can't burn these words

"...look in the mirror, we think the image
which confronts us is accurate..."--harold pinter


you gifted me with a thought, pretense
of a way to have dignity (because all
is less ephemeral than the flight of emotion).

naked you walk over time
with breath and lips
divining meaning. colonies
of skin tags, benedictions of
blemishes,the blood
in the veins pumping.

it was because you could not lie that you saw
the value of truth. matchstick before flame.

i feel shame, your shadow more
solid than mine, calls to lazy
guilt. blood in my viens
rebells & longs to spill
in the sinning streets to cleanse
them or me. same thing.

i whisper to your blank ness-only a very few
are allowed. your eyes feast
on my lies, feed them to future like deaths
which will never be counted.

when belief is allowed my flesh
you mumble from inside my burning
dreams when you offer up your body
same as curse, you may at last sing.

pond and sun ripple in music only
my eyes can hear. i know the whole
world's sorrow and the single prayer
of each dna: remember me.

letter to crow

in tampa the weather is balmy
and life drifts along. you being to wonder
what it would be like in gaza or maybe
at the local starbucks. anything to get off
the cottony non action that reduces you
to hunting for episodes of tv to replace a life.

the tarot is is like a carrot that you stick
onto your psyche so that the pain you're feeling
(which no one can understand this far out
from the dead zone, most especially you)
may be allievated by a sybyllist or sillogist or gist
of something less retarded than your emotions
after after the blast .

when you draw
the queen of swords is your card.
she holds her blade in a non threatening way.
there are clouds in her hair, and a symbol
of a song you once wanted to turn into a virus
that might infect thousands and bring
no money in its wake, not even reorganization.
just some glee that the trip took you there.

anyway but here, where you sit in your chair
counting the days till your own personal apocalypse
arrives, knowing indeterminancy of the last one
is the gluon herding three protons
with its own ripe bark.

you sound like you're in a bad mood
but you're not, just sad. that you don't
think sad equals bad is amusing to yourself
but perplexing to anyone who asks.


the lights are working at the intersections
in your favor. the weather is what paradise promised
in the brochure. you think you hear your neighbors
making love. or maybe that's laughter and you remember
what that felt like for a minute. then you remember how
to be just as giddy through the miracle of chemicals.

saturn's in retrograde. it's time to let go of things
but not time for beginnings. you want to ask
the man on the corner with the sign saying hungry
to take them, but he's not there again today, and you wish
you could join him, where ever it was he rolled his
stolen cart to, so you could not be there too.

44 dazed

i hate that i love you
turned into israel & gaza.
i can't say which of us was first
or wrong. i still have sympathies
for both sides. about that
scorched earth policy --we had
to be driven apart.


the cease fire only lasts as long
as it takes to forget muscle memory.


it wasn't about the land, i know
we could have shared a villa
anywhere on earth
except here, except now.

killing hope step by step

every time i see the way the sun
declines in the evening i get a little
piqued that i can't feel the colors
like i did with you. it's not morning
that i want, tho i want that too.
these days the sun's on my horizon twice,
and it's plangeant and tripsichord.

i'm going to begin walking soon. let go of october.
that'll require some good shoes, but still my skin's
melting off my face and i have no cure for that.

laughing at the way buenos aires left the room.
i mean, come on, if you're what you say you are
then the holy cross on rio de jinero's mount
should be a point of debate, not escape. well
the translation was from an olde english miss manners guide.
soooo retro. and that sells today, among the tragically
too hip to care about the future crowd.

future, what was it that cioran said about that?
i'll leave it to you to wrestle with the impossible...?


maybe i look it up.

of course, it's not there.


so this is what a dweeb does on saturday night.
lots of fun yes? i hope i


omg, there i go again. why wont you DIE?

on the matter of the tree

we were writing the movie
again, but we needed a new scene
so out of the heavens came a storm
of intense perescription pounding on the trailor
top twenty skateboarders doin wheelies n he
popped
off the couch, shouting the windows! the windows
she and i looked at each other laughing she said
let him handle it
the trunk is open and everything! so she jumps up, heads
out the door i'm almost fifty i mumble
i don't need to be heading out in the rain i'll just go
get some towels so they can dry off it's like

a firehose drenching out there, but he comes in with his shirt off
and she said he already had it done, and the rain keeps
pouring out of the sky like some cloud's getting rid of the six pack
he drank at the inlaw's so she says baby
it looks like we'll be sitting here a while and i say you know
how it is in florida. so we watch the water for while
listen to it embracing the square sides
and sloping roof funneling
straight down
drowning sound like
the pool dived into you

then just


taper



off.

he says if your camera's out there you might wanna check it
cuz the water was coming straight in sideways. i walk
out the ground's wet
but nothing in the sky. i say man,
that's one hell of a way for someone
to tell you to close your doors.




