

has something strange in place

and not what I had dreamed of.

Crocodiles come drown me in your sea of love.

x.         again and again never and then

One sleek shape meets another

in darkness when it's cool
at my own fucking baby shower!
in the sunlight, all the time

briefly, without consequence

but to me

nothing ever was warmer.

------------------------------------------------

A great black lion on her way to the car

frantically tossing the white loveliness

of her paranoid luminescence

vapor trails like wolverine claws

from the airport outreaching
her mind, with engines
burning away

the complex/midatlantic/artisan skies.

Unrestrainable progress said

How do you expect to stop me

and my independent lifestyle?

Her world, it turned

so on and so on:

The only thing I’ll ever understand

I know nothing about.

xi.        modernity v. antiquity

Because she cannot lose me

she accepts me. 
I too am troubled by this

and wonder what she wants

all the way to dream

a lonely place

I guess I love:

a room we tell the night

to change its mind.

And then as one

we talk til dawn.

Beautiful but it wasn't that way.

Enlightenment is darkening me.

xii.       awake at the crack of time

Fast forward to love.

Here she was

in hot red pants

giving me her keys

and when I brought her near me

a feeling I call by her name.

She was never without wine

tales of Thailand and Peru.

Never looked at you when you came.

Never was impressed

her interests were now yours.

Soon I realized
she was like some crashed device
where memory had disappeared.

xiii.   interlude

You’ve got to be insane to get by.

The news said it was a night of roller skating turned tragic.

Rapists were out, the world was changing

inventions were blooming, people were rich

and people were poor.

And there were reasons for everything

so many millions why

we're born with our handicaps

and how we can break them

and why things happen

quite like they do

and how none of it's real

unless you believe it to be so.

You've got to be insane to get by

or her words would be as clear
as the perfection of her face.
------------------------------------
Dreams begin
to stand for reality.
Acronyms people
poverty wealth.
Links for ideas.
Units for multitudes.
I thought I'd found the only original
among the duplicates
and it killed me
it cost infinity.

xiv.    1%

When a 1% chance of success seems certain

is in fact a zero from the day you were born

life is hallucination 
to reify or die trying.

I am acting in a cloud

I do not want to rain.

This is where I went

snubbed by secrets

she would not tell

of all the men who love her

less than I have

since Day 1.

xv.   tremors

She spreads her legs like a honey-dripping bar of white chocolate

and destroys a Cappodimonte mace on my head

She is the editor of my stones against the sky

She shows the blue string she hides beneath the night

She is the reason for flowers  She is the reason for murder

She is whatever you decide  She is whatever you describe

How can I feel less deeply?

xvi.    Chet Baker played as she barged in the door

All words fail when you dream.

It is ugly.

You are always incoherent

and you are always incorrect.

Nothing mattered anymore. I could pretend

but didn’t want to. I could rescind what I had said

but I could not.

The polls meant something I took for tomorrow.

Time was the space I was falling through

faster than ever at entry.

I did not make love in the middle of stadiums.

I did not have the body of Julius Caesar.

Someone else did. He was back in town.
-------------------------------------------------------------

I would support unending rain.

Every dream spun

negative feedback

looping truths opposed to one another

philosophies in turmoil

exegeses of geneses that did not jive

traditions that diverged

animals that prey.

No news. No lack of news. No silence left to say.

Her love would solve the world.

xvii. fantasy crash

At which point you realize

the trouble is you.

The struggle means nothing--

Nero was a poet.

Monsters get their meat

and jackals what we can--

a glimpse of that testarossa rainbow

fat with finality

blood on the jeans

and fantasies crashing the doors--

heartsick renegades torching the fortress

in madness

on fire.

-----------------------------------------------------------

I said it all to silence

in essence

not just the Hilton but everything—

My heart is burning and you are in it.

No news. No lack of news. No silence left to say

to a woman closing the door

who writes the next day

as if nothing has happened.

xviii. rock bottom

Cash green as nightvision

exploded through Maryland subdivisions.

Basic measures of security dissolved.

The fat dungeons slaved

the elite rigged

campaigns went disarrayed

social-health dilemmas flew.

It was wildfire season.

