shine

red-cast
still yellow through leaves
a Sun hangs fantastically
while the decomposition of seeing
what used to be
keeps on

the frail

the frail encounter ghosts that way
never hoping for anything different

threading through branches
to find ripples beyond a cabin

at the quieted pool
sailing away on leaves

typhoid

Carlos was clearly malnourished
everything long-ago-collapsed
writing away morning
writing away eyes
the buried stories
labyrinth-like things
shutters opening often into nowhere
he was roofed into sleeping forever
while illness went on
aimlessly wearing his clothes

while exiled from God

we
     sought sky
     encountered every island
     wrote true inside our own dark places
     grew lost in the shadows of our notebooks

the distance seemed small

once only did we kiss
until the ancient minarets burned
    purple and gold
    purple and gold

you seldom recall

finding the purple of old waters
sketching things far out at sea
writing red mornings
as malaria turned through the sky

the scents wandered green
among malnourished foreigners
their bright hands wounded with gold

on and on she roamed

her heart beat labyrinth-like
for gone men whose notebooks of America
narrowed across the flirting distance
like things growing among grass
worked by tourists’ eyes
scrounging through the city’s shadow

on and on she roamed
until the ocean was nothing new
discarding small possessions
only foreigners tried to understand
more turquoise than true

in the end her rusted eyes closed in on just one man
her unhinged breezes piled up in his sun
during her malnourished days she longed to find his room
its waters near to morning sky
rising gold and exiled
above the hours of her dull and wasted life

time for me

was always a labyrinth

always a bright crack overhead
closing in on three stone things—

     1.) the jagged shadows of a peppercorn vine

     2.) an unknown bird of prey
          passing over my purple notebook

     3.) a ruined fortress hewn from chyrsolite
          from where i wrote inside
          my decrepit tent of empty ribs

zanzibar

those starving kittens,
self-exiled,
recalled the approaches of foreigners,
ate jaggedly, always true,
always among the tattered sleeves,
they spent themselves three stories high
over broad sketches of trash,
broke themselves there
below the minarets,
long they saw across the far nights
that morning steeped in blood.

foreigner

in lonely places of cannons
you sometimes heard
the blue patterns of shadows
as waves beat away the walls

by then you understood

the real island speaks grass and malaria
it is only the foreigner who writes
his long yellow pages of old wounds
shuttering inside his sleeves

by then
the cold white distance of scattered tusks
assailed him

a foreigner
surrounded by odd tessellations

as if the callers
backs scourged
sought him out

it was a much more narrow interpretation of God

always the men
their stories turned Portuguese
the forests dark and filled with disappeared

wounds dark as gold

these wounds dark as gold
and the labyrinth-like fevers
in the foreigner’s coffee—

things sought
until time shakes them
from a structure grown narrow
with uncovered sun

for days he balls tourists

nowhere a stone
ever so blue as this
docked in an odd crack

God has become a small afternoon

as branches burn

the folded flesh remembers
the hard dead stratosphere

hours erupt
out of sudden familiar aromas

weeks limp their way through
old cluttered towers of dirty hands

the strange husk of a soul slowly lifts
above the raw public village

like a leaf
that winds never abandon

want

he wants the slow easing motion
of a dry standing woman
quieting her watery hair

she holds the carved edge
of this gentleman’s glance
as he lifts her from her sleeves

together they fall
forgetting everything else but down

now that your nails are polished

let your woman spill dark
         your nostrils flare

               let fingers erupt
                        stream silver

        let your lady’s aroma
flow sweet into              longing

stone susan stood still

her speech hidden
where  unfired  the blind reside

the light sat brilliant beside her
but lonely

involving visage after visage
easing his long shadows beneath her blouse

his whispers were laden with pollen
were stems calling sun back to the earth

there are some women

for whom age
                 has become
beauty

living east of town

living east of town
   the sun is always behind me

i go to work in the morning
   the sun is behind me

i return in the evening
  the sun behind me

nearly everywhere i go
   sun behind me

but sometimes

i travel east
   in the morning to greet the sun

or west in the evening
   i linger


        just to say so long

the heavens

what was beautiful in the sunshine
turns cruel at night
what dies in the west
on the last day of spring
will be reborn in the east
on the first day of fall

time continually eviscerates itself
and thus we feed
love is nothing more than ruse
a desperation to reproduce
but why survive
it is so we can betray
so we can slaughter
the skies are full of these
the archer and the scorpion
the hunters and the prey
we are the ones
who carved these myths
across the cold vast void
and call it heaven

dusk

i have not sodden my body with you
you have not earned that destruction
the taste of your sundering
long ago shaped in the back of my throat
it is only our bodies that long to exist
what we have been does not need to endure
take this day for instance
how the sun has been given back
to the wool of grey sky
that circle of wind that plumments a bough
your arms are also limbs
if i can’t gather them unto myself
(i have not claimed them)
whose are they
what we lay claim to destroys us
the day is at its end
that gatherer of light
the moon
is already dragging our shadows
across a field

abandoned my dead

I have my grandfather’s pocket watch,
                                                               but where?

