No Lions in Sweden

My identity, though shrink-wrapped in the garage
still has claims on me. But there's no room any more
for even coffee and blue agave, when love, swept in like a storm
moves the broom.
                               Re-moon-eration of a moth-eaten flame.

The butterflies, at least, seem happy to be born,
— no longer in pain at what is lost — no fear there's
no path, just flight. Incandescent they lift
limitations with ease and grace, evade time and space,
seeking something not seen.
                                                  The brown leaves turning purple now.

Maybe someday I'll stop fearing these things,
and reserve my terror for myself alone,
who makes a giant dissolve in his boots.

The Poet in Kau'ai

One must not leave the island
to hear the waves of grief
waiting on the outside
to be healed

                    — so the rainbow rooster cries
                    like a pure slack-key guitar
to the lava people: lush black rocks
made love to by forever's new white
breakers, that honors every singular
                    with a flower
in the moment of merger

                    before receding

                    without desire,

— so the awkward palms might say,
swaying in no direction but their own.
                    The grasses stretch their arms.
Long roots hang down like earth's raw nerves
from giant empty heads above
                     in the koa, in the stone,
                     in emerald gold, blue cloud.
They seem to want a voice

from something that is lost,
                     forever outside
                     paradise,
not the red dirt river of life that takes
                     nothingness
                     from place to place;
this endless wave of beauty wants to hear ... us,
                     just as endless
                     but blessed with the curse:
                                            a sense for
                                            finality.

The sound of rain on the page
as the children are washed away.
The white hibiscus like a sniffing bee.

At Anahola

Hawai'ian kids sway
       in the waves
                            laughing in Hawai'ian
while their mothers
       like mothers in every land
                            say
                stay away from strangers,
       white strangers,
us.

The littlest one
       laughing with me on her yellow noodle
                 says
                             "you're a noodle."

Late Afternoon Beach

A paddleboarder is the only thing on the horizon.
A boy, too sober, carries his wood surfboard to the waves.
A naked French baby runs away from his parents to the surf.

But all of that is lost, in the light
of the clouds so close you can dream of touching them
and the mist upon the green
like no one can fit in.

Plane to Vancouver

A succession of thin red curtains
         and we pass
from American
                          Spanish to English to French
as if we have too few faces to assume.

I leaf through bi-lingual restaurant reviews
         five pages of hipster bistros
                           in Dublin alone!
Serving:
         long-necked barnacles
                           chayote horchatas
                                              macha shakes
         "like a glass of water for your skin."
Is this what it takes
         to help us forget
                           there is no time?
That all of history lingers
         like this sunset
                           and nothing is at stake
                                               beyond this moment
         crackling high above the clouds
                            like a suspended chord
                                               as rich as chocolate lava
                            you don't care how the choir
                                               will resolve
         for the end in sight is not
                            where you are heading.

The orange cannot tell you of the night
                            you have to break it open,
not pick your dreams from menus
                            as if they live above you
                                               unassailable
as Patagonia
                     served on a platter of snails
                     by prostitutes of commerce
                                               in eccentric orbits
                            tossed by brutal gales,
to redeem you like a model steals the beauty
        of every wanna-be at Macy's perfume counter.

From the dissonance of distance

         comes your consciousness
                              to feel what's not expressed
         but shared in interstitial
                              flatterings from nothing's tail.

The landscape of the Yukon
        almost simplifies to meaning
                              but the hills of mottled green
                              recall too much a something
                                                   never known,
        too bright against the eye,
                     
the mind is darkened,
                               sees only God.

Vancouver in Signage

Totem

By blue Vancouver's living clouds
A junky sleeps in brown wool shrouds

The city of hydraulic lifts
Holds up a falling sky

The poles connecting life now mark the grey
For love has found its way

And everyone's an Inuit
On this Autumn Equinox

With gem eyes looking
Inside

That is to say
Beyond

Another Sunset on the Bluffs

We mine smoke crystals
        on Dinosaur Hill
As the deformed sun
        slips pepto-dismal
Like an ill-omened eel
        into purple

What doesn't glow in dirt?

