continuity

We are all orphans                                               our own
brothers and sisters                                              children

On nights sacred
On nights profane
We press together
desperately

between I love yous
we take the time to write
love letters to our father
absentee

on certain days we read aloud his               
"check is in the mail" note           
on the fridge
set it to music
sing it beautifully
               
In winter we remember
he'll be back soon
from the store
We celebrate

As long as we have been ourselves
we have been
     alone
   together                                                           to gather
                                                                     
looking up
at the dark
with light in our eyes                                        complete
our warm hands
tightly
ready                                                                   already

Forgetting makes us present

Ay blessing of forgetfulness
If I heard every voice
Saw every face
As well as now as then

How could I choose
But love all
As I do love all
But only absence makes me faithful

Were they all with me
I could not leave them
Nor would I long for you

Thank God
For this constant despair

Without which I should be nothing
But happy

Instead
For the blessing of your touch
I pray

Instead
For the glimpse of the shadow of your smile
I toss restlessly

And when dreams come
Damn them for returning me to
Then

second snow - seconda neve

the conda navy, the conned navy, the conned knave, the fooled fool, in the fall of snow

it is a fine, dry powder of snow, a storm of sand in white
bouncing and clattering as the ground meets the grounds and so
a hissing singing static roar
never beginning or ending but being
as though it has never not snown

there are muscles of this body too which sing
of soreness or of use for what is soreness
what is use
what are these names of anterior and oblique,

of seizing and of releasing
there are those withing me
I have forgotten
how to hear
yet

there they are

even under the snow
the roots of things
are waiting

December morning ii

Standing guard over the morning frost
Lines of trees hold their
orange and red
Stubborn
 banners of war
Autumn unsurrendering

December morning

The sky is steel
Without variation
Like a mythic Alaskan fish
Circling the world
At the far edges, where the horizon crowds with buildings and winter trees
Only there can I see
Lighter blues, hints of pinks,
Clouds like coiled rope
Is it heavy with snow, this sky below which birds are wheeling black like wind-tossed winter leaves?
 Will it release, with a sigh, as a lover feeling whole again, reunited at end of day

Not not silent

I watched my children
Make war
For the right to despoil
My mother's grave
I watched my children
Burn one another
In furnaces
I watched my children
Shackle and Enslave
Their cousins
     then each other
          then
Themselves
Will you say
I should have reprimanded them
  cut their throats as infants
   drowned with their blood the violence
Of their hands
Will you say I should not have watched
All the while I was growing Chestnuts
In the earth of my garden

I ain't eaten

Can't Decolonize
What never was colonized
Can't Decolonize
What loves fierce loves hot never
owned anybody
Can't Decolonize
What takes the leather of the road
What has walked every inch of itself
Can't Decolonize
What feels the breeze feels other skins feels
my way in the world

Can't
Take out
what never took in their poison

 I got plenty fear
of those guns and tanks
I know to run
from those bodies
what pinned me down
locked me out
told me get in line
get on the bottom of the totem pole
(never bothering to learn your own ignorance, eh)
I FOUGHT
and BIT
and WAILED
and I did not win
but nor did I lose

And you can't take out of me
what never got put in
Won't submit.
Refuses to conquer

Will

Just be
and cease to be
And be again

old news

The stories we remember?
Are the stories we tell.
Not as they happened
Any more than what we see is what is
When I was a boy
Which I don't remember being, not like the photos, not like my parents would tell you
but there I was
and when the Challenger exploded
there was a spark which traveled up
outside the shuttle
inside which were all those hopes
and fears
and those in 7 bodies
And there's a roar of death as I write this. The animal who one day will come
for me
there's no faces on the shuttle
Need Another Seven
but I didn't know them - I knew they should have gone higher
and returend
I knew the stars were less mine
without them
I didn't know what the fires meant
How long they'd burn
how many bodies had burned before
those 7
all the bodies of the earth
I didn't know the bodies who burned in West Philadelphia
but I saw one boy
Was he my age? Older? Younger? He was being held. A news camera saw him
with my eyes
and I see him now
as a boy
for all I know then
I saw him as a brother
friend
other
was his mother with him
who is he now
more radical than I
Or am I
untethered from the dream of
freedom
that played on my old fisher price
Pete Seeger leading a sea of voices
WE SHALL
how did I see those faces then
how do I now
who was with him
and me in my room
as the record spun
As reagan said "I don't remember"
100 times
all these
happened
to me
at one
time

fragments, transcribed from notebook, c.2007)

