sunlight

sunlight.
a beautiful confusion of liquids
confusing the senses


time grows these roses
sound the confusion!
is it comfortable in there -
your life, like that -
so crowded by carcinogens?


is it louder than the night crickets,
or the birds in the morning?
do my windows magnify your insides
as they do my outside?
you're not the lion I thought you were;
I will still make you breakfast,
if you don't eat my lambs.
shake those birds out
before you bring the trees in;
draw the curtains.
sunlight!

succinct remains

holy transparency, could you hide for me the real truth?
try midnight, try tones of alabaster,
try rising from the remembrances of the fall.
aspire your eyes, your tender, broken roses
open your glorious celebrations, water your idealism
the golden harvest, I can touch it
the length of your fear, I can reach it
stretches of echoes and love's intentions -
I require the midnight horizon
to be painted with coffee immediately -
there are no mindful ghosts alive this night.
Listen, lovely little leaflet:
the nations are now distorted.
the pulse between my ankle and heel
dances with desire for you with no complications.
If Heaven were less than halfway here
there would be no meaning in this
empty drinking jar, where the scent of
life succinctly remains. This much I reveal.
You will find joy in the dregs of the coaster below.
Above, my caffeinated moon releases
these sweet, silvery reveries.
My thankfulness is electric and final.

Making Moves

shes says: Making Moves
On the Edge, with only twenty dollars
and pieces of each other


swallowing trust
and the complexities of curious blood
senselessly opening windows


of each other
exposing the gutters punctiliously
using everything, even you


to see the skies flutter
*maybe, with echoes, and forgiveness
of each other*


*maybe, with echoes, forgiveness
and each other*

blackbird

i

blackbird - shadow

the fancy

echoes

blackbird - distort

the wetness

underneath

blackbird - whisper

the answer

floating

blackbird - empty

your eyes

flat

blackbird - answer

my desert

dreams

ii

dreams - whisper

my distorted

shadow

dreams - silence

the echoes

floating

dreams - slide

the wet

scab

dreams - remove

the encrusted

memories

iii

memories - dream

far away

webs

memories - wipe

the night

clean

memories - roll

away empty

faces

iv

faces - unbind

the sleeping

self

faces - remember

please forgive

memories

v

memories - remember

the time

echoes

Ambush

To have lived for such a little while
freckled with marriage, diapers and death
I alone steal as much as I can get
My theft expands the cosmopolitan telephone
the plastic cosmos are mine
your cosmetic freckles are mine
my life alone: blushing,
I decline.
In such a short time, each
vacant heart lusts soil
littered with bones,
honey bees, and mercy -
none can be promised.
"Innocence" acts with a shiver,
enamoring you, while I steal your
future, and your tears, too.
Eager for bones and honey bees,
I steal your ears and eyes - 
You, first, were blind to see.
Halfway between selfishness
and prudence, your words
I steal, leaving you with the 
quenchless universe, your 
passive life, and the 
eternal lipstick that I stole for you.
I return your freckles, infused with
cosmos tears and words, 
and marry you.
Your future was already mine.
My theft is unaltering.
My mother wept
when I gave it to her.
In such a short time
and with so much more
we mirror alone
gazing silently -
secret spirits devouring
the life we were given.
My sour stillness unloosens
the luxuries - the cosmos
in the mirror belong to you.
The fallen skies within dizzy
chunks of moon until
I close my eyes and throat
and lie ambushed by life.

Lines

millions of straight lines
stitched together
etched and withered like
ad old woman's delicate
neck. Beautiful -
over-used and never
mingled, treasured lines
of life, wrinkled - understanding.
the stenciled sailboats
bobbing on paper,
parenting the pencil
parenting the hand and
mind and souls of these
street-side sidewalk
steel-mills.
the utensils itch and
quiver, never 
comfortable, warm, or
ever under covers, never
talking, smoking, or smiling -
translating aeriality,
skyly deconstructing.
eaten/absorbed/crumpled
like car parts, occasionally
recycled, Whizzing


across paper - else being
Fizzed into the can
trampling or trampled
made of wood and staples-
faded plastics,
inks and alcohol - blades
of furious practice. niches
with cousins and twins
of language - in-
capable of languor
switching whenever
switched. alive by default
snaked
often dead once bought
capable at any moment
to compose any thought.
The Everyman's Atlas
of Nought. the pencil
the paper, plastics and
staples, occasional 
instances of brainy goo
and remnants
of residual glue.