Entertainment

You can go to the hottest block
on the hippest street
to the coolest flat
and the dankest beat
where the microwave dishes
of the world's eyes stare
at the glitterati
as they share
cogniscent
and intelligensiate
all they know and adore
and be colossally
bored

Or you can go to any desert
some meagre collection
of half-alive plants
watch the catclaw
and brittlebush tangle
the mojave asters
poke through flannel bush
as dune primrose joins
with desert marigold
wire lettuce
with wooly daisy
smell the white sage
fill the sand plateaus
with a blaze of scent
sense the structure of love
as every limb connects with others
of harmonious colors
in immaculate design

It is too much for the senses
this feast that never ends
as insatiable to give
as our souls
to receive

Resting Under Sycamore

Dry rain of sticks
      on brown summer grass
             cool wind
puts the mind in its place
      with the stones and acorns
             a keepsake
more still than the grass
       and nervous branches
              without the dry leaf's tongue

It waits
       like every other thing
              for an unnatural connection
that will work so seamlessly
       who knows it isn't real?

Drought

The ants are working but the people of the park
       are sleeping. It's mid-day.
Michael lost the keys again. So his last mechanic job
       ended, on his anniversary.
Lynn's bike chain broke, and her dead-end job
       was far too far away. And Clete had to take care first
of the cigarette and affection needs of his woman,
       so he won't be welcomed back at that fast-food gig.

And these are the lucky ones, who have some work
       to look back on, not just bouncing balls
       or toxic jive, or rich-man's hip-hop hanging fire.

Cast out like purest angels from the best establishments,
       they leave their cardboard homes and plastic chairs
to squat with all the spent life on the forest floor
       safely under a red-corned pepper tree,
       away from the shame of women and children.
Still they leave in the sun their bent Modelo cans
       like all the best tales of decay.

Tree roots like exposed nerves hang down their dead riverbed,
butterflies on droughtgrass, spiderwebs on dry-leafed trees
       like their cobwebbed film-noir nightmare
       in a kaleidoscopic breeze,
mesquite bean shells emptied of what food was once
       inside them,
ice plants grey and lifeless, holes poked full of leaves.

Here I run from past and future, breathe in dirt like any bum,
pulled in to the same gusts of nothingness,
       the whisper they call silence,
but I find a shaded log — and fight so hard to believe in it;
       its perfection's too elusive,
       that I should be free, receiving
not some semi-sheltered creature watching leaves fall
       from the eaves
       like a shuffling of cards.

The butterfly glides away. The trees go silent.
A hawk swoops close by, glares at me, at least enough
      to say: "You think you've got a problem, friend?
      I'm a hawk!"

Desert Evening with Scorpions

A wasp hangs over the bougainvillea
        like an unrelenting consciousness
               with nothing to hold on to

O why could I never say the things to you
        that should never have been said?

The coastal sagebrush growing in the sand trough
       throws a million tiny buds against the sky
               how many inchworms disguised as branches?

O why was it your dark happiness I chased
       and never your fair sadness?

Fuzz forms on the strand like a gift to the wind
       while a man runs his cars along the dunes by hand
                dirt blazing as the wheels move

O why is there no memory of you
      only a me I still can't understand?

The birds are all moving toward the sunset
      where the orange ball takes the sky along with it
                and the pond current stills to receive its color

O why is moving on so slow I must pause
      to give tribute to the moment for your rage?

Birds walk in peach water
       the rust buds glow with a knowledge not my own
                but bequeathed in fragile gold

O why was your gift so cruel
       that I never will forget it?

A sidewinder calls the Gods to his magic winding tail
      and slips too slow and perfect to the brush
                just as the moon takes control of the night

O why was I so stupid, when I let you erase me,
       you weren't erased too?

Self-Portrait with Trees

I am no different
      than that tree

— but I can see

the waves of feeling
flow in timeless beat,
the sound of clapping
leaf turn
      gold relief
while roothands hold to loverearth
as if there are no
                           others
                                   
But these I also see
                           Catalina Cherry
                           Lemonade Berry
                           Dana Point Buckwheat
       so I am
       incomplete again
       salad tossed by wind
not in one
       alone
       like them,
keening.