($)










in the flower bed next to the broken screen back door
one of those small juniper trees in a bucket appeared. it matches
the way the snowman got on the patio. on xmas eve
i brought it in and decorated it. now i guess i need to keep
it alive for next year. i dunno what to do with the snowman.











*******









next to the bejeweled tree she tells me how you
gotta love yourself before you can love
anyone else. self esteem in the land of the gladiators.
i take pictures with flash and without. some of them
look like the real thing but mostly
they seem dispossessed, like patience
without reward. a pink bell wearing
gold filligree underscored with a' red
lamp fuzzes the light like the times i was
beautiful, for a little while, with you.

love she said

you throw that word about as if
it had never hurt you.

sibilant on the phone, trying
to express god in human terms.

you're too positive by half. she said.
for a man in your shoes.

so you took them off.
placed them above and behind
the places she wanted to go.

you can't take any of it with you
except love--soft, sure, sincere.

she said what makes you think
you can take that? the moon
under the clouds, shining despite rain.

riptide

windy beachfront property
late night twinkles after the water
goes to bed. a mantilla
across the void.

she throws a package
into the waves. encantational
slides or maybe notes
to neptune's laughter. whatever
is inside beyond an act of faith
is not important.

what's important
is that the sea
is going out, taking
startling reflections
with it.

















*




she is in charge
of the meat for christmas
dinner. suddenly the party
grows less manageable, what was three
is now 21as if
divinity mated with itself
and formed a common
carbon isotope.

she wears a green skirt
her top is red.
colors of cardinal & pine.

she asks the butcher
for the steak to be pounded
to paper. teeth will write the poem
into flesh


she needs three ripe bananas
and beck's most scratchy tunes.
the nuts await, oven's hot. the mailbox
has been empty for a week. she's
reminded of a heart, or the place it used
to be before she went down to the sea.




















*




i'm listening to beck today.
country phase. goodbying
moving to disconnect. i'll try
to forget what you gave me. these tunes
we didn't listen to, together. gathering
everything because it was there.
a bag full of pecans, bogs of watercress.


pulled and pasted on stereoscopy
a salad with balsamic vineagrette.
the stores close early today
so people can be with their families.
i have no tree. i want no tree. i want
to admire my daughter's give her
all the ornaments i collected while were
together. you never knew me. you didn't
ask. i didn't tell . our life was like
the ascending strains of/ a day in the /
sampled in a song,
or the white out of synecdoche
inside a refugee camp. lost cause.
but we believed in it
because we didn't know
what love was
for.
















&**^^^




































out on the sandbar, we walk carefully
there are round and primitive organisms
growing under the thin membrane of water
and silt. so very graceful and fragile these circles
in the early stages
before silica slides into a skeleton
weaves itself into thickened diamonds
less likely to break, mounded as if quiet
tribes had buried their refuse below the surface
like meconium with a new life. if you brush
away the sand and reach carefully to
the flat underside, pull it whole above
the ocean, it must breathe
faltering and leaky, it will stain your palm
with the yellow of sun behind the remnants
of storm, in late afternoon not setting.
dirty & bright like how i see you
outlined in windows which meet at a corner
yesterday, when i did not know who you
would become.

illumned adriftness

a piece of fluff balanced
on a stalk. clinging.


the wind comes
the wind goes

once i rode the train
that led to your door.

no more. linearity confuses
the river. straightjacket bargaining

with a picket fence.
the river flows.














&








i'm thinking maybe
i'll get to work close
to the time i'm scheduled.

i'm thinking maybe
work can substitute for you
since you seem to be vacationing

in the south of france or atop some
tiny stalk, maybe snagged
in the britches of a blonde

cousin, say, infatuation
with the next ex
who will bring you closer

to the soil in which you'll
rest. budapest was a factory
for puns, so you move on.























*(&&&&














it's christmas. ring a ding.
bake the cookies, make them sing.
when i was young i taught
my daughter that santa was the giving

so she could believe as long as
she wanted. my son was born
knowing surface, inherent truths.
it was a struggle watching him

before he could find words. he
never sat in santa's lap
without crying at the fraud but
he'd sit in mine, demanding

the gift i couldn't give before
its time. now he fondles mathematics
with his mind, teases want with will
stands on a precipice of lime.































