Poetry

my books are my mind

spilled out in pages
scattered across shelves

i am sifting through my ancestors
the sacred and profane
remembering and forgetting

i am becoming

my path is a line of green
highlit fire

I am a thousand flames
words
called forth
from the black ink

to think
is to divide:
each letter
infinitesimally smaller:
the beating of a heart

god
i love the fire
pressed through me
called forth by the word
into difference

yes i am
fractal
infinitely recursing
into flaming colors

books within books
are written
as my soul exults
in the infinity
of spaces
between words

it is 9 o'clock in the morning

and my brain is full of tongues

i woke
to a president's plan
for an ailing economy
pressed through
a recalcitrant congress
ground finer still
by the pecking fingers of reporters
stuffed into the airwaves
like a sausage.

my dreams were cobweb
clinging in my mouth

I prayed
in the light
as I waited for the snooze
my dream persisted
like hope but soured

a sharp toothbrush punctures
my reverie
not unpleasant

i elect Ira Glass
soft king of my ear
for breakfast
a small truth
etched deep
into five acts

there is coffee
moving quickly
and I go
full
before the dawning fluorescence
i was predestined to arrive
a little late

i know how to empty myself
but where does it go?

time swept me
like the metro

The echoes

of a night
drift
through my screen mesh.

A man explains
fervent
against a Crown Vic's
acceleration.

Crickets pulse
aloof
as tree branches
rustling above.

And why
does a horn slice
insistent
across the rustling
of dry leaves?

Anonymized
by distance,
a dog yelps
in pain
incomprehensible.

Our city
vast as starscapes
whose lights
yet travel
to our eyes.

i am a distant hope
i make no sound
my ballpoint
is a ninja.

How much less am i
than a single cricket:
whose sound brings sex
the thousand-throated drums
of pheromones in ecstasy?

While yet
my pregnant wife sleeps
through her symphony
of ninjas.

One evening soon
the rain will fall.
I will watch
the smallest inifinty
of sound
blanket her all.

Hope begins

the day barks:

a hound set to guard
by inner clockworks
officious, vigilant

exhaustion
nine thousand anonymous
lapping at the will
an attriting ocean

once again it bays
thirsting for work
and feed

"i am (i am)"

yes, and i am
i say
but less
in the dawn

oh the ceaseless dawn!
calling me to life
from wordless desire

ah how it tracks me
9 thousand distinctions
shattered from a single pane
and the wind carries a howl
through the broken glass

"i am (i am)"

i see that you are!
and i am less!
who am i this morning?
who was i last night?
who shall i be today?
why do you track me
you bloodhound
where do you come from
on the coattails of my grief
to the citadel of my self
where i had thought to rest

"i am (that i am)"

again you are?

i remember the hammocks
staring up
into the meshed leaf canopy

a midwesterner in paradise
still working

i remember the hammocks
of paradise

high in the leaf canopy
i strove against the leafcutter ants
against the green-hued sun
to build a haven
where all things stay
where put

i remember the hammocks
where i strove in my mind
as my body rested.

porn

is a hell of not having
but seeing
the transposition
of infinite desire
laid over the world
on a screen

there is no resolution
to the seduction
of the symbolic
it remains
an impossible exchange

the object of desire
does not exist.

you are
as attractive
as you are
and have sex
when one woman
is not too tired.

but what you have
you have
through the trade of yourself
really the only currency
worthy of another.

this is the beauty
to remove the shades
from your eyes
and view yourself
and your love
unmediated
by the funhouse lenses
of the impossible.

how we have grown the impossible!
in ways beautiful and terrible
in images we create.

but let us make love
naked
as we are
flesh to flesh

this is the way
of honesty
we have trodden

Hey everyone!

I slunk
noiselessly
candy on my breath
past a weeping violin.

I tore out my smile
and rolled it like a cigarette
smoldering gently.

He began to smoke
and my guilt subsided

He kept us there
imprisoned
after he constructed a facade
around the the sheriff's office

it was the tin veneer
of a general store
he sold permits and titles
to goods and lands

she was
good at birth

her age
like cracks
in a foundation
spidering away
from crabgrass

i love her always
this world

i love her as she is sinking
into the earth
like an ancient mansion
returning to dust

i love the earth
so much closer
as we sink
into herself

for she is both foundation and ground

i recall her
to herself
who she is
and was
and will be

she reminds me
of her birth
as she stands

i love her
as she is
created good
and sinking