Forty is the New Thirty

The same old abandoned walks

Despair would be too dramatic, would call for action

Instead I am shading my eyes from the sun

The dark side of the sun spooling out its disenchantment

I am not the only drunk on the temple steps

The swirls of light around people and special objects

All forms of knowing and perceiving

This road has been hallowed by travelers

The children throw rocks at the embassy

I can write whatever I want

The clock, the wave, the bird, the star

Some very nice things have happened

And some not so very nice things

The Lava Life

I slept through the resurrection

I drank too much Irish whiskey and had to sleep it off

It was raining fire while I slept

I woke up for the war but then went back to sleep

When I asked you to marry me I was asleep

I slept through chemistry, philosophy, and law school

The kidnapping, the hostage crisis, and the release were a good long nap

I never woke up for my divorce

The alarm sounded but I was sleeping

I couldn’t keep my eyes open for the French Revolution

I was asleep when I lost my virginity

Wake me up before you come

I slept through Great Expectations, Little Dorrit, and Oliver Twist

I was late for my own funeral I overslept

While America was working I was enjoying a siesta

I slept through the Olympics

Remembrance of Things Past was written for insomniacs

I was dreaming I slept with you

I was dreaming when I heard you say “I love you”

They had to wake me up

I slept through ancient Greece

The sunlight was so bright and warm I fell asleep

The universe rotated on its axis while I slept

I had to take a nap to wake up

I slept through Paris, Barcelona, and Moscow

When they walked on the moon I was out like a light it was glorious

I was sleepwalking when I performed a triple by-pass
The Berlin Wall came down and there I was asleep

I hibernated in summer too

I’m sorry Your Holiness what were you saying I must’ve dozed off

The Ushers of the Exact Limes

At home in the caves of the sun

A perfect chest of drawers.

Ringed fingers.  The plausible ins-dead

Standing, soap flake galoshes

Essentially gardens, mythologies

Where the other animals read

After the lights go out, after

The war.  We shine up the lily,

The touch of feet silver the linens

And method.  The story of us

Tangerines every sympathy

Pursuance of limits

When parted.  To logic, a fig, flames.

Clouds and letters, blown.

If I could go where no one lives

And stare into oblivion,

It would be exactly as here and in this life.

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