Lines Escaped from Lyrics

The mystique of interpenetrations
when alone is so much
more together
alone…

To serve your target eye
or fall to the conversant me
in all peripheral
extremities.

I’ll convalesce in madness from afar
or hold my sanity
inside a luminescent
jar.

My bounding was too sensible
because too mad for you
—my compromise with rhythm
had to leap its ruinous dive

to become the essence
of the lover
alone and swimming
backwards

though bare and thinking canyons
with negligees on trees
speared flowers
for the moon,

whose play is far too large
for humans and their grieving,
their need to fly away
in pairs

to not become responsible,
to lose something
and say that they’ve
been found

having so deprived themselves
of love
they find it
in another

who looks at them
with eyes that hold the world
but crave to know themselves
through other worlds

in smirkings
of a moon
that bares
its scars.

Still, horses cross the sky
and even I must carve my
naked purple
out of moon,

my love comes from
adjacent room
a million miles
within

but even she,
despite her
otherworldly blooms,
immortal songs,

who’s waited outside time
to breathe as one,
must bless me with
forgiveness first—

I the holy
stand before
confessor priest
so I can feel.

Sonnete/Godluster

You speak and hear but let us be the night.
In sight of your gorgeosity we know we own it
'Tho we idolize the voices that you use
And think we hear what your ears can't convey.

The world of birds and trees cooperates
That we make all these sounds and call them singing,
Because we still believed that we were beasts
Not thoughtless Gods who had forgot our other.

All that's left of you's a gesture, a hollow bead of notes;
You come forth like a figure out of stone
-- We call it art -- finally a thing
That can perhaps withstand our understanding.

You would be all too easy to find
-- Impossible to know -- unless
You swirled your dress round nothingness.

I pretend you don't exist, to dream you real.

At Mead Swamp

Two geese hit the still pond
like stones from a muscle-bound skimmer
and don't miss a step in their dance

The thistle has finally turned red

These geese would be lost without people

The Softness of Spring

New York
speaks gibberish
because it is so very old.

It deserves all its jewels
to cover up the scars it has endured
from a lifetime of watching
ground balls go under
the glove of the shortstop
over and over;
a lifetime of so much hope.

The only thing it is good for anymore
is to teach the young
with a kindly kick to the teeth
and a bill for how much it costs to be wrong
—the best way of learning—

and I, unbelievably, am young.

The Thought of Mexico

"Why, why, why" --
Don't you know that every answer
                                    leads to me?
There are no rules for how life is
                                    supposed to be?
All engines lock at times,
Complaints are barely read
                                    except as loud
                                    and foreign
                                    favors to you.
Do you really want entitlement
                                    for miracles?
Does that not defeat the point
                                    that there is something more
                                    behind this raggy, threadbare,
                                    see-through screen?

Something always holds you to the light
When all the engines rust in fallow fields,
When all the voices grate like friends
                                   who disappointed
                                   years ago,
When information swirls
                                   back to the source
                                   in wakes of chaos.

It's when you think things aren't
                                   as they should be
You must remember me
                                   I'm only what is
                                   always, always
                                   there.

Another Typical James Tate Poem

It's the word "chasteness" that the Earth hates so much.
That sound, for instance, is not a wheezing fridge
but a cricket accompanying dripping water.
Good thing I didn't kill it!

The cool winds are whipping the spring into shape.
Feeling at home is only a matter of getting the knobs right
in my Mansard-slate room at the top of this lit toy-train set
with names like Quotient of Pain (bread), Pinocchio's Pizza
and The Connecticut Muffin far, far below.

I am annoyed by the sound of my own breathing,
thinking it's another voice vying for attention
now that I'm the slattern catholic about incoming noises
be they door-handle gears, or geese cheering base-hits,
or the way the treetops moan each day at sunset.
I wish that you were here sometimes
to make me feel insane again, with your Chinese water
treatments and your entrances as sweeping
as they are traumatic to doors. A pitch-perfect prisoner thinks
these pirate broadcasts are catastrophies
to endure vicariously, when each and every semi-hemi-quaver
not approved by the FCC
is a reminder to be free...

like the postcard on the fridge from Mount Estes
reminds me of the grocery list, the door jambs, slippers, batteries
I need to start my new life
that has no past or future.

I look for clues in the entrails in garbage cans
and out comes my new friend the cricket
with what looks like a key to the moon.

The Financial System Explained to a Five-Year Old

Paper covers rock
Scissors cuts paper
Rock crushes scissors

Money covers gold
Trust cuts money
Gold crushes trust

Green Curtains in the Closet

The insomnia house
with its working-class planks,
now bequeathed
to a family from Queens,

while my fat candles burn
in Victorian spires
filled with Indian drums
and bookshelves of poems.

This facade that seems so frivolous
is the shell of my protection
for my own most peculiar religion
(the only kind that matters,
the one that accepts all others
(because it is so crazy
and so true to me)).

The birds and the squirrels
who were calling me away
are now looking in through my windows.

The town with the last reputation to uphold
wakes up in the glow of spring's promising

and I sleep
right through it.

In a Moment of Reversibility

The angels are shocked
at the blondeness of the wheat,
the horizontality of the trees,
how white the pines in morning light become.

