causeway

when there was nothing left to mourn,
maade a battle cleft from a horn
blew it wild into the sky, sun and fire

explode into a sigh, the last to die.
we let the years just slide, now we're here
at the edge of goodbye

where memories became
the trappingss of regrets
turned round in my minds eye
yeah we lost those bets

we didn't place, the sure thing
caught inside of our races
, distracted by all the pretty faces



break--middle eight

how can you mourn ashes
of the roses that you burn?
how can i rise up again
a fire inside a poem?

maybe that's the thing we missed
turning round in the sunset
alone on our own hills

when there was nothing left to mourn,
maade a battle cleft from a horn
blew it wild into the sky, sun and fire

tweeting, neda, democracy

ok, i'm a neolith. i dn't txt. don't twitter. when the revolution comes i'll be reading it from the walls of the cave i was thrown into. one sec while i grab my pipe.


i'd use too many characters to twitter. sure it's fine for verbosity to consider taking the subway, but i've been reducing my service reports at work to bare minimum dimensions for years now so that's lost its novelty. twitter is the new haiku, if haiku was txt 4 mstly inane mssgs slf spmmng sans vwls. rhymes with towels. but what's this?

an election was rigged in iran you say and the people aren't happy? why not let them take it to their supreme judges? they did? and they're still not HPPY? how could they doubt the word of allah's mouthpiece. infidels, kill them all. if we can find them.

i mean interesting times is the year's understatement. what began as an experiment in flash crowds and instant parties has now become THE tool of the revolution. unfortunately, the powers that be have the same tools, and the tool case. and instead of rocks those powers have guns. and snipers. with real bullets. that put holes in young women who dare to wear jeans, and want to let their hair fly in the breeze and quote POETRY for allah's sake, admire poets OMG can we say sooo two centuries ago? or sx4 2 cnts b4?



come on mericans. don't buy into the hype.

swallowing virus for cocktails

indeed. let me get rid of the sardonic
i called and you were accomadating.
that's all that's required apparently
that things work as i expect them to.
then i feel so much better.

so anyway, spent the day enclosed
shut in from the heat like so many of you
do in the winter where you live.
oppressive. drying. they say it's not the heat
it's the humidity but they're wrong
it's the heat. my backyard neighbors spent
lots of money landscaping their yard
and all the bushes are the color of dun
no real rain all spring, no real water
for months. the zoysia i sodded
is the color of california farmlands in
the valley between two mountain ranges
sere as the sun, a summer yellow
found in deserted suburbs and dresses
of starlets. i called you thinking
i wanted something but you have nothing
to give you are never was. never. was.

she loves like perpindicular lies
crossed in ninety degree angles.
flirtation is for teases. she wants
much more than desire, she wants
fulfillment. lately i've been wanting
a best friend. it's lonely when
your best friend falls in love.
even tho they're still friends
they don't need you like you need them
their love has bonded to better
then one is left
with the bleedover. so as bff
you encourage that cuz isn't that
what you wanted all along, their happiness.
and they want it for you too. bff don't
go away that way. it just morphs
to bfw. whenever. which naturally
is less demanding, that's what the lover's for.
i still maintain lover cn't be bff. you need
to have someone to talk about lover with.
don'tcha? maybe that's just me.

N E ways. i called twice left
a message #2 and you were true to form.
thanks for that. i know i can depend
on you. it makes the universe
seem like it has rules and pattterns
and that's all one really needs
to keep body and soul together. ritual.
bless these cards. they weave
the story for me. that way i don't have to.
i called because i have a dieses
simliar to tourettes
blurt out the stress
in inappropriate leakage from my psyche.
tomorrw teh wave will be different.
it always is.

transatlantic disco

k, i think i'm ready to admit it.
the ex was right. who the fuck
would put up with my shit?

oh well. if it putting up with my shit
means i have to put up with your abuse
the answer is no thanks. that's why yr ex.

i mean i'm ok. a bit wacked but who isn't?
most days i mean. what was it you said
expect too much. you certainly know
the beauty of lowering yours. and i thought
the years in the ghetto and the mommy trail
would have inured me to loss, but the paper
lamp is once again broken and the disco balls
have fallen into the sea. no one

notices the dances as they catch flame
and head for the captain's table. viola
flambe je suisse franc. that made no babelsense
at all. even as metaphor.

so we're doing the retro thing
got the orbison glasses and poodle
skirts ain't we got fun.
the hood ornament necklaces the ford
fairlane, appache warriors from the barrios
like tu chenga. it's a melting pot
headed for an iceberg. lets' hope
this time they didn't forget the
hair dryers. just aim them at the ice
add a li'l hairspray, some axe
and the roller blade incident
and we can call it dance dance fever
till saturday nite gets home.