Explosives went off

the power went out

distrust reigned supreme—

anarchy fraud infidelity theft

toxins antitoxins

our desires purifiers

information wrong

a truth deception, the best

on average,

nothing more

til night over nothing resolved

mossed on the beach overhead.

Eventually I was. Eventually

I wasn’t

living in a cloud of cheap perfume 
and cigarette fumes.

How do I ascend

to what?

How do I feel less deeply

everything gone wrong?

xix.      alcohol for pain

So anger at a woman

becomes anger at the world.

I garden traumas

because it is always the season

and hang the future

on a resolution to the secrets

I wish in secret never end.

The mystery of why

I am nothing in her sky

a luxury puzzle to piece

as the country goes dead

and I stare out the starlight

decoding decoding.

In this way

criminals are born.

Masterpieces made.

Jobs are abandoned.

Lawsuits filed.

Plots created.

Life is lost.

Or changes course.

----------------------------------------------------------

The moon fills me with consolations

as galleons long ago

spilled from speared sides

blood and emeralds into the sharks.

There’s too many people to love.

I’m out of control.

xx.    injured buffalo

The ripening globe softens the rind

melts in its own putrefaction.

All rhythms expose themselves for deconstruction.

Heroes cheat. Sages lie. Glory flaunts.

We run for cover.

We cry that which

has no cliché.

We lick our wounds

for the taste of it.

---------------------------------------------

I knew what I was looking for.

It wasn’t what I found.

Destiny is not to be
a woman of open doors.

It is a great black lion

hunting phantoms of her own

a springloaded Love You

defending her image of me.

xxi.    the language you must use

Every day's a list

of names and verbs

and other words

aligned in ways

that signal meaning

that can be stacked in ways
they correspond to feelings--

how you stare
into the freeway window

how

how the limitless can’t be quantified

how others think you’re them

how a mother, if you have one
knows that something’s wrong

Heated thinking melts the walls

between dreams and the millions

of evils you see

come random disaster

and wonder Why?

I was the safest man alive

because I knew the answer

Why?

Because I heard her speaking words

no one wants to hear:

If things had broken differently,

things might have broken differently

I deal a different language now.

I understand the meaning

without her saying so.

---------------------------------------------------------

On the side of the highway--

Cupid dismembered

like a hated plush toy.

Tonight let’s soak the moon in gas

and see what happens to my mind.

xxii.      a horrible week of california

So began my nothing year

following millionaires around the sun

playing getting played

thoughts stuck in neurons

like fish in jellyfish:

If I close my eyes

can I squeeze the evil out?

If I squeeze the evil
do I lose the good?

I’d grown young and fat and insulting.

Birdsong reminded me

of early-morning arrests

carnage, her underwear.

patchouli and blueberries, death.

Beautiful things of the terrible.

Terrible things of the opposite.

It was like driving on the emergency brake.

One day I must stop being extraunique.

----------------------------------------------------

After feeling through lies

with keywords and codes
the truth blows in like solar wind

you do not recognize

and cannot breathe.

But it's real, it must be understood, and acted on.

My problems and yours

big as they are

cannot be stopped

no matter the size of the heart

the breadth of intentions

the strength of the bond

except that there is medicine

and with it

you can see

what others see

what she sees

in a sickness.

------------------------------------------------

So sad I dealt by amalgamation of cure

and poisoned the outcome probably.

Like some sorry politician

kicking screaming to regret

spiritually off the trax

desirous of being

a man I was not was

options blooming

at the speed of disease

yesterday's massacre an island away

menacing light of the sunset

lending gold to the clouds of my war.

So sad I dealt by amalgamation of cure.

xxi. memories of Peabody

I am the very worst of time

when I wonder how she's burning hers.

In a rainforest bookshop overlooking the pampas

reading with both hands and a smile on her face

Somewhere in Florida melting away

housewife and tether to a rich-bland-handsome fiancée

On top of a villa

where Romans of the decadence

play funny games in little fountains

with broken ships and all her questions

xxii.derecho

One day I must stop being extraunique.
There is nothing to it but sadness.

I drive alone down a storm-steel highway

thinking the future

into being

my desire

thinking if I will it

hard enough

it happens

no questions.

