no other way

you've buried your meager coin

sand slips through your fingers

a sun without warmth casts its dull light
a cadence of waves beats the shore

this is a black and white photo

of someone else's summer vacation

you've poured out your measuring cup of envy

sold your teeth

one by one

strung on cheap necklaces of self-pity

and now—

will you also discard the bones your mother brought forth?
your ribs because they are a cage?
your skull just a hollow bowl?

who would choose this?

so many mountains of skulls yet to cross
countries of skulls
whole continents of skulls

rising out of cruel unasking seas

all we’re afforded

entrance beneath trees
sun verging on surrender

only the present
where the forest grows

it tolerates
no remembered thing

moss and lichen without roots
the beech have grown for years

likewise our ways
worm trails under bark

come
empty your bowl

bone and branch
whitened by years

which in their sure way
sanctify us too

an otherwise ordinary day

so this skinny chair rubbed up against a fat telephone pole, or was it the other way around? the telephone pole rubbing against the chair entirely the wrong way which in this case was the right way and all those people who still had land-lines overheard everything-- the cardinal sin was public knowledge and we all went to bed with visions of soft fat chairs and hard skinny poles chaffing against an otherwise ordinary day.

glass

the one gift he was given
he didn’t know how to accept —
such a fragile thing
intricate glass-work
silver inlay
the craftsman skilled

but each time he held it
he’d break it
he didn’t mean to
just couldn’t be careful
couldn’t put it down

so he kept himself from it
couldn’t bear surrendering
its rare wonder
for his pleasure

but it was made to be broken
and its breath set free

thirst

this river within the silken dark
is not dark

it waters my silent mouth
flows across the table
and i drink it up

but it is wide and deep

an unrelenting current washing over me
it erodes all hope of deliverance

i cannot fight it

in it there is no fear
only the unfamiliar awe
of being consumed

until all that i am is taken in
and these endless panting waters

full

Tuba

I woke at 2 AM and poured my heart out, and everything else came with it, even the tears I cried in 4th grade when I'd butchered the tuba and discovered it was, like me, a mass of hollow tubes. Pooling in the bottom of some of them I found foul fluids I presumed to be stagnant spit though some was blood and semen and synovial fluid which I've forgotten the purpose of.  Sometimes in the early morning I am all ears, or rather just one, a fleshy kind of sousaphone that God likes to play when He is drunk which he must be after He thinks of places like North Korea or Rwanda in 94. Sometimes I think He only knows how to play sad songs, or maybe enjoys playing melodies that even He doesn't try to understand. Back in high school a classmate and I locked one of the juniors in a tuba case because after a couple of years we'd had it with the obnoxious motherfucker. That's what God has to do with me too when, for instance, I tell people I want to piss on the late April snow. This morning Jim Harrison had to come along and undo all the latches.

what remains of an inappropriate nursery rhyme

...when the days and nights
all grew dreadfully clear

we knew the war
would continue that year

still the snow it fell
on one and all

on the dead and the dying
and the living and the lost

and there by the hand
of a cold frozen child

just inches away--
a sleeve

of a red and black sweater
on top of the snow

The morning star twinkled
anew in the sky

then silence was broken
with the coming of dawn

a lone robin twittered
one promising note

but then came the thunder of shells
falling all the day long...