Which box,
                                                               inside which drawer?

                                                               i’ve abandoned my dead,
i cannot hear                                                the hours of their unwound clocks.

afternoon now

nothing but sun
that yellow weight of warmth
winter had pilfered
without my knowing what it took
whatever was stolen
the sun returns
full measure
all that's required
is the holding out of hands

she never calls me anymore

i imagine

               feeding a few ruffled sparrows—

                      greyish little creatures
                      with their pointed wings

i lose myself
              in their fork-like prints
                      where scrapping for tid-bits of bread
                      some had lost small feathers
                                                                buried now

                                                                            as the day grows blind with snow

morning

branches of oaks
like fractures
in a pale of perfect sky

the stillness broken
by a tracing of geese—
their imperfect lines of cruxes
echoes of their distant calls

and here i am
among the flurries
world weighed down with dew

there was no conspirator

swaddled in a horse blanket the baby was found in a stall
it could have been a manger scene with camels
except for the whores

what’s more precious
that which is lost
or that which is found

immortality   immorality
each has its own dangers and rewards

myself
i pocket the twenty and move on

two lights

one coming slant
through leaves of trees
green and quiet
that tans the arm and shoulder
the one that comes with days
heralded by birds
the one you take nap in

the other fierce like cutting knives
or bullets perforating
the sac of skin they call the body
the one composed of rays that sear the eyes
that awful light that cauterizes

one gives birth to vines and trees
and offers fruit
it warms the pond
where fish are hatched
among the ropes of frog eggs

the other blackens with its brilliance
and disavows the flesh of man
the one we harvested and opened up
above hiroshima and nagasaki

both these lights i crave
in darkness yes
when there aren’t enough blankets
both these lights demand
both we hold beneath the tongue
that winnower of men

An entry from 2007

I cling to memories of visions of what once was.

Midnight taxi rides through Zanzibar streets, damp heat so continual I forgot it was there, ginger tea, the odor of green wood smoking in a cooking fire, the red glowing coals carried on a banana leaf in the dark of night and spilled across the hard packed earth. I remember how coals bounced across the darkness and came to rest in random patterns. I wondered if that was how the stars were scattered across the Universe. "Do you know what stars are?" I asked Nelson as we walked back to his grandmother's house.

"Ndiyo, Taa za Mungu" (Yes, the lanterns of God)

Now, nearly seven years later maybe he has a different answer. Many I knew I'm sure have died by now, many have felt forgotten by God, or were angry with Him having died unknown or unremembered, writing devil heads on letters they sent hoping, begging, pleading for medicine, some cure, some dawa, friends whom I abandoned in their hour of need.

A well gone dry.

A mountain rose in the distance outside my window. It was always there, looming in the background, always in photographs juxtaposed against the dumpy rundown streets, always there, like Zaire Music (long after Zaire was gone, long after Mobutu grew old and pitiful —just giving up— and much, much longer than Patrice Lumumba, whose body vanished, but whose name and words burned like the coal glowing in the dark on the cold earth, reminiscent of the innumerable stars that lay scattered across space and time).

I desperately cling to memories of visions of what once was.

Banana trees rattling their broad leaves in the breezes of afternoon, rich green beneath billowing white clouds set in the bluest sky. For the briefest of times came peace and rest. Yes, for the briefest of times.

The visions fade, their luminescence ebbs away at last in the midst of midnight's darkness, disturbing my sleep, and I myself uncertain if it is for good or ill.

indelibility

every evening
sunlight
warms dark wine
the corked bottle
the silence of time
abandons them all
only sound remains

i’m already gone

rivulets

i don’t know how to tell you this
the dark green shadows of leaves
the dim grey light of sky
what’s harbored in our world
a lone pale moth
how it flutters
desperate for its single moment
gone
so much washed away
in rivulets of rain
such tiny vessels
twigs and chewed off bits of leaves
one act tumbling into another
every little thing
crashes down from its own height
each toppling tower
small craters in the beaten sand
these are not tears
our labors
our wounds
all we have to offer the world
we are poured out

i swam the restless sea

beneath a red crevice of sunlight
after the sun itself had departed
and deep blue edges of clouds filled a sky
i the lone shadow
in what was left

light wavering away

into day

the first-light of dead speech
calling out to another

inhabiting shorn eyes
black hives cool and unfired

the Moon's passage

a progression whose shores rock seeds
left for lost emerging from a single shadow

where waters ease
and hope –the blue-skied– comes

evening

in a still moment of moon
an otter stood cold
laden with light from the west
where it had eyed months ago
the sealed hives of bees

