Parched

When I wake in the back seat to a dim teal
on the leatherette, my legs seem to swell
like Grow-in-Water sponge pills. They wet the boat's guard-rail

with their SPF 80 glaze, and their toes touch the kelp ends
that lay flat on the surface. The chafes
from the flashlight rods that leaked last night
into the spots not calked by the blackout curtains
are dry. The seats are rooted to the floor, are pillars
that loom in the morning sheen.


(the kelp ends peak from the surface in youth, but as I age they surround me. I seem to have submerged and drowned, but in dryness, who would have thought death would have been so dry)

damp for

the root

of sweat, we wait for an

intersect of thought like

a cosmic sea-monkey cyst

for hyperbolic brine, settle on

vacuum dust, amniotic juice

has yet to fill the gap between

us and the chaps

pinch the nerves each

time lips splay

to show that

we are

Surface tension

The romance that two
plump boy scouts push
and inhale through harmonica
reeds is well worth noticing,

lines are gaps
into unease when
on a Duchamp,

and it is well worth noticing
such a droplet in that split
moment of surface tension

when it balances
atop

Glazing an urn

This urn holds
air, is wiped clean, is not glazed but crisp
yellow like an old meerschaum. There is a hole
at its forehead for air to fold around and press into
air, suave entrance as if with a waxed
air   while the hole whistles like some after-
vibration of a bell gong glad
to see the air through, but to look
seems, look   as the grain still dips
beneath the gloss   it is underhanded
to observe her features by the image
in the bus window, to coat when the always-
child gaze had the texture but the grasp
is followed by what, really
what sheen. This urn holds
air, has a smooth oil finish.

no-speak

no-speak, the space
between open lips before columnar lifts
and dips in air vibration. In no-
speak tires roll up-
hill before hill turns
to gravity hill to slope, downward
to a point, speech. no-speak:
so long a tongue curled
around potential snaps
into speech when no-
body uses the whole
bin but only what some five
fingers grasp. speak,
but with no-speak, prolong

I

Perfect disk, with an alloy

of mist so thick as to weigh

on the aperture until the pressure

differential became standard, until the grass

blades, grass blades.

Proselytize

The Red Hatted Vagabonds pluck blues

chords near the yellow

tape at the street fair, not quite among

passerby. You can graph

the ripple of a drop in a glass

but the chorus sings from the torrent,

relatives or dreadlocked
Valkyries in matching
tie-dye skirts, where

the vocalist amid
loose gravel in-jokes
as if tied to the mic-
stand reaches

out and cries
proselytize me baby.

Glory

The aspect of the right angle in the car

window frame beside the blue-brown of the slow

river, hardly even

I mean it is basically asphalt

and now orient the plane

yes, morning glory

but you hardly deserve the name, take what symbol

you want son but when you don’t got

a seed, that’s what it is,

how the yellow on the cereal

box is less yellow, why

does morning glory lead

you that way, when no

word really, take

the seed.

---Reshelving carts

A life in these carts,

yet the books so quickly return.

finger oil stains the pages

so that they stick

when the binding

shuts. Seeming disorder, why

agronomy and Pynchon,

before the librarian

reshelves.

A moment's bliss

Squeeze a period, for rest,

between the chimneys and brisk

wind, that line of teal

on your cheek, the apertures

were shut but the smoke

pipe and even the Oleanders

pruned to trees glowed

upright,

if the change has in it

a clamminess, if the change

lies apart

It is dawn and some wet

twigs stick through the window

frame. How

several   some sphag

num on the bridge

between joints too

exist so

willingly “don’t

need a lunette” says

they, whether or no

the window clap.

What is it about a dream

a burst of amber stage-

light where tinfoil

heels tap to

the amusement so great

fun is it not the curtains

wave like the live sea

not dead sea as

still as the mirror as violent as

the cloud’s curl.

Lethargy does not exist, the veins

swimming below my transparent

tautness however much they point

to life do not pull my attention

from this viscous string

of thoughts through

which I only rarely glimpse

genesis.