Funny Thing

The funny thing is after you’d been gone for all those years you showed up yesterday. We got a hotel room that turned out to be an engine of a huge steam train. All its handles and levers confounded me until I realized we were in my best friend's hotel room and you had come with a homely girl and we were all together. When his wife appeared at the door, you huddled behind me peeking over my shoulder. I stood there like nothing had happened, but I think we were naked. All evening we'd been unable to keep our hands off of each other. Your shirt was unbuttoned and I had my arm between your breasts, against the warmth of your skin. Then I put my armpit between your buttocks, and the inside of my arm against your belly. You ran your hands all over me as I balanced laterally on one arm performing some gymnastic act I am incapable of. In the morning my friend drove up on an antique tractor he’d borrowed to carry your luggage. I felt a little out-done. As we escorted you and your friend to a distant parking lot, a group of tourists stopped and asked me for directions. The place they wanted to visit had too many turns. You were slipping away; I had to run to catch up. When we said goodbye your face eclipsed the whole gray city. Odd I thought— your green eyes, curly bobbed hair, and how I called you Jane who's a brunette. This evening when you showed up so unexpectedly telling me you'd read everything I'd sent you, all I could think was you were taller than I remembered; when we hugged so closely I couldn't help feeling embarrassed for all the places my arms had been. I wondered how I would ever explain this to my wife.

Note to self

Be thankful for the irreversibility of the universe. It shows us which things are precious, and which are not. Without it, what would urge us forward? It teaches us to be careful but not too careful; to enjoy what we have when we have it, and after it is gone to let it go. It scolds us not to abandon the things that are repairable, and to discard those that are not. There is no arguing with it, it can't be convinced. It wants no nick-knacks on its shelves.

promise

this light
fading from the sky

this day
this moment already gone--

let go
you cannot keep it

more will come
the world is merciful that way

blue dye no. 2

last sunday's easter egg
leaking sky on a cheap white napkin
not much, just enough to follow

i'm lost
can you find me
floating in the stain?

that’s me hovering
over the shattered sky
which i have broken

the half-eaten sun—
un-resurrected
not warm enough to feel

empty bowl

Now that winter’s gone
I sit by a slow river
come here every day
a pair of mourning doves coo
how long will I have to wait?

trouble

winds strong or gentle

diminish not the waters
nor wear away sands

neither shall adversity

carve out spirit from a man

desperate sideshows

atop a great rock
we watched smoke
curl off the horizon
a sudden urge—
I leapt a fissure
three feet wide
thirty feet deep
mistook her fear
for desire

up a mountain trail
pool beneath falling water
we leapt boulder to boulder
her bare legs trusting everything
but someone else
you could fall
I dove deep
currents pulled heavy
strength almost gone

rooftop bar
in Morogoro
I pointed out a ledge
if you see me climb out grab me
stars burned bright
the conversation—  noise
I knew he would fail me
that’s why I picked him

crammed into speeding taxi
rumble of gravel
no elevation
dawn’s dwindling stars
hands on my legs
all of them shouting
stop the car
halfway to the roof
my final act foiled

Sorry, I've been hacked by an automated WTF generator

Oh great, I've lost a flat tire,
I can't even start the electric potatoes.
Who opened the doorknobs and let all the carbohydrates out?
Please, turn down the piano it's getting yellow,
can somewhere smell me why the hell is turning at?
A.P. everthought,
I'm feeling alittle timezone.
Maybe? is something on this?

deep the blue

i long to taste a mermaid's songs
siren lips melodious
to wreck upon the ribcage of a shore
be dashed into the cavernous sea
to unfurl my hungry sails

Winter's last

upon March late field
an evening snow lays down blue
all the gravestones gone

Venus de Milo

arms
                        of modest line           
                                                   contour

                        pure


how her hands

                        catch her skirts
                                          
                                                                fingers
                                                                     without blemish

some unintended sorcery

I woke last night
realized it must've been Jim
my co-worker who turned my eye
who was always turning my eye.

I suspected some overnight chaos
rattling objects on my desk
averting its gaze left or right.

In the beginning
I didn't know it was an eye
picked it up in a parking lot
walking to work
milky white quartz
smooth and round.

For a long time
just a stone on my desk.

