september ("fisherman")

teeth grit,

bowspray crackling

against leatherbound cheek. 

flint-hued eyes

set like stones

in the sockets of his skull,

casting out small, flat chips

of the same color

over the endless ocean,

vainly,

after the horizon's fleeing back

his red red heart

curled like a fist

around ropes of blood

the hat he gave his son

that his son left in the garage

now worn & frayed,

discolored like an old tooth,

is lifted, jammed back down

& shifts, back & forth -

brim pointing first forward

then back,

like a compass exposed

to a man-sized magnet

above, the old sky

still appearing new,

and the veiled threat of fall

nestled sweetly

between the words

of the wind

the roar of the ocean in the sky echoed in our room

the shush of sheets
over bare, scissoring legs

late night undulation
thrust, parry,
push, pull

the wind from the window
is labor-shallow,
the world outside
is a woman in birth
snarling

i am devouring your pain
through savage, blunted teeth
i am shoving fistfuls of you
into a small wet cave
whose walls are painted
with figures from a dead time,
with the paint from the heads
of dead marigolds,

shatter, spin,
suddenly:
rounded eyes,
as big as two moons
in a blemished sky

i cram your heartbeat
into my ears,
all eleven measures of it

i like you terrified.
i like me poised,
catlike,
on a branch,
entranced by the black glint
of your fledgling bird's eye
somewhere down
on the winter ground

the ceiling thrums
like a skin pulled
taut over a drumhead,
the bed hums
like a skin pulled
tight over the bones
of a skull

outside, a seagull falls
for no reason
from the endlessness
of the sky

in the morning we will find it
crested, regal,
on its back, with its eyes squinched
shut and beak
curving heavenward

you unknit, suddenly,
too suddenly,
in the cold breath of the dawn,

and i spend the rest of my life
chasing down
the fleeting pieces of you
tossed about by the teasing wind

you're just death sans hood, baby

i watch you take your eyes
out of your skull
and place them on the table
reverently,
then step back and sigh,
crossing your arms
over your chest

cigarette smoke unravels
from your mouth
in long, knotty ganglia,
as though you are
exhaling your spine

i watch you
quietly and decisively
plunge your hand
into your chest
and pull your calcified heart out
and set it on the table

when it hits the wood,
it makes a noise
like a glass of whiskey
re-encountering the bar
from the hand of a drunk
and glitters
nastily
in the same way

your hair
turns suddenly white
with the effort of growing,
and you tell me
between mouthfuls
of your own fingers
how you've always
bitten your nails
to "the quick"

your wan smile threatens
to slide right off of your skull
and then makes good on its threat

you pull off your skin
like a set of rainsoaked clothes
and your skeleton shivers
like a windchime in a
dispirited breeze

i touch each one
of your vertebrae,
rap each one lightly
with a knuckle,
as though quietly
asking for permission to enter
as though quietly
begging you to stay

the electric universe (scraps)

the new world!
a blinking whirl,
a dizzy shimmer,
this lurching carnival &
sudden, dreamlike drift -
           have I been here before?
 (electricity's invisible kiss, a clock's devious hiss)

& the atmosphere is crackling
with unsung words
pickpocketed from the mouths
of drunken poets

(this winterbound city
purses her lips, hesitates,
crumbles, burns, shivers,
reassembles.)

the old street still lives
beneath the new street,
the old hotel rooms hum
inside new apartments,
like a clock within a clock,
one pair of hands
in a desperate chase
after another,
sweeping indulgently past hour
after hour,
gathering up seconds like gemstones
as the face yellows
and clockguts rust

(& the rain falls outside
desultory, indifferent,
gathers strangth,
exhausts itself,
spatters, stops)

we are creating a new history
all salvage & twisted rope &
rusted links of chain,
feebly attempting any connection
between empyreal and concrete,
lashing down whatever
embattled spirits we can
(some nights i roll over
and there is a phantom
between us, eyes shut
and hands fists (as though in prayer)
beneath the eave of her chin)

and time clothes itself in
the discarded garb of our old enemy -
Death -
as we inch nearer
to the edge of
an unnamed cliff
only ever trangressed in dream -