The iron is wrought

as the man before the bathroom

door clenches a fist he

wants   but it is closed he

releases and on the chess-

board tiles leaks

through the ink

          the blank

he hardly knows

what abyss
and anyways color

is nowhere and 

assumed here

when he came to

he stepped off,

arms iron, arms

light.

Insomniac shades
let the street lamps
spray the ceiling. I cannot
read. The bay

beside the highway sunk
to mud that frames
here and there a sheen. "Dis

person," some Morse
code of headlights, "Dis
person."

what is it, sunk
possessed by Gershwinjaundiced sick we are playing notes of others, vacant now of the passion that stirred them. but all have always been vacant, only the few who choose not to be fix themselves into the phantom that possesses future players intent on voicing your composition.

the asphalt widens
it is nice to roll
along the char.

futile now? rubber
skin, prod

The insomniac
clouds dull the grasses
I've seen the Yellow Mountain ridges
to Gershwin preludes beside
my desk lamp. The pipe

is full of ash, soot
and remains. Prod
my supine
hand, it is cold.

At our desks and the professor
says Huizinga's cane factory, be
the process om
shanti, glaze

word
to confection, clouds

of it to perfume
with a moment's burn, heap
lest they notice, the arid

riverbed.

Half truth, what the man
in the isle leans
on when he bends
in indecision, his spine

makes for something solid
it is like others', like pull
the dip and there
we are all on the patio

"Mavericks" he says and omph
through chips like grass
whistles,

they play. The crumbs
in the crevice next morning
are already earth, almost
their edges sag,

and so the evening satiates.

nietzsche. truth is right and wrong are survival inconcrete flesh is transient so we build these and "here it is immutable move on" along nothing to see here except false we see ourselves through the world we build through this incontrover   but there it is, stop   here.

agape agape. does modern art take on the form of pressing stream of consciousness because this is the only way falling people can tap into the art, beauty. but what is that but poor order in need of reordering order would be better off in chaos. so is this it then   a progression to a halt to break see it is coherent this way, loss, art is here. death  or we can instead of jump from point to point linger and play a song really.

I kneel to tie my shoes, I try to walk

The snake moves along pavements
its eyes gouged. The solemn procession
of scales best handle the sprig
of green onions before the palm molts
away

the sunbathers scratch oil
from their nose or peddle lunch
menus

cleave through the pockets,
as even the small moon
shrinks when you squint,
and though scales bristle
there is space,

so glide. All the same I stepped
in something varicose
and it sticks.

Returning to my parent's house

My Bichon with gray knots
sighs. Hair mats the floor like soot,
the stools are crooked,
but the Franzia box
is parallel the fridge:

home. My apartment
was less comfortable.

I never minded fleas
until my sheets became a harem
of the slick-skinned
progenitors of "He is a quiet

one, I understand why he did not come
tonight, but at least I did invite," to whom
the crabs clap their claws

sue the withholder of deposits,
feed his dog pins

and the hike up Tunnel trail
showed me State street
and brake lights

I called myself happy before
I ran my nail between the knots
and flicked black beads
from the inflamed spots,

but my blood then
was festering.

The smoke has shed
layers of my mouth,
but it blooms

Clicks at the screen
is such ease, but
simulation. Can we live
strings? Foolhardy

Promethean, to presume
your clay is set:

orange blossom
at clarity, but it is the scent
that droves
of nerves strain
to spray, and then recoil

between the rocks. Effort,
this, but seasonal,
and the moss on the rock-
seat, the spark

and the pungent
release ensures
decay of yet
more layers.

Tendrils of teapots
stained brown and brown
smoke

I only ever use my penis
when I pinch some moisture
and sniff

love, we hiked to the sand
and shucked oysters, tortoise-

shell glasses, now, eyes faintly
there if I squint

your dress is so
tangerine, but you expect
what

shall we live both in tangerine
teepee, dank
oysters, yours
agape

smoke, brown
not cloud-white
must   use
stain.