The Labor of Bees

Encountering the echo of lost words,
speech made pollen,
her mouth was taken—
a honeyed turquoise
emerging from the many chambered shores.

swarm

suddenly
ten thousand creatures

crawling on every surface
every edge
trying to eat their way out

my skin is wet paper
a failed vestige
it has given way

the ravenous writhing
all insect eye and mandible

i flee this remnant
this rudiment
of hollow bone

one ugly motherfucker

-for Jim Harrison

geese call as they pass overhead
and maybe you are drifting with them
in that overweight cloud of your own weathered hide
lost in the dark river that time has etched
where wolves missing teeth circle their own tails
and you slump dead at your desk
killed by the only thing that kills a writer
death

horses come galloping
draped in headless rattlesnakes
and bearing polished stones
retrieved from the dust of riverbeds
high in the dead mountains
or are these stones from the mountains of dead rivers
whose murmurs can still be heard
between the gusts of wind

the winds of those places
are either too hot or too cold
they carry too many voices from the past
the voices speaking to you have now ceased
and you in your turn join that cadre of voices
spoken to others of your kin
or are they mine

i never knew you
but i’ve always known you
something deeper than blood entwines us
all the poets i know are suicides
some are just too frightened to realize it
but you were wise in some ways
knowing you had yet to pay your penance

and when the last coin was demanded
you –still living– were left to haunt your dead wife
until the walls of the rooms came down on your head
and toppled the cold pencil from your curled fingers

you thundered down on the floorboards
and all the wine and whiskey you ever drank
spilled from the cavity of your ursine mouth
silent now

your left eye freed from its body
healed at last and turned to glass
spun round and round
before fixing its gaze outside a window
on those starry hosts seen between a woman’s legs
wondrously dangling
from the boughs of an overgrown apple tree

a measure of time

there again
a fly on the windowsill
cleaning its wings in the sun—
this ritual of welcoming each season

age

little by little
we let go of this world.

we say to ourselves
damn, what an odd dream.

then one day

then one day
there came a door
in the middle of my living room
we were having dinner
i had to get up
there was no time
to finish my peas
everyone else was talking
on and on and on they went but
there in the doorway
my      mother
who was the last of her sisters
my uncle
who’d outlived the rest of his family
i turned back to the table
shattered my fist on a plate
trying to warn them
my wife my children
but just like always
they never listened

lust

woman
in a doorway 
the corner of her hem
a red triangle blazing in the sun

she leans against the door post
grips it gently in her hand
she gazes out across the brilliance
and holds you in her stare

she can’t be bought
there is no price
though you have paid it
a thousand times with blood

later it is dark—
you have swallowed all the sunlight
it burns inside you
nothing can extinguish it

covered by a woolen blanket
riddled with bright bullet holes
the cheap motel diminishes
over and over she stabs you

with a single ray of light 

my congregation of crumbs

“like a giant absorbed in pulling down stars and scattering nebulae” –Lorca

four crumbs
and nothing more
like stray planets
or a cluster of galaxies

with one exhalation
i send them tumbling
across the table
and onto the floor

soon they’ll be crushed
and carried into the universe
on the heel of someone’s shoe

this is the way i change the world

refund

with a great urgency
number 972 must be identified
fervently the pages of rice paper are turned
in the great annals of hell
where all the eyeballs are found
why are there so many eyeballs in hell?
like marbles spilled from duffle bags
glistening
darting this way and that
in panic
yes
because they are helpless
deprived of their eyelids
unable to blink
damned to bear so much seeing
a monotony of gore
that incessant ocean of infinite nothings

forlorn

it used to be so easy
to cross over to your side of the river

but now i’m lost
among the reeds that choke the waters

when i do arrive
i find the field abandoned

a crow there speaks of me
he has scattered himself across the years

another replies
who shall gather up the sheaves

véronic

years ago she was the nurse
from médecins du monde
who held the x-ray of my broken arm
against a home-made tray of light
i dreamt of her again
last night

this evening
the sunset turns red
the moon is just a shard of white
i walk around the block
and walk around the block
there is no way of knowing