*()&&&





what would you have me say to you
love
passion
reason for living
?




we live anyway.
reason is a monkey
embracing god's raiment
if god needed clothes like she did
in that movie where a child singer
plays her. i'd kiss that girl
if i ever met her. instead i buy
her music. sweet. poet.u

some number of days later

she realizes that though
she doesn't know exactly what
love is, she knows more now
what it isn't.

it's not words without actions
probably actions define by omission
rhetoric that is untrue. like honey?

i've hit my head on this cabinet
again, can you please move it now? yes

dear followed by another week with a lump
on the lump on the noggin. like could you

possibly make time for me today
she asks after a couple weeks of no show
and canceled provisional yesses, hears

i'd love to but
where the but becomes the love
recycled into unbreathable air.

not ready for crime time

this guy's an internet stalker
like hey!!!
like why don't you write to me?!!!!
why don't you call me??!!!! like
we'd been married for six years
and i ain't been bringin him
a six pack every night at six in fact
i'm almost never home at six anymore
so now that's six six six
times 2 which talk about writing
on a wall, and if i throw some bleach
on that, i deserve the knock out
i see in the sheen on his face
and throw in some slaps
like the grease in his hair so i think
wow some people don't get it
the internet is here
for distance so you should just keep
yours until you at least get
to talk on the phone you really
shouldn't beat your wife before
you marry her.

the mythos of ice

he said we bind
to the frozen thing
or something like that he
was always wanting to turn
into sunlight or smoke.

i insist there's a reason
we flock. strong force, weak
force, dip in space. time
for a pair of blades maybe
a spin in the nascent vortex.

out on sheldon road, blips
and bleeps of authority
someone's life is changing
within the sound.

letters that you never meant
congregate into words that
you wish you hadn't.

slow drip of the rip
basted with warmth
then frozen again futher
along the river, like antartic
waves poised at the breadth
of a snow beach, never to break
into motion. a stasis field
where the core collects
and is exhumed years hence
after the carbon is released.

it doesn't matter if you ever
read my poems. you wouldn't
want to understand .

entomology

the ants are back
lost on the bench unable
to cross over the posion
river the bug man
laid down.
this morning she tells me
about her dream. her son
is in a casket and as she walks
by his eyes follow her. she tears
up, asks, what does it mean?
this is only
the second dream
i have since coming
to america.
i used to find portents in birds
i've moved on to the tarot. frog
in a shoe. the number of school
closings vs the years left that
i should care.
you say i want to meet someone
who makes me want to be better.
happiness used to be the frontier
but the self help genre kicked us all
up a notch. welcome to my pedestal.
one and half times the national average.
rising seas and falling temps. global
evolution as a dominant paradigm. break
out the whip.
on the second half of lunch
pulled pork falls out from the bread,
i wipe crumbs to the floor for the survivors
swept from the bench. some of them
were crushed in the cleaning.
i tell her dreams
are messages from the subconscious
perhaps you are missing family
but not admitting it. she wants to know
what it means, this dream.
i have no clue, i repeat. maybe
look it up online.
online the search for desire.
the stars are firm in their sky.
if one begins to resemble a frog
i'm running, i just
haven't figured out
which direction
to go

this one

> >
> > metaphors for rain
> >
> >
> > every summer when the crickety cars
> > twitch along limpid roads
> > tar seeps sticky into sky
> > moves into our skin with an overnight bag
> > and plans to stay a week
> >
> > in the evenings the smell
> > of something like a tin hook
> > you picked up rusted in the rushes
> > on the edge of the lake
> >
> > or hydrogen and oxygen rusting busting
> > out of the green ground rising ghosts
> > gathers round me
> > like a see thru shroud
> > and the smell of waterstacks
> > then the breaking of the sac
> > floods down the leg of the sky
> >
> > whipping hurricane over your face
> > like a woman's hair
> > when she's on top whirlwind, nameless thunder
> > then pools, runnels into a grate
> > after passage after passion
> >
> >
> > the way it pools
> > in the lowest point
> > arching toward drain
> > like a diver
> > from the high board
> >
> > tell angels
> > to take their kisses and place them
> > on some other forehead for
> > mine is blessed by holy water
> > from a dripping tongue
> > with an element more basic than tears
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > rain fools the window
> > into membrane
> > rolls gravel chitter down a slope
> > and he an i blow
> > bubbles on the front porch.
> > they barely birth in the mist
> > that rises from roof's waterfall
> > a convergence of two
> > sharp angle caresseses ,
> > like sun without a burn.
> >
> > so what about god? he asks
> > and the devil? i say
> > well god ......
> >
> > hold on just a second...
> > and he rinses his sticky hands
> > in the dribbles that still sputter
> > from the roof, climbs into my lap
> > and says
> > at last!
> >
> > the clouds move like sun and the sun
> > moves like fireflies
> > rain goldens the air
> > and we begin to breathe like fish

21 days

they say three weeks
makes or breaks a habit.

i dunno. i tend to cling.
still smoking after all these years.

it's not that i want to reach
back and grab what we never were.

i just feel like i've been mourning
forever. why the fuck?