Facts will be in vogue,

contingencies in remission.

Her glasses on my nightstand.

Her little arms across the sheets and me.

Enlightenment is taking me.

Taking me down a strange highway

maybe the wrong highway

to pick up signals from Richmond Philly

Wilmington Annapolis

to pick up signals

here by accident.

Everything is not enough

to keep amazing one who wants it all.

------------------------------------------------------

Take the unbelievable relief

of glaciers in the right light,

and that’s the way it was:

glaciers ten shades of black

delicate as tendons

so black it doesn’t matter.

And I wondered when
I would see again

why I see things

which aren’t there

why I see things

I want to be

as they must be

if there are no gods.

xxiii.    a natural phenomenon

The past

exists

but for me

what for?

Future days are what I need

to filter me

all the places in my mind
where she arises saying No.

For the last time No.

-------------------------------------------------------

A pattern spun by nature and repeating

I speak of her as just someone

to myself when I'm alone.

She'll break her heart

but not with me.

And I will wonder

what it is to hear her crying

and who I'd be to know.

The dopamine her smile

released still releases

such things for me to wonder

as I pass the edge of sleep

and spend the night with someone new

crying on my mind.

Concrete and trees and the firetruck

moves through town slowly.

I put my hands back on the cliff

and the cliff bled.

xxiv.     thinking in daisies

I've found ways to kill dreams.

To unremember, look ahead

to booze drug work and medicate away

til sun and moon and television stars

are sun and moon and television stars.

There is no meaning everywhere.

I've thought in daisies for so long.

-------------------------------------------------------------

My face quivers as I geiger near the truth:

I am no longer evil.

I am a civilian.

We are together

desperately in the same house.

My wife knew something

in me changed.

xxv.     the doc

He said emotional  masochist and  I said yes.

One day I must stop being extraunique.

-----------------------------------------------------------

I can't be confessional. Therapy's dull.

The fog is painful to wander

painful to write about

in words that are painful to read.

History must be unredacted, reredacted.

But the past can't be edited.

A reader would be lost.

It's all about shit from two decades past--
a look your dad gave you

a lesson you learned

incorrectly from mom

a way of lying

your experience inflects

a way of being

Desire infects.

So Romance gets

its diagnosis.

At the end you will awaken.

You will hear the things you spoke.

She will look at you

as if you'd had a stroke.

xxvi. literal illness

While convalescing at my sister’s mansion

I had time and the wind and whiskey and shit.

Every demon I had fostered rose in thanks

for memories of her labia.

I spoke to hell on the hillsides of exurbia

wondering could I sneak back to heaven.
Where in the maze I’d lost sense.

What words I spoke fucked the spell. 

When from my hands it all fell.

It was not me
I was assured

senselessly by those who listened.

But in my head I still was destined

to find her foreign world

a foreign world

with a language so beyond me

I would never stop to learn.
------------------------------------------------------

I stared friends down 
til I was staring into empty chairs
torturing my brain for information
waiting for an email to absolve me or distract
or offer me some pills
to fix whatever act
might cause me next
to pour out in my vintage verse
a case for why our love should never die.

Never die? O

brutal for dreamers
this modern world hit hard.
She was my first taste of blood.

I could feel the romance
dripping from me

transfused with some

contemptuous liquid instead.

xxvii.   yet another song

I fought a thousand years to win and die.

Obliteration, rejuvenation.

A soft bite on the thigh
that made her moan and come and say
I never knew I felt this way 
and then to reconsider 
I feel an object 
under your touch.
----------------------------------------------------
Such turns in love are common I suppose
though I am largely unexposed.
If love and adoration are so lost
upon the lost
then what am I to do but lose?

All that followed was
I guess this really is
goodbye 
again.

Goodbye--

a diaspora of memories--
to the feeling that came

when I landslid in passion

she told me how she is

notoriously tight

got a look in her eyes
like I was a new kind of victim. 

To things I don’t want to forget.

To things that must be
blasted down.

Because I do not want

and can't expect
a zombie love

brought back from whatever

died that month inside her

even if it means

a fascinating life

looking for the door(s)

she hides behind
woman, lady, girl

in every stage of endless breakdown.