Mind the barb
on the hanger
as you pull the day's
shirt, starch

and coffee points the prism
at the sun, but wrists
fatigue. Rest,
restart tomorrow.

"Bite the plum:

it soaks your teeth

nicely,

does it not? We miss

you already, but say

before you leave

a little about yourself

Come, drink

let us speak,

savor life." We tipped

our cups,

and there was little too say

beyond recent shootings,

and I refuse.

a glance:

is it inwards

when you pause?

we have let the bird

bath in the back dry

a beer bottle

is in the well

"But speak,

it gives us pleasure

and you would enjoy"

I step to the street

where the moon's jowls

are still, the air turbulent

with hysteria.

Words over silence
like a mail coat

its rings are Gaza
are sale, are Alaskan
lake fishing

and it is not trembling
when there is a breath,
and unburdened

we spot an orifice
in the breast, more

a need to quake
at the base,
the still base.

Self Shrine

A bookcase:

the read books

stand crookedly,

the clean pages

lie in stacks

wooden yogis

clutter with smiles

etched

as I prepare to move,

I leave this for last, but it is less

assuring now

that it stands against a vacant

wall.

A whisker on my cheek

You are longer, thicker

       a baobab on a salt

flat. The others on my lip

      pale in comparison,

and insist you be plucked.

Can we be fading skin
drying, approaching
the mirror where the blade
winnows the softer

so that the bone
sticks its cleft
chin and cries

in its bass tone
that a life
like a popsicle
sags after its first sheen
of promise?

Was she ever as beautiful

as I recall, or do the pock-

marks

that now drip with “how

do you wash your dick”

when I say I live in my car

only show that my loam

Is sewage?

How to smoke a pipe

This is for the novice:
first there is the flame

any will do in most
circumstances, a heat

that when applied
chars the superficial

into a black cake. Find
that any fresh

leaf will make the burn
uneven. You may pay

attention to the first
puffs, on the second

light, and in consequence
the pipe will sputter,

and when you then pull
softly, the ember

will dwindle. It is a task
where there is no respite,

and so resign, look nowhere
until vision clouds

the sea or the oak or book-
shelves, and prepare

to pack; stay some
time longer,

though, inhale
the blur and release

again, and see how steadily
it burns.

Ketosis breath

Fat chirps from beneath

my shirt as I pedal

uphill, and the carols

of sour fish fillets that waft

from my throat note

progress,

but my destination is food,

and though at times I follow

my gaze to the ripe

horizon until I lap

cherry, it is brief

and I focus again on legwork

and dead fish.

I may have HIV

At the Grand Isle
in a search through driftwood
piles for a message
in a bottle

a syringe glanced
my shin

likewise, clearing thicket
at a housing site

we found tunnels,
an underground
city,

lanes where speed
thrived,

but where are the people
who left the needle
again stuck
in me?

Why did a metropolis
sustained by veins
of passion
dry--

have all of them
ascended?

In the seminars
we learn that conversation
is idle.

Habit

Habit gives rise
to a funny callus
that coats every
nerve end

content: all
is a brush
until an itch,
deeper, some

splinter

makes me file,
rejoice in cherry raw
skin, bruised
skin at every

touch skin,
plush.

In a toy pen

a child plays

with bare

resonance

wooden blocks

kindle,

but the burn

is in the attic

he reminisces

of these days

    days

lost,

but though dust

has dimmed,

that same pen

he is still

there, has never

left.

Consumed kimchi, coming down

Chili juice

    amasses in the well,

I dip the bowl

    to one side,

and it moves,

    a phantom blood-

hued koi

    that as I focus

pulls me

    into its amber

pool. I set aside

    the dish, 

as I have had my fill
    for the day.