Oh face!
That to my vision as a floating flower came
arisen through dark water to the sunlit surface
--
Alas! I have no sense for beauty,
you have proved me blind as a clod of earth.
Stepping from behind, your face revealed, radiant
striking me silent, staring in awe
I wondered that before I have not seen
you
--
Although we have studied in the same room,
for weeks,
and although your face is radiant, beautiful,
such that seeing you at my side I was awed
into silent bewildered contemplation of your features,
although even from across a crowded mile
you would stand out to me as the most fair
it is only today I have seen you, only now, only this morning
as you stepped to stand beside me, and laughed lightly,
your eyes shining
--
Not to have seen you sooner, I must be blind
or a fool, to have so long stared at soil in the presence of a flower
--
I have too many days dwelt blind
Too long by
A flower bright and fragrant in a garden grew
I stood hard by but in its shadow, never knew
(I stood unwitting by)
--
Yes, oh, I stare
I do not reason eidelons
or attend idols
--
Forgive me, I stare
I do not hold up eidoloons
or idols
I worship you now
who are b-
because you are beautiful
as I face you
and I love you for your beauty
my own desire loves you
as you lay on the early autumn grass
in classic pose, your side curving
body full against your layered clothes
I sit on the earth, in shade
watching as you stretch
and lay akimbo
in the afternoon sun
I desire
without will to pursue
--
Long I tended the earth and weeds of my garden
laboring in the loam, dirt caking my nails
but found one day a flower blooming solitary in
bright and fragrant adorning the green hairs of the earth
amazed I knelt, beholding still and silent, awed out of action

Now returning each day to the garden the rows are ragged
I ignore the daily work, and tear good plants to pieces
searching for my bloom, to stare

--
my garden passes, ruined and rotting
where once I labored, my hands caked in earth
Since I beheld you, beauty, flower, bloom
adorning the green hair of my old love
(adorning her green hair, my old love earth)
who now seems dull, her green jewels(hair /strands /wig) dun and false
obstructions to the sight of your bright face
which, starving (ravished) I each day return to view
where I, each day, starving, seek your face to view
trampling in my hunger the crops I grew
--
my passing glance your glance attracts
repeating after in my memory and playing out
a frame to t-
that glance remains in mind
and there I study it and overlay
on it the empty papers of my mind's eye
to trace/rub an image on the contours of your look
the hope I hold for g-
--
in passing by I found your gaze cast free
and caught it
thought to catch it glimmering
and lovely
and jealous hoard it close away
but catching I was caught
and now am lost
--
in passing you have lent me looks
that jealous I have hoarded holding close
those glancdes minted in my memory to print
your image on my empty hours between
so memory and hope your image bear
and your look I hold that you have lent and left
and cont?ixi? continue?
those visions spent
--
in passing you have lent your look to me
that in your look I love
and thinking to catch am caught
your glance has covered all my world
but only return only look again on this and break again my world with that lok
and I caught by thee
will wake and be free
--
my garden ruined, rotting to barren soil
where once I broke my hands with worthy toil
since I your bloom beheld

laboring, my face downturned to the black earth
with green strands /jewels my old love's brow adorn
which once I labored to
now seem dull obstructions to your scorn

with green jewels I my old love's head adorned
her body caked my hands, my downcast eye
thought only she had worth

my downcast eyes the green-strung earth beheld
which filled my daily labors, caked my hands
and seemed...

stars. starts.