My role was clear
to disappear.

Fuck the city find it dull 

turn around and try again.

And then forget what I am bad at letting go

the sounds I made her make

the smile she flashed in Gettysburg

the August night we briefly grew.

-------------------------------------------------------

A wintry mix

of pain disappointment and loathing

waited high like buzzards on the watch.
Influenza came to stay

and I welcomed it with latenightsworking

a broken heart a million questions

theories out the ass

resolutions to do more

to burn the love from me

idols and expectations

descriptions analogies.

------------------------------------------

And so I learned 
muses do not want the job.

Would prefer to sit alone in Subaru Imprezas

listening to NPR and wondering how they ended

up in Baltimore, starring in the mind
of some obsessive fool
who thinks the year is 1589

and cannot see her as a woman

she is not:
Screaming at the opera singer

an apartment down below

fidgeting in sleep, crazed by every coffee stain
independent, needless
a gem tossed by the elements
into a form 
it owes not to itself 
but stunning nonetheless

a creation

fabricated from the beauty of the broken
lives we lead 
as broken lost and selfish apes

searching the city

for what makes us hopeless

a parade of flawed men

I joined as she floated

away in the airwaves

and set my sights

on a parade of the prostitutes
I could never embrace.

xxviii.   reincarnation

How do I begin again

all the same material

emerge as something new?

Change insignificance

to confidence?

Destruction all around?

I stared out windows that defined me--

highway skyline downtown marvelous--

trapped behind towers of data

and a bank of messages to weed

churning on what life remained

what gods planned

with their ancient hands trembling,

fifty-dollar AMEX gift cards

meant to keep me going

in lieu of beatings drugs and economic shame

til nothing was left but a bottle 
and some pills.

-------------------------------------------------------

November like an avalanche of slate

came with promises of cheap oil and turkey

and frosted thistles made white flowers

that would irritate a baby’s reach

my glowers deeper now and people

of concern concerned

her arctic inferno

would blow me down for good

in a pond of hot tears and ice

melted only by the sweat

of a bender
and dreams that she’d dyed blonde

and moved to Russia to avoid me.

I woke up haunted, tried to think

of other women

those West-coast girls
with bulimia self-confidence

threesomes and careers

knowing only time would trick the pain.

All else was a lie.

I was too busy to die.
----------------------------------------------------------

Some people thought I did the moral thing.

My friend was going through a rough time.

His wife had taken up Candy Crush

chocolate

and weight.

He’d grown an ursine beard.

If you describe for such a man

love for a woman

so strangely made

you may hasten his divorce.

Some will say you did the moral thing. 
Some will say 
it's you that's broken.

xxix.  that dreaded X

Rewind to love.

Ultimately she did destroy me.
I saw that glimpse of real wild love
like a ghost among the ruins
and inexplicably approached
left afterward to wonder and pause 
Did I ever see that at all?

That hook she put in you
must hurt real bad 
someone said to me.

At that point I realized
I am ancient history.
I should be painting masculine bulls
investing in real estate
speaking with accents

whatever it is I do not do
or cannot say
to make her forget
the future that she drives away.
-------------------------------------------------------------
She knows her beauty
does these things
and wonders why
she is alone.

Why I am not alone
and rich
or gorgeous
why someone is. He just left town.
-----------------------------------------------
Because she cannot lose me
she keeps me as her kindred eunuch.
Because I cannot lose her
I deal by amalgamation of cure.

Therefore
I write for myself
the way out of love.

Therefore

I write for a constellation of spirits

who have existed, who have yet to exist

who have seen a ghost among the ruins

and inexplicably approached

to spend their afterward days
the subject of fables

one day one may

understand so grandly

our poems

their sentiments

need not be.

Friends will be friends

into eternity.

xxx. cold romance

Destiny is not to be--
just something close, resembling

the shadow of the aim.

Thirty verses in

and sixteen months deciphering

I like to think I am enlightened.

Her pussy is no jackpot

and I am done pretending.

But really love’s bloodsport

still makes me bleed.

Every day in vain I've thought

someday some way

the space between us

might just close.

And here we are at poem's rest.

with nothing to say

for all we have said

but love will solve the world

when love cannot

solve the world

on its own.