Their customary purples
cannot describe this scene,
how things don't need to move to have a being,
how they're lost in some perpetual forgetfulness
where eternities are temporary, and continual,
how they have to make some pact with rocks and grass
and rivers that with their mirrors wash away.

The sounds these things make
are what longing feels like,
as if there's something real
to threaten who they are.

And then the angels feel relieved.

Of Rocket Scientists & Hedge Fund Managers

They think 'til every second is perfection
They strain 'til every moment is more pure
They think so hard to earn their lives some reason

For only in their minds is some protection
Building to forever some vast sewer
They think 'til every second is perfection

They navigate the poles, collect the seasons
Have every guidepost marked along the tour
They think so hard to earn their lives some reason

They circumscribe all peoples into sections
Apportioned 'tween the greater and the fewer
They think 'til every second is perfection

The borders that they make are grounds for treason
To teach the young who cross to be mature
They think so hard to earn their lives some reason

They calculate by hand precise directions
But even then they really are not sure
They think 'til every second is perfection

They tolerate some crying within reason
Will let some longing sighs remain obscure
They think so hard to earn their lives some reason

Erections for destructions for protection
The greatest minds find lightning bolts to seize on
They think 'til every second is perfection
They think so hard to earn their lives some reason

New Canaan Morning

A sunrise of pink lips
the lavender line
between love and lover
a wry smile
opening to forever.

A red opened bloom
new from the hibiscus
I drove here last night
in driving Easter rain,
the last thing to move
after I burned all the boxes
instead of the innocent house
and the only thing living they say.
She spread her leaves out
the open car window
and didn't complain
she was far too large really
for my car
but along the way she asked me to sing
"The Girl in the Other Room,"
the one that explains it all
while never once losing its cool.

This morning, my eagle's nest
pimped with my moments
glistens in infinite quiet
till I walk and it responds
with how large I am,
it's like a Studebaker long dormant
in a millionaire's garage
has been tuned up at last
as if time hadn't passed
(as indeed it hasn't).
At last I can live like a human being
crooked walls and golden-age appliances
notwithstanding.

What the Angel Said to the Insomniac

That sound is not the train horn
it's the universe trying to speak.
Without longing
what purpose would love serve?

Last Supper at Gaymoor

At a certain evening light
Connecticut gets creepy
for history's too full
and has never been resolved

Three Poems

Equinox
The birds are singing
The snow is flying
First day of spring

What the Light Says

My advantage is
I travel fast
so you think first
of the thing being illumined
not the source that gives it light.

Closing Thoughts from the House
I don't care

what TV shows you watch

or how loud your arguments get

or the chaos your children cause

with their saxophones and erector sets,

I care how the garlic is sliced to honor its life

and how the pasta is stirred when water boils.

I don't care about your dining room furniture set

or the giant swap-meet urn with nothing inside of it,

I care about the length of children's laughter

and how often you have an orgasm.

Just give me some spackle and furnace filters

I don't ask for much, just love and respect,

shoes taken off, clothes put away,

everything up off the floor,

cleanliness not Godliness for me.

I don't mind the weather and the dust

but the bannister, oh boy, when it sways

it's like you are taking my back out.

Don't think because you take care of me that I'm yours

just because I can't react in terms you'd understand,

but then again, neither do your children

and you take care of them, sometimes think

you own them. Well here's the thing:

somedays, when the wind blows through the attic

we share secrets adults must never know. 

A First for Me: A Poetry Reading Video

I finally joined the 21st century by getting of those fancy smart phones, and playing around with it I noticed I could make a video of myself, so I thought it would be appropriate to read this poem from 2007...

The Scream Heard As A Whisper

"Fortunately for us Van [Morrison]'s romantic bliss didn't last too long." - Joe Smith, President of Warner Brothers Records

Art is nothing more
than the humanizing of divine engines.

There's beauty in what appears to be loss,
a blanket instead of the girl

and truth in what appears to be hidden,
the betrayal of lovers before their children.

Morality protects one from self-doubt
but it is an illusion,
art tells us,
the eccentric opposite of what we're told to do
might be the only glimmer of sanity we have.

The Bakery Shop Chimney

I know its face will remain white
when I say my courage of truth
but I also know the nature of reality
will have been changed.

I know its breaths of smoke
are nothing but an illusion
still I look, and with me the universe
sees what's real within it.

I know its imagined ovens and unknowable fires
give some comfort of certainty
but the gold they provide is not bread
but mystery.

Some Implications of the Piri Reis Map

The polarities are melting,
glaciers flow like vast unclogging toilets,
and an albatross on a stony promontory
emerges for the first time from its nest
to learn all there is to know
about the ground
until it finally finds its eight-foot-wing true nature
and flies without the need to land again
from the Chrysler Building’s feathered spires
as from the pyramids, and below its windows,
like love, a flow, not black and yellow cabs
but Emperor Penguins tobogganing inland
to incubate eggs in what is now the most hostile place on Earth,
the South Bronx.

Everything has a purpose, towards a larger order, a larger justice;
it takes 1,000 lemmings a day
to keep the Snowy Owls in cubicles in love;
polar bears rip manhole covers off to paw at seals;
on an old New Jersey coastline
five million walruses lay on one beach
and bulls fight to the death
in front of the children.