This can of beer.
Open. Empty. Forgotten. Needing disposal.
Unremarkable in its blue and red and gold and white, in its shining and its matte,
its machine-perfect cylindricity,
warnings and measurements of volume and assurances of authenticity, all
without meaning
without distinction from
another can
object
moment
on the street it would be stepped over
here at the desk it has been gathering dust
and yet
it is less than a century old
as are its oldest brethren
the idea of its being
the metallurgy of its making not yet two centuries
metallurgy itself not yet 10 millenia...
this can is an infant and will die in infancy
not aged enough to merit a name

The Gift (unattached)

Even remaining still
We come around
To this place
Or that

Just right

We are cast from the garden
But return
Not through the gate
But by beginning there
Ever
Simple

The Gift

Even remaining still
We come around
To this place
Or that

Just right

We are cast from the garden
But return
Not through the gate
But by beginning there
Ever
Simple

 here again
I come down
With you

Who art new
Yet this old love
And delight
Ever was
Tis
Yours

Miracles of Morning (for S)

Framed in the vastness of the universe
   the sunlight first touches your face

                                  These                          
                                
Infinitely small                              moments 
Infinitely brief                 
Infinitely rare                                      are
Infinitely significant

Giving meaning 
To the sun 
Light
Time 
And
Creation

The doing
And the announcement of the deed
The anticipation of notice
An unpressed knee remembers pressing

I have accomplished
But still

The crickets sing again
And I

Dream new songs
Delivered by priests in white
"Life and light"

A friend today exclaimed
"Magnificat"

What house can hold
All this? The being
And desiring
The knowledge of contentment
And the lust to be made content

This greedy wave
At the shores of my past
Pulls me daily out to drown
In the teeming
Be

I'm not afraid of much but cause and effect
Rejection
Acceptance
Other transitions from x to y
And the other axes
Because every line cuts
A wedge between one and two
Every gap is infinite
All space
And we            are infinite
Which is a kind of lack
Sans finality
Thus
 beginnings and endings
Are so strange

Before I was both one thing and another
I was
 chaos or darkness or the swirling cloud
Tovu vbohu
And just because someone said
It is good
Doesn't make it so
Even if they made it so
Still it also isn't
I hold in opposition
A kind of strength
A kind of weakness
A mind of self
A bind of impression
Behind a mask: another
The lips that kiss themselves
But can not divorce

Others lips are a treat
Silencing each and each
In the flood

Even the most high things
Could not undo creation
It spun
Before
And it spun hereafter

Look no further than the world to know where god has gone
Defeated by a greater power
Retreated from being

Do I too grow weary
Wary
With each thought
Am I
Driven back by my creations
Become death
How else could it have found me
But by my face
And hand

What should that hand hold
Which can undo all
Is love a potential thing
Can it be offered
Without acceptance
Or is it turned by the deflection into two
Or three
The signal pattern. Photon wave
Was it always what it becomes
Time working in all directions
Forget, and
Voila

It has ever been
Not been

writing in water, evocation

I lie                                         between
                      don't we all                                                                              
memory                                    hope
                                                                           
                                                                                                                         
                         
                                                                                                   \/ocabunt
         we have impressed ourselves
                     in the rocks
                       and trees                                                                                   /\ocaverint

but can't resist

damnatio                         memoriae






                                                                        [nothing was here]





             edit

 make abridge
             over                                                                                      re
                                                                                                     vision                            /\/\
          troubled                                                                                                  visioun
                                                                                                          visio
We'll go down to the            river                                                                    videre
          go down           beautiful     the                                                               weid                          
                down       beautiful                                                                             wide
                              beautiful                                                                                river
                             river

We'll map the stones                                                                              and roots      stand      here
                                                                                                                on the riparian            and there
         return to the current                                      and                                    margins
     call it the same                                                                                                \/  /\
                                                                                                                       \/                   /\
name ourselves the same                                                                                         /\
                                     people                                                                               {[(birds)]}  /\

   All my ancestors                                                                                                  call
                                                                                                          have called            continue calling
drowned in the deeps  

          not me                                                                                                     vocaverant
                                                                                           vocant  
                                                                                            \/ocabant           /\/\
                                                                                             vocaverunt          
                                                between
                      don't we all          
memory                                    hope

                                                              {[(/\/\)]}

I still have love
although worn thin
stained in places
like the remains of an heirloom coat
I did not care for properly
or time worked its inevitable wonder
but this same object
is another object now
the luxury which warmed my grandmother
I carry as a handkerchief

recipe

none of these things are real
                                                of course
none of these                                           are
but I am                                                         anyway
in the kitchen
                             cooking
there is                                      an intermittent hiss
from the stove
where the water meets the blue and yellow flame
a scent too
from where I have piled lavender blossoms
to smolder
and the potatoes have boiled                                                  now
the pasta is still cold
a lemon is lonely on a board
yellower than the laminate counter
as yellow as the flames