I colored a black iris
never thought of Jim
working late into the night
all alone
with a stone eye.

at the end of time

in barkless tree
a great nest of silverware
knives interlocked with forks

in uplifted spoons eggs turned stone
against an empty blue
no circling silhouette of mother
strange bones strewn beneath

driving from the beach

still picturing her beige one-piece bathing suit
aching for her smooth wet hair
the sand clinging to her feet
the cool transparent water
where she floated
beyond Summer's afternoon
in blue sky above pines

sharps

the old piano
at Winter's picture window
waiting there for me
it's time to learn the black keys
unravel the vernal chord

words

written on egg shells
heavy words like recompense
glued to a canvas
as I listen to her voice
all the empty years dissolve

Oscillating

This sea I swim in
where I encounter you
it undulates with light and darkness
I am drowning in you
then I am drinking you in
then I am floating and still
I can feel you quivering
against all that I am

Doorway

I don't know why the way in is through a barn door up a ladder to a hayloft empty of hay after our last horse, Nugget, was sold, or why I awoke there that morning alone with a crow fluttering its wings to wake me. Maybe it coveted my eyes, was checking if I was dead, but when it spoke I began to wonder if God had ever used birds as prophets before. Go to the house for breakfast, your mother will tell you what you are missing. She'll tell you that along the three miles of highway you walked last night someone found your wallet, then your license, and then all the other crap. All I remembered was how drunk we were, how tightly she held me when I'd carried her across the outlet to Lake Michigan. The barn, a picturesque red, was traded for fill dirt at the end of that summer.

dinner missed

red sun dies
out a square window
dark wires cross
cracks in the sky

ceramic shingles slope into gutter
a magpie watches over women
washing in the court

they clean black pots
pull off burnt rice
not for magpies but themselves

heat lingers
tin cans rattle rough music
patio nearly empty

magpies land on tables
perch in low branches
say things
I don't want to hear

The Way Back

One summer when we were eight my twin sister and I hiked back in pine hills where the brilliant blue skies whistled above shadows of hemlocks; where the north sides of hills hid June snow. We'd run away, but only she came back. I kept wandering among the shadows and burning heights. Winds lifted me to the top of a pine, it snagged me by my collar. As I fluttered there I saw how clouds were distant isthmuses, peninsulas, endless chains of islands. I struggled free and floated off. I have only recently returned to rummage through rubble foundations, to sift through ashes for my whittling knife, to whisk away dust from my first sketches of trees, to uncover old Dittos of elementary math problems. The ink has faded. All that remains are answers written in pencil I did not erase-- nothing else, and now I'm out of time. My skiff is moored loosely to the top of a pine, the moon is rounding the ridge, eventide has come, my lands are burning with blood of the Sun. The winds and sea are too unpredictable, there are only a few endless stars to guide me.

It wasn't you

It was the nights of lies I lived
waking in strange slums
off cement floors
in hotels under assumed names
taxi rides of promises
dreams that were bullshit
the late morning sun
burning everything
from squinting eyes

arising

out of nothing
returning to nothing
things small  still  empty
like a coffee cup
a heatbeat with no blood
echoing before sound
before the beginning
an end destroyed
created
doesn't rain fall and fall and fall?
a thread unravels
has been unraveling
since before it was wound
in that great machine buried in some lost factory of time
silent gears turning always turning
slow imperceptible motion
CPU burning out bits
its  0 0 0
sometimes 1
0

Redemption II

wings
the mechanics of flight
not prop planes and smoke hearts
but prisoner #1853-M
the bird man of alcatraz
visited by sparrows
teaching himself to save them
doing solitary in leavenworth

beating a thousand times a second
not candy hearts but heat and metabolism
why bludgeoning a man to death is wrong

Redemption I

Held in bone hand—  a life
unmade, drips from worn joints.

Marred by dark grains
it melts away—
an undulating pool of silver
seeping into sand.

As if caught in flame—
it becomes glass
just for an instant.

All that remains— grit
takes the contour of bones.

splendor

greatly diminished
house of a thousand spoons and few forks
an empty drawer

Algebra I

The sum of their ages is six years less than mine.
I tell them sixteen years for me have passed like two
which is three times less than six.
This story problem—
too senseless to solve.