The crows descend
       like an equation
and I fly without thinking
       to solve them
       dissolving once again.

The world
                          so alien
runs from the strangeness
                          I am.

Miss Mary

There's something comforting about a mosquito bite
to be shared by a creature so light
she seems to float instead of fly through the air

and so wise
race-car precise she knows where to find
the inner red, the warm rich substance
that is nectar for the young

and when she bites ah
there's a pain I can finally get to
not hidden in the mind's denials
but itchable

like Copernicus was addicted
to a circle
and had to scratch

The Wind Outside

The mind quivers
more than any leaf
for there's no circumference
to claim

the belt can be rolled
into a spiral
the bedspread pulled back
to a point

but even the salt lamp's damp pink depths
are too much
like the wind
to bear

Domestic Sonnet

The chickens are angry, the rabbits are sad,
The cat says "God help me", the dog says "I'm mad".
No woman alive will really back away
From even the steepest, iciest crevasse
Though that is one of the things you can not say
If you want to stay sane, or value your ass.

The rabbits are happy, the chickens are sweet,
The dog rests in fleece, cat perched in high seat.
No man ever works when there's play to be done
Though that too seems another conspiracy
When the world and its Lord regard having fun
The same as or better than drudgery.

So we disagree. The frog needs more crickets.
Love is only love 'cos we can't resolve it.

Sunset Near San Diego

The smell of charred, rancid flesh,
The sound of laughter, blood red glasses rung,

And voices of unthinking cruelty (humor),
One gotcha and we're through.
If you're wounded you will have to play the fool.

The Jacuzzi steam is like a war zone
As the infinity pool dribbles like a machine gun
To water the Mandarin lime trees down
The hillside pomegranate red.

They're stealing the view from the sacred mountain
On the terraced marble of their great mausoleums
That would give the town's homeless a place to live.

All it would take is some real gratitude.

But despite the laughter and the perfect weather
Only sorrow echoes on the cold stone.

At a Winery Wedding

I tried to be mortal, really I did
But "the end" was never a reliable answer to any of my questions.

Love was just too endless, grief too immense.
When we held on to life we were clinging to much more:
A one-minute egg, the smell of fresh timothy,
Old magazines left on streets for the junk dealer,
Compassion for one's lover -- besides, death was always
What happened to others, like a Little League trophy
That changed not a thing but remained in the basement
For owner after owner, 'til when the house was torn down finally
It seemed something timeless, a variant of mercy,
With a persistent and meaningless glow all around it.

Friday Afternoon in the Green Room

The door hit me on the way out
Like cactus at sunset as the sandbox turned to dust
And the puppeteer laughed,
Prickly-pear, once-mighty,
At the thought of another fool
Like yours truly, as disposable as razors
But never nearly as sharp,
To grimace under her fingers
And call it a dance.

While the players writhe in pathos
At my poor, unfathomable fate,
The take back of the golden handshake,
My emotion is not hate, but crazy love,
That she thought enough of me to cut me off
Like an alkey at three lime-green gin philosophies
Before the madness set like concrete,
And she was sweet to kill the light
So I didn't have to see leftover faces nursing miseries
Their soft, unfeeling hands
Rehearsing their own ghost limb shake.

And I wish that she and I could meet
In a nicer place, where time has healed
Enough that together we could laugh
At the gift we concocted in limitless love
Instead of this head let loose from the bag at parting,
This waiting for the black hole our legs will soon fall into
As if we are illusion, not the trap doors each steps through.

Today's Movie Makes Me Want to Buk

I only live for others

When I'm by myself.

When the waltz light comes through
The most despairing yellow sun

Across the Virginia Avenue bungalows

In late lilac afternoon,

Clothes stacked outside,

Chickens eating crabgrass,

My joy seems then so miserable,

As I think of all I'm missing in their smiles

With the gun not pointed to my head
By the strangest hand of all: my own.

For once the horror seems resplendent,

Mendelsohn conducting Santa Ana you bitch to move along.