buried in a pollock splatter

buried in a Pollock splatter
Lead [-]

--hector the crow

the distangled threads of white
noise filter thru policy vents.
happy places on the way. marx
was waiting for this on the corner
knew she' d come by, glad to be
his entertainment for the night.

whatever ions need to discharge
discharge thru the prism, blow the breaker
in her eyes. he wants to kidnap a play
bury it in your driving lane and tie
her to tomorrow. her hands are pigeons

pocketed. you want to past tense the entire
melody, spinal tap for mimi in miami. there are needles
in the cabinet, clean but large. open wide. she dives
into the wobbling voice of water,street carnage
written on his face. landslid announcement of irony
disperses a statement of stability and flame
and too much is read into everything regarding diplomacy.
she loves the way the vein pulses in his forehead.
hookah bars are on the way.















*



on the front porch
we watch the sky play
with light sockets. the sky
takes lsd , exploded in double
rainbows over potholes
to this side of town.

how many times have you done this
he asks.she shrugs. i've lost count.
spontaneity becomes de riguer.
hopeful is never the same after hollywood.

inside it's irish nite. the band plays
a bottle full. we need popcorn
and a menu. suddenly sharing
a salad's as intimate as sharing
a glass pipe.he say my son
tells me poets hide
behind words. i begin
to talk. he say i was in the marines

i worked in food service i was a nurse
in a former lifetime. we don't know
why we share these stories
over and over. we don't know why
the poets can't write us out
of these fingers and bolts from black clouds.

she say it's not as safe as you'd imagine
sitting here under the roof. i grew up
where kids got killed just sitting
in the front window. he smiles
says i'll chance it. she thinks he means
her. blows the lights out with a wink.

they come on again. the waitress is studying
dance. in college, working the convo
for tips cuz the porch is empty.
everyone's inside at the bar
tipping sheri instead. i just eat
the salad,happy that the croutons

are crisp,the taste of anchovy
and emperors in my mouth.
when the talk is all gone,
he begins to look in my eyes
instead of the stones around my neck.
i try to embed meaning into

the small multicolored lights wound
through the southern railings, or the way
the tables keep rearranging themselves
or the sound of retreating thunder
and the smell of headlamps hitting the road.

finding meaning in reverse

a spray of red and gold asters
in a suncolored goblet wiggles in a breeze
from the fan in the doorway of a violet
colored bathroom.


it's peaceful here now
there's no one but me

down the street, she's starting another
adventure. memories begin to tangle

together, hers & mine. how different
the times we weren't together. she remembers
her dad making her live with him, the structure
she craved, my permissiveness a wild card
lining her pockets with ill gotten booty.

she's going to have her own soon, but now
she's got a teen. his. did you know, he said
my father always used his fists
to speak to me. i don't want to be him
and he sobs into his can of beer
and his knee hurts and his heart is broken
by what men are capable of.

when the boy challenges him, he strikes him once.
only once. a dam breaks
floods him, his valley goes under.

tonight the moon was not out. the palm
in the front yard didn't rattle, there was
no wind. paradise was tired, even the heat
abated. natty light cans gleam
in the streetlight. a computer tower rusts
on the front porch. a high chair and stroller
sit on the patio collecting dirt. bits of trash
sit under the stars, occluded by city
lights, a pepper plant thrives and some kind
of flower springs up in a small clay pot.
it has not bloomed. we don't know
what was sown nor if it will survive
this drought. no rain in days. if only
his eyes could be clouds.

swollen with shadows

don't try to save me. that's what your blue
eyes telegraph to the man across the table.
you don't have blue eyes. you don't understand
time , you don't understand vanishing,
or even shared lights, exploding inside
a mulitcolored parabola
stretched over the rim of a lens.

on the radio there's love on two planes
lust on spit take. the distance grows
but not much else. over feritilized or under
utilized amounts to the same brown fields.

gotta get you outta my head. your lips are split
cherries and marischino juice.
car doors, slamming against the grill. he takes
a long pull from the bottleneck, moves a little to the right
feints left, gone. your eyes are the wonder colored
sky to the east, upside a storm
with the sun falling slow in the west.
you look on the vine, but it's empty.
find yourself inside fuzzy skin, being plucked.

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isis in the golden pavilion

wherein lies the heart of the beast
do not meddle with the gods we are riding
chariots of bones, do not pretend to take our avatr
apart. you think your weak and trembling psyche
caught up in your squalorous room in the middle
of a cesspool of a kalpa can change the tides
brought of a waning moon, do you not remember

the way we used your feet to guide us into the sea
between shales of craggy rocks bent on your blood how we
saved you the trouble of beach shoes and even the touch
of your shark baiting partner? we have plans for you my
little starfish my amphibious feeder of air. yes, these stories
he scorned are the musical we're watching so get with
the program and just record.