window

the vision burns
within me and through me
pooling at my feet
the floor made window into the world
a glass through which i see the ironworks
deep thrumming of great engines
grinding bone to ash
the garments of a woman
laid out on a bed beside a wavering furnace
they smell of talc
the stockings have been worn
the odor is not unpleasant
the scent of a woman
weeping naked by the blond bed
her hair is gone
she is bald and shaven and shivering
her ribs beneath her tiny breasts
her eyes the insides of skies
vacuous
she raps her fingers on her skull
empty echoes of an oil drum
a thought drops from her mind
it might sound like a tear
but several come dripping
the faucet run dry
her bare body emptied
beautiful in all its pure lack
and so become perfect
because you can starve her
and still not hollow her out
she is filled with visions of white cities
adobe of some other realm
the place she weeps in begins to diminish
whether it’s moving away from me
or i’m moving away from it
i can’t tell
sometimes the apparent is true
it shrinks to nothing
my window through the world closes up
there’s a knock at the door
she has become lovely
wrapped in the robe
of all her own hair 

october as ontological preface

incessant
the weight of broken things
the way incandescence hangs
on all the dusty shelves

earlier
a fire of small sticks
sunlight beyond the southern trees—
it lay upon the upper branches of an oak

a tendril of smoke weaved sinuously
among the yellowing leaves
the sky bluer than it had ever been
echoing with silence

I leaned into the fire’s heat
it stayed October’s cold
I sat by the fire and dozed
propped up by a grey branch

the evening was fading
but in a sudden gust of light
I understood
what it meant to be an exile many years

left alone to stir one’s dimming coals—
dozing is preferable
to chasing one’s ambitions around
in the wakened life

oh that turning and fluttering
if you take what you’ve been given—
everything
and open it to wind

returning alone

i find myself standing at the foot of the driveway
the dark house
a dog barks a few doors down
and beyond that
traffic noise from the highway
i peer into the night
at bands of clouds occulting stars
many still shine
so many points of luminance
among all the places i’ve ever known
here is where i’ve come to be

head caught in a machine

there was once a poet
who got his head caught
in a machine
it was a very bad machine
but better than his brain
flowering ensued
but not the kind that you might think
the internet of things
began to come to life
and suddenly
the refrigerator started to sing
an automated car
sought out a precarious peak
the municipal water spouts
began to leak
people were confused
they went outside
and there they found
strange things
forgotten things--
dandelions and collard greens

destitute woman

that you were a wren
or swallow or bluebird
inhabiting some uninhabited space

that men might make a home for you
fashioned from discarded boards
of some abandoned barn

that you were two or five
of Jesus’ sparrows
alighting on a bough of locust leaves

that wings would be your grace and
lift you from the thorny branch
or save you from the mangling

understand—

a photograph can’t
nor memory

seagulls cannot speak to it
nor the chattering of children

red of geraniums
already beginning

petal by petal
to flit away

Fallow

From zero, infinity.
From two, sometimes twelve children.
The harvest yields a hundredfold.

Each night
I return to lay again
amidst the desolation,

but then the sun comes out
and all green things
begin to flourish once more.

Yes,
I have decided
I will let the milkweed grow.

longing

deep in a forest you part the underbrush
find morning sunlight glimmering off a pond

in the shallows whitetail stoop to drink
their hides so bronze you take them for naiads

but don’t we always lose ourselves in some wilderness
alone and in peril of being remade into an echo

an imperfect acquiescence

burgeoning leaves
obscure this evening’s soft light
gold upon far pines
let the cool winds set you free
abandon your white gown to breeze

tropic of cancer

remember that desolate beach
inhabited by strange crustaceans
washed away by surging foam
only to come sidling back
those red armored creations of claws
and stalks of eyes
enacting their curious uprisings
in claims over the meager remains
of more complex forms of life
their odd intrigues
beneath meandering boughs of a great tree
that one wide limb where we would lay
weary from swimming
sharing our last mango
tossing its skin into the fray
that glistening fisherman
scattering every crawling creature away
his fish of many colors speared
which in that night’s dark downpour
we roasted over fire
waves in the distance
breaking and hissing
upon that shore of crabs

failing chaung tzu

nothing left undone
the myriad creatures transform
desire raises its head and raises its head

press it down he says
press it down
with the weight of the uncarved block

but freedom from desire
ceasing to desire
even crows and the kites will feast

jigsaw at the library

the sky undone
it’s always the sky
and maybe that’s what i’m here for

it requires right seeing
to finish the sky of another
but it’s nothing to me

some pieces of mine are missing
i keep placing them into others’ puzzles
when they turn their gaze away

a co-worker's observation

she told him she’d seen it
his wife binding him tight
in strips of funeral cloth

his body cocooned
his caterpillared head
she said she saw his wife

squeezing his mandibles to her breast
her milk when he drank it
diminished him

when he was small enough
she stuffed him in her purse
and walked away

re-addressing a chinese pianist

these hands of mine crawl keys—
two hairless tarantulas
caught in the beaks of her frenzied flamingos
how fine
her powdered neck
her lilac sash and purple dress
she is now a woman
and i a boy with sweaty palms
she places her fingers on top of mine
like this you ignorant child
her breath is hot against my ear
we are flying again
high above
the broken chord

a chinese pianist

in purple gown and lilac sash
she flits her fingers over keys
and stoops her head and teeters
everything is birds and feathers
the way she lifts her wrists and elbows
the necks of two flamingos
the room wells with etudes
the bench has toppled
her feet lift from the floor
she flies away
and takes me with her
far beyond
this broken day