Tomorrow we go to Santa Anita

To see the dawn before it fades,

Watch horses fresh as dew
With friends made new in hats

And ancient bleachers, holding racing

Sheets, stale donuts and coffee.

We have waited far too long 

For cheap amusement,

Spraying with bullets the possums and raccoons
As if that makes them go away.

Pacific Spray

Yesterday the sea
       was louder than my mind,
Its madness of no words
       in pearl clefts' stillness surging
To land's grey ends, the seeds of sand,
       mounds gathered for veiled burials.
The overwhelming sound, that strips out
       raucous children, the masticating gulls,
A man on fire with summer's rough desire...
       all tossed like shells in madcapped froth
Brought in by the blue stranger, who churns to
       other chimes than these we knock around,
The gourds we have collected, from a giving
       spendthrift tide.
                               
                                   Today
The furnace spits. This thing too small to be,
       the mind, rises like a reddened thumb,
Engorges on our brutal flaws, too much to bless
       when we must do the blessing for ourselves,
The way we are, imbued with all the dust
       of pilgrimage, the waiting water
For our healing too indifferent, too like God,
       for what's left when we clean the grit
And watch it go like hats of defunct sports teams,
       mirrored glasses, lucky stones?

How much that we could lose that isn't there.

At Upper Newport Bay Nature Preserve

No one is as pure as California light
And the cool become old in this wind

That carries the egret like a gaunt moth
On the venting of dry phantom tides.

The red cactus came here a long way to die
Where the half-alive stalks cry in unison

To leave this last russet of earth alone.
But what else can we touch when heaven's this close?

We're squeamish as the estuarine mud,
Silently making each day from clay

Til the pictures are framed and stories playacted
Like a fish that leaps without need of a bug.

Fishing

In a white boat, white people
With white clothes and white hats
Watch a white fish flexed
On a white line
To a white deck

Then a haemorrhage of red 
Is wristed by what seems like holy water
To the ocean below
As if heaven can be fooled
By cleanliness.

Night

The devil is only as evil as we are,
As wounded, as cursed -- his coyote chuckle
Echoes through the night a kind of kindness --
After the blows have landed, on what remains of our flesh,
All pretense of dreaming torn clean, all reasons
Not to love.
                      The clamoring herd moves like clouds past the stage
And an eerie quiet of light resumes
                                                               so meaningful
The candle now
                             still bearing light after war.

Evening

Sunset, and the screaming begins
And there's a short violet light
To determine
If the sound came from outside
Or within.

Morning Arrival

We are our mothers' aphorisms,
Our fathers' pearls of sweat,
But the hens emerge fresh from their hutch
Forgetting their new eggs.
The bunnies every move is unannounced.

A Spot on the Ocean

Beyond Catalina's crowds
A garland of kelp
In a desolate churn
Birds skirt never touching.
I can hear their wings beat.

In Pink Balboa

Boys will smear chocolate on their shirts
Pose like pelicans on storm drains
Walk into the harbor in their clothes

A Skater Rests

In the sun they glide
Still they try to learn to fly,

The present moment flow
Not alone enough for mind

In eccentric orbit glow
Thinking of the Icarus boy

Emblazoned on the sun,
An afterimage mote

That makes the hot earth come alive
In perfect sequence -- as if it is now dead

In vain sense clinging, finding something
Because nothing still is too much to endure.

Yolks Darker Than Tomatoes

Egg laying music
Beautiful if we all join in
Even the dog next door bares his instrument.

Working Lunch

The gray area
Beyond the building
Before the sun divides all into one.

The Hen Will Not Stop Crying

Every moment is a new life
Yet every fragment of the past
Lingers
To be corrected, not destroyed.

Potions

Progress is measured
One disappointment at a time,
In hopes it may be less
Disappointing some day;

To maybe crush the berries
He didn't eat
For the potion he decided
Not in the end to make - 

A little bit less of a mess
To clean, after all.

Cabo Communicado

1.
Mouthwash-blue sea,
Iconic rocks seen from an infinity pool
Warm as the ocean is cool.
I play volleyball with Mexican children
While my love in a bikini water-stomps to country tunes.
There's nothing to prevent heaven,
Not even a cloud beneath the kind sun,
The mission light, the palms saying something
You have to be slow enough to hear --
All you can eat papaya.