Seaweed hangs like banners inside Madison Square Garden
as kelp waves from the rafters of the old Grand Central Station
to disguise the sharks and bottom-feeders who battle on the floor.
Killer whales can fit inside the subway tunnels now
to feast upon translucent grunts
swaying like no dance troupe
peeling back the blooming onion veil
in a universal spiral that furls and then uncorks
and baffles the armored sawfish
who subsist on rainbow smelts and hake hag slime.
The octopi climb cathedral walls in deft pursuit of mussels;
the black eels chase pink pogies through barnacled art deco;
dolphins circle round the tank that was the UN Building
- they like its peaceful vibe, and besides, they can hunt
the hammerhead sharks that lurk on Dag Hammarskjold Plaza;
tautog, cusk and pout
with eyes so blank and purposeless
all leverage in on a grouper’s food
to try to gain a crumb, and they all join
each others’ conversations, completing thoughts
with a wave wand of their tails;
and the dogfish swim the streets in the most
outlandish costumes, but no one blinks an eye
unlike in LA, where everyone wants to be discovered, here
everyone wants to disappear.

The Times Square lights have crystallized in mid-air
and even the headline reels have become frozen in time.
The Jesus Petrel minds the shop on the top of the Empire State Building
while shags roost on the ledges watching white wolves track musk-oxen
down the tundra hills of reddened Central Park;
the beluga blissed out molting over stones like a loofa
have gone much further north, past 86th and Columbus Avenue,
the caribou click their electric antennae
like no bulls or bears before could ever do;
there’s starfish all down Broadway,
sea urchins in the Bowery,
oyster beds at the Waldorf Astoria,
torpedo rays along the Battery,
sea horses run at Aqueduct,
skates glide like Rockette skirts through Rockefeller Center,
tuna in the Meadowlands are eating soft sea grass,
snails cling to the Village walls quivering in their shells,
bluefish are getting schooled at the project bball hoops,
but there are no fish in Chinese restaurant tanks,
some lobsters though are skittering through FAO Schwartz
and some are at Lincoln Center, it doesn’t much matter,
for their lives are far too natural for them to have a care
about the subtle structures of their templates.

The blue whale at the center of town
breathes in every fact with the plankton,
and unknown lips are kissing
the gifts of this remembrance
and the blowhole breath, having formed it
into a variable of useful truth
can exhale now something of its original state,
what no longer must be solved,
not scrambled as it was
when it was sought.

There’s no need any more for lox or jewelry,
newspapers or cigars,
vodka or watches,
ermine or guitars,
for the people are
somewhere else,
living with the Gods
they thought were killed
instead of grief.

Before the Self Finds Itself in Resistance

Crocus and frost
the kind of a day
between waking and sleep
where memory no longer warms
but hope has yet to seed
the kind of a day
where the earth is the same
without life as it is with it
when shadow and sun have reached
a kind of compromise.

One look inside the mirror
of the still and silver pool
and time disappears
and, with it, mourning.

The Reification is Proceeding Apace

I.
One glance unglues me,
the chemical question mark,
so I, insoluble, might fit, or
the exclamation point at my core
with outward roar that knows no limit?

My breath is a body of effortless form,
my being is light as language, and within it
a glimmer of me not yet swallowed whole
so I can still see that glimmer of you

in the fields where quanta grow
as the mind's dodecahedrons
create it all
so the heart can feel
itself
(all can grow)

with the lover always further away, elusive and luring,
the chase and play, the universe empty enough for that.

II.
The constriction of time and space
is the reason we have free will.
The lights on wet streets
talk to each other
and all of us are still waiting...

The Atlantean Hangover

The voice doesn't care
how listeners respond
- so much eccentric orbit each perspective -
but the mind that let it go, become another hearer
puts on penitential robes
to feel the slightest gasp
as thunderbolts from Michael.

Some Reflections on Freedom

Dedicated to Dr. Robin Smith

The prison guard is as innocent as the prisoner
yet such anger issues through from behind the bars
at behavior far too cruel and disrespectful,
that such could be regarded as a kind of love,
a part of killing numbers, as penance for a crime
he didn't even know at the time was committed...
Somehow they did all the judgement for him
and with that pulled inside
the feelings he could not bear to recognize:
the shame, the guilt, the resentment,
from remembering what it was like
to be a bullet that was loaded in a gun -
how it kept popping back out
no matter how strong it was shoved in,
how God will pay a heavy price for that.

Door

The moment between
spring is coming, oh no
and spring is here, oh yes
is the moment we free ourselves
from angels.

Through a Small Window

I woke up to a foot of snow
and no old life to pull at me;
the trees are stuffed with cotton now,
the houses packed in foam.

The wind is mad at something
but it finally is not me;
I watch it torture branches
and sip my tea

as bombs of snow go crashing down
dissolving as they fall.
Each snowflake with its own dance
finds its own way to touch ground

as each navigates the space
'tween earth and heaven;
a silent song of sifting snow
takes form from all of them

because that space is empty
and singing is what comes between
the giver and the gift.
I hear the train - a miracle,

there's no need for a me at all
until I hold one snowflake
with my eyes and they all vie at once
for each one to be noticed

and what had seemed so soft and still
becomes a universe
exploding into all its pearls
then necklace coalescing...

It's endless, notwithstanding what the neighbor
blowing driveway snow away
and pausing to talk with the mailwoman
about the weather might say,

for they are no closer to me
than the snow, despite what it seems;
it's all impossible - far away
except inside my dreams.