Frank O'Hara:

Today


Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!
You are really beautiful! Pearls,
harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! All
the stuff they've always talked about


still makes a poem a surprise!
These things are with us every day
even on beachheads and biers. They
do have a meaning. They're strong as rocks.




[perfect!]

Peter Davison:

Peaches


A mouthful of language to swallow;
stretches of beach, sweet clinches,
breaches in walls, pleached branches;
britches hauled over haunches;
hunched leeches, wrenched teachers.
What English can do: ransack
the warmth that chuckles beneath
fuzzed surfaces, smooth velvet
richness, plashy juices.
I beseech you, peach,
clench me into the sweetness
of your reaches.

inescapable

inescapable
held in harrowing haiku
your beauty says blue

sweet sop

winish tears drop
teardrops of wine stop
when plopped on paper
naturally. I opt not to
tissuemop so as not to
disturb my accidental
purple plop of sweet sop.
a lop off my heart
is every single sorry drop.
I am simple, atop.

pieces

heaven I don't know
heaven has no end - yet - 
unsuccourable earth's sole pageant contends


friend! you are mine
you stranger to reality. to me -
your facedown fluency is a circadian constancy


- wheatbread makes you ever unwell
telephones - or - anything telephonish
is as strange as wooden nightness


we gather estrangements in paltry pieces
hoping sensitive sunlights and peaceful spirits
will remind us - some reality and some heaven - 

crown

the crown clinks alone
slandering silently in historical solitude


uncompromising eloquence kindred
possibly, to something pure


swishing your resplendent alcohol
thinking - likely - cerebrally sneaking


your whiskeyed words wash over
like whiskeyed ocean winds


burning sand in my eyes and vision
the Monarch of the Sea branding the insides of me


your crown clinks alone
slandering with stubborn aptitude

soda

you lipstick stops
to watch my never-ending
soda-pop


we don't call it that
in the South
nor do we knock


we open the mouth
for sweet facades
to fall out


just like soda
and its silent, smirking
sugar quota


Southern Grotesques
in gross
bustlebop


thank you,
for the lovely company
and cold drink

Auden:

Nocturne II


Make this night loveable,
Moon, and with eye single
Looking down from up there,
Bless me, One especial
And friends everywhere.


With a cloudless brightness
Surround our absences;
Innocent be our sleeps,
Watched by great still spaces,
White hills, glittering deeps.


Parted by circumstance,
Grant each your indulgence
That we may meet in dreams
For talk, for dalliance,
By warm hearths, by cool streams.


Shine lest tonight any,
In the dark suddenly,
Wake alone in a bed
To hear his own fury
Wishing his love were dead.

by Tomaž Šalamun

Academy of American Poets

Muldoon says Heaney is like the Vasa

ship. Built on three floors,

it was the world's biggest battleship.

It made half a mile

and capsized alone in  harbor.

The warriors are killed by insects

and lack of glycerine.

Scurvy corrodes their skulls.

Spruce trees shake off their seed and snow.

Between Zlatorog and the Savica waterfall

their is no hoarfrost.

deep dark moon

something twirled - rather carelessly - through my hair,
fixedly - into my ear, reminding me disparately of life
and forced the thoughts "where" and "who."
though unlistening, and because I am "here"
tell me why you are so typically distant blue


                         -  pause  -


still, please, forgive me, friend
I (sigh) am listening now. Listen - 
Ladybugs glisten and blue jays sin
but I would rather not blend.
I am lost and I will sing.
An heiress of yellow under
your transparent wing and life
in thorough lines will glisten.
Death, like sidewalks, we will
lipstick, and Home,
we will christen.


                        -  pause  -


your lips - with confidence - never shutter
always a breath distinctly blue
your inner beauty is my deep dark moon
and in time, our (perfect) loneliness will conquer death.

Swimming Constellations

Swimming constellations simmer
or - shimmmer
like, well - 
a mirror
facing the sun
through the water
through the wetness
of your almost-eyes


You blanklessly stumble
or - tumble
into, well -
me, and my space
and I wonder
what that implies

That Look

Your songs wing soap
every light dims to glow
fossils breathe dust
your songs feather breeze
I will be fossiled
deep under crust
your songs listenthrust

Instead

My colours -
    "paralyzed by emptiness"
could have been yours.

Instead
    the ocean will remain blue
and "emptiness will be free"