Overcoming Darkness

There, above the frozen ruts of mud,
just beyond the leafless heights of aspen,
a thin luminescent smile of Moon
held within the circle of its own ghost,
and right beside it Venus burns
with piercing shards of shattered light. 

Object Lesson

Take some graph paper
and a No. 2 pencil
draw four lines of equal length
two inches each at right angles
and you will have a square
that occupies sixty four grids.
Choose three corners,
at each one draw a line
one and a half inches long
running off in the same direction
at a forty five degree angle.
Connect the ends of each line
with two more lines.
Thus is the illusion of depth obtained
and you can imagine a solid cube,
or a volume containing nothing,
or less than nothing,
merely the idea of nothing,
but as you can see
the idea of nothing
is already more than nothing—
this is just the first paradox of love.

place

i’ve never quite grasped the confines of geography
those rivers and valleys those highways between us
why are these cities we live in not spelled the same way
why do our streets have so many different names
where among all the doors in this world is that one door
the only door open to me   your door
that sole door-frame standing between us
the one adorned with postcards
from all the world’s places

Sometimes it goes like this

One morning you wake
with the word mujer on your tongue.
You go to work like any other day.
You’re pouring coffee
when someone says
he’s a published poet.
The guest speaker
the PhD from Havana
she offers her hand
and damn—
it’s such a fine dress.

all that is holy

it must be a truth
that everything holy here
will come to an end

elimination annihilation obliteration
so many long words
for that blinding white flash

all that is holy must come to pass
these kingdoms of light
built only on blindness

unfurling blooming blossoming
what can we hold
even time will cease

these clods of dirt
wounded and broken
left in our hands

it will all settle to silence
winds will echo
no more

eternity
composed so entirely of nothing
an emptiness we keep hoping to grasp

cut corn

a small pot of corn
to warm your cold blankets
a thin slice of butter
you eat cross legged in bed
each spoonful
every last kernel

it will never be any better than this—
the quieted room
an empty spoon   

unafraid of lightening

you mete out rage
in heights of branches
assailed by wind
a hard rain in your face—
the sun emerges

you sleep in wet grass
against the knotty trunk
stars appear
ascend to zenith
streak back down

like embers
luminescent trails
above the cricket song

letting go

how smooth the ice
across a windless bay
the almost perfect circle
of a silent moon

as if color is sweetness

look how she paints cantaloupe
halved in morning’s long light
as if color is sweetness
worked into the wounds
of her old wooden table

each morning she goes to the market
selects what fruit she can find
and with her worn brushes
she wends her way
well into moonlight 

she understands the sun departs
much in the same manner it arrives
mingling its orange strands
among streaks of shadow
spilled on the floor

and in this light
she takes her last peach
gives it a new color
over and over she does this
slicing cantaloupes peaches pears

until
she sees what she’s searching for
it is the color of mango
held in her first love’s hand  

my dear wasteland

i'm only a smudge on your cheek
a shadow of nagasaki burned into stone
i'm the last hour of winter
made of that same atomic light

you come to understand

you come to understand

the bent latch
the rusted nail
the last lingering edge of glass
in the window pane
looking out on what once was

it has drowned in a pond
where rotted trunks now rise
out of gray tessellations of cracks
inhabited by tiny black beetles

awaiting the orgy of winter
a blue racer basks in dwindling sun
it has fed upon the young of a mouse
that scurries about
puzzled with absence

this is just the way things are

scorn of a jealous muse

you never realized did you
writing so many useless words
stringing your ink across the pages
over and over

until the pen was spent
and the sun went down
and all your teeth fell out
and turned to dust

though a tree now grows
through what you used to be
all the world's birds
are gone forever

where were you
beneath summer's rustling leaves
always wanting
someone else's urging

the real and imagined

Some say a poet lives by his words
but really he dies

the poet is only a man
wed to thoughts of another woman

even after many years
she still inhabits his mind

the real and imagined
have always waged war

he finds himself in some other country
overrun in a barren field

frothing with spittle
surrendered to the white of his bones

he writes his last word upon her
as if she is paper lifted by flame

paper lifted into the hollow of night
into that which is holy

his own body
he abandons to silence

this inscrutable absence

i find a winter moon
tangled in the twisted branches
of the timeless oak

it also holds the wind
outside our kitchen window

tessellated moonlight blue
like shattered glass
upon the midnight snow

obsolescence

is it time
that has bricked in all the windows
or just being

nearly all the old edifices of this city
now closed off to light
this grey haze of december

