Portraiture of a Coast

I was triumphant in my wandering
as a tool outside the shed
I layed under the skeleton sun
and rusted into lead.
I bestowed you my hands
like some souvenir
we wrote the words
of things unheard
and like a surplus
of Texas hay
I felt you in my bones.

You were born under
a wounded moon
some low month like july
you stood tall
with scraped up knees
starry from the falls
and like your moon
you remain wounded
like a beneficent sailor lost
and searching for the call.

These days I see life
through a scope
all the faces, so close up
all the people, small.
I was feeling once
and I was fickle twice
and I saw freedom
in the eyes of my father,
a ghost.
He faded into sinless laughs
by lips of calabash
parting like parched stalks
on a lonesome farmer's coast.

Written on a Playboy, May 1988

For a romantic in the cold,
there is only solitude and self-pity
harrowing in the body, hesitantly
pulling downward never painlessly,
in a cue dawdling always behind me.
At the top of the staircase,
all of the air in a square,
square, square, square
the cries echo corners and
you can not help but desire the bottom.
I do not want to fall but my eyes,
they have an impulsive love affair
with angles and air-
To give my fruitless carton
of a body some Freedom
from the ferocity of tomorrow.

The tenor of all the noised voices
dangling me on strings
this way, upways, no, no-ways.
Friends there is no room for your hospitals.
I will not fit into your hungry hands.
I live in fear.
I wish to be afraid of something real
like a loose mutt or a killer.
As a child I would pinch myself
to redirect the pain.
For there is no difference between
the past and now.
You are everything you were,
romantic or not.

I am still under the covers
with my nails digging
the tops of my hands.
And further still,
breathing the air feels
like a climb up the stairs.

Alas, Alack, FIN!

It is a dry spell, this lost love.

In the operandi of letting go
you are plagued with a
reverie that has dismissed
its judgements, its manners,
its debts to its own consummation.
This recollection of what has been
is but a severed sentiment
unable to see with the sun
in its eyes, unable to feel
even under the fullest of moons
and surrealist eclipses.
Even if Time weren't
some sculpture we climb,
the past would be inborn numb
like sleep walkers cradled
by their soft steps
tussling like babies utterly
unable to grapple the stretch.

The brooding memoriam
would be crippled to beg
for an ending unlike this.
What is to fear most about such ends?
I do not recall birth
but I will bask in the gallantry of my death.
If I could remain suspended
in the moment of my heart's ease,
I would wield the Albatross
infinitely, with fire
in the palms of my hands.

Alas, such bloodless flames
Alack, the bloodless end.

Confession of an Egoist

I was born pale
and fading like an old bulb.
I want to die this way,
colorless, with a constant
becoming of the air
around, just to dissolve
like a cube of sweet cane
gone, gone,
from the life as
a bird of paradise
spread like a Japanese fan.
Eyes all over me.

In the rarity of being unaware,
fleetingly negligent of
the backs of my hands,
lark hands, the same
lark skin as my neck-
I remember
in the womb I choked myself
into lending some flesh.
If I could just lay on top of you
we might stop breathing
long enough to love the air,
the colorless and constant
becoming of the air,
becoming of everything, all matter,
becoming of the reality bearing
of the becoming of my reverie.

What would you give to become the wind?
Cold with me, strong with me
across continents like a
continental lust for the surface
ennerving the tops of trees,
swinging in hard limbs,
morphing into water
and running down cliffs.
At times I look up and realize
the clouds are still moving.
In theory,
we could hide in these clouds;
but you, like those before,
will fade in the zenith of people
with their pallid operettas
and bastard eyes.
You were born alive and well,
alive and well.

OK,
I will give you the confession of an egoist:
I want to die alone.

Mother, tell me when you want your box back

Women
deny all sides of the box,
so it is the circle.

Jacob's Aurochs Full Length

Can you feel me in your spine?
The lonely ghosts climbing, comely,
Up, up
Jacob's ladder.
They breathe wind into your ears.
Soft wind in the tunnels that will retire
like maraschino on the tongue.
for you, I'll keep it whole.
My teeth will render secrets
like captive ribs protecting the heart.