The Drone of Filibusters,The Filibuster of Drones

"The drone industry is pressuring regulators to loosen restrictions on decades-old unmanned plane rules, which are still applied because of the drones' high crash rates. But they are considered model airplanes, so we have the spectre of multi-national corporations applying for hobbyist licenses...Yet, when one [a drone] gets in the way of a commercial airliner, as happened in Brooklyn two days ago, no one knows whose drone it is."

"These predator drones were authorized for border protection and national defense and now they're loaning them out to local police forces without any debate... 'We don't call them in for everything,' said the local [Brosset, North Dakota] police chief."

"Drones can snap pictures far longer than airplanes."

"Now they can monitor if the magazine you are reading is offensive to public officials"

"Just because they can see everything you are doing in your hot tub in your backyard doesn't mean they have a right to look."

"Some of these drones weigh less than an ounce. When is there a problem, when they're 2,000 feet in the air over your house or ten feet away from your window?"

"Are these drones being used with warrants? Do citizens outside their homes give up their constitutional rights?"

"How long can they hold the drone data before using it against people?"

"Signature strikes [drone kills] on the Constitution party convention could be very effective since they've already said such party members might be terrorists."

"More evidence is required to do a wiretap than a targeted killing..."

"I don't want to wait around for the memo from the President on whether the low threshold for drone kill strikes abroad would be applied on American soil. I want the Senate to write the memo telling him."

"If you are in a cafe sending an email to your cousin in the Middle East you shouldn't have a Hellfire Missile dropped on you. That's not due process of law and not a legal standard."

"If we follow the official explanation for why the underage American citizen was assassinated that he 'should have chosen more responsible parents' then we've set a pretty low bar for our killing program."

"When Sen. Wyden asked nominee Brennan directly if they intend to kill Americans on American soil he said 'We need to optimize transparancy and optimize secrecy.' That's a direct quote."

"The AG says the 5th amendment doesn't always apply when we are at war. Who are we at war with?"

"No evidence or authority ever is released after these people are targeted and then killed. How can due process be administered in private?"

"How many people on the disposition matrix (targeted killing list) have been already killed? How many names have been added to the list?"

"Are we supposed to be placated when the President tells us he hasn't killed any Americans yet but he might? That he doesn't intend to send Americans to Guantonimo bay without due process of law as enemy combatants? That's not good enough."

"Why can't the White House end the debate by saying or tweeting they're not going to kill domestic non-combatants? Their non-answer unfortunately means that they think the 5th amendment is optional."

"A war without end and a constitution without limits leads to an endless imperial presidency"

—Quotes from the Senate floor on the evening of March 6, 2012 by Rand "McNally" Paul, a curly-haired Jimmy Stewart Senator from Kentucky doing an olde-thyme filibuster to prevent Americans from being randomly killed by the US government, in what was the longest continuous display of common sense in post-war American congressional history.


Our hearts are now so large
Our oneness is so immanent
The aliens use drones
To keep a closer eye.

We know that it is envy
Fuels the watching from the skies;
We want our backyard hot tub
Friend surveilled by insect spies

That criss-cross every inch of earth,
Each window with their sights
And look like model airplanes
Veering closer to girls' skirts.

They're there to kill us all, they say,
Because that makes us look,
For they too want to be adored
And thought a part of us

For we are all just aliens
And we all are terrorists
Trying to make sense of this
Enchanted and forgiving place.

To know that it is overseen
By God as well as Satan
And that we may be taken out
For no particular reason

Provides some comfort and relief
That we can feel some working
Of gears that shift above our head,
A gentle, silent whirring.

Waiting to Land

To make sense of it all
I created a story
and because it was a story
it was true
and because it was true
it was a lie.

How quickly has my life
become another lifetime,
the mirrors so I could
perceive myself
now portraits
of imaginary kings.

My Appearance on the Type of Jack Show

Join the mirth with Jack, Rhyann and myself in our without-a-net colloquium on internet poetry that went on for a couple hours after the recording devices were turned off.

We waxed polemic with glittering generalities on the online poetry world that included some love for my sponsors: Shay's Word, The Storialist, Walking Man, Sojourn(al), Photographs from a White Space and of course Type of Jack (cue right rail, please)...

Another Poem About My Wife

If a goon comes to my door
to throw me on the street
because I must pay for
those toiling years of love:
my careful repair,
paint for the sun,
landscaping stones,
of making my home more beautiful,
doing things for others as you would
have them done for you,

the gift I felt for my gift
was immeasurable.
So to see my landlord
pull up all the stones,
blacken down the walls,
take back
the damaged mind
he'd left behind,
there must be something more that I still owe.

And if those goons do show
my son says it's all cool,
the luckless on the streets
in cardboard homes
have Obama phones.

Light Into the Mine

This house doesn't tolerate the blues
but if you listen hard enough
to what the trembling floors are saying
it's a gospel celebration,
the rafters are a pyramid
volcano of light.

The words are so tragic,
the notes so rich with pain
but if you close your eyes
the long-dead child
that you used to be
will look at you with eyes
that shine light
on being human,
on finding the gift
in the illusion
of a world gone hopeless wrong.

Sparks

All you can see
in a beautiful face
is a soul.

