In the Bird and Flower Business

Although the fraying at the edges

Occasionally flips the game pieces,

Scattering the pattern like tv snow

Through the mosaic of being,

Everyone has an unappointed task.

The bits we gather go back into the fold

Issuing between the visible and the light

On those occasions when the tide

Of darkness ebbs.  The flashlight

Makes them sparkle in unforeseeable

Ways, the flashlight of the mind,

Asleep for so long, then one day lit

Like a torch one is now carrying,

In private splendor, for the new creatures

Suspended in the walls of a raindrop.

The power is not yours to do with

As you wish, any more than sleep,

A pure good, is something to have,

But it will come to you, like love,

And then you will be swimming

Beautifully, the equal of the angels.

Let’s dive in the oxygen till the stillness

Reaches its apogee and we are pure time.

Our twin souls will be folded and intricate,

Braided like sisters of darkness and light.

A Very Small Exit

The junkies in the system sleep somehow

Through the revolution leaking from the edges,

One of many small exits.

And spirit is

I have a key to the earth

I water seeds in you, a secret algorithm of love

I am filling up a notebook

A spirit composed of clouds and verbs.

I am in a bad mood.

The horizon is holding by a thread.

I have lost track of the days and the nights

Sleeping overtime, clasping still the straws of hope

To be free, freely entangled in the junk

Nobody seems to mind I put

In this column of integers.  Why,

Should they?  I understand many things

And this is not one of them.

You must have rocks in your head.

Everything is tainted till the forgetting comes

Another set of integers

Then nature leaps out at you.

Le Cheile 6-21

The tides and bodies of boats

Move both ways, into and out of sight

Like a sinuous line between the visible

And the light and the scrutable

A boundary that doesn’t block but bend

All stems to the sun. Dunes curve and writhe

Along the coast til the chaparel reclaims

The dirt from blast and draught

A constant redrawing of wind and shore

An endless line of mad surveyors

Eyeing and chewing and scratching

With lewd stares into the air

Something you can sink your molars into

At last, a blank expression, no, a bank one

Passed through with all of the currencies

Exchanging saliva, despite the prohibition.

We signed for a copy of the resurrection

So now we are the captain.

We call capitalism by its name

And then the shrieking starts

Someone broke a fingernail

Or an iron law and circulation increases

Heading round the cape where markets rip

Stumble and spill into bigger piles of assets

For some the terrible necessity of being underneath

The gameboard of the sea juggling

Its risks like gulls down the line,

Amigo amici, the opening Italian

And the end game a slurry of howling apes

Somehow the vortex looks best in plastic

Pants, in the spirit of dropping,

Called out, collapsing, Pierrot on a string

Vexed at the stasis of his garment

Who are we to check your pockets

Without your coy permission?

James County

Forgive me water

slows the mind

In the days before

The flames engulfed

Only watching

The river was

A prospective lapse

Or a project

From a lounge chair

There are no signs

when entering

or one sign

that reads x-ing

a neglected culvert

and a few machines

used to stack things

I have made a bed
Inside a tube
Small glass tubes
A piece of wine
As fat bodies flow
Down the river
Mumbling

I am always behind
The light unless
It is night or

The smoke fits

The atmosphere

Some places are flat

Others as common

As valleys

Frankly water

I wish you

were as clear as gin

I get my news like a

Human thing

Soaked in a chair

The future in nowhere

Samething again

We is reserved

For the things

That would destroy us

Tiger Lily What's Your Name

An old bumper sticker for a comic presidential ticket

Milk under the bridge

The foreign news was also world news

The news from some other world

Live in the bag of discourse

Shuffling between observations decks

We view London from inside a gumdrop

And before it cloys

A midget grinds out an epithalamium

I licked the stamps myself

Then we floated up the same river

The absence of porcupines in the dining car

Dismayed the shoe-gazers

We were down on the floor when my egg timer pinged
A kitten had lost her phoneme

Of Being Alive

Not many who can stand it ever return

To tell the rest of us to buck up

And quit being such a bunch of pussies

Whatever may come.  Is it wicked

To gaze at cattails in bloom

In that lascivious profusion down the road?

Don’t answer that.  Tell me you love me

But this time try to mean it.

The pyramids and the Alps

Will duke it out to woo you back.

The soda pop in the fridge is stale

Someone ate all the cookies

The house elf is not going to do the dishes

What more can we accomplish?

Some strangeness in the morning

And early afternoon

Lying around the house.

To Walt Whitman

I look at my neighbor’s genitals

Have a drink

I love my neighbor

This poem is not on my schedule

I am stating it for the record

Bliss is not ignorance

The stars and stripes

We are now a corporation

Brick by brick the great wall

This poem is going somewhere

I don’t know where

If you like you can give me a prize

I accept don’t tread on me

Where is a policeman when I need one?

This poem is not a fictional person

I only live here

The water bowl is not mine

Do dirty secret wars give you pleasure?

Appeal to heaven

Write me a check I’ll call you

I am running out of sentences

I stop for food and drink

There is no standing here move along

This poem trudges along looking for a song

My utterance needs elbow room

We have plenty of rooms

One line at a time

In whatever order you wish

Dessert salad aperitif

I feel a fizzy sensation

One hour on a Saturday night

Clouds of copper

The sky rises like a turquoise sea

I am gold on the couch

The dog snores in his house

My neighbor

Something in the sunset for everyone

A swallow strays like a comma

I wrote this poem

I had rather it be you

The Weeping

The moonlight is more beautiful than silk

Flowing over the ramparts

When I pull the curtains back.

Moving to the rhythms of a soft

Parade, the women emerge disrobed

From their doorways as I weep

Locked in a room with no chair.

To defy the curfew, the bride

Of the city appears in my dreams.

She is dressed in black.

After two days of rain

A powdery blue mist erases the solids.

Eventually the weeping goes away.