a good world for ghosts.

grass lengthens in patches
through rubbled concrete
and everywhere shattered bottles.
cold filters are without cigarettes
and bags shred in bare branches.
a footprint in mud
but across a small field not even one animal.
the houses don't move with the wind
nor the people with the seasons,
everywhere signs are posted
even when only the clouds are passing.

headaches

Invasive species like the Peruvian Headache Beetle
ride into port in boats of Peruvian packing peanuts.
Poor regulation allows insufficient inspection and
bam.
headaches for everyone.
there are accounts of headaches in Roman medical writing
before much trade between Peru and Eurasia but
There were still Aurochs then and
they were loud.

Chicken words

Meat bird. Skin bone flesh fat. warm...cold....hot...cold. Eat. Suck. Taste. Bite. Chew. Gnaw. Gulp. Fly, eat, peck, flap, sleep, lay, cluck, strut, be. Feather. Down. Chick. Egg. Born. Died. Plucked. Sliced. Carved. Beheaded. Boiled. Salted. Stored. Cooked. Roasted. Picked, parted, clutched, grasped, shared... salty. Greasy. Succulent? Sweet?

Fragments

poems are
Fragments
the beginnings and ends  implied
by a lack
not like destructive arts, where the lump of clay runs out, the pencil nibs,
the song breaks silence
poems just sit
like fat toads under mud
   they might be rocks or dead
you could die without knowing and be alright.

Two years without...

Terrible loss.
Terribly lost.

Beware the private smile

The little grin at night's end,
Because you think you know a secret, like the name of a star: your desire and your need are indistinguishable.
It must then follow knowing, being - no need can be unmet in a just life. Who can turn from the sun?
Who, god or man, basked in love, would not blossom love?
no prize can be wished and not gained.
some hidden devil's mischief blocks us, else we would have our hopes.
To wake alone, to seek without finding, to grasp at air, to smile at night and mourn at dawn, these are beyond understanding.
To be drunk with love is to know the bitter world must be a dream, and waking is near.

Double suicide with a toy gun

He counted aloud
a gun is only an object.
I breathed hard.
death is an idea.
The hammers hung and they weren't like anything. They were themselves,
Too much themselves.
I regret it now, though I can regret it.
we were too much in the moment
And memory too little distinguishes
pretended terror from its eidol

Last night, awake for days, the world became painfully immediate. Small changes like a footprint on snow seemed monolithic. Moving through moments meant leaving one for another, and that brought on near sexual agony.
Pulling the trigger on a plastic gun, I shuddered with the imagined explosion
very near then and important
were your folded hands
and their movements.
tomorrow was too distant
I ate a small ball of snow like an apple
I flickered like a candle
And wished I had a different bravery.

"You're no good at planning"
No. I'll always drift
But never find you.

Other people have reactions
That goddam fucking lime is
greener than the table by a mile
Violent as guns
As the memory of her hand
Which other people held while I was
Where? Asleep? Asail? Or fucking?
writing? Action isn't action when it's far away.
Words...
If I were whole I'd

Two men walk into a bar and

"You left us speechless"
they shout to the bartender because she and their niece have one name
and I thought
"her cock in your mouth"
Shadows flicker under the fan
Hard thoughts like the hard smooth bar and words like beer flowing
the bar night dances
"hello" thank you "left me speechless"
(laughs)
sweaty cocktail alchemy
poured drunk swilled soaked in mats and left with lights out
like a bad punchline
Speechless

What secret?
Who?
a dancer under drapery
                        
      limbs               her
              branches
                               Shrouded
               
     dream clarity
             orange hair floats

                                 a full moon
                                        in
                                     water