Newfield Elegy

Port Chester in the morning
has a quiet, blue-grey light,
the stillness of the river
nearly glints.
They said that this was Springdale,
some tradesmen and a mill,
a florist and fishmonger side-by-side
a Catholic cemetery ringing Darien
and the train horn ubiquitous
no matter where you stand.
The closed and dingy now familiar
with the sun moved to a nearby town
and I a piece of driftwood
on a slate-blank foamy tide.

The church is wrapped in scaffold nets
like some kind of cocoon,
the only thing renewed
across the plank and shingle skyline.
I should add to my "to-do" list "grieve"
but memories pass on their own schedule
like tree-buds re-awaken
outside of time.
Trying to will these people
of the Cape Cod cul-de-sacs
to be somehow less selfish
only showed how selfish I can be
to expect unnatural things
from human nature.

Where the wave lands
I can't know,
for to let go
and somehow float
beyond the wake
is gift enough;
no ships to clutter up my view
and redirect my hopes
from the purity of the horizon,
the endless catapult of clouds,
and a sun that's always closer
than the ghosts that pass for faces
in the crowd.

If Death is the Mother of BeautyWhy is the Mona Lisa Smiling, Thinking that the Sphinx is a Buzzard?

It is because we are immortal
that the present moment is all there is.

Notes from Inside It All

There is no difference,
the sun outside
and the sun within,
the diamond as prize
and the diamond where the heart is

but oh the horror
when everything
one kisses
is oneself!

When the universe is
wide enough
to be nothing
there are still two dancing.

Song Video: Down Confetti Road

Still Life on a Moving Train

At the entrance of cold
water Pisces
the slightest of snows
as juncos echo
ceaselessly
under eaves.
If I could not forgive myself
I wouldn't hear them
for fear that they would overcome
the gap of pain I am,
I wouldn't accept another realm
as a part of me,
I wouldn't know that forms are lies
we love to truth
instead I'd believe my eyes
were the lie.

A woman on the platform
is pretending not to cry...
a man does the worrying
for two...
and if I am honest
it is only inside me,
this drama,
or it is nothing,
for it was I who decided
to separate
at some toxic nub
from everything
and watch it fall
ever farther away,
too numb to see
it must connect with love
and turn to light
inevitably.
The winter sun,
loving and cold,
pulls shadows
from all things.

The Music of the Mailbox Horses

White sun on blue snow's
day moon crystals
down syrup echo drains
and racing streams;

is this the outside world
I dreamed was me?

Cold wind hollow bells
and leaf scrape rattles,
the gate creak chitter of chickadees
and bark of gulls,
a turning of knobs
where there are no doors,
or none that can be seen.

Elusive, though the chatters
use my ears
to sound incomparably
familiar.

It can all be drawn together
like it's meant to be
though its beauty's in the space
in between,
its tragedy.

Bite Sized

The star-damp sea
of infinite light years
is only a oneness of love
and this berry so close to my lips
is so we can share
its sweetness together
or, more precisely, to feel
who is already there
for recognition.
Without imagination
nothing would exist.

Song Video: Cupid to Psyche

Early Train

It's light enough to see it all,
too dark to think it's real;

The hues start showing larger things,
some glitter more immortal:

We call it beauty,
this not quite being able to speak.

The only thing that is alive
is absence with its glowstick

Before the darkness comes again
to bring the words like magic,

Explanations for what isn't
really there.

Words for Art Pepper

I batten down the Christmas lights
with Sonnys Rollins, Stitt and Criss
as the new snow weaves its jones of mad diagonals
like a bell tree wind of hi-hats,
Philly Joe from the one speaker,
Elvin from the other…
never stopping–so ephemeral,
the lyrical answer to the world
still it accumulates
like the resin in Sir Desmond’s horn
prophesying furious blowing of cool later on,
a gaining train of insane pain waxwaning its refrain
lain slain as frozen rain
without explaining–immortal.
The birds are quiet now, awaiting Charlie Parker
to play with time and space and prove
there is no universe to speak of.
They hide, for the snow is too immaculate
heroin white, but there is space
in this alicecoltraneinwonderland place
enough to hear the bass…walking.

And there was once a song about you, too,
how beautiful and blue you were,
and the melody lingers
in tangled skeins
of minor modal realms
hopping to your love
or is it to the comfort of
its hot stove
and the pathos of retreating?
Such questions need no answers now,
for the players from the cellars
milk the prosodies of funk
in my Grant Green room, Greenwich
mean time, born to be a perhapsody in blue.
The thrush she cackles so ecstatic
that the thrill is gone
she won’t feign that diamond jive
of grieving how he got away
in some Pacific car wreck sunrise Ferrari
trying to make it real compared to Watts,
for she still has her pearl
and everything else is lost
to hold to that.

When we go deep inside
where no one ever finds us
what they never get to know is
we have the blues
and no one can take that from us,
not even the bright light
streaming through the yellow linens
promising the night will come.
A sad politesse pervades the air,
rich melodies are coaxing,
always coaxing the blues,
to civilize it,
waving the red flag at the bull
but stepping back
at the last second
to be wordless and to bless it
and never stab it
for all its
ferocity,
its righteous thirst for outrage and then revenge.

There is only beauty here
on this vine.
No truth can live this high.

