In a cave of a sarcophagus of ages,
Or plainly beneath the blue bowl of sky,
Alone on the white-tossed waters,
Within the majesty of sharp ridges and black ravines,
Where rivers surge and rush alternately,
Where the red sun burns the stones mercilessly,
In the darkest of darknesses blind are the fish.
Snow
A tame mist in the morning,
The white, blank flatness,
The monotony of snow,
Kids like pencil scratches on the white back of ice.
A lost yearning,
What's lost?
Some hidden sudden joy of gods in youth,
The raw bloom of demons' rage.
At night, the starfield and priapic Orion sweeping silently.
Dream
One night,
Sleepy forced-open eyes,
Tire-rumbled concrete grid,
Toll beyond,
On-rushing me line,
Garrote of urban light.
- A dream,
Someone's old past,
Old me somewhere -
When night pinks to afternoon,
The wash of the west so strange,
Trees that bar the sun,
Wind that charms the head,
Pond-mud on his foot.
Vacillating,
Vaccinated,
Nostalgia of that noon,
For the shade of things to come.
"You are more Houyhnhnm than Yahoo"
Bug food
Self-created in the slime.
My lowness is lower than my words can go.
Toy of gods
Strummed to manic lust.
The higher I get, the higher we go.
Foul waters
Reflecting bright faces.
I betray their innocence by my urgent dreams.
Purged
Struggle no more.
My children sound silly with their savage screams.
Dance
The saraband
These Spanish-eyed ones.
His tiny hands in hers and hers in mine,
around a central pier of air we step,
And each to other bow,
Momentarily.
Landscape
Bowl of blue to gray descending,
Furry ridge of trees in shadows,
Not a pinpoint of a terror-place
But spread wide beneath invisible stars.
Worlds joined not at war,
Water-colored in gray and blue and paling white,
Only radio towers in red and white
Like ladders for storming the town of god.
A tunneled road slashed through the trees,
Brown and black of branch o'erarching,
Suddenly wide are fields of tan
Grasses patted by a giant's hand.
Precious droplets enfold the air,
A nucleus of dust for each hollow sphere.
Rains Miserably
rains miserably
mystery sleek mystery
white brights red lights
arc from the gray wet high-
way
to the sky
a blank gray cloud
blinder than the deepest night
into the cloud I'd drive
miniscule
pinprick of light white
and soft sudden slaps
as the water sweeps the wind-
shield
so intermittently wipers
pass across this glass of mine
glass of delicate refracted light
and the black woods
looming on the left
hovering then slashing
onrushing swallow
sweep up all of me
Canis Comatose
There was an iceball sunward racing
In that spring's night sky,
Underneath the arc I was told to make
From the North Pole eastward.
Opposite, Orion, settled sleepily west.
And the dog lept in silence
Never reaching that jeweled belt.
Pins of light towards the summering sun,
Pure white like bones bleached in the heat.
Their gladness was like a quiet bomb.
Trembling Fear
trembling fear
excitement rages all around
the half-man
the cold touch of finger
raspy death-rattles
hisses
cackles as she scrapes my balls
twining within
smooth flesh of the embrace
moaning limbs
folding the secrets
as he covers my half-moon
Sacrifice
A metal knife rips thin
Where my chest is a face of no eyes,
The wound of which formed so
Of which my body's broth steams
Mouths a sibillant "oh,"
Remembrance of wounded lips
Pressed softly onto folded hands,
Whose father glances each hanging tress
Billowing down a bowing head.
Empti-day dream of day-glo light
Empti-day dream of day-glo light
sleeps in a hole of empti-night
a wide deep cave of
hard-to-swallow ice
pain o'plenty neath drifting snow
by sleep's mere-drug a-froze
oral fetal-suck
refuse offal
creeps hoar-frost on the mirror-world
breath-mist from the sigh
- stasize
I nervously sleep alone
darknesses mass on our right hands
skin-spots calculated to stone
while left aside glimsping skeletal-white
unabsorbed by our meta-dark
grins toothy grins reflect
or your familiar lullabies drone
Pencil dictate this fainting dream
Pencil dictate this fainting dream
there are demons on my lids
on the edges where lash knits skin to sky
they pine on the edges of my eyes
where a web curves fibrous glass
my male energy pierces those young eyes
weak with hungry lethargy
so comes the lightflash at my peri-stalk
of undesired drive to remorseless release
all I retain is the hard knuckle
of a demi-urge in my bowel
shrinking from skeletons of trees
that lurch out to cut me
bony limbs of winter-spring
as the half-life of pharmacy wilts in my stream
I come
I come
greensward through a notch of shade
cow-eyed prey on a black path
in a clearing upon a statue without a face
tit-god of the empty clearing
from on high
from terrible stones of clouds
of shades of gray
in that odd light of the eastern sky
precious droppings hang like glass
beads of glass
in a fan blown across my face
and all I want is to submit
like the black boughs of trees
green with leaves
and spiny grass shoots
shot through with the wetness of everything
Eye of the Beholder
Sentimental beauty
frailty
in a ceramic cell of secrecy
treasured innocence
graved by my eye that
limns the slope of shoulders
and those limbs of slimness
It's a gray skin that shines black
against the back of the adult-store photo
or again in bursts of color
even the crux of the nude body
seems shadowed
And I imagine
skin of milky white
pores across which my breath
blows hairs already soft down
bent over
And again I return
retract from that vulnerability
disengorged
from that rapture gorged on that
capture
High Way
Away from burnt awnings of faded cloth
no longer red fringed and frayed
high by sleek orange cones
back of trucks flatbeds and containers
on a thick road
on a thin line red on the map
where grey numbers sit on confusing places
some places there are horses
some hippies
dusty companions abandoned carts empty lots
A creature
trapped in a stately forest
where the trees squeak memories
of native ghosts on their American journeys
I pass through the mountains' pressure changes
humbled under the sky high in white
where the blue film thins at ground
balls lightening over a white desert floor
before a city of colored beams of light
and when the sun breaks through
I squint at the airplane
that floats carelessly down
that's the dusky radio time
when the signal fades and I haven't spun the knob
and everywhere a road torn up repaired anew.