Your idea of love

Your idea of love—
red giant stars
a globular cluster 
tattooed on my chest with a fork
tines bent into fishhooks
you cast with no art

Your idea of love—
dirty dishes
me on the dining room table
you with pliers
he loves me, he loves me not
my teeth ring as they land in a pot
I hate you, I hate you
not part of the game

Your idea of love—
my toothless mouth
cradled in your arms
shards of glass from our portrait
worked into raw sockets
twisting and turning
if you love me you’d kiss me
that’s a nice boy
your knee in my jaw

Your idea of love—
me naked
in a stained porcelain tub
filled with gasoline
I know how you hate to waste it, dear
your face glowing in match-light
a cigarette hangs from your lips
you know I don’t smoke
the match falls from your fingers
onto the floor
don’t think I’d let you off so easy
that's not my idea of love

in winter darkness

breezes swirl
hollow my voice
lift whispers

across quiet miles
your mouth waits
starving with warmth

always making

dreams into poems
preams into doems
peams into droems
poeams into drems
poems into dreams

Clocks

city planners have devised these—
three great unblinking eyes
ensconced in height

one over knowledge
one over law
one over commerce

they gaze upon our urgencies
pupils pierced by iron shafts

two dark arms quantify subdivide
attempt to master
through mechanical means
that which is inscrutable

once

stumbling upon a hidden entrance
deep in an old abandoned wood
she wandered into a dark labyrinth
more ancient than trees.

running her gentle finger
along rough and dusty walls
turning this way and that
she found her way at last to me.

you do not belong here
my raised voice
how did you get through?

but by then it was too late—
every wall she'd touched had crumbled
light was coming in.

Mishap

As I set out on the path I worried that there might not be any more water in the well.  I never was very careful.  I didn't even see the snake, only heard its rattle. It bit me in the calf, through my jeans. I staggered into the well and fractured my femur.  The poison didn't kill me, but after a day in darkness a bucket struck my head.  Some woman overhead shouted, “Shit!”  There was no water so she left, and no one came back.  A week passed.  I had to eat myself to survive (methodically, first my legs, then my left arm, then my torso— I've carried a jack-knife since I was a young boy.) After I took the last bite I began to float.  How careless I thought, I've forgotten my knife, my keys. It didn't matter.  I had no weight.  I kept rising; out of the well, above the fields, heading to the stars. Earth from space is so beautiful, just a tiny ornament, a memory of a fading blue pinprick.  I'm not quite sure how many years passed before I started to fall again, pulled towards the center of the galaxy; converging in perfect silence with crowding stars, ashes of planets, and blinding light, but I arrived at last standing before a familiar door. It was locked as always.

biding

sun hangs low beyond a field
around the garden a rusted wire fence
dead branches for posts
sunflower stalk black against snow
bent-over head empty of seed

january

the children move among old apple trees
seeking shifts in elevation to sled

trees so many years burdened
trunks split with weight of un-pruned growth

branches now empty of wormy apples
some dead farmer has left for birds

why do you never come to this field?

the children lose themselves in its abandon
time has died

the sky pulls away from itself
wisps of clouds

in the west
a burning glow beyond the weight of gray

in diminishing light
you walk back

down a road
still muddy

applied physics

dull brown metal door
safety glass
cool to the touch
a low hum
reactor
cyclotron
madam curie dead
damned by curses
from shadows etched on walls
wernher von braun kidnapped for his mind
would the british castrate the son of a bitch
and yet we still turn over rocks on the shore
find beneath them pebbles
but sometimes
it is possible
more possible then you think
a child's tooth

Ruins

outside of Cairo
there's an open air restaurant
where there are sphinxes
too many skinny cats beg
cold chicken from your chipped plate

where do deer lie in winter?
is endurance for them the same badge?
is morning's violet dusk a joy?

how many years do they cling to an impossible love?
what would they surrender?

driving home Christmas night
the only colors black and white
a badly broken deer

do they have sacred places?

remember the blackberries by the edge of that pond?