Aftermath Past

This amethyst you gave me’s filled with pain,

its purple not as deep as I imagined,

its green a different shade 

than the one that called me once to you

as perfect complement. I see how

you endured me now – took it all in being careful

not to show yourself at all beyond my shadow

- I didn't care, my life so needed love

I made you from my own clay,

to smother with my loving energy

you crystallized inside, without letting me see

the list of things that terrified you of who I really am.

You tried to make me change, but how could you

when couldn't let me get inside, how frustrating

that must have been, to love someone so deeply

but not feel quite safe enough in your own skin

to accept him.

I honor this, how you gave yourself

back through me, and if I couldn't accept all you were

- the madness, the greed, the constant dissatisfied need –

you at least had the grace to throw back in my face

what you couldn't deal with of me - my tapeworm

strings of thought, my becoming what I’m not,

the whole lost without even knowing it mess

that can’t once be a thing to rely on, just

a shoulder to cry on and a rock to hold on to,

without definition, like the mirror of the sky.

And all I deprived myself you gobbled down bitterly

and all I didn't have the heart to ask you for you denied

me angrily, as if it wasn't my fault that I did not have

the strength to be real, to call you on your shit, the gift 

that no one ever gave you but you needed most of all, 

from me. So my love became a running critique, 

a thorn of abuse in your side, and that old high road

that worst, most inaccessible proximity for someone

who’s wanted for so long to be known. And I knew you

but could never say – my kindness was condemnation – 

my not turning away the worst way to betray – to confer 

the prison of hope.

                               So we got in each other’s’ way

you with your piles of dilettante stuff

almost wanting to go there, to get close,

to give back as you once had wanted to reach out to me

and me with my secret life just waiting to strike

anytime you turned your back on it, in the dinghy 

basement crypt where all that was left of me was

- what you once embraced completely – but day by 

day, without even seeing it, I fell back into me –

the shame that the closet I’d locked myself into

was too comfortable, how freeing it was to escape

from being needed, how frightened at my own crime 

I became, continually re-enacting in my solitude

some ancient abandonment.

                                               I tried to tell you you were

forgiven once – you refused to believe it – I tell myself I

should have known right then, in the moment before 

everything crumbled in slow motion geologic time – 

but everything from then on was a gift, too, 

every missed connection a great lesson – all of it

was planned in the most precise permutations – 

our being so close yet so far apart, how painfully

real we forced it to be, yet how blatantly false. 

In the end, you spun too many lies for me to keep up with, 

and my sins of omission gave you too many excuses

until there was nothing even to apologize for – I said

I was sorry for everything, as if that was my right to do – 

and you withheld everything, as if you knew 

what was best for you.

                                      So much wasted time, 

twelve years, from 2000, the year of the apocalypse

through the burning Bush and the Obamanible years

our children grew, and never once could we find

a compromise – it was always your way, even when

you decided to give me what I asked. How could I 

accept that and not push back - without that sense

 of how sensitive you were, how little it took to be cruel

 – such a flimsy excuse! No wonder you’re angry! And 

even now look at me, only speaking to you through some

hidden poetry I hope you will never see, because

 – well, I still - a part of me – needs to believe 

that you know me, and your inevitable animosity 

at my presumption in speaking for you here

might trigger some recognition that you never did get me

at all - just the face I drew, wanting to be filled in – 

I never cared, not getting that, that you needed it too, 

despite the violence of your objections, the damaged state 

I knew you were in when I came in, for that – and for

everything – I’m so sorry. In how little I could tell you, 

that was the only way you could learn who you were,

and in all the ways you failed to change me

with your lock and key, it’s the only way I could 

see how I need - now - to change. 

In the little we could say to each other

it was more than enough to know.

                                                          And here I am, 2012

washed over like a wake, and I have to let go of what

I believed myself to me  – while leaping in faith to a future

where darkness holds me in love in a way that 

you couldn't. I release you from any responsibility 

for anything other than accepting the chance so eagerly 

to give me the gifts you gave, gifts more precious for being

the kind that get me where I now am more quickly.

I’d release you from more but there’s nothing more left

to let go, you gave me that gift as well. But there is

something else, something you've asked, and I’ll try 

one last time to honor your request, and not try to figure out 

where you are right now, to let you be without my hovering 

self-doubt mingled in with my love – you wanted, I see, 

after all this time, in horror, you wanted to be free

 – and now you are. I let you. go. 

Aftermath Present

I've done some crazy things in desperation—
Told strangers by voice mail I wanted to marry them—
But I never did anything quite like this,
Your doubled-down Gaslight Nurse Ratched by proxy,
A letter to my parents how you think there's something wrong with me
(Or The HR Move as it is known more formally).

Such a neat parlor trick makes my job rather easy
‘Cos it hips everyone you’re now indeed bat-shit crazy,
But a part of me still wonders why you’d reach out this way
(Instead of answering my letters, say, with more than innocuous notes
To buy more time for your ransom post), thinking it would float
If you pretend that I'm the one who filed for divorce, that my actions
Through insinuation's twist would show need of your supervision.
Well I've learned a thing or two about the affliction game;
I’m aware, for example, the difference between eccentric and insane
Is the hair.

And all is fair in love and hair, but there were signs of this in hindsight,
Like when my mother quipped I was the starter child
They should have thrown right back;
I should have known you’d take to that
Like yeast takes to sugar
Creating diagnoses for your cure.