()()(*









at work i've got the window
moved into a 3 x 5 index card
to be hurriedly hidden if some
one notices i'm not working.

i've got a cold coming on.
pinch in my shoulder. it's tuff
to be positive and it's not about
the economy or the holidays. my job
is still around, and we're not asking
for government bux. bonus this friday
means the remainder of my pay
which the company's kindly kept back
for me to use at this time of year
will be passed out. so it's not financial
in the strictest sense.






no, my angst is tied to one of the big three.

maybe all of them. shouldn't aging
be included in that category or is that
merely a subset of the line 3? i mostly
don't agree with the dominant paradigm
but too chicken to buck it. sigh. bucket.

i'm beginning to see why suicide looks so tempting.

pain is a relative thing. let us wallow.



























*(_()**&&&






i try going on the dating sites.
you tell me i'm sposed to be
in a relationship. i have to ask why,
because none of the ones i've had
ever gave a shit about who i am,
just what can you do for me.






i think that's pretty accurate.

so why go there again. .


ok they've seen me. i think i'll go
take 'lunch' now.

oopsy.

look not everything

is going to pan out. just because
the pieces look like they fit
doesn't mean time's warp has left them
unscarred. some people don't
want to move toward the light
or see ultraviolet where you see
white. shy away. laugh it off, festive.

temperate geometry
the way the feather's snuggle
becomes undemanding flesh.

we could all use a little rest.
time will build a half moon
in daytime sky. you can fit
the key into the lock
at anytime. the requirement
is observation and trajectory
as long the right door
has come along. go
on. try this one too.

so you


hijack the title i jacked from you
and jack jacks the whole poem
like billy sez, we are all thieves
just some of us don't mind rewriting
other peoples lives.

i'm by the window, the blue trailer outback still looks
slightly off kilter. if i make my lines shorter
does that mean my poems are longer?



don't even go there.










*



she pretends to want
and i cultivate goldfish
memory invasions like a big python
that shows its precursors
to the cops. condiments of hello
what are we doing here
again
?








if we cut to the chase
then what will the hunt be?

just be in the forest when bambi is
and you'll see what i mean.



if i say i'm not going to call
till christmas, do
you open
the package
anyway?









ok ok
i'll stop sitting on your style.





























****************************************************************************************










the screen door performs
slamming in the breeze
like an exclamation
i forgot to remove.


time for a little substance abuse.



my backyard is mix of sand and brittle grass.
frost last week, the dry season, careless ness.
i ventured there to see if the jew came for his property.
he did. i still have the chops because the smell of rotting meat
did not appeal to my sense of aesthetics. i don't know whether to eat them
with the four hundred dollah bottle of jack or let them both
sit in stasis till the rains begin again.


i was not anti semite. it's just a descriptor, valid, what i can't
say the black man's black?. he has the nose
to prove it. also his shekles, it's ok. substitutes for real life
are common in the suburbs. you ask
should i call should i call should i?

fuck do i know about it?
excitement is its own best enemy.






















but come on. getting inside
is the bloggy way. i guess you don't want
to be associated with anything nouveau n stuff
but sadly, remember jack, how ftbt was buried
on the shelves in that library you used to put books
lackadaisically away la la la lifted more out
than in, left them on tables for observation
of the tipping point. and the photon dissolved--
a calorie now in your head. how ftbt and the daily
real reality personal writing of the now defunct sandboxes
in all the rotarian message boards///cc/////////.... but sadly
how once again you
were at the forefront of a movement
you left
before the crowd
gobbled it up, tiring of the mask
before it ate you whole. failing
into poetry
over and over again



some version of yourself from way back
come to hack your way
thru the fresh jungle sprung up
around you unstoppably delicious












*













ok so. in the movie
which come ON
someone's gotta write them what's
the matter with exporting every facet
of how to become human in a post
god is dead social scene. humor,
black, essential. the raucus revisionary dripping
carmine laughter and curtains made of razor /step
thru my little darling, put on the riding hood
you have not seen this story before.










*(*)(&



a large bird, perhaps raven perhaps
hawk just flew low over the offcenter eyes of the blue trailor
behind me. in this position, my chair by the window affords
me a view of a lint filled sky, on the edge of summer. sun , when
it breaks thru the clouds of the west, is oblique on the palm
outside, infused with your long pale hair, coquina's watercolor
a shell that held, but no longer holds anything but its own carapice.

the bird flew in a direct line toward my window so that when it raised
its neck to clear the roof, i saw its underbelly, the flat airstrike of target
combined with freedom. this body can't wander in the air.
and i always wonder why not?


does this make me naive?



