The girl who smiles back

Back at the trail
I walked last week,
but  now a jet-
haired woman

walks too, and the chaparral
floods into sea,
turtles with moss-
covered backs

swim, I strip,
ask her to enter,
and we dip

*

I sit up, tend
to flea bites
and scratch
my terrier's
ear.

I never met
this woman

exactly, though
her hair I've liked
in one, her eyes

another. A dream
composite girl

my elusive piece
meal--I will always
see you only there.

table talk, shootings
in vogue
now, tomorrow
wristwatches

she pauses mid
sip and shakes
her head as they speak
about the gunman,

asks for creamer
because the coffee
is too black

yes it is terrible
how people do such things
delicious scone,
I am goo-
despondent

The night when
            you said I was a dog
    too happy to
         please, prods

like a gear
            in fast orbit
    and each spin
        lacerates

the room bled
            bend, that type
    who nods; veinous
        wrist

hot to stick
            into any gap
    but, time
        dulls

and the blunt
            nib on
    occasion
        may

prod like a niece
            who thinks for the seventh
    time she asks Guess what?
        you won't know

That's what awaits,
            before rust
    eats the gear
        and pain fades.

I thought Pigs on the Wing

      would be a nice song to wake

to, so each morning at Reed

      when I would look to see bare

branches, hoar-

      frost grass, I would detest

those words: you know that I care,

      that hovered above my poly-
ester blanket.

Selassie is the Chapel seemed fitting

      after I dropped out, but now

Marley's voice reawakens the itch

      lathed over my body

by fleas bred

      in the carpets and sheets.

Presently a shrill

      monophonic ring

disrupts my rest,

      and I walk to cook eggs

in my flat's kitchen.

I don't think I will change

      this tone; it may

be the best sound of all.

They once gathered    more
to listen to some    upstart
play Faure; today    my belt
perks awry as    nocturnes
play through laptop    fan
static, but Mozart    knows
that life is like this,    hear,
says he, disregard    plastic
medium.

Speech, to pull

surprise

          from a gap

where the lining

comes

          loose

in your jeans

pocket,

          where

anything arises,

seams--

          fable.

I sat again

at that focal

            dip,

where masts bend
into a dome

            frame

that supports
a spectral
            ceiling,
that city lights

pierce

that parade and

            swivel

But when the sharp
point from Moby Dick

            fine

sea food inches

between my

            ribs

and the pizzeria

on the shore

            slides

neon into my side

and they lift

            me,

I imagine, as

wonder

            drains
onto pavement,

that skywards,
            lady

familiarity parts
the worn

            fabric
between Mars
and unknown

            suns,

says, "they who wield

electric spears want
            jerky,

not succulence." She
says I must now 

            escape.

Thought is a homely nurse

Haze
until my split-
image arrives

He is casual
as if to bare
face

behind
skin is common
and he says

yes,
I am clarity,
your neighbors

play bop-it or moan
but you can't disoblige
them, flesh is fire

and they ache,
but you thought
as much in the fog.

Look:
you saw the chandelier's
tusks, and pictured
ivory,

but you can hardly kill
her outright. Shall I take
you by the hand, draw
more?

You nod,
hardly listen, weary-
pupils, let me tuck
those lids over, but know
that in the fog
you can only
quake.

I let him go,
the flame grows
damp, and a still
air rises.

Trouble sleeping on interesting sheets

Laden, a shade
steps along a scaffold.
He looks over
the edge and below
orange energy
pulsates. He observes,
                             -if I dip
my face into this broth
viscous from adren-
aline shivers, I may
                            bloom
and petals curl
around unused
thoughts and brush
                            off
the dust, and laughter
rise, as if skin knows
pleasure; I need only
                             swim
and let orange swells
engulf second-thoughts
                             and feel
electric curls
where a cry is a slide
to a hiccup
and bliss wells
                             over-
he turns the corner
and lays in shadow,
for there were no thoughts
there, he saw no thoughts.