Before we tasted, we felt in our spines
like Aurochs with their pastey wings
sweating in the sun.
Up, up,
the secrets they kept had a Florentine concupiscence.
For there is no animality to an angel.
They dance in spirit form.
They think in burning loins,
burning bushes, burning candles
with wax like slow skin.
Freaking out until it's whole.
They are blind angels, bending lights,
awkward angels one by one.
They are the Aurora!
The Roman dawn, the everyman dawn.
Old drunken stratagems that break their clam shells
They die again, again.
They never die, they close their eyes.

I have a secret:
You will not believe the Heaven of your mind.

Ange Gauche

All of the soft moths
die stiff in the jar.

Under the Pillow Again

In the presence of pain,
I see young faces
and watch them grow old.

Sleep is a Rose, the Persians say

I want to sleep in this grass
With my own arms wrapped
Like plants that have learned
To try in the dark.
This I can do with conviction
Like a caravan of ivory birds
Circling blackened poles
Constantly, constantly.

Autumn is summer
When you lay this still
Or when you love nothing.
It is disgusting how indecision
Cradles its babies into
The great mercy.
The world is hot and afraid.

Where is the bundled up ceremony
Of wandering bodies like nomads
Stoic and breaking in sweaters
And fat warm mugs?

Where is the blood trail?
I want to see my veins.
Where is the one with the body
Like a blade of grass?
I want to sleep in this grass.

I'm telling you.
Know that of which you do not dream.
Give up.

Together, the Caddish Limbs

Hands are not of the spirit.
They will betray you in real form.
When you are faced with the Freedom of falling,
they will clench to the vast cliff side.

Entre nous soit dit...

I.
All of the distant shapes
in photographs
are so raw and unserious
like raw meat or
meteors and hard things
floating through the galaxy.
The lines lead to openings
to black holes
and to primary places.
It pulls me upstairs.
do you hear the whispering?
It whispers back to me.

II.
I want to cup my hands around your ankles
Don't you understand?
I see your clothing in pieces.
Each piece a part of you,
each, apart from you
just nothing but singular.
God, I want to do your laundry
Fold you, dress you
Make my gaze sharp enough to hurt you.
Come to me with all your years of misery
I will offend you.
I know not of these things
but I want you to be infantile
from rebirth...
I know nothing.

III.
You will walk again,
you will write again with wicked fingers,
you will stay awake when you're tired
and you will sleep nervously
to the sound of new lungs waking
like good days.
Look at my objects
the tips of my hair are pre-historic
what, 5 years.
Fallen fossils
What, like my inner side
blazing.

Jacob's Aurochs Sweating in the Sun

Before we tasted, we felt in our spines.

Haïku for Lust

Fantasy will thrive
until you hear a medley
of the school girls coo.

Face of the Kali

Please, I have hope
As I meditate with my eyes open
I have sight.
I might pick up to read some Bly
But I'm still there, always there...

Hold, a beautiful girl walks by
Peut etre her 20s will
Be another ennerved puberty
Until a woman comes through
With a face like Boston wind
Burning the corners of the buildings.

I have found the most predictable spot
For a voyeuristic approach.
My earth picture
There are voyeurs and their pictures.
What is nostalgic
Is not what has been captured in portrait,
But rather what can be released in real time
Like looking up at the grey pencil in the sky
How it envies the sun.
I want to be with the eye in the sky
Obsessed with one center, obsessed
With my sister who looks like my Mother
And all the God glistening animals
The people with the right color combinations
And attractive jaws.

Have we compared ourselves to sharks?
They're suffering from solipsism and reincarnation
Underneath, inside, inside
Worthy places, all the years of night
And praying at the bottom of this ocean
For our mothers to bring the good cream.

When the death mamma descends
With her mouth open revealing sharp bones
The sharks will burst in her throat like ripe melons.
From this yearning, they have learned to see in the dark.
From the blood of the melon working in wet domes,
A woman is born.
The child of the death mamma sharpens her eyes.