Even today I can feel her resist.

I can feel her resistance warning me so:

Don't live so raw.

Love with a filter.

Cuz destiny is not to be.

Destiny is something else

for both of us.

My metaphor,

ultimately, my memory.

My love. My devastation.

My untouchable 
constellation.

Demon, Attosecond

What you seek is seeking you. 

      --Rumi

i. chrome sea

The moon gets smaller as the night comes on.

Rises over bay and constructs.

Time

pink 

green 

brief as love.

The city has lifted its flamingo wing.

The sun forces gold from shadows and windows.

For a minute in traffic

static speaks of rain, machines

cancer and harp seals

trucks guns and holy words

slipping into darkness

leaching all the beauty

from a slowing day.

The moment given

is nothing new but novelty.

I had my way. Discovered roads, went wild.

I remember everything

immediately forget.

with the memory of a child.

-------------------------------------------

Night creeps out the streets.

Gulls talk of brittle eggs.

Like a landlocked whale

who's wandered in bad bays

and gorged on fish

until he's trapped inside a space

to prove how patient is extinction

my grunt exits to elements.

------------------------------------------------

If you're seeking enlightenment

this journey ends in the middle.

As in the lot of us

Desire’s set its talons deep:

The constant create-more-creations.

See more than necessary.

Feel more than prescribed.

Broken laptop with lucite earrings and eucalyptus leaves.

Pineapple and lemon on velvet in shade.

Untitled shipwreck.

Silk patterns, bright colors.

Who's fucking my baby now?

A yellow light advising caution

gleams against the last lavender.

The heart is beating like a million trains

and darkness come down

like a dagger too eager

to rain and thrill me.

My mind is over

in the sense of seeking.

ii. life cycles of the holding tank

O to live in a diva's day.

To have one's stimulants used against thee.

It is difficult to find a conversation

that does not lead to love-poisoning-love.

Difficult to find something

that isn't boring 

or disgusting.

Everything we-don't-know-why

brings night on its back

and on the carcass of the moment past

new thoughts form

like fungi dividing the living and dead.

These are not the sexy epiphanies of brilliant youth

but steady streams of task and stat

face and judgment

date and time. Metaphysical dust.

The stuff that poets keep clean.

Everything has failed to solve thee

yet hope remains, a pretty weed. It must

beneath the pain and trivia.

The night is lighter later

by a moment than the previous.

O limited men
in limitless oblivion.

The closest we get to understanding

can only be confusion.

-------------------------------------------------------

There are insects that breathe for just 24 hours.

In this we see

ourselves as grains of time—

a second-by-second guess.

It is impossible to do anything but stare.

To move on automatic

with some vague notion

of what to seek and where.

Food. Affection. Money. Prestige. Check.

Eternity is eternity

to perfect our deformities

to constantly curl in places

the soft parts stick. Sixteen.

Twenty-five.

Thirty-three and thirty-four.

And suddenly sad at looking back

and saying I was a starving carnivore

beyond solution, deep in self-pity

the earth around us seems to crack.

If you pieced the puzzle

you'd see a war crime 

ripped from the headlines

bleeding onto the icecaps

while someone gave an explanation why.

Desperate for shelter

seeking connections, saying

even the homeless find them

one warm night

under the punishing stars

we may unlock a moment to wonder

Am I the only one?

And Love, it says

Yes, Love, or

I like the way things are.

But X is subject to rapid total change.

Moods will vary

events will alter.

Beauty calcifies.

It seems impossible 

with these gadgets anthems and pills.

Keeping us moving

through mayhem response and the critics

on the most-pristine oil spills.

Surrounded by needles and cameras

injustice frustration and death

everything’s becoming more evil.

The greater the evil

the more it speaks of harmony and love.

Whoever spoke I trusted less.

Whoever was silent

wasn't far behind.

At night I stared at couples 

kissing in the bars

and wondered about my future food source.

iii. in undress

Strip-searched to the skeleton

there were gunshots in the blue. 

The things we hear, the things we say

mean little on the day-to-day.

Speaking of freedom

seems a trite confection

emptying its value

on broken bridges, systems

courts and cities.