(even it, doubling in the
drunken field of our vision,
reveals itself as hologram)

and time,
that awful invisible tyrant
who lives in the wings
hushing every actor
who has yet to
make their eager entrance

fishing

to Mike Foley

I am trying to slip sidewise
into this unwritten poem,
I am a sliver of a person
lodged in the palm of the bar,
surrounded by fidgeting fingers,
loquacious drunks, befuddled by
the intensity of the guy adjacent -
a man who provokes conversation
so that he can use the word "I"
as much as possible,
as though that ninth letter
at some indiscernible point in the past
became totemic,
and I keep slipping obliquely,
jarred by this man's insistent,
repeating narrative of
a missing tooth -
and they say when (within a dream)
a tooth goes missing
it means you're afraid of abandonment,
as though a part of you
has mysteriously & without reason,
politely & bloodlessly,
seceded overnight -
just like this damned poem,
a silvery flash under dark waters
(and me without a creel or even
a serviceable line, pun intended)
all I have is this wriggling worm,
too fleshy and insistent,
desperate not to be used,
so alien against
the iridescence of my palm -

ite, missa est

& the lightning is a vein
on the back of
god's subtle, murderous hand as
the tired old deity
stretches out across the sky.

the night is hot,
ripe and near-bursting,
like the moment
just before a flower opens,
its mouth like someone drowning,
gasping for air -

& the ocean shifts,
restlessly,
like a dog plagued by
torturous dreams,
whimpering & twitching,
at the foot of the earth's bed

oh something is about to happen
whispers the awed congregation
of tallgrass,
wringing their hands
around the deserted, windchapped
summer estates -

into this, eventually,
the sun rises -
an impatient member
of the audience, standing up,
making his irritable way
home

maria of the moon

how many sides does the moon have?
we divide it into two,
one for light, one for dark,
but i see a dim side
that hopeless color gray
like your eyes & cigarette ash,
& sparrow's wings,

this is the remote place
where the souls of everything
that burned down go,
sitting crosslegged with knees pulled up
gazing wistfully down on the earth
from the edges of huge, dry seas
reputedly made up of tears -
but how would tears get to the moon,
unless when we cried them
they went up
like tiny liquid balloons
that never pop -

this existence, most argue
is totally meaningless
without a thought for love
or destination
so i will light a lantern &
at the end of my life & escape
silently
hoping no one notices

& i will meet you there
with hands & pockets
full of the love i never believed in,
melting helplessly like icecubes
in the summer sun,
apologizing with my atlantic eyes
while we watch stars
nearer than they ever have been
streak across outerspace
& extinguish themselves violently
in a shower of sparks
like a cigarette
flung to the asphalt -

i hope we will dance
on this undiscovered third side of the moon,
i hope we will swim
in its gray sealess seas
& that we will kiss
for as long as forever lasts,
since we don't need to breathe
anymore -

i have confidence our souls
will be safe on this satellite
until the fidgeting hands of time
decide to dismantle it
& we float instead
hand in hand
through a new place
that has no end -

post-war, desolation

the divine general
is kicked back at his holy desk
helmet tipped down over his eyes
snoring

on the wall behind him
a map of the universe
yellowed and faded,
curling at the corners

someone has written in Sharpie
on the general's helmet
“God is Dead”
then crept out of the room
snickering

and, below,
the spavined old women
clutching wooden beads
in shivering hands
bend their bonneted heads
murmuring like a newsreel
the songs of Heaven

and the burnished-eyed,
spring-young men,
chins thrust forward,
resolutely march
forever through fields
toward a many-handed,
million-named enemy
with only philosophy
to protect them -

this year the trees shall
unburden themselves of pages
in place of leaves
and shrink themselves
in the process,
turn to wizened old men,
stooping over graves
and clucking their tongues

and
in the encroaching dark
as the sun goes out
with a mutter, and
as the stars begin to
sizzle in the skillet
of the sky,

the gloating sound of
the dead rises
from the horizon
like an orchestra warming up,

then,
wind,
and nothing further

but the cruel wink
of the moon
over the empty churchyards

triptych

first,
rage -
a quiet, invidious force -
a cold wind seeping into
the cracks
of the teeth,
a gathering knot
of electricity,
seething in the veins.

its partner is sadness,
trailing behind,
mournfully,
yet dutifully,
tightening the strings...

then,
the third,
unnamed,
with scissors -

& last,
gray-cowled regret,
oscillating between
what is now &
what once was,
somehow inveterately
shuddering
caught in a trap
whose jaws
open, close,
and open again
without words