above the grime of some shadowless alley
a fire-escape rusts
soon it will come to ruin

sketching your profile

i have taken some liberties
in tracing your contours
with the tip of my finger

the bridge of your nose
the line of your jaw
the back edge of your neck

now my soul has come unloosened
and i'm unable to shove it back
into that cloak of flesh i wear

come swim with me
in that sea beyond our cages of bone
unfasten the gown of your body

show me your luminous edges
let your unadorned presence
shiver the surface of waters

then before dawn
we'll step back into our skins
and i can start using a pencil

a quiet village

and where do you suppose this place you speak of is
beyond the wars of other countries
and their exiles without shoes

some who've traveled whole continents
counting off miles by the thousands
before they can find any trace of silence

curtains billow in an open window
you can still hear
the sea outside the abandoned village

a sound
like old men sleeping in the afternoon
with no one to wake them

the sky among shadows
of bells in a gleaming tower
with no one to sound them

here and there amidst the flies
that linger long on clods of clay
flutter still the unnamed sleeves

piebald

did you forget that ghost of a boy
who’d flit into the sunny spots
we’d sometimes find in forests
when we used to lose our way

funny how we seem unable
to find those places
anymore

he was always hungry
not for anything but light
he was thin

and his clothes were sun-bleached too
how he craved the billowing white
that dark haired boy with eyes of night

sometimes still
startled from sleep in some black hour
i see him

at the far end of the pasture
beyond the weathered stumps
and red-capped lichen

there used to be a piebald pony too

but now the fence is gone
and the barn’s been razed
there’s no place for ponies

or pale-faced boys

a momentary solace

i find the wind has taken down my favorite tree
and yet across the gray-skied bay
light unfurls along your slender peninsula--
a gown of ochers and reds

my brother

on that night they brought you up
did you tell them
how waves overwhelm the world
demand everything
how they rise against the unrelenting winds
and build with all their liquid weight
until they reach a height
that is unbearable
did you tell them
how they fall
full of what they are
and crash
a clamor of rage
did you say
waves are only water

beyond midnight

each word begins
         as a yearning

                 a wound

       each one a brick
                      a cinder block sinking

some surface too easily

                    he tries to be singular
                         but he's too tired to make anything
                                                                                last

       some chords composed by john cage are spears
                                                                         thrust into a sleeping man's side

                                                                         light cuts long
                                                                                         into the cockcrowed hour

beginning the second half-century

two women round the corner
they have nice asses
one pushes a stroller
they stand by the shore
and take snapshots of themselves

around another corner
the whir of electric wheelchairs
two boys their heads askew
their conversation is not unintelligible
they race each other and laugh

the sun is warm against this wall
the court is empty now
whirls of leaves are my companions
my constant companions
i speak the skittering language of leaves

a lapse of discretion

the street
once sunny in early october
maples’ orange leaves
the woman sits in a chair

her white collar and painted-on smile
how she looks out the window
at the fabric in the shop

the softness of her hand
a quality of cream
of linen as if it has no weight

only a scent of jasmine
a scent of hemlock
of lavender

the color of her silken blouse
a lilac purple
spruce green

a taste of powder
beneath her ear
behind her jaw

tight spirals
pressed dark
against temples

wavering breath
of parted lips
as if to speak a pleasure

over and over
starlings dot a sky that's almost blue 

persistence of vision

chair in a desert
every single day its shadow sweeps
from west to east

a young child kneels
forehead in sand
veil of skin covering ribs

a photographer frames the scene
weighs vulture against child
he has an eye for balance

he shoos the bird away
but the image remains
he cannot face it 

chair in a desert
every single day
a shadow

few know the sweetness of twisted apples*

on boyhood’s farm
my grandmother spoke a language
i never understood—
a winnowing wind among the apple boughs
gnarled fruit of a quitted land
her skinnied limbs her skull-boned eyes
i cawed to crows
in windmilled heights and maple trees
my father dug potatoes
a cow would lick my arm
the coarseness of its tongue
old john the lugan
the basement his home
a crooked table where he ate from cans
the bed of straw upon a metal frame
sunlight’s meager portion—
a pillar of dust across a concave floor
polished dirt beneath his shoeless feet
the stubble of a furrowed face
his only language a toothless smile
singsong of a sweet-wined drunk
displaced by war
his family lost
perhaps relocated
maybe never was
his hands weaving twine
carving tines
whittling away the wooden days
until nothing was left
of my grandmother
or the cow
or the ashes of the apple trees
my father moved him on
only the smooth earth
to remember the soles of his feet