I left it dirty         the board               wiped but unscrubbed
as though I were a cowboy
a cowboy    who                  zests               lemons
but             who is               to say            they didn't

Sans

As a stream of pale yellow pressed out of me

I bent to inspect

And in the stream were old words 

Histories,
 reasons
Phrases of Fagles' Iliad
 Other canon crystals

With all their supposed import

Childhood conversations corrupted through cloning (dream repetition, bragged assertions)

So many loves felt intensely

And intentions I swore were digested

All and more
 wept away in urinary tears
  Blood would be cleaner

I have swallowed living rivers

But I can not hold them

Any more than the earth

Mourning coffee

This day              (time being a painted pony)

        Which goes without me

 and I            (And observation making it so)         were   

  / Wereday : a transmutable dayman,   

/And the words transform with the /apostrophe which are moons of the word  

/("We are" [but are we])

                    

doing well together 

                  (and would I do well to get her)

                           (Would she have me)

Having begun

        Or continued 

After a sleep

        (Where the sun dreams I cannot go)

And risen

                  (Despite old satan Xeno)

And walked on

               (I having marched in place and the 

                 Cosmos beneath me giving way)

And the diner sandwich

        (despite the ketchup <... in connemara>

   (I having asked for none and yet received)

     (Thus it is sacred ketchup. Dyed for me)

And the coffee

   ( come from the sweat of the earth )

     (Come From The Toil of 1000s)

       (Alchemy perfected at last)

        (Blood and Base made High)

And bus and train spun in my orbit

And I cometlike 

Stardust

Streetdust

Galactic (though my coffee was black)

               Traveler

                             Of

      *                 PHILADELPHIA

  wherein we orbit the Son of William Penn

The son being eternal (unto its end )

The penn being eternal (unto its end )

From planet NEast

To planet West

Until 

         In a moment (as all events)

         In an instant (though the coffee was brewed)

    Without warning (though inevitable to the eyes of history, as all tragedy)

   The coffee rebelled (retaining the homeopathic vibrations of exploited labor)

And traveled (in the way of capillary adhesion and cohesion)  (In the way of electric charge) (in the way of pressure dynamic) (in the way as scientists would say of "water is wet") (in the way of alchemical hermetic magnetic heat and cold) (in the way of ironic movement) (in the way of manifestation out of the infinite void og potential states)

From my mouth

To my nose

Whereon

In a sputtering snort

Was made a day

With me in it

And it was not good

This is just unacceptable

Those plums
Were my breakfast
As you surmised
What the fuck dude
You need to move out

Gods of simplicity 2

                                                                                do
   Before the detonation

              (which outside time is not before)

The bomb is like a note of music

                                 or like the string

        Unstruck

What is it to be

Complicit in time

                                          la

Only contemplating immo tion

From the crest of the wave

There are faces in the sea

Not the faces of the living

Looking up from before the pleistocene

                     at our contemplation

The light between us and them

Is particulate 

One

  One before two

And the deadly flash 

And black rain

We see             one another

      Through time

Make music Of the order 

which makes their faces ours

Which defines their features

Burns away all possibility

Sets one note 

One key

C become

Death 

Every bomb we have imagined

Sings in the air

Every child of our generations

Finds harmony

Time moves the song

And the light

And the fire

Gods of simplicity 1

That still thing
Orange juice in a glass
Even at a moment
We diffuse it
Into three
Past present future
We are the particle participant
The wanting wave
We wait
Even when the train has arrived
Ohhhhh One
Is many
               Run
That glass has broken
In this poem
Is volcanic sand
Is stardust at the end of all cold expansion
But between lines
What is it
Barely Orange
Cooling or heating
Invisibly
Suspension
Indifferent to every pattern
Even as I am
Between two thoughts