 

2.
In sprouting palms a yellow wren
Poses for a snap,
Purple balloons float across the pool
Like there could ever be too much fun.
The cactus shines in the sun.
There is no sense to anything anyone does
But the birds speak the impeccable logic of the palms.

 

3.
Trouble in paradise -- a blue drink --
"What's in it?" -- "It's delicious!" --
The fix was in on the poolside trivia game --
All relaxation stopped and the faces
Became those who can't win.

 

4.
Annabelle sells bracelets by the seashore
In a white robe and straw fedora,
Patiently waiting behind the rope
For tourists to cross, the few
Who are unafraid
To negotiate her down to pennies for her day.
She faces away from the sea,
Toward listless luxury
On a beach that's burning.

 

5.
The joker laughs -- ruido --
The cards always tell a joke --
But the tablecloth is neat
And the breeze from the veranda fans
Will make you forget
Whatever it was you willed yourself
In hopelessness
To remember.

 

6.
The streets of no mind;
Corazon,
Where all is sensation
Regaled
As a king is kissed by a fool.
They wait all night and day
For the birds Americanos
To light again their dream corners
And fall in the sinote
Where they play.

 

7.
At the pink hotel
St. Michael slays a lizard
While the Spanish virgin looks on in wood
And a blind parakeet named Adolpho
Sings at every opened door.

 

8.
Schools of fish spawned from the chum thrown on the bay;
The death boats drop from the landing;
The Mexican Navy plays drum reveille less than crisply;
Dolphins are kept in a concrete house as therapists for children;
You can pose with a marlin as the captor or the captive;
The big fishing boats (owned by Microsoft, Walmart, Exxon Mobil)

Eat the little fishing boats (owned by Juan)

And the tiniest vie for scraps
As grey pelicans wait grimly for food.
The worlds are so far apart they don't even collide,
The well-rounded views of wealth
And the half-completed skeletons
Pass like ghosts exchanging pesos --
All they know of each other is the sea.

 

9.
The rhythm of the waves,
Desert clouds, palm fronds,
The shadows on the rocks --
The only things that stay.

 

10.
The mission garden
Date night
Restaurant,
Hard feelings softened
By the yellow tulip lights
Until a few sobs drop to the tiles
From the skies
To baptize the lovers
Before the monsoon starts
And fills the water glasses,
Clears the tables, sends the still
Smiling hostess on a mission of mercy
To gather all the cushions
Before they float away.
The customers have given up
On Campari umbrellas
And detach to the oak room
And its orange light to sip
Incandescent green drinks
And watch the streets turn to beaches
In sheets of surf-glow black.

At the top of the tower

A blue light beckons

As if what happened before the rains

Was just a pretty picture,

A backdrop to a game with rules more ancient

Than even the masterchef here understands,

At the end of which is ruination,

Mysterious and hopeful and beautiful

But ruination nevertheless.

 

11.

There never was an empire here

But they make it seem so noble

To be so broken and ashamed,

As happy as the dead, to heal

Those orphaned of their Gods

With nothing but hand-painted skulls.

Such visions of what never was

Can take the place of heaven

Everpresent, never ending,

Giggling in the breeze.

 

12.

Trained we are like seals

In ways to see the sky and sea;

Blue means one thing, grey another,

Some valence on our lives gone flickering by,

Sealed as good or bad. But what if

The water, churning in, is as green

As Senor Frog's lime-green philosophy

And as black as Yucatan Chocolate

At the same time? If blue is fractured

By beveled grades of slate?

Heaven is as real as what's let go,

The need for blue, the attitude toward grey,

Letting the green moments stay impossible.

The rocks on the other side are full of spray,

Just now. You may have the food

Here, but that's where the fish are.

 

13.

Angry in paradise

Two black swans,

The people caged outside,

Are overseen by naked Neptune

At the Roman fountain end

Where busts of the Caesars reside.

They pick at their food,

Pick at each other,

Snort and snarl at humans,

These two of a kind

Flown in from Namibia

For reasons the toucans don't understand.