There was a game
where two magicians
played ball. The first
threw it to the sky,
above the clouds
and it was afloat
a zephyr and native
to the wind, and then
the latter took control
and the ball abruptly fell
and his arms shook
but it plummeted
until above his head
it plumed and haze
and vines birthed
with petals that curled.

The former's feat
may have been laudable,
but the audience could
remember nothing.

We spurn a person
because when we fear they cringe,
nervous lips deter.

Change

An idea coats
your mind
like an overripe
plum that a child
hurls at his parents'
wall:

its fruit dyes the plaster,
but sleep loosens
a torrent and soaks
grip until
any trace is gone.

The child may later touch
his tongue against the pale
wall, and his eyes
gleam, as he will taste
sweetness.

Hi-C Wrapper

The HI-C straw
wrapper between the dull
grass blades
reflects more than grey
light--fourth-grade
field trips or dips
into the golf course
bamboo patch
shimmer on the opposite
side of sweet hydration's
debris. It is sorry
that the memories
we cherish hide
behind panes
of scrap, that
we reach what seems real
only when we open
gates of ivory.

On finding happiness in a large city

More sensations, more lights
that stick to your iris
and sit there until
registration,

exist here. It is nice
to walk a boulevard
and affix sights
like a pearl-laced
gown tail that extends
for yards,

as each brush
against a bystander
or waft from the gutter
threads into your
fabric,

to think that you are wed
with delirium, that you know
him well. There was a booth

that took you to miraculous
places, and Auffman
took it down.

Water Slide

-Why do you lack company?

-I've slid for some time,
 half-choked on recirculated
 water.


-Where?

-It is dark, the tunnel
 twists and my elbows
 knock against plastic
 walls that echo.


-You are long-winded.

-Easy breathing too often suffocates.


-Have you tried to escape?

-I sometimes enjoy
 the percussion that hints
 at an outside, but
 it is likely dreary.


-Au contraire! I
 am happy there,
 where conversation
 nightly over port
 soothes.

-Port has taste,
 but it drowns.

I would like to pull out my front teeth. Really, I gnaw at them continuously, push them back and forth with the lowers. Sometimes I pull too forcibly, the grip slips, and a piece of cartilage births from the union and rolls around my tongue. My teeth are all worn. Chips abound. I pay too much attention to small tooth-aches when I should step out of the room and act, or create a masterpiece. But instead I gnaw, and it amuses me enough to avoid boredom.

Exhaustion is a theatrical word, but I am tired. A fantasy where my eye lids meet absorbs me. I want inspiration, but find it neither in dreams nor alertness. Let the lids' next romance be eternal, let them love forever.

If you want to be nihilist,
then do not dip
your pinky finger
into its battery
acid pool. Dive
in and be one
with your goal.

Look at words that evoke slime
and your revulsion
mirrors fault --

a wave has no color
yet you apply violet
festers to font,

you turn white
paper into semen
and lather it behind
your eyelids
until it drips
from your nose,
and you loath
another letter.

But you color
your temperament,
and you disgust me.

sensations
burn and then
like a half-
smoked cigarette
that drops
on pavement

glow in memory
of the flare
but fades
as nobody
really wants
it to catch

so it dies
or some passerby
steps it out

and the city
is built this way

so that no flash
fire combusts
dead bark
and no greener
things grow.

Irritation over social expectations while on a riverside trail

To tread a path
that an hewn
clear breaks
my inattention,
and the toads
that croak satyr laughter
beckon me off.

A step from the path
steeps my boot
in bottle shards,

and there is no life here. I dip
closer to find the hooves
that hover out of sight,
snag my clothes and skin and hope
for return in the denser thicket,

and gasp at the ankle
scruff. Lichen
loops around and attaches
the beasts to limbs
that leak. The half-goats prance
and the limp
quarter-pieces grasp
sneakers or a liter
of Aquafina as they skid.

I ask that they plant ash
roots in my crown
and give me a goat hind
so that I too may laugh
at the flaccid life.