* The title is taken from a line in Sherwood Anderson's "Winsburg, Ohio"

ode to a bird

this lone remnant of our conversation
white feather found on the floor
have i told you of the rain-beaten leaves
of how it rains nearly every day
lost little feather

its end has been clipped
its barbs undone
you at the next table over
all spun in cloaks and scarves
what is one feather to you

this thread of your vestment
opened wide open--
unfold before me
you flower of feathers
you bird
you song of pure air
all these leaves loosened by rain
it's already Fall
what are you doing
making a nest in my hair

exiled

amidst the hollow pieces of another night
dust owns everything
there is no help from stars
nor do books of stars carry any promise
I count my teeth
I don’t want to believe they can be incinerated—
the only remnants archeologists might excavate of me 
countless twigs scattered in the grass
is the oak even alive
or is it dying by an unperceived attrition
long after hammers strike
the notes reverberate
linger still in silence
nearly all my conversations are with the dead
many are foreigners
clinging to black bread—
leave us alone they say
we're tired of your soliloquies
go pester the crows

beyond the labyrinth

only the humming--
a monotone moan through a glass door
voice shaped by buildings of brick
held by a patina of rust
walls at right angles
a multitude of distances

beyond the labyrinth--
a small elm encircled by pavement
its yellow leaves roil
dark branches bend
preserve that which is rooted
it clings to the earth

pattern of etched mortar
chipped paint of white letters--
the severed clouds
sunlight framed by the shadows
once more the monotonous moan 
a meaningless outcry from nowhere to nothing

you hang over this small porcelain cup--
touched by how many fingers
mouthed by how many lips
whose breath was held here
and yet the wind
it speaks to you

look--
the leaves glisten with brilliance

burning bush

shadows of leaves on a burgundy curtain quiver
they move in muted sunlight across a Persian rug

you ache with things you shall never be—
the persistence of vision.

rise from this kneeling,
open the curtains of day.

among September winds
the leaves turn

redder than fire.

leaden

at dusk’s open window
a rushing wind—

oaks’ deafening herald

you stand before the dusty sill
a drumming echoes off your chest

a promise of sleep—

distant lightning

returning to earth

~ field ~

how green still clings to yellowing trees
and cattails bend over darkened waters
the blue-grey sky is violent with cloud
the slanting sun upon a knoll of beat-down hay
a few loosed leaves and branches lifted to wind

~ shed  ~

once the grey-grooved slats smelled sweet with pitch
the curled shingles smelled of tar
now the brown bent nails hold nothing--
round worn ends of bowing boards
outlast the carpenter's hands
his utilitarian plan given to the rootless moss

~ homestead ~

once there were potatoes and corn
white curtains rustling in a sunshined breeze
scent of apple pie
now the rusted rims of tractor wheels
the rotting harnesses of horseless fields
the odor of forgotten implements
clinging to the hollow of a broken barn

after the storm

mossy shadows
a hum through the branches
you say the mountain is cold
but I say it is still
water trickles over stones
leaves litter a rain-dampened path
the coarseness of pebbles beneath your pale feet
the puddle a mirror
the mirror a vision of sky
word you have forbid yourself to speak
breath slipped from tongue
dew sliding from leaf
translucent into a pool
a single circle
fragrance of chokecherries
in dusk you tell me
all you know of dissonance
how you crave the sound of crickets in cold
you wait in silence beneath the striated clouds

and this morning

is there sunlight
on your breast,

any yellow glowing amidst
your waking’s whiteness?

which wilted flower
lends it’s lone colored dab?

is it red, or orange?
tell me please it’s purple

you were draped in purple
in my dream,

purple in the sunlight
of my dream.

because they do not know

in the dead hours of night
you disassemble a piano

each shaped piece of wood a lever
the clutter of a pile of keys

beneath 87 and 88 a dime from ‘18
a bingo chip—  translucent red

the hidden edges of 63 through 75
stained from communion wine in ‘94

due to the chaotic situation
no consensus on the number

hammer 46
broken at the shaft

nearly lost
recovered from a potted plant

irreparably untunable
the piano cost a 100 dollars

to lay your fingers on the keys
and watch the hammers strike

for weeks you hear the silenced note
for years the ghosts beneath the bridge

like bamboo bells

once we watched the sunrise
through leaded window-glass

ate pheasant using silverware
inherited from aunts

now a spider waits for moths
among the toppled bricks

hollow husks of insects
rattle in the sills

harvest

i will walk across a field
with this basket i have made
the basket i was given
still some seeds to sew
empty basket made of woven thorns
i will walk across a field
dig among the roots
onions and potatoes
radishes
odor of dirt
how many years
beneath fingernails of hope
how white teeth gleam in sun

beneath my bed

a cigar box
i don't know what to do with
a volunteer firefighter badge
a 10 year pin from Harbison Walker
a 25 year pin

he used to give us pennies
flattened by 30 ton cars

all the jack knives bought as presents
now a tin of ground-down blades
all the watches arrested at random hours
what can they say of that hollow in time
all the Chinese money he brought back from WW II
unrolling across the floor

overtime

just solve this one last problem 
before going home for the evening... 