They pace savagely behind their well-appointed wire --

No amount of blue sky and surf frosting

For waverunners, parasails, hangliders will do --

No quantity of happy hour Margarita's and Texas Slammers

In the the deep bass pulse disco light show

On fluourescent Mexican folk art while an 80's cover band

Drives people back like cattle to their youth

To reclaim what they never obtained in the first place

Will keep them from craning their long black necks

Like plumber's snakes looking for a clog

In their sandy demense -- no --

There aren't enough endless pools of bikini'd beauties

And white-washed houses with blue miniarettes

And cliffside drives at night along the Pacific

Past immense haciendas lit with golden light.

No tradewinds breezes will ever soothe the irritations

They feel. Do they know they are black

In this white swan world of beauty?

Is there some onyx and malachite pool somewhere

To call home? Neptune doesn't say, he only

Looks on with the contempt of the ocean,

His curls, trident and impossibly small penis unconcerned

With the problems of two ornery birds.

They are some half-baked symbol, one supposes,

Of nothingness, how black is white and good is bad

And rareness is unexceptional - a gag whose humor

Has long since turned to bile, for no one had the curiosity

To ask for the punch line -- maybe these birds resent that,

How the joke their lives were made into

Was never even laughed at --

Maybe they are laughing

In their squealing swan tongue

To show that they are funny, really,

Despite everything.

New Canaan Morning

The men in blackest suits
Emerge from dim white mansions
To walk the pre-dawn highway
With grim eyes fixed ahead
Suitcases sway in rhythm
To the Talmadge Hill Train Station
Where their crosses await.

Goodbye Mamaroneck

The peacefulness of flowering weeds
        Draped along the waterline
The green that reaches through all grime
        In summertime

I see they're all not there now
        To be seen
They're paintings of the train
        That stays on rails

Its cargo is too fragile
        To look within -
And Willow Auto Sales
        Will do for now

Compendium of One-Line Poems

Too much talking — stream be quiet.

A concrete metaphor: chainsaw days.

In Harlem a rooster sells mulch beneath the train.

Marguerite has holocaust eyes.

Black vanilla from Antananarivo.

A new Hemingway story: Men Agreeing About Women.

So how's the money?

The low road to Fresno.

Rotisserie chicken baseball.

A lurid lack of sleep.

Fashionably Latte.

The suffocating perfume of the rich.

The Aristotelian death cult strikes again.

We disappear in the sun now so they spray on the clouds.

Sadness of the Rebel

Consequence the child must learn
            as if it is a fact,
But the only thing they ever learn
            is love and its lack.

May

These trees move much too quickly
Like thieves in the night
When the leaf vale finally flows

A softness far too perfect
To ever compensate
For the hard-luck lock-down winter
Where all was lost, all forsaken

This new thing at the gate
Has no pain left but the future
It must, like a spring, await

Reality

Like Midas and his gold

     the masks turn into mirrors,

But I see them still as mysteries

     cos’ I can’t see masks I wear.

It’s far too bright, my being’s light,

     to gaze upon directly, so these

Forms that take the fire's place

     are the only thing I know.

To the mind they are false,

     to the heart they are death,

But how could I ever take them off,

     knowing they aren't there to begin with?

Life and Death

Spring sounds so confusing

          to the newest birds.

“This is life? Or death?” they’d say

          if their cries were words.

There are no shoots, no leaves,

          no crocus in the grass,

Tho’ summer cigarettes the sky

          and glows through every glass.

But maybe they know more than we

          how full trees are of sap;

What could we know of life and death

          who eat meat from shrink wrap?

Carnival

There’s always an amusement park

          at the end of the line

Where the sewer of dreams

          has run dry;

Each stop is more hopeless

          as more time passes by,

And the last extras peel

          away from your screen test

Where you would tell the little of the story

          you can handle

(The story we all know so well

          we think we own the rights to the sequel).

You kill yourself thinking

          there’s something you can’t give away,

How if you knew what it was

          It’d be no longer yours

And maybe you’d be lighter

          someday

And could plant your banner

          at the end of the pier

Like some phantasm

          cool, dark and pure,

Lurking, turned heartless

          from heartbroken.

