two poems

summer rain

awakened from the dandelion dream
you fall on us (warm)
like whispering stars

lay down on the earth
and bless the pavement
find your way to the tongues

of spiders and ants
and into the wells
of all the kingdoms you serve

find your way
across the shivering grass to
broker a peace without tears 

i found my way in the morning mist
i found my way in the pitch of white light
in the drops on my glasses 


when

you must float up
in ways that are hidden
breaking the surface
in the middle of the night
while the universe sleeps 

two poems

our machinery

I open my collar to the wind and salt

and no sooner have I muffled the whistling kettle

when out of the obvious
murder walks a panther

of fine husbandry and meticulous scent

and lo! I am broken and suckled

laid down like a barroom brawl

tongue rolled like an axe

from unfastened buttons weapons are delivered

the machinery, the pistons and combustion

(smoke shivers)

our gears are meshed

the mirror is a nail

inside the shell

a fractured diamond

sparkling dust stirred

by waves of electrons

the mirror is a nail

that clears a path for

streams of light to divert into

we draw ourselves maps

only to wander blindfolded

we carve the ground 
with our will to disintegrate

threads

pureness in reality
    around these parts
pureness in death
    a crime is committed nearly every minute
pureness in complexion
    and the perpetrators are rarely unknown to the victims
pureness in fire
   
you must have a singular purpose, one with a backup
you're never stronger (eye of a needle)
than when you've consumed your own heart
and filled the space with a mad dream

there were five men on the north-bound train
when it left the station
only one arrived (and he had no teeth)

police officers in bathrobes
reviewed the case
they smoked tobacco
they ate veal chops
they took an untested drug
in a clandestine club
where merchants of sound
pulled threads though their ears

once the universe is aware of its own existence
it seeks to protect itself through the elimination
of external and internal threats
it will take bread over circuses
but it still wants something
to watch while it eats

oh lord the squadron of shrapnel
flew in formation
into my eye

-----------

holiness

the beats found holiness in the mundane
this is an attitude worth having
sometimes we forget that all of reality
is alive with meaning
even rocks, even empty space

A bunch of little poems that wanted out

-----o-----

Hey coffee, you’re the best,
Hey vinegar, you cut through the flesh,
Hey polio, I can taste you in my ears,
Hey people, come swallow your fears.

-----o-----

america has grown fat
it’s noble purpose asleep
in a bed unmade
in terms of trade
in a narcotic arcade

-----o-----

I drank the Kool-Aid, I stole the purse
I said magic words that opened the universe
the back of the mirror reflects a different light
and a different You is staring back tonight

-----o-----

Send for my prescription,
my sacred beads of mercury.
I’m feeling a clarity,
a stark encounter with the end of us all.
Last call for alcohol
in a city of failing light.

-----o-----

It is the number five, the number you are
always asking about. It’s always five.
Hold up your hand, make it face the sun,
make it feel that star, make it be felt by the star.
Our only hope is the sun,
Yet still we stare into the darkness,
Lying in wait for the things that come out.

-----o-----

Pray that he comes
in the heart of the heat,
the bone and the meat,
the pounding of drums.

Pray that he stays,
pray that you’re strong,
an army in retreat forgets
all of its songs.

The Prince has an air
of hard-done-by youth,
and disdain, in equal measure,
for those under his hooves.

-----o-----

Delight in a thousand engines
Lay waste to the prime meridian
Out of the fire and into the physics
We’re bred in the lab, unconscious.

-----o-----

Obviously, there will be a full investigation
Utilizing all of our imaginary resources
But the bottom line is that
you will get your money back
It’s just a question of where and when
the wrong atom is split.

-----o-----

A red brick
Sailing through the sky
Signals the start
Of the next revolution.

-----o-----

A molecule of air
When bathed in sunlight
Is as bright as a berry
When bathed in rain.

-----o-----

Too late!
Too late!
Screaming at the ambulance,
Screaming at the world.

-----o-----

Artificial light, sailors tie their knots
like ribbons of sugar and weeds.
as popular as you get, a rapidly growing franchise
has neither the womb nor the ratchet
to bring about riots.

There’s a glow in this room, from above and below,
a vanilla cream hum in the floor and oddly fragrant mists
focus slippery sounds in the ears.

There is a spirit of dust that has settled on my shoulders,
A head like a tunnel, a passageway for colour analysis and time.
Lose the analysis and keep the colour.
Or is it the other way around?

-----o-----

The road to ruin
Is paved with
Abandoned pets
And smoking jackets.

-----o-----

there will be no more Pepsi
for your awkward illusions
there will be no more foie gras
no pastries, no handsome paperweights
the full scope of your mad dreams
amounts to nothing
but a whistling insect
and a few grains of rice

-----o-----

Nine Poems

Another Other Brother

it is really quite revealing
the way you spin your guns
and open the jar of honey
like the bees are still inside
i can’t recall the first time
i awoke with you on my lawn
damp shirt and sunglasses
black as the moon


And what can I say?

And what can I say if one day
I’m opened up and falling
with rocks and stars
watching everyone watch me
smaller than my own skin
and feeling like nothing left in the sun,

but the next day it’s cool green
and silent liquid silver
and there’s Bill Evans himself
playing like a bubbling stream
and it’s all delicious,
a martini in a chilled glass?


Opinion

I’m tired of having opinions
of pinstripes and aeroplanes
and combustion engines arriving in the nick of time.

It’s the path that’s seldom taken
in the air-conditioned excuses that are trotted out
in the headlines each morning before nine.

I’m tired of making opinions fit between sheets of glass,
freshly glued to foreheads and bedposts,
scrambling down the road like a two-legged camera crew.

It’s not my hard-fought-for breath I’m wasting when
I blow out the gaskets on the kingdom of ink,
it’s the paper that soaked up each and every one of my songs.

I’m tired of having opinions
to share with my victims.



Mirror

What is a mirror
But a pair of scissors?

 
Endgame

Panicking soldiers
jostle for her attention.
More than one will
go home tonight.


Celluloid

the kids stand in line
at the birthplace of Disney
to pay their respects
to God and Lee Harvey.

 
Two Poems NOT by Yoko Ono

1.
Draw a map
Of your parents’ bedroom
Mark an ‘x’
Where you think they’re hiding.

2.
Put a rock in your pocket
Each day
Put another rock in your pocket
Keep doing this
Until you pants fall down.


Sun Heart

in the sun there is a worm
beating as its heart
it tunneled through my head
and fell upon the flames

 
Moon Heart

under a moon that’s carved in two
I hold a heart in cupped hands
my birth was a chance, a punishing peace
my tongue holds a word (and won’t let go)
but my ears are pretending they already know

Three Poems

what you see in my forehead
came from a comet that sailed
through December
it left its mark in the form of passageways
opening a path through everyone that saw it

-----o-----

snakebite blacklight
    the thief never comes at midnight
airstream pipedream
    he may arrive on a sunbeam
sailing bracing
    he will never find me waiting
glass pane double drain
    I fell from the sky in an airplane

-----o-----

around the star we swing
like a hammer chasing
a nail that fell into the void
always swinging
never landing,
a ball of glass forever falling
to the floor

starlight

what,

what now is breaking starlight?

(you break stars on a summer night)

it’s not the colours around you that has opened the ground

the energy that makes the ground vibrate

nor the song of your voice, splintering sidewalks

(gunshots in the heat of summer)

chaotic and liberating, it’s in the fine details

of our smoke and food, our murder and skin

how impossible it seems

when weighed against the starlight

burning in lifetimes of endless space

what,

what is on fire?

how many other fires has it started?

(in the dry grass)