Now, I deal with matters
of meat, and drag
detritus through
the trees. It tires
to ridicule parts, so I squat
at a creek and spot a toad
that croaks, and I ask
to become like him.

I am now unable
to drag. Instead,.
my throat extends
and exhales
noise. Here I am closest
to that aspiration
and furthest from
home.

On a terrace with an elderly man

However far sight
stretches, it does
not snap--

Through a dime-operated sight glass
the sails of still yachts bulge,

children scale a tree
limbs as twigs tear
their eyelids,

and a man kicks
his squatting dog's leg--

and I like to stand
here and watch
and mock their
infatuation with small
things,

yet when these liver-
spotted cheeks puff dry
air I hear, "You are a fool
to have died so young."

Thoughts between a couple on a curb and a patio with plum pie

Few things are inert
in the sun, until
he stops and sees flannel
patchwork that leaves
visible a bulge that rolls
around dirt like a pit's
wrinkles. It smells

so loudly that some lift
their heads and bare
stained teeth

before they bend
to eat, and lick
the scabs of juice
from their chin.

These thoughts
clot the calmer passages
through which attention
flows. His fingers
are numb, but he will mind
less when a cheek droops.

Water flows
into crevices, down
slopes,

and once stagnant
in a pool that breeds
mosquitoes and algae,
it rises and floats
above houses
and over crags

without ever
following
the strenuous path.

Three months is not long to live

You say that you have a limit
that will soon arrive, and that
it is alterable, but
you change nothing,

your words are smacks
of bubbles in a bog
that pop, and though they rise
from beats deep at the core
the pool smothers the throbs
and make each
more quiet.

When you ask me to pray
at your bedside,
I will not. You slurred
at mine. When you die

I will laugh at how absurd
it is that I feel like a piece
of me slips in liquid nitrogen,
like a liver or
a fist or
an entire cluster
of neurons ready
to store better memories,

yet  that your image
still survives as an eternal
croak that sounds
from the stains
of your swamp water.

Upon scaling front-country hills

I register depth
when I see distance,
but no profundity floats
between my eyes
and the sun-burnt valley.

My throat is loose
and my veins drum
like an epileptic fishnet
as they entangle thoughts--

fluid bends light
and even when clear,
contains inert
taste,

but each step
heats flesh
and constricts the net
until thoughts suffocate
in its embrace.

At the summit
the back country peaks howl;
the net seizes
and silence rises.

For a moment
the hills distill me.

He grew tired of listening

I coat my mouth
with the tingles of vinegar
and sea salt phrases.

Reflections choke the larynx,
and though lukewarm water
will relax the tension,
it is tepid.

I spent last night floating
in a creek, and my skin
was crisp, my mind
swimming downstream
like a disentangled
intestine: I must flay

my tongue and mount
a peak that looks
to the sea,

exhale
until it rains,

and wet
someone's Crab Benedict
so that it festers.

So says the diabetic

Too much digesting
whatever sounds or colors that surround
and too little vomiting
forth, shouting
out from a precipice
with wild eyes

so that another might digest
and think
that they too, digest too frequently.

Lukewarm water does nothing for the spirit
but will keep me alive,
and if I live in temperance and embrace
tepid liquid like a stone bed
I may be better off,
but I may just start throwing glass
if I have to bear another sip,

and so I suppose I am pedestrian,
uniform

with everyone who is so ecstatic
about creation yet unable
to devote
to anything but the tingles
of sugar and vinegar
on their tongue.

And so I eat sensations,
devour reflections
and add each word another says
to my own corpulence:
it coats my lungs,
my heart, in hills of adipose
and I struggle for breath,
for more inhalation,
consumption.

When I flay the taste buds
from my tongue, burn
this accumulation
by mounting a peak
that looks above the people
out straight to the sea,

and exhale accumulation
until it rains,
I will be alive.