Eigengrau

the sudden saccade
of the eye
from one dark
to another
& the lip jerks
to reveal bared incisor

the embyronic shadows
conceal still
the cowled demon
of nightmare,
huddled, unbreathing,
diamond-bright eyes
fixed on the bed

the hiss of dream,
departing -
a crack in the window
through which a
trysting lover is going
psst
psst

the bedside lamp allows
only a quaver of littoral light -
the bulb may burn out,
pulses weakly
in electric thrust
& does not
dispel the demon

there is no one
at the window.
there is no one
in the corner.
there is no one
in the bed.

the room is empty
and the light is on,

and yet, hear:
the snap and pop
of sinews tightening, and
the cavernous yawn
of something still waking

the dogcatcher: scene

1
weirding hour -
raining again.

headlights in
the desultory dusk,
questing up fog-laden streets

cold in the cracks of my teeth
shaky fingertips
hurried, arrhythmic steps

spindly trees
flailing and moaning
like flagellants
unable to reach the whip

stoplights sag, sway,
blinking
in confusion -
red, red, red

and the streetlights reflect
in the mirror-wet asphalt
like an eldritch arena

waiting for some
awful battle
to begin -


2
father's waiting at home
with a handgun
nestled in his arms
he murmurs to it
as if to reassure,
but his eyes keep flicking
to the door

his index finger runs
down the barrel,
slowly
outlines the trigger

the crescent moon of his smile
trembles over the
horizon of his lips
and sets again
as if afraid to rise

the rocking-chair creaks
in supplication
and he ignores it


3
my heart is
squirming around
inside my ribcage
like a child held
too tightly,
as i slide the key
into the lock

the door is heavier
than usual,
as if complicit in
some awful crime -
the hinges
squeal

inside,
the shadows flock
like disrupted birds
worrying at one another -
they splay themselves
over the white waste
of the walls
as if furtively,
guiltily,
hiding something -


4
the van parked
down the street
idles,
sighs -

in the back,
a horde of muzzled dogs
whine,
pawing at their snouts
eyes murderous,
sinews taut

in the front seat,
the dogcatcher taps fingers
in an ostinato
on the wheel
one two three four
five
one two three four
five

a hagiography

i knew him for a time.
we flew around
the room of the world
like crazed moths,
bumping into one another
more often than not,
knocking loose the dust
from our wings

i heard he changed his name –
funny, i did too. we made
pentimentos of ourselves,
scrawled over the names
we once called one another
with ink & with wax.

we were wildeyed,
two jongleurs of
an old &
sour tradition,
ghoulish and gabbling
under the scold
of the moon,
ghastly and garish
under the scald
of the sun -

we unravelled ourselves
then gleefully set to the strings
with our teeth,
sawing giddily
back and forth,
magnesium sparking
exothermically
in our bellies

then suddenly
i knew him differently,
like a book from childhood -
he acquired a dingy patina,
became covered in
something sticky
like spilled jelly -

i came to know how
he acquired clothing:
by osmosis -
something borrowed became
something his
just because of how he wore it.
that,
and the stink.

i came to hate hearing him play
“her majesty” on the guitar,
especially the whole
bellyful of wine bit,
came to loathe
both his wistfulness
& his ardor,
latenights,
by the bungalows, crooning,
while girls, swooning,
clutched at his threadbare sleeves

how the ragged fall apart!
years down the line
i think of him,
somewhere west,
past the heaving, sighing Rockies,
past the arid and
steaming deserts -
i think of him,
sitting high up in a redwood
amongst whispering,
adulatory leaves,
in a familiar jacket
pressing a looking-glass to his eye,
facing east -

i am not so high as you;
i am nestled snugly
in my harbour-town,
an island amongst islands,
one for every day of the year -
& i have always preferred
the hard sheen of the Atlantic
and you,
you’ve always preferred
to be pacific -

once,
i broke the string of your guitar
on purpose, and never told you,
viciously turned the knob
as easy as turning a key
in a greased lock –

i blamed it on the humidity -
these things happen, i said coyly,
when they’re pulled too taut –
they capitulate,
sing one desperate chord
and then

twang

like the zithering lash
of a downed power line.

my fingers thrilled
to the snap, yanked away
as though burned,
itched -
for days after.