And it’s not like this hasn't happened before;
Like the time you created the deception
Of wanting to go to the couples counselor
So you could have your very own psychiatric intervention
With terms you’d learned like “dissociation disorder”
The S word, “schizophrenia,“ “borderline personality.”
I’m mightily glad paranoia wasn't thrown into the hopper
For I saw at that moment conspiracy around me everywhere.
The people I tell this to, their jaws drop and eyes water,
They can’t believe I didn't leave you and sue the therapist then and there,
But you always stayed so calm and cool, you always held your ground
No matter how I frowned or made the articulation of violations sound
Of boundaries, love and professional ethics that went down,
Your mind was always clear, your heart was always good
And all you ever really said by way of apology
Was that you were understood so poorly.

You are dangerous, my love,
Is this not enough to shame you?

Or the time you kicked me out of bed for good because I needed "therapy"
But once again the therapist said that's not the way it works, this remedy,
You’re supposed to learn to talk together, but you felt so "unsafe" near me
Such a plan was a “deal-breaker” for you, we had separate work to do
And I was not allowed to know of yours except some self-serving clues,
Just as you must stay informed at every turn of all of mine.
It was a lovely scheme, coerced therapy for the blood line,
My son and my daughter, most of my family,
With no commission at all for your trouble of suggestion
As long as your hand could stir up the slurry
Without actually spending a dime or entering a session.
And what a detective of DSM-5
As you went through drawers, emails, closets to find
Anything to make me a sinner
Which was anything that made me alive
To possibilities other than your medicine
That was always pending, still in R&D, forever undefined.
You shared some parts of psychic charts
Of how I chopped off your head in other lifetimes
Or my unconscious mind-set of abusive catastophizing
So that any correctly conditioned behavior on my part
Could be dismissed by your confidential report
Just as any expression of love no matter how sincere
Could come with an agenda, a hidden malodor
Of the dark toxic sludge at the center.

This was all one big secret—
Should I be afraid that it isn't anymore?

It was not 'til I discovered, house empty of your things,
You'd left for me like untied apron strings
A dossier carefully packaged and placed, your contortions
Of my loving heart in guilt-based, web-paste apportions,
The horn of your final diagnosis, with eager underlines
Of all the psychotic symptoms you saw in me, defined
On the side in neat and helpful annotation,
I as always the vampire and you the heroine
(Even this verse is a worse addiction of course than heroin).

You've trained me so your notes now promise nothing but it's up to me,
Words on accusatory edges, heart on arm's length sleeve.

When I put my career on hold to save your life
After you'd successfully refused as my dependent wife
To move with me to my new job in Arizona for a long, hostile year
And ended up too sick and helpless to remain angry or bitter,
You claimed your friends were outraged that you picked me up at all
From the airport. This was abuse, you said of me, plain and simple.
I cried how much of a heel I was, even though by then the news had hit
You were moving back to Arizona and there wasn't a thing I could do about it.

So it was that everything you did that didn't feel right
Became my fault.

Now I see it’s not your pepper spray that made me giddy
And I guess I wasn't fazed the times you tased me
For trying to occupy my own reality,
‘Cos when I sacrificed for you my sanity
It was all in the “why is she doing it?” my pin-point deadly
Weakest link: the lure of getting in your head.

From there it was only a step I knew
To owning all you say and do
And that there was no pleasing you
So my days were all apologized through
For the me I saw inside your eyes
That never measured up to actual size;
I almost wanted it enough
To answer all your broken cries,
I almost to the end believed
That all you said about me weren't lies.

The Blue Rose

Missing you, thus
missing everything...
It falls soundlessly a step before my arm.
What life there is mocks me with its calm, alarming
Resemblances to you.
All the flowers are grey,
But not the grey we shared, which was a rainbow,
An ocean, a laugh into the abyss
Where we heard, coming back, each other's laughter,
Mingled, hopelessly merged,
Like grass grown from a seed
Spread out immortal on the lawn,
Framing in deep green the gold of heaven's earthward light.
In the breeze this simple all unfolds as bliss,
The flowers grow from love, what's just
Remembrance of the whole
Feeding and being fed endlessly...

Winter Sun Hits the Filament

Deep in the heart
of January's empties
—laparoscopic labradoodle cold,
the loveliest of creatures,
a double-helix spider
creates the notion of form
to bind all this nothingness
together
and carry the fire.

How hard have we become
to be so twisted from the truth,
to see in broken cobwebs
anything but total freedom,
and in cadavers wrapped in shrouds
anything but transformation?

We're squeamish with caution
towards the very thing we are,
as she merges
earth and heaven
because she can
weave her creation
and travel right through it
at the same time.

The Folds in the Karmic Curtain Not the Show Itself

No sense in belaboring
the inevitable:
the debt of pathos
can't be paid
for it's the mindset
that created it
that must be freed
first...

to stand in truth
firm
while letting the opposing truth
wilt my eyes

and stay there still

hoping words
can balance out
when balance
allows no words,

no obligation
to disrupt
impeccability...

and I feel guilt
for leading others
astray
and I feel pain
for the way
they seek to punish
because they went astray
by not listening
to me

seeking words of
impeccability
when impeccability
allows no words

except:
"you are eternal now,
you can wait it out
like the sphinx."