A child grasps for a leaf on a sunlit red brick terrace. A young man flashes his Canon, and creates art. There are many such pieces: loose skin patched around green stick bones, earnest, tender eyes, that ache for the leaf so near those fingertips. The children agonize for that sunburned crispness. Artists splay their pictures across desktop backgrounds and youth help billboards. But what about the children who drag their nails against the image, gnash the unbent colors as they teethe? They scale the tree, molt their down, assault passerby with orange peels, and scream: "I claim this tree, and I am king."

Frustration

Thoughts shake
as the vessel
pounds against plaster.

We are each a cluster
of ideas that orbit a dearth.
We plummet
yet feel still, and still

emptiness envelopes,

but we may dive
towards spreading light--

her smile may
brush along
your skin--

and systems spring from orbit
as two unseens
circle, dance,
and collide:

dust parts and cakes
like flour on his face, and veins
dispense their frustration
on the wall and on the floor.

When the next man enters,
a new thought goes 
its own way.

The masked enter the temple. They live in the liminal space between portrait and intention, and as they float the blackness hums. A flash sparks beneath their eyelids: white, then violet. It gives way to a forest, an invalid crouched on a salt flat, and a void. They train their minds through focus, and the ultraviolet melts their skin. And then they're off. Until they find themselves in the cave, where it moans. They open their eyes, walk to the kitchen, and ravage last night's drumstick.

He sits amid the bustle and orders a drink amidst unfamiliar sounds. It thickens. The people talk like Peanut's parents. Each syllable is a sheet of metal; funny,
how reverberation blocks vision. Each word
reflects his suspicion. The noise encases him.

Their murmur splits his ear, and his room shakes on iron wheels that scream, and he is in a train car. The cars shudder, and like the rattles of iron links
the word "unsound" ricochets in his lobe.

And he is in the furnace. He piles coal into the fire, heaves each scoop into the mouth and blanches his knuckles as he stabs its tongues. Thoughts
of growth combust. Dead wood, dead wood.
He grows faint as each breath only draws in ash.
It cakes his lungs.

A stationary phantom, he stays behind as the furnace treads forward. He shifts on the barstool, and people speak: "unbearable, so hot my hair dried ten
minutes out the shower", "nothing a pint won't
cool". He looks through the window
and views expansive plains.

He returns to the furnace
and it yawns smoke; he grips
his spear; he must escape.

Air Out

You cannot help but hold
the plastic lunch pail, emblazoned
with the whole Sesame Street
gang, even if rips and wear
amputate most,

that you find hidden
in your dead mother's garage,
but you hesitate
when your calluses
meet its latches.

The stench of sardines
that pokes its jaundice-yellow
eyes through the seems,
and beckons you to gulp
and wade in its pool
of sulfur and stale Franzia,
makes your fingers recede.

It is best not to open it here,
but do not leave . Either click
and unseal the lid under a tree,
or shatter it with a bat,
but somehow those memories
must air out.

Often an encounter
feels as if my spine
is vice-gripped
between a pair
of scissor blades
and my intestines
bulge--

how does he look
or mean, inside

--like the sponge
of an incised
cocoon,
and I neither feel nor look
very human.

Death held an ashplant
in place of his scythe,
today. And he hit
me on the shoulder,
rapped my collarbone                  
until it ached,                              
and cried, "Costa Rica                
is for sand crabs!"                        
                                          this chronic leaning
                                          and tendon-bending
                                          makes me feel like my once-ripe
                                          muscles are browning, rusting

           Like discarded apple slices
           beside a hair-strewn caramel
           quagmire of copulating flies,
           my dreams just seem
           unappetizing.

Death then jabbed my sternum
with the cane's sod-strewn
hoof, and reminded
me of the breathlessness
I had hoped of feeling
atop the Urals.

Cataclysmic: he sat alone,
no matter his attempts
at friendliness.

Herons and wagtails flock
the hippopotamus's indifferent
hide, but only the disliked
came to him--

only mosquito larvae
swam in his shallow stagnancy.

And a group fell
by, ticking to its own
balance,

but he could not grasp
the medium that framed
and made them gravitate
so, orbit and revolve together,
like marbles circling
a dip in a tarp
that some person or meme
weighs down.

