Michiganian mid-summer

Michiganian mid-summer,
duck lake's
sandless shore

and footpath into wood
cut long ago,
bermuda grass

creeps in and up
ankle tickling,
leafshadowed sun

decanted through the tress
mapped out
onto forest floor

through half-transparent
pillars
luminous

light in shade,
cricket
hum

choruses
the summer
familiar,

the trail
itself
a home,

sun-warmth
remembered
and present,

the tree-split
before
I was born,

rain-worn
resilient
wood


opening up
as though a
wooden volcano

whose fiery belly
holds only
moss,

the day
holds,
the path

motionless
and steady
in the shadow-light,

nothing
of the moment
as a river,

the lake-
shore locks
the water,

the termite burrowed
fallen tree,
amber wood-dust

haloed out around it,
sinking slowly
into earth.

I woke late one morning

I woke late one morning
and the air was hot and dry,
my tongue was chalked transparent
and around it coughed a sigh,

I rose through sounds of sunlight
children out about for hours,
pissed with the bath door open
and sacrificed the shower,

lit my first morning cigarette
from a pack I did not buy,
ashed in an empty beer can
from some earlier July,

and stayed sitting on the sofa
staring at the locked front door
for what might have been an hour
of not thinking it, before

I moved out through the kitchen
watching dust float through the sun,
and put on a pot of coffee
knowing I'm the only one.

Will Listen: No Cost, No Catch

[1]

my middle american city, small downtown, clear
pockmark free pavement and brickface, uncrowded
air above symmetrical city streetlines, here

light moves through the empty body-space
of soldiers somewhere abroad: deep desert,
sandstorm weathered rocks, scorpion-faced

and falling ever into sand, slipping
toward the autoclavic center, molten back
again eternal, ephemeral: 'burn' is not enough;

creases formed in the coarse fabric, time
coheres around the pink rose bloom, dissipate,
the accretion of ash unfolds the mountain flat

and ripples someplace in the oceanic dark;
scour the chalk flaked pages, the water-written books
for an eschaton's coordinates, the map-point of safety

that hides in your body, embedded beneath skin
and spirit bespoke by imperceptible growth
of trees rising from the moss and muckgrass;

as the millimeter bug clings to the coffeemug,
twenty times toeing the porcelain perimeter
above the steaming black, so too you return my stare

with quiet constancy; bodhisattva peace amidst the city-rush
laps against the shoreline of your soul, whispering
through your ventricles, a rebellion of quietude;

with warm bread, ballast and seafoam
we unfetter ourselves into breath, evanesce out
capacious and comfortable in our negative capacity

[2]

I broke from the tenets of the city,
washed myself up on a black sanded shore

and then I made way, I carved
a space in the air for my body,

moved about among the tree branch,
slid down the water-rivulets worn into rock

only to wake in a sun-lit forest
of people contiguous as quilt;

the acorn's center, the foot-clapped pavement
hum something sorcerous, framed from inside

as the tree-bark hides an outward expanse,
as under us air around arrowroot gloams;

some substance half outside of me sings
and spurs a nascent sentiment

like washing your hands in warm water,
like familiar arms round the waist—

let yourself glory in the opening day

Learning to Destroy the Teacher

[1]
I call myself out from hiding, I call to the things between, the things found
when mid-summer springs forth, the flaxseed sprouting in open field,
laying lull of lilacs in the breeze, bowing their Tyrian purple crowns—
Be not modest you luscious kings of fields unwoven!
Be not modest you who reads me in time unseen! I have felt
your diaphanous span, felt the humming of your inevitable arrival, it is not
a gift unwarranted, it is not much more than mine, not much less.
What wonders of your world surround you of which I know nothing?
What wonders of your world surround you of which you know nothing?
Do not shy away from your sovereignty over encounter, shy not from the singularity of our span,
from the kitchen mouse scurrying frantic over the tiles, fleeing the head servant's cleaver,
from the fields of corn towering toward gray sky, waving briskly before the coming storm,
from the oaken wardrobe, crafted by warm and rough-worn hands the color of cinnamon,
from the children playing on mounds of snow, bundled warmly by mothers and fathers,
from the riverbank's silt-lined shore, otters rolling in the gray-brown muck,
from the young ladies dressed for Friday, laughing their way into the taxicab together,
from the sound of a hunter's footsteps, crunching quietly over fresh snow in the forest,
from the stillborn's mother, her sobs echoing over the heavy arms wrapped around her body,
from the crash of football helmets, the flexing muscles pushing against, the stress and competition,
from the flight of a sparrow, pointed light looped line across the billowing sky.