&*(*^














so you leave me to my life and i to yours
this is what adults do, we morphed from midges
or the life cycles of fireflies before sand
dollars. we morphed from gametes
glossing tennessee seas. adults crawl

along the bottom
with a skin of spines,
drawing iodine
from sand into a tobacco stain
for my hands to match
inside of my breath,
these many years devoted
to filling my lungs with goodbye
so we can settle
into the bottom
stop moving
group like flowers
and clones in the used robot store.
remembering green.















but that was not the miracle
it was a day when paradise called
to her denizens, the beach sparsely populated
but enough to remove the idea of copulated
we could still share a joint, a bottle
of red, a walk until
past the first mangrove, the obvious rocks
a couple of benches in memory of
i got hot and bored and tired.
dropped my bag,
stripped my skirt and waded out.

the sand bar came up to meet me, i turned
motioned you in. you followed, trusting
my footsteps, no misstep so we dive
into the salt and mother ocean
and i feel the magic come in
but i'm not listening i 'm telling you
some story or weaving opinions
and options into the stew. i search
for sand dollars with the sea up to my neck
feel the familiar soft stone hump, brush
to the edges of it and lift it with my toes.
i show you this trick over and over
my hand fills with the round test, stars
embedded in centers. it's my stupid human trick
i say. you laugh, tell me how refreshing it is
to hear your own metaphors from someone
else's mouth. you think it means we see things
the same way, like how we see the sheep
we have contempt and pity for, the ones
in whose flock we hide, braying,
trying to keep from being
mutton.

i do not know. my hand is filled with the dead
creatures. i offer half of them to you, searcb
for more. when my hand is full again
i stop and float in water the temperature of perfect.
streams of warm on top, cool at the bottom.
i am a little cilica tube between gods i do not name
i let them kiss anonymously
gravity for their lust.
a bridge of flesh breathing and floating and meeting.


so we smoke and talk and drink
the no see ems begin to bite the sun
is going down. the breeze is idylic.
when i hear the red winged blackbird's
song, i tell you how she's my totem, point
to her flying there, ahead of us, dropping
into the sand at the high tideline. the tide's
gone low, exposing the rocks we missed, to
either side of where we walked in, blindly.
you laugh at the fortune and i smile, repeat
this is my beach, i did nothing but let it lead me.

we divide all the tests
between us. you wrap yours
carefully in your backpack
but i am less so.
i understand that i will not
get them all home safely.
that was never the point.
i see them as signposts of health
cut flowers of the sea
constancies revolving
summer to summer
hiding just below the surface
breathing like a heart.

transcribed this

some kiss we want

there is some kiss we want with
our whole lives, the touch of

spirit on the body. Seawater
begs the pearl to break its shell.

And the lilly, how passionately
it needs some wild darling! At

night, I open the window and ask
the moon to come and press its

face against mine. ~Breathe into
me.~ Close the language door and

open the love window. The moon
won't use the door, only the window.

--rumi

trying to get to the yuku board

i found this in the batcave.

footprints saw the always.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
you grab the feathers
and pull them to your chest.
one' caught, hangs waving
from the dark mass
a hungry beak, white as death.

my head is crocked
against sleep or crawling
into that need between
your arms.

i miss the moon
and what she says
it's always about what i miss.mess
strating requests on the
the most important things

like durability. the grade of leather
the extent of the swamp

there was so much i wanted to say
to you. instead i fed the feather
to a pillow

camilla

give yourself to love
if love is what you're after

the song on the radio
is your hair, soft between
my fingers, the soap traveling
down your back, trickling down
my wrists. when you were
three, i had to sing you
to sleep for hours.


this room is mute and soft light.
to venture into the world
i must leave it. there is no poetry
strong enough to save me from that.

last night's fried chicken
a temporary buffer. whenever
the fire is lit, it mentions
protection and triage.


in the sand out
side our backdoor
blue and green plastic
shovels flower-
i would like a day off
to play with you.

there is no church
i'm reaching into no stained
glass monolith to brighten
the dreary week i feed
with my time. lurid florescents
and green circuit boards
the ticking of the cable machine
acrid smell of flux, burning.

inside rests several poems
everyday several poems, some facelifted
many rinsed with clarol, their children
nymph into adulthood, my children
explode from a chrysalis, the economy
keeps grinding us all up
for nothing but the all, up.

i would be sad, here, now without you except
i have given my self to you, in a package
with tissues that keep peeling away revealing nothing
more than what you have always had.