And does a smile
put us in the same system?
And what makes an idea draw?

And so he sat on,
to thwart company, so that soon
he would not care.

He grew careless,
and his mind lived
in the mountains.

A beckon is like a rustle
of dry leaves or a drip
of dew, and landscapes
refract the same light
as faces.

He left the path
and hiked upriver,
where the resting Gerrid said,
"My kind all dent the surface,
and the unseen lives beneath,
yet we feel them somehow."

And so he dove below,
and made a stir,
revolutionary
to the once-firm plane.

He fled when solitude met him,
but he only butt his head
against the bars--anxiety, unmuscularity--
when inside the lion's cage.

Strangely, light shone through the beast's
esophagus. The moon was brighter without
the pack.

As he sits, the clouds roll above the
bowing greenery; they seem
more than just villi,
and the loamy pungency
more fragrant than intestinal musk.

When he questions the world,
it echoes in return,
but an answer would just startle,
and by now he is hardly material.

He will touch the earth again
without knowing. But before then
he would only laugh, and delight
when the world laughs back.

He is in transit. When moving, when still. He biked along the palm-rimmed beachside drive and listened to thoughts lifting off in every direction like planes directed by a lunatic controller and meandering through sky-line thought-paths of "no coconuts fall from these palms, or dates, not with the fit jump-roping blonde beside the picnic table." He biked past and sat. Advil does not halt the throbbing wayward flyers, and if he knew it could he'd give it to the gutter. Stopping thoughts in mid-transit would only drown the passengers in the mid-Atlantic, and stab Marsyas before he could be flayed.

A guise curtsies
and hints at something
somewhere else--

a child bare on dark wet pavement,
a youth trapped in isolation's thicket,
a man alone--

and smiles when it says,
"I'm well too, and yes
it is warm today."

Monosyllables

And I do love her,
thought I as I fell
into her warmth,

but when I break through the imitation
wax paper surface of first sight,
and hit the concrete reminiscence
of other loves,

I see that it will come to nothing--
to monosyllables
or a no-goodbye
disappearance.

But tonight she unexpectedly
enters through the sealed orifices
of my white walled room;

she peaks around the corner
of my eye, winnows
through my bones,

and as if I am a woodwind
through whom her whistling emits ideas,
she sings and I find: she is I, and she is none.

Unfathomable, preposterous, hrmph oomph hachoo hack, wheezed Uncle in the face of my restatement of the age-old novelty. Reason guides us, he cried; logic holds all together. But Uncle, as you speak atoms that once belonged to you float into effluvia, and you disappear into ever-dispersing quanta!

Nonsense!

The monkeys and koi have more sense!

Pfoo; thoughts of I and humanity have built interconnection,

Where?

Here--

What are you doing?

                                      We are together

                                                Let go, get away!

Reason guides movement, momentum.

                                                 

Solace of the woods
stuck in a plot between roads and houses--
solace, solace
are you forever unreal?

Stretches of imagination
that attempt to guess another's thoughts
are less real than wisps of wind
on a calm day.

No rope and grapple
can fly from me to you
so that I may climb into your mind
and have tea with your thoughts,
and genuinely become
acquainted with your heartfelt
intentions.

Instead some spark trips
or some chemical pulse fires
and a green or red ball bounces
in my solitary ball pit,
and I guess,

because our thoughts are as alone
as a dormant black hole--
as a pinch and a pull on a tarp
that imprison all balls in one pit--
that not even a moan is always true.

And yet the madcap still laughs at me
and cries, "You think you know, you think you know!"

Then

Then opens a palm
that holds dirt and glass
and drips rivulets of red,

and tightens a fist,
and with pale finger-walls she hides
like mist, she hides.

But Then's eyes delude
and like Tantalus' food,
she steps back when I grasp,

yet we cannot part. Be
my shadow, Then,
and I always your heart.