Passion of the odors
Passion of the odors
lullabies of the winds
the sweet riot
where green spreads for ivoryrose
apple buds bound by silver snakes
by the sleeveless arm of her fertile flesh
by the thin fingers of his reflexive touch. Mystery of the whispers
of the mass of leaves
mystery of the dark
where the houses stand black
mystery of perspective
flat by the dark night blue
when the children tease
their pettiness is serene
and I wait for it all to end
and begin anew
clatter of words
martyrdom of sounds
mystery of the flash-heat
when the sun burns
mystery of my daughter's
"is this like a dream?"
Canyon Fall
Seeming to possess that which is that
above a great canyon
not dwarfed by its gap
but somehow nonchalantly
owning it
glimpsed through an ellipse of glass
in the airplane's wall
its third dimension
shattered to a pretty two
but I feel like a speck after all
alone
not part of its majesty
not afraid it is inhuman
without desire
Then cloud drifting downward
suddenly loom large hills
that hold you in
a palm of a hand that
would crush you
ribbons of highway
silence of bug-cars
that flat land with its heat and light
over a final sharp hill ridge twisting
perpendicularly to the line of flight
and suburbia welling up and sweeping away behind
awake arise
awake arise
through this curtain thin membrane
to wondrous drug of breath
where sound is a rush
and the sun is a thrill
when its noon's high could seem pale
to shadows of gray-blue morn
dripping willows of yellow-green
and useless snowdrift fences left
from that time of
look ahead and look behind
and when the heated air of heavy afternoon lifts
for the humid lush of evening
with kids' calls, cars, and all that soft cacaphony
the rhythm will be sleepy
it will not block the blade
Summer Noon
two-dime flat beneath a pane of glass
penny-pensive at the vanish point
diags' depth simulators
drawn without time as the quartered-coin
where eyes resize as figures cross a back
ground laid out looping infinitely
dollop-dollar
green-blue-black-gray
diorama
Blue-white Black
blue-white green-black and blue again
tumbling shore of green whose
leaves form black shadows
that still stare in the light
the lapping under the piers is an
ostinado neath the whispers
and away
across the rippling water of
nearby tildes and distant dashes of black-blue
a siren howls
a tenor to the birds' trills
black and pewter-black and black again
where the double cord of trees dams the water
black twinned by grayer black along the
mirror glass of black water
above
white stars in the black
their own twins tossed on the lake-glass
like buttons of light or pebbles or gems white
while
nearby an animal splashes against the shore
Sun dog aft of western ring
all its yellow stain in our eyes
blue ways green miles highway signs
cursive recursive rocket beat
amidst the concrete structure with rumble drum rumble
this simple motor speed is our rush
the keen steel city flies
up from the wet Missouri sticks
and she of the fall smiles
while I drive the sun
from the heights where the heat has bleached them
In the deep space where is the blank
a breathing sounds to me close
in this it should be a place of cold
gravity pulls my personhood still
but any light I see
is it near or far I do not know
and panic would burst me apart
about those majesties of amoebas behind my lids
circle beads on spittle threads
from within each a nuclear furnace roars
or a fluttering of the gentlest leaf
fallen from the tree in back
startled by a nudge within the tomb of a bump
shuddering like a shattering like a sudden thrill
When father kissed me with his craggy lips
brimmed with the half-stale breath of ancient sleep
I floated above the earth's canyons
whose shadows foretold the deep caves lightless within
could then the sky's rain have filled those caverns
across vast distances where sun and night oppose their rules
his eye beheld male delicacy in a tear
his hand my hair caressed with grace
his member my mother impregnate becoming
became the further reaches of my embrace
His Love is Forlorn
shimmering beauty that electrifies
dangerous fillip of those amorous eyes
quintessential bounty of the surpassing sea
silly lies and lonely half-truths of
all the sensible choices that he rues
of the waste of the loneliness of the holy
mass of his ejections incomplete
his sorry state impels him to everlasting lust
of anger madness blood and sport
the furtive run the lope the unanticipated
sheer glee of his human hate
The pale sky rises
translucent without waves
where he of the August noon gags
on its flat December
lie of the brown lawn
pressed airwards
lake of his blinkless eye
wind whistle
in the looming dusk
when the lamp of his young sun's a memory
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