you round a corner
startle a thousand cowbirds

they lift into the sinking sunlight
their shadows climb a yellowed wall

you chase after them
running amidst their frenzy

you can't stop

if you do
you'll plummet to your death 

solitary

a small square hole
brilliant with light

     you are given what you are given
     the rest you take
     or leave alone
     abandon by the side of a road
     in some other country
     this place is not your own

sometimes they let you speak
other times they close the small square door

     you're left with what you can't abandon
     a few useless stones 
     from places you can never go back to
     a garden of poppies
     gone to seed
     crepe-paper petals
     a leather-bound bible reeking of incense
     you cannot mask the smell of death
     the raised scar on her sternum
     she addresses you as Jesus
     handfuls of dirt
     dislodged from a world of untruth
     two worn shillings covering eyes

the door opens
small square hole full of bright light

     her fingers perched upon the edge
     carmine color of lipstick
     mouthing inaudible words
     rounded edge of jaw
     what can you trade
     for the concept of time
     face buried in wind
     same old story
     woman and man
     how a glance lasts an instant
     you raise your head to speak

the small square door closes again

     a three tined fork slides off a white napkin
     rattles across a checkerboard floor
     a purple blouse
     her pulled-back hair
     consternation behind sunglasses
     somewhere a bent candle still burns
     a downpour washes away trash in Paris streets
     her swelled nipples
     cotton camisole
     everything ends at the ocean
     and its odor of salt
     how afternoon sun dries your face
     many years cannot kill the taste

a diffuse glow
through the small square hole

     she tells you to come to the house tonight
     asks you to bring your shoebox of moths
     she wants you to shake the dust from their wings
     rain makes a new kind of silence
     caught up in the heights of pines
     dew at 3am
     the whole night sky is yours alone
     long ago you named all the phenomena
     surrendered their wonder
     now you seek it through others eyes
     that's why they still keep you around
     you've learned to give them
     nearly everything they want

each new day

the threshed out
kernels of wheat
milled into flour

baked into bread
for strangers those
who would starve

without it who
always come back
in need of

more claiming it
with all manner
of hands each

misshapen by what
the years have
brought we all

must take this
burdened stalk of
wheat bent with

harvest broken for
us in every
field by those

whose names are
lost within this
silence of loaves

requiem

In this alley stinking of urine
littered with cigarette butts
waste-water pools,
mirrors the contours of clouds
blue sky
the sun--
a single point of brilliant light.

He could speak to this
until in shadow
beneath the bridge,
unacknowledged,
he was beaten to death
for a pint of gin.

heart as lesser creatures

dots darken and swell on pages
of a library book–
i worry about the rain

she uses the words gently fall
when she can just say
fall

i lay my hand
upon the bareness of her shoulder
instead of on her bare shoulder

grey beneath pines
a hummingbird appears
circling with eager drone

i want to knock it from the air
ask it
just what the fuck it's doing

fireflies in the forest
of my youth

shadow of the hills

returning

how surprised i am to find you
in your neighbor's bed of iris
(left untended many summers
before their cottage in the oaks)
you're on your knees
among the purple blossoms
a mound of wilting weeds behind you
there is sweat upon your brow
you look at me and smile
your hair as red as ever
as if you'd never lost it
i cannot help but help you
i bend to pull the final weed
you carry a whole armful
i have only one
i say it is a wild carrot
you lay your hand on mine
no, not wild carrots
all the misplaced years

jonah to the fish—

i knew i couldn’t save myself
so leapt into the unrelenting sea

resigned to death
i was well-pleased never to return

but who can speak
of the vastness of a sea

its unknown places
deep within darkness

your shadow passed
in silence

your measureless form
hidden in many waters

i was drowning and swallowed by waves
when you were called to take me in

and bear me down
to the bottom of the world

there
where there was no light

no hope
only one voice speaking

those unstirred waters
no warmth nor subsistence for you

yet you kept me
all the given days

as if your whole being meant nothing to you
until those words were spoken

and then in silence you ascended
through some uncharted way

to birth me on the blinding shore
of a new and sunlit land.