[2]
On the Michiganian shoreline I spread myself wide and invite the day, I pause
to call out to you who stops not at the lake, who hurries past holding your hat to your head in the wind
and say I do not despise you in your rush, I too know the ebb and pull of business affairs;
I go with you down the steps of the subway, elbowing through, swiping your card at the turnstile,
waiting and crowding in toward the 4 train as it screeches to a halt, doors close, slowly forward, faster, the sway of the car, the muffled music from headphones turned high, the stops and new people, the shuffling
EJN
feet and newspapers, the people looking up, around, the eyes turned only toward shoes, the novels'
pages fluttering between delicate hands, the eventual halt and final arrival; in Tribeca we rise up
into the open air, my spirit lagging behind to admire the height of skyscrapers, running to catch up,
ascending the marble steps, nodding as you do to the receptionist who's wearing his inerrant smile,
tallying on your phone the tasks for today, chatting baseball with the elevator steward as we climb.
This is the accomplished man, well-fed, smartly dressed, a fine suit, an overcoat for rain,
not unshapely, well-shaven, going home to enjoy a cigar by the fireplace, collar unbuttoned, tie loose
and perhaps a fine red wine, perhaps a sniff of bourbon, all the while clear headed and content.
This is the destitute, yellowed nails long and brittle, head bowed beneath the bridge, frayed and
molding blanket draped over sagging shoulders, the rainwater pooling black at his sides.
This is the sunshine on your skin, the heat and color, the squinting to see, the ethereal blanket of warmth.
This is the mouse caught in the trap, its fur fraying and ruffled from the struggle, eyes wide and
voice shrilly calling to no one, neck half-broken by the wire, vision fading from us like a dimming lamp.

[3]
I speak for you who does not speak, you whose voice is caught somewhere, I unlock
the latches on your chains, give gladly water and bread, I slide some solidifying
secret under your tongue, there it starts to vibrate and resound with something not quite unsaid.
Who can tell you you're done? Stop and sit with me by the rough water's edge or
by the bar in the dimlit tavern, here the beer is hearty, quiet music's playing and I'm in no hurry.
Where are you going? Where have we been? I pray you; stop trying to close your borders,
what is open is open. There's nowhere you aren't that you're essentially
supposed to be. Let's have another drink, linger here away from the chilling evening air, bathing
in the glow and warm smell of small candles encased in frosted glass, flickering back 'gainst the woodwork.
Share with me a few more of your readied words, your deathless stories. These are weighty, real, these
are not the last words. There are no last words for the way the dusk-glow that ripples over the horizon
melts into the star-birthing nightsky overhead, no words for the way you carry your
laughter in groups, your contemplative nights in moonlight through a window, your running in youth,
the first bed you'd ever shared, somewhere within you—vibrating like the eyes of a Bengal Tiger, everystep.

Birds in the Dark

Through rainwater beaded windows, car headlights
sweep through the unlit living room, two blinks
of the turn signal, yellowing then unyellowing
the silver urn on my mantel, the solitary night spent,
the solitary night saved, like a young man brimming with strength
in a stone-framed monastery, like so many piggybank pennies
I grow up to find useless. If you spend the night watching
the night, it grows into something formless, hideous
then shrinks back into the fireplace den, shrinks
into a universe of its own, the unwashed dinner plate
orbiting motionless on the coffee table, preparing perhaps
to launch an offensive in the East, annexing the red stained wine glass,
or to crash against the wall at will: mine.
Isn't this the point of meditation, to be god of a moment?
To temporarily take hold of the reins even when you aren't sure
who are the horses? I will carry this darkness
with me in the morning, pass on its presence
and peace to the eyes that meet mine.
Outside: the storm's heart is illusive and beats
down on the pavement in moments we can't quite catch—
down 'til just before you think it might dawn
it's done, and the blacktop glistens rough in the streetlight.
Inside: I glisten rough in the dark.

1 Tbsp. Gravity, Heaping

What fiery force flung us here
through the holy doors of mothers?
My body showed up in the sand, at the shore
painted toward the earth, fading from the sun
as surf swallowed me in stages.
Is this the end of progress? Have we finally made it
to civilization's gory climax, rumbling chainsaws held high
above the trembling sense of plenitude and purpose?
The ceiling fan whirs without breaking the heat
and in her laced, barely-there black nightgown
nihilism keeps tempting and tempting again.
Is something really imperceptibly intended,
painted blue with fingertips, kindergarten morals
written underneath the river-hiss of tires on pavement,
smeared by the hand of an infant-god
invisibly behind the lines of divorce papers?
Is it here where the universe starts? Ends?
Can we ever name the night?
The sun still sets in Boston, out over a wide country
that someone somewhere will never see.
The moon shows us the sun,
the earth the moon. But if we spread our vision wide
to wrap around us like a quilt, will we stop our interminable turning away?
In the middle of an unoccupied Tuesday, walking along the river
I wake like a bird beneath the wide and cloudless stretch,
see nothing above but the brilliant blue burning
to be understood. Are you as it and I?
Have you feared the weightless void?
There is no rough beast slouching toward us,
no axiom to define the contours of your breath.
In the neon