I took a step and thought
   "Not bad"
I liked to revisit them
    Smiling
                            Unsure
I'd bring them to the park
      To see who noticed
Did I ever love you
If that one day
You wouldn't take my calls
                       I've since had each again
Of our conversations
      Many times
They play out
                          The same
But my opinions
                                Decay
At any rate
                     If you saw that one step
You'd know me
                                                                  As I do
I'd take it again

On the day your sister died
And in the park with the swans
And in bed after
                               Miserable
                     I'd have that step to count on

And not press you
                Unless  you liked that step

But how can one be sure
I'll take it again
Again
Here:
Is it ours
                To 2 too tw
Remember
         Won't you

Again

Old notes for a sonnet

have stared and studied love

Squinted and marveled and made all my focus the little elements and large motions 

Of 

But in my memory*

All eyes

All feet

All kisses

Burn one flame*

Melt in the flame of my memory to one

Grotesque amorphous body barely seen

A waxing monster in the shadows 

Thighs

Where lips are looked for 

Or a laugh

When the back of the neck is sought 

No hair

Until hair is conjured

No hand to hold

But a hundred hands together

When hand is spoken

Despite my memory

I long for you

Ever surprising comfort

Refuge from the haunting

Of your *own shade

idolatry/renewal

Thou
         you
Shall
         will
                    have make keep name become create hold
no other                    
gods
but


because                             all the time
                   there were         no more
                   then every
                     day new gods
                                    men
                    announcing themselves
                                                 
and enough
         was enough

 tyrants!

our gods are our own
       we  are
    ourselves

we all were slave-kings
we all have killed

     we shout                            to god
                                          from        god
                                              each other

         no                               make gods of me!
                                                      yes
        no

the Last Surviving Graffiti of Alexandria

Dear most of you. I hate you. Shut the fuck up. I resent you. You don't deserve success.
You can already survive. Beyond that you're just shoring up insecurity. Fucking make some room. But no. You won't. Your tiny success is why we all fail. I'll eat you. Before I die. In a perfect world. You'll burn. In this world I'd be caught too. I'll burn too. I burn now, just thinking it.
  I leave you alone.
I love you though. Some of you sometimes. And want to kiss your hair. Because I like your little moan. That time you appreciate a moment. The rest of the room let it go. But I shuddered. And wondered if it's the same moan as in private pleasures. Which I'd like to offer. But then. I'll have too much. Of you. Of life. I'll hold it. I'll need to burn. You'll burn me. Or need me. And I'll want to offer. So I'll grasp. For us. And they'll burn me.
     I leave you alone.
I'll sit. And think of you. Think of me. Of them. Fucking and burning. Hate and love. I'll wait. Until the moment after wanting. Until the other fire.
Have you heard me moan? Enjoying a moment? Did you hate me then? Or imagine me under you? What fire do you have for me? What fuel? What air? And where is it written?
I am without ink. You without pen. They without me. We print our own words. No one reads them.
I'll burn my own library. Twice. And bury it. The smoke will carry me.
There is no sense in it.
My books were not much.

"Unsung" (layout incorrect on mobile page version)

                   "I am not loved"

Each night 

                  "I am not loved"

repeated

                  "I am not loved"

 in sol                                      ace    at              Sol, Ace, I, 1, beginnings

                                                       itude

                 "I am not loved"

 burning                                                                      light in dark 

                "I am not loved"

 but not                                   announced                       sound 

                   "I am not loved"

 lest it be 

                " I am not loved"

 denied

                                             Those things which are silent

                                                  are most true

                                                     

                                              In the null set

                                                 They shall be uncalculated

                                             

                                               And 

                                                   Universal

            

dissidents in the house of plenty

That we are dissidents in the house of plenty
That we lacked something and our eyes were opened
That seeing, we surrendered
or surrendered something
Or of the world or of ourselves
Or yielded a desire
That we might keep room for seeing
But not enough
Never enough
Hungering makes us mad;
Wanting, resentful;
Having, guilty;
That the keepers should hold out to us an apple
Who have taken our horns
With promises of protection
They can not keep
We smell their sweat, see their eyes dilated
Darting
We are animals as they
They as we
We know their fear
as ours
But not what to do with it
Or ours
So we tear at ourselves
that Sometimes
In the night
And we deny each other small things
Certain names;
Words;
Ways
Each other first
Then ourselves
that We sneak some nights
To the larder
For a forbidden snack
A ham sandwich
Or a coca cola
Hide the evidence
Dream of bottled blood
that We curl sometimes
At the windowsill
Remembering when they could be opened
Or were those stories
Or also dreams
We wait for the house to fall
Promising ourselves we will laugh in the cold night
Promising each other stars
And forgiveness that can not be given now
Not here
Not to those who like us
Live