The sound of money and gimcracks

         and junior high proms

Echoes so sadly, like the lights

         that won’t stop

Disappearing, and crying

         through the gear-restless night.

On some moonless Sundays

         you can still hear the ghost

Of the dance hall waltz

         in the arms of the wind

Like the story is writing

         itself.

The Ghost of Henry Dumas

The dispossessed they cry
But it's never quite as real
As those who're crying for them
-- The anger out of line,
The victimhood unseemly --
What has all of that to do with me?
The watcher speaks. We understand.
Yet the specimen parade, in cages
Is the only voice of freedom
We're supposed now to attend --
The loving touch of those outside
Too much like us
To trust.

Negro History Day

"The contradiction between ethics and aesthetics in Western society is symptomatic of a dying culture." - Larry Neal, Director of Education for the Black Panthers and Guggenheim Fellow.

The cool passed all their tales to us
Like a bag of phony dope.
Toasting by the dozens,
The dominant jazz
Oppressed the printed Miltons
In their ghettos.

A child sees only this,
How pale his own skin is,
How ugly.

Aftertaste of Explanations

The machine of mind
          hums brighter now
I cannot hear its
          high-pitched drill.

My prayers are automatic now
          - the clock, the keys, the glass.

Our comfort God asks nothing but
          to serve It like a woman
And drop the petals of my soul
          upon Its black faux-metal
Without a trace of will or
          pause of doubt.

I finger news,
          thumb-wrestle sports,
                    push pictures for the weather -
As if I was betrayed by trees and grass
          for turning yellow.

The older Gods said "shh" inside
          vast honeycombs of texts,
For knowledge was a secret then,
          a sacred thing that blessed.
Now all that humans grasp and know
          is just one more addictive pull
To keep the wolves away
          outside the fire line.

No limit on how
          empty all this
                    striving for the
                                   facts
                                             can be.

The truth
          - the me that I've abandoned
          for fear I'll be abandoned -
is undisturbed.

Another Poem About Chemtrails

The skies are finally thick with a silvering grey, not like every otherwise blue day, when all manner of thin etchings balloon in gassy sick criss-cross in the sky, back and forth, up and down. The skies that would break the silence of God to us forlorn mortals are now sprayed with human waste like some vast and secret dog marking impossible territory. So we evolve, beyond the shapes and thoughts that brought us here - to new visions of what's real and true and right. I begin...with you.

Winter Night Without Stars

The wind must believe I have never existed.
The snow can't accept it won't stay here forever.
Who will correct them?
The trees dare not show any life,
and my heart is far away,
teased and contradicted
by a sweet ocean breeze.

Kafkaesque

The gaslight is not real
-- people say --
but they can't really know
if saying "you've taken my soul"
saves or loses it.

I'd like to think
there was a voice
you stole from me;
your total lack of honesty
let me believe
quite indulgently.

But now I know
there was no you
only me --
even loneliness was feigned,
it took every piece of
the city of lies I built
to fool myself.

Your gift of nothingness
I thought was life itself.

Another Ode to Lethe

The death of literature - ah -
what never was life - oh -
hold the warm beads by the fire -
feed your heart now something more.

All things must live -
passing cannot change that -
the list of things to forget
grows larger every day.

It seems so easy to release one's grip -
until the will fails -
and decay alone opens the hand
to let nothing fly out like a bud.

The councils that watch this - with pillars and eyes -
are no more real than we are,
trying to live in homes we've built
- we pilgrims never lost.

The false hope - becomes real

The false hope - becomes real
With a wave of one handkerchief
- For you remember how you feel
At each turn of love's leaf.

If the thing - underneath
Merely fills the echo of space,
The face of God's the form bequeathed
- Fixing your gold from its base

Like any altared Lord
Can't exist without thankful breath
- Something later nailed to a board
That won't die a real death.

Heaven's in you - now Hell,
As if it's from something you've done.
The pictures you know all too well,
Subtracting one to one.

That thing you remember
Is not your old life, well disguised,
It's barely the flare of an ember
Pops the dense seed - outsized.