The list is endless really.

Speaking of love, speaking of death

of life, of god, is all the same.

Today a woman was shot for no reason

by a kid with no name.

It’s like we've been created 

by a secret committee

inbred as a pharaoh's afterlife

and any passing luxury sedan

may determine how tomorrow ends.

May understand the tropes repeated

and hold those who know

why the bombs drop for real.

I adapted to a challenging environment.

Survived and hated it.

Stopped believing newspapers talk-show hosts antiheroes

the all-powerful dollar

villains supervisors

the script of heaven above

got so high I spit on stars

then felt bad because they were set like me.

To die. Avoiding death.

Saying Eternal life is awful

And waiting to believe.

To believe in nothing, even disbelief.

Drifting here and there

repeating words I'd overheard.

A puppet of prophets.

Or their silent unmoored companion.

What are we floating for really?

To doubt the lessons of poets we admire?

And the music that we hear. 

Is it really genius?

Or a crude commercial 

for an ancient king?

iv. love for nothing

Metaphor clarification innuendo and slur

days move in harmony

with radio stations

broadcasting bland hits

and arctic prophets coming true.

It is so lovely, the logic we deny.
Rain oils on the city.

Rocks me to sleep

like tsunamis of lava

under the red-lightning sky.

I wake up to the sound of rain on tin

stained glass early shadows

velvet thumping gentle cars

birdsong in a forest of malachite.

To sounds the privileged hear

hushed upon a distance.

But X is subject to rapid total change.

In time without effort

I saw shit everywhere.

Bad burgers sat in my stomach like poverty.

Fat clouds of silence my art

my words now brilliant for fools.

Hemorrhaging money

a golden liver

begging more.

The get-yourself-together-and-forget-it-man

well-wishing friends prescribed

wore thin as I found memories in song.

She's there again in the bedroom. Not naked but not clothed. The bluebirds listen deeply. Silent summer air. Our bodies mortared with sweat in the attic. It is late afternoon, and lace on the sun.

I sleep. I wake. I go.

And the dream ends with its understanding.

In a pile of cloud that never was

the breath of myth

balanced on air.

What happens when the light of god

has no effect upon the flowers in you?

Do you not ascribe your flowers

to a different source when they arise?

v. despite the evidence, heaven on earth

If this is what awaits us 

is it not a miracle?

Yes or no is either 

side of the wrong answer.

And maybe some heartbroken heart

finds comfort in this sympathetic hurricane

moving toward the end together

forgetting the punishing stars.

Maybe not

And I’ve misplaced

all that's real of human value.

Maybe we go round for days

like crazy beasts

with evanescence hampered

by temptation-to-endure.

Maybe X is A and B is T and it is sad

to emerge, gladiator 

in a stadium of infinite blood.

Given no option

but to wrestle with monsters.

Living like the spasms of a severed limb

acting out of habit

like everything is there.

Blood light kiss. 

Form breath rain.  

The senses are an industry

burning up stimuli

to leave us jaded ogres

complaining the sun today was too golden.

vi. and in the end, another

Chewing dip in twilight angles

as homeless men give up their Gloria

under blue sonnet skies

rainclouds like aircraft carriers

sweeping the west

nothing can be said

except to explode 

into light

pink

green

brief as love.

Like a demon to damnation

everything must go—

misdeeds and planets miracles crowns

the juiciest tears ready to flow

from drug-company actor on cue.

Diversions kissed-together

are now clouds, roll away.

Words that once ignited me.

Promises seemed-real.

----------------------------------------- 

Starlings and seagulls

on the cables of big ships

shake their heads 

like thoughts are stuck

and the sky turns 

other shades 

of pink and gold

and bigger blue

that bring the rain.

Other shades,

as if to say

these are not the only options. 

Alternatives await

if you let time and space 

catch up to you.

But accept indiscriminately

the rainbow left behind.

Welcome a fog on the hippocampus.

Cloud the severity

of things seen so clearly

you know more than lifetimes as a little god

or a veteran pawn.

If you need to know more

my journey ends here.

This I may remember.

I may immediately forget.

I have the memory of a child.

But if you find yourself in fear

take these words

and blow them to the sky.