envy and jealosy for art from the comfort of an unmade bed

their poems are elegant

beautiful

universal

mine clunky

stumbling

those poems for allende

for hebron

for the wars between love and cruelty

these poems which circle like vultures

around a dead certainty

i have not traveled to see

the shrinking green

on the hills of jerusalem

i will not fight

but stay

immortal to my death

eating chocolate

thinking of sorrow

dreading cold

at last, at last

I grew up so grateful
to live free
at last
in the days beyond the end of
all the terrible things

I rejoiced to pray in ranks of the last
to have suffered

so lucky to know their stories
their struggles
before the sun dispersed
their final night

so lucky
to learn the songs
of the 60s
when hand in hand
so many rose
to lift me up

imagine! their smiles!
all our ancestors!
glowing
holding flowers,
blue bouquets,
 celebrating the dawn of this
eternal day

an accident with teeth

I bit through the apple
I bit through the dough
I bit through my finger
I bit through your faces
I bit through your names
I bit through your demographic
your condemnations
your sounds in the moment
I bit through all of you
 and all of me
again and again
finding the gold purity
of discovery
and escape
flooding my self
with my self
to endure the birthing
of life and death, of no longer anthropomorphizing
my own heartbeat
but saying
Oh
I bite
have bitten
will bite
louder than the bark
of 30 years
long enough sense for saplings to grow strong
but they have no memory of planting
no sense of past
fragility
they won't
want
old birds
I will nest
in the branches you have dropped
in my awn
awld
twigs
I'll nest
I'll cuckoo
replace myself
with myself
I'll be
at the end
the egg
the root
I never
could

cood

c

All the winds that blow
can't shake my hand
from my trunk
can't rattle

all the birds

from my branches

all the rains

can't cry

my last
 leaf

I'll shimmer and sigh
a song of asteroids
 barren then bejeweled
then barren again

I'll reach to each of you
in turn
and prime
and offer

into eternity
a promise

of a new leaf

I'll cry

for all the flowers
unbeed

let's

make honey

to the sunshine

to the final day

I'll bite you

and the milky way

I'll swallow

with every star

your name

because you said

yes

10 attacks on truth

With my eyes closed and right palm pressed to my brow and bridge of my nose

there is a double negative

to let the light in

from other days

those days though what are they, haven't they traveled as long as I 

aren't we companions, all these days

why should they float wraithlike above me

or haunt behind or beckon ahead

why are we not infinitely deep

together

I have never remembered any light

it must stop with me

I must be the end of all light

the horizon of events

I pass through

I have never been any 

but death

and dying

how should I distinguish

the death of moments

from the death of all

All our revelations

are of those truths we tell ourselves in mudra repetition

wringing our hands

while other stories move our tongues

what poetry turns out our digestion

what song reveals our flaming dragon disease

breathing fire from colon to comma

destroying the towers 

my build of bricks

until I speak your truth

because it is no different

until I reach 

without permission

into your heart

blood salvation

each pursuit each obsession each turn of a page each new mouth

kisses and forgets

sucks itself

wishes for other words

the world we inhabit is so small

and the edges 

are poems

blake and beckett both found truth

in shit

the undigested flower 

is not worth praise

when I regret 

it is not missed action

but lost attention

that a particular shape of pouted lip 

or sigh 

was not forever watched

impossibly 

and regret of the impossible

is not regret at all

but resentment

what else is memory 

but returned mail

so the poems continue

with birds or windows, with the unnamed you, with the battlecry of longing, with lies on lies

I have no singularity

no window to a sole thing

no illusion

but desire

desire

a hungry ghost

a phantom pain

a scar fading

a falling drop of venom

my watchword is "no"

and love has come out of it

I am so sure death will not come for me

that I wait 

whole seconds 

to devour my love