)(*&&&\






think about what they say about harnessing the universe.
the weak and strong gravitational forces. the calorie of time
which allows matter to exist rests in .
the fluctuation
of something that does not exist
according to the koi i spoke to
just the other night. water he cried
and i was like what? you're a fish.

so is it the fluctuation or the fish or is it both.


acorn after acorn drops on an alumininum roof.
there are plenty in my neighborhood. the bird
passed long ago and only heralded the coming sunset.


on the long drive thanksgiving evening




i had a dream this morning
that my bonus was cut by 5/8ths.



i thought about how that would be devastating
to my future plans.

but that's only if plans
are written in stone
or on a legally biding contractual document
which can result in repossession
(as in you dear grantee
were never the actual possessor)
of said portion of your life
by zarathustra in a monocle
holding multicolored money
and the deed to park place.












()***






i'd put in pictures n stuff
but i don't
want to be
lashing . the drum circle goes
rain or shine, but i don't have
a drum. sadly. across the universe


is on at ten. the day shortens by lengthening into
things i have not again accomplished. i want to take care
of myself lately. part of that is reveling in my own filth.
this is not a good role model for a young man.
there are three in my living room, needing sustenence.
i am the mother. this is my job. i am not the writer
nor the artist i am called back to substance
by the slam of a door, skateboard ticking
acorn falling cuz the boys are throwing them
onto the rooftops of town.

i think
i wouldn't miss this
if i could move
from this spot.

more than fourteen days

yay

intellectual infection

it's been a while since i saw
this side of the coin-- smiles
amongst the weary.

if i can
be the last lesson i have to learn
then what will you teach me.?

see? we need each other.


say orange blossom honey.
the jib's fib. tack into the wind.
finoluction in the junction.
every thing right with the world

including this mad caw protein virus
peppering brain with flocks of anti sorrow
blackbirds and such. thin whine of a spoiled
browser. maybe load it in this time.


listen. if we could have great sex
on the weekends and maybe once during the week.
i mean what more do you need at this age?

pancakes. a 401k with heft. a few more years.
?









*(*^





the beauty mark cut
thru the night, strobing
like invasions of pod people.

each saturday someone would wander
into the bookstore and purchase a book
or buy a cup of coffee, hot cider, spangles
on a sharp bookmark. it's criminal
the way you turn down pages. mark up
fine paper this way. you just thought
that means love. you part with it
in sorrow. this should all be erased.

tequila is not condusive to writing
and thus have i proven the incohate brew
that derives from ferment. the stew
takes sover the creative process
but it only wants libido. like the way i

called you, got your attention
in the pocket of your shorts
you told me to stay
on my side of the pond.he
says it means
you respect me,


it also means you would have
answered the door with less
in your hand than your heart.

you would have answered.

too soon. too soon. watch what my
mind is up to. when a thief meets
a thief, no introduction is needed.

yes i think there's magic
and i don't want to measure
the length and breadth of it i
just want to watch in materialise
around our heads, as if
belief came to life.

delineation

this morning the sky is pale a minor with a hint of cream
lint clouds waiting for a hand to wipe them, whipped
in a froth of leavetaking.

falling away is always, moments drop
into a pond, ducks skim the surface.
only the surface can be skimmed.


silence is full --
a paucity
in the pause.


will and fair meet in a glass hovel
the walls are cold or warm
depending on the weather.
floor of crushed ice.
floor of featherbed.


this morning the curse is stone
become sand. say goodbye
to that mountain.
face blown away.

temporal magic

she knows what to say
just not when to say it. ruins
the dinner in less time than
salad with pine nuts. we'll
take a cab back, we'll be naughty.

are you sure want a second?
that's the fuck me drink you know.
she doesn't. know.

the chrysanthemum is an orchid
or not. you want her
eating from your hand.
the boat may be yours
in another life. the magic may
or may not work tonight. but

it's been a long time since before.
refinement is not her strong suit.
however, the pictures...well. good eye.


i'm not in my slut phase. so she pulls
out the wallet. a five. a ten. a one.
for a cab. instead, let's walk. the drink
didn't work i guess she insists later, on the phone.


in the morning, she sees that her wallet is gone.
she cleans her room , the wallet
is still gone. she calls the cops, hopeless
but a fire and rescue guy found it. lucky.
but oh so wrong about the drink. ponders the
magic in those streets.