at the sink

you cup water in your hands
    and it runs through your fingers

maybe we are all exiles

offering

lone winter maple

            in whiteness 

                          empty black branches 

      scribbles

   distant clouds

the motions of planets

Amid the stab of night
in a break of winter clouds
I look past constellations to forgotten stars
find Venus waiting beyond sliding glass

I used to own a telescope
the odor of machine oil lubricating its focus
dust on the lens

Once I bought a red filter
forced my old man from the TV to observe an opposition of Mars
never again so close in his lifetime

I took my remarried aunt's new husband
bent him down before Jupiter
the odor of vermouth
two billion light years to Andromeda
repeated in a southern drawl

Summer slipped away
even my Mother learned the motions of planets
it's the only thing I gave her of me to love

The loosening

I woke last night
for the first time ever
pulled down one of my poems
floating away on a gust of wind
everything chained to it—

The screen door laying on the porch
leftover chicken scattered in the lawn
a trail of broken dinnerware strewn across a damp field
knives spoons forks
worse than hail

I pulled a fork out of my arm
cut the poem loose
watched it blow toward the lake

If you find it buried in the sand
an address stuck to it with masking tape
don't attempt to read it
don't send it back
winds are still blowing
let it loose before it maims you
it's not my fault

alittle further

it's alright
you can only go so far
before the red dirt road turns to mud
and you get your dress pants dirty
they'll wear out long before you give them up for gone

I wonder if my voice is tired
it seems so hard to coax
maybe I'm looking in the wrong places
asking the wrong questions
I want it to say what I mean
instead it tells me
things I don't want to hear

who really cares about a rain storm
or how the cut hay smelled in boyhood's summer
why do they want to remember salamanders under logs
where are all the women I tried to love?
I used to tell myself one day, one day
like a promise

12.14.12

Is that my child's shoe?
The space inside too tiny now to hold any hope.
How can I be thankful that it isn't when another found it was?

the night is sure

even when seas are calm
 when breezes pause as if
   considering

even when oceans rage
 when gales cast before them waves
   stars still shine

regardless

the direct route

walk the          straight line
cut off all the       branches
drag them
burn them
if you find a     robin's nest
if one fleck of      turquoise
would regret
would remorse
does a crack begin to form
is it already       absolutely
destroyed
yellow of a yolk
isn't that enough to   know
and if you go another  way
let branches be
are all of these
would you
will you          ever arrive

Nameless

When did I forget the full moon really had no face?
She was beautiful anyways
her black shadow hair glimmering with shards of stolen white diamonds
she danced in a buckskin dress made from the ghost of a deer
it had no bead-work.

She used to whisper lies
frostbitten kisses burned my cheeks
oh her lips against mine
what I thought was lapis lazuli was turquoise instead
I valued it still.

Some nights I go back
sit alone on those hilltops
among long grasses bent with the burden of seed
watch waters below mirror endlessness
until her weeping ripples the sky.

abyss

i query the Database
it keeps returning nulls

invalid parameter
subscript out of range
script timeout
404
404
page not found

you will not find a tiger in this poem.
the night has not yet come.
it is not cold.
you are laughing
but have you seen the sun?
have you tasted it?
or something like it
orange in the desert
some salt in your blood?
the light that comes with sunrise
it's not in the sun
but in the clouds
not in the clouds
but in the not-clouds
not in the scars of claw marks
you do not have
but in the scars you do.

early winter shore

winds blow through a worn and barkless beech buried in receding dunes
what weight is there in hollowness wrapped within a tree?
gray sky clouds drag their shadows where tourists used to stand
where does a shadow go? which color are the pebbles that remain?
what is their number? how are they arranged?
what determines where the grass will grow?
the vertebrae of fish have gone
seagull skulls lay staring
eyeless though feasting on eyes
none of them see
overhead glide high in the wind
echoes of screeching
the slap of waves
draws mountians
on the shore 
one after
another
erases
heels
toes
all
of
it