The Urge Toward Revisionist Dreaming When Heaven is as Unknowable as the Earth

When pressed, she lays down a longing tone,
a pleasing riff and some blue notes
and I, because it's all that I have,
my ear, my axe and my fake-book,
surround her sound like David Murray,
blowing the snot out of what are
only pretenses
of her sad and sorry world
encased in ice.

The cry me a river defense
deep in the suburban diaspora:
can she reach beyond
"he hates me now"
to shed some callous skin?

The hero that I wanted to be
gave it all to her quite willingly,
the things she didn't want to take
to get to what she needed.

Wherever you are, whatever you feel,
it's not what I am feeling for you now.
There's nothing you can say
—pretending feelings are something
besides clay.

Some Short Poems about Football

Flacco
The high-pressure cold was nothing
compared to picking chicken feathers
in crabboil summer on the Eastern Shore
or listening to Brother Ray pontificate
about the best chicken wings in Halethorpe,
so he put on his hairshirt of solid purple prose,
Concord grape you can practically taste,
that doesn’t fire until they see the whites in his eyes,
the shirt heard round the world,
to rally round the purple boys,
the purple mountains majesty
to chill the Rocky Mountain high.

Belichick
They’re addicted to being exonerated
by the world's most miserable man,
who pours the milk of human kindness
down the drain and says “so much for that
– now what can you do for me that isn’t
hateful or self-serving?”
as he assaults our common sense
with his painful rigmarole
of algorithmic cleverness,
relentless Baltimore logic;
that’s why we watch the games,
to see if he’s lost a wisp of that
irremediable grey hoodie rage
at how broken is his being,
how everyone else is great
and he is poison
(along with all the people
unfortunate enough
to tag along with him)
– it tastes not quite so bitter
when you beat them back:
the heroes unassailable.

Matty Ice
Matty Ice from Filthadelphia
spends the off-season fishing
at Badwater,
lighting scorpions on fire,
waiting for the piano
on a dock loose from its mooring
to play "The Ballad of the Loneliest Monk"
as it floats down Furnace Creek
off a mold-free roll from Terre Haute
like an old soft shoe
in the new high tide.

Harbaugh
He’d jerk
the phone book
if he could.

Manti Teo
It’s all so deciduously insidious…
the Polynesians with their secret kava fruits,
and the women who don’t play in the NFL
only for the sake of the children;
it’s just the Goddess playing with us
to show she’s more than a fake girlfriend,
her love mere human violence can’t dislodge.

RG3
It’s the last game of the season,
everything at stake,
Cowboys versus Redskins,
and the Jesus of Cool knows
he has to have a bad game,
he has to give them something
not off his Superman shoulders
for his team to win
and the country to survive
hanging in the balance
off the fiscal cliff;
the legislators burn
the midnight Redskin oil,
the one perspiring smell
they will always agree on,
to see him pull out
with the impossible humility required
from his sun-splashed
dreadlocked hat
his greatest illusion yet,
to suck not bad enough to lose,
to be the leader true enough
for Alfred, the Robin to his Batman,
to load the rocks himself upon the truck
and for the Football Gods to be inspired
in Lichtensteiger, Polumbus and Garcon
while he makes like a one-legged charity saint, smiling
so the poor don’t have to die.

I Would Write...

I would write you a love song,
the thing only a man can do
to show he's right by God,
and you'd decline politely
to accept it, with your infinite
grace and mysterious tact,
for that is what you do
to keep the magic circle fires
encendered, the not-quite
turned to unrequited,
the quenched revived to dry
like butterflies to chrysalises again.

I would write you a love song
but there is no love that's left in you
to steal, no passion to pretend
it isn't mine. We walked as one
through everything connected
to find the other gone
along some smoky bend,
not knowing our reflection
from ourselves,
never learning how to feel
except as another feels.

I would write you a love song
but the finest troubadours
do not let any one before their longing
for love is in the tuning of the strings,
that blue and subtle point they can't,
the breathless throng, abide to wait for
and in their great impatience, can never hear,
for the note is meant for me alone,
the purity of my own and only being,
the sound that echoes endlessly inside.

Waiting for Nothing in Particular

The electric finds the magnetic every time
so why do I sound the depths for symmetries
instead of merely being - a throbbing light
alone in a loving universe

Young VZ and Old Weezy at the Twin Rinks

Ice skating to the Thrift Shop Song

Three Charlotte Hornets caps

“This is fucking awesome”

Parents look on from the grille upstairs

But that’s not the way I have ever rolled ‘em

It’s me and Vonny skating hand in glove

Like back in the day when she was five

But we get funny looks ‘cos she’s now 19

And says “dee-ad, look, you’re the oldest one here tonight”

As we weave through the holes in the cotton-knit swarm

That drones across the rink with its hockey tattoo

I let go for a moment to the purple onslaught

Of hip-shaking chicks and kamikaze boys

But I find her hand again before the nervous tyro corners

While the lone black dude comes out the penalty box

Keeping it real with a Dodgers cap

That matches the color of the snap-on rental skates

I can’t tell the difference anymore

Between the kids’ karaoke and the actual songs

But I know how to play the Zamboni interval

By waiting it out Southern-fried style

And roll leisurely out after the mad rush is over

It’s deep waiting – "that’s how we do it" –

I’m still wearing my grandfather’s clothes

And my kid says she feels like a kid again