i can still hear it,
that sound –
can still see your manic,
berserker eyes
over your manic,
berserker beard,

i can still hear you
galumphing through your
frustrated coitus,
grunting and moaning,
slapping and sighing,
as though wresting madly
at the lock on the door
where love is kept captive
secreted away
in a dark corner,
shying away from your
red-faced advances -

we battered at the world,
ran full-hearted at doom
heedless of warnings
and admonitions
from those who had run
the same path before,
grinding our teeth
while congratulating ourselves
on outwitting the slow men,
the low men,
the causers of this and that and thus,
removed ourselves,
turned frail and brittle,
cracked
in more than one place –

for me,
the thunder of our separation
still reverberates
through time’s
glassy echo chamber,
like an orchestra halted
at the point of climax,

for you,
it’s no more
than a whisper,
the susurrus of drug
still feathering
your heart,

no more than
a moth’s wing
against your face
in the dark,

no more than
the schuss of cars
going through puddles
in the night,
somewhere between
departure
& return

widdershins

ed. note - this is a combination/revision of two poems found below.  please excuse the repetition - they just seemed to work really well together.


and so today was a
slow itemization of things
that turned against me:

i woke from a dream-tossed sleep

into a pellucid morning,
fear dripping into my veins

from the invisible machine
of nightmare,

had to turn the light on
and stare at the shadows

until they melted back,

outside,

the necessary cigarette
left me
as always

unsatisfied



and doing nothing

was justified by 
reducing it to

small somethings,
like reshuffling the books
because the spine of The Idiot
is smaller than that of 
The Devils,

and i don't know,

maybe i felt something

a little like sympathy,



and then
the cat hissed at me
though i had done nothing,
and i saw my fear
reflected in her eyes,

a weird shimmer

like the lake of heat

you might see
over summer asphalt,



for a damned second,

heart pulpy in my mouth,
i stood staring at
the ridges of her palate,
thought how they looked like

the marks the waves make
in the sand at the beach

i rubbed my tongue over my teeth
and prepared to hiss back,

but the rumble and mutter of a truck
shoving by importantly

on the street outside

sent her fleeing
for the nearest couch.



the sun went behind a cloud
and didn't come back -
amateur Houdini –
i am jealous
despite my scorn

then,

now,

this,



and i say to myself
this is one of those days,
an exhausting pageantry of hours
whittling myself to a sharp point
& by the time i’m drunk
i jab at anyone
who comes close enough

& my friend says
i drive people away,
says through a froth of drunk
and pot,
and later we sit
on his couch,
like a couple of knives
rasping in a drawer.

by the end of it
we have dulled each other
and the window is repainting itself
with a fragile blue

& the birds are
going apeshit in the trees -

dissever

and the blank-eyed men
are out again,
pious saints of discord with
melted-wax faces
& grasping fingers,
absently adjusting
the ties at their throats
& cracking their necks
from side to side –

they slip sideways between us,
nimble dancers with
poised, gleaming scissors,
murmuring snatches of song
culled from other lovers
they’ve dissevered –

we never see them
though they live in our house,
share our bed,
sit in the empty chairs
at suppertime,
gorging themselves on our silence -
while in the dark,
under the table,
the dog whirs & whines
with alarm

soon enough
sleep becomes a five-second shudder
between one & two in the morning
and we wake up at the same time
unable to look at one another,
afraid of what we might see

and outside, the wind is
shearing leaves from their branches
and the rain is pounding the roof
like a hundred thousand tiny fists
and the sea is going in and out
of the harbor
like murderer’s knives

we share invisible,
vibrating smiles,
hold hands
and watch as the lightning
blotches the face of the sky
like an incandescent rash,
our teeth
glued together
inside of our mouths

when the electricity finally fails
we are plunged into
bristling, barren black
extending all the way up to
the cosmos

and when you say
timidly
that you love me

all i hear is scissorblades
going
snip

battening

1.
the sun is peeling
another layer from its face
again. turning whiter.
blanching. removing itself.
retreating.


2.
the wounded earth,
bombarded summer-long,
healing itself with patches
of frost


3.
brittle, brown leaves
drifting, somnolent,
from exhausted branches
indifferent to landings


4.
pumpkins on porches
going to slumped rot -
static curls of wind
frantically crackling
at newly cold ears.


5.
the violent season is ending,
the violent season is beginning


6.
yesterday we watched
a squirrel nervously
gathering acorns
in the yard. stared at us
as though we weren't quite
there.

later,
looking at each other
in the same way,
we gathered kernels of warmth
and buried them
in our bedsheets,
and together
closed all the windows
in the house

sunday prompt: milestone

the invention of a milestone:


in place of an albatross he wore a millstone
around his neck. suffered through
the blinding sun and the twisting highways
and the dusty backroads,
head hanging and back straining
a torrent of sweat cascading
between sharkfin shoulderblades

he has come to this place,
read the sign that says
WAY STATION
and has halted, unsure.

there is an old building,
falling down around itself.
the sun cackles and crackles
and ascends like a madman who
runs up and down the same stairs
every day,
gibbering.
he is deafened by its noise,
folds himself into the station
and sits in the dust
and in the dark.

he has come in search of
Away,
and has yet to find it
but knows he is closer
than he ever has been.

he has named his shadow,
has given it a name in order
to control its waspish tendencies to
stretch out in the direction
he has come,
to sneak inside the soles of his shoes
and hide.
he has called it Miles,
somewhat frivolously.

he talks to his shadow, addresses it.
scolds it through cracked, dry lips
and with a lumpen tongue -

at night, in the cold,
her ghost: a pale blue shiver
like a pilot light about to go out.
parts her lips to speak
or kiss
and is gone.

in the morning he is walking again,
struggling with the weight of his millstone.

at half-past noon,
he unknots the rope and hurls it
as far from him as he can.
it lands and lays
like the shatter of Ozymandias,
quiescent. still.

he walks away
and leaves it to be covered
by the shifting wind

(re) capitulation

and so today was a
slow itemization of things
that turned against me:

i woke from a dreamless sleep
into a pellucid morning,

fear dripped into my veins
from the invisible machine
of nightmare,
had to turn the light on
and stare at the shadows
until they melted back,

then
the necessary cigarette
left me
as always
unsatisfied

and doing nothing
(a lot easier
than it sounds)
was justified by
reducing it to
small somethings,
like reshuffling the books
because the height of The Idiot
is smaller than that of
The Devils,
and i don't know
maybe i felt something
a little like sympathy,

and then
the cat hissed at me
though i had done nothing,
and i saw my fear
reflected in her eyes,
a weird shimmer
like the lake of heat
you might see
over summer asphalt,

for a damned second
heart pulpy in my mouth
like a bitter fruit
i stood staring at
the ridges of her palate,
thought how they looked like
the marks the waves make
in the sand at the beach.

i rubbed my tongue over my teeth
and prepared to hiss back,
but the rumble and mutter of a truck
shoving by importantly
on the street outside
sent her fleeing
for the nearest couch.

the sun went behind a cloud
and didn't come back.

then,
now,
this,

a shaky column of words,
a half of a pillar
in the rubble of the
ruins of the day

day #---

the kind of morning
where i can’t get the temperature
of the shower right
and every other step i take
down the sidewalk
is a stumble

and i say to myself
this is going to be
one of those days,
an exhausting pageantry
of hours,
whittling myself to a sharp point
& by the time i’m drunk,
jabbing at anyone
who comes close enough

and my friend says
i drive people away,
says through a froth of drunk
and pot,
and later we sit
on his couch,
like a couple of knives
rasping in a drawer.
by the end of it
we have dulled each other
and the window is repainting itself
with a fragile blue

& the birds are
going apeshit in the trees -

oubliette

and there,
outside the window,
the world sits,
unchanging,
staring eyelessly -

i inside have insulated myself
from it,
blacked out the windows
pinched the switch
on the lamp. took a hammer
to each clock.

the throaty roar of the heater
hoarse from its battle
with the insipid, creeping cold -

outside the window and
up,
the great woods. sharp
black forest. a tangle of
rustling and
silence.

the eye of a frightened deer -
glassy, wet.

in my small room
the hardwood floors
are unfinished.
i cover those places with dirt
and later,
snow.

soon the outside world grows in
around me. the sun worries a hole
in the black sheets i've strung up.
the walls fray & the wood
rots. the door
falls off its hinges, hammered
repeatedly
by the wind's invisible
battering ram -

& there
i am
sitting
in the middle
of the day
or night -
naked -
a needle in one hand
thread in the other
sewing my eyelids together -

fairytale coda

the woodsman returned home
with the wolf
tossed over his shoulder,
smiling grimly
through a haze of blood -

the sun in the fairytale forest
buzzed through the trees
like an alarm,
a warning.

the heroes, the sidekicks,
the kings, heroines,
& all their animal friends
crept warily
out of their warrens -
spite lolling in their eyes
like a growing glaucoma -

what now, villain!
- their boisterous cry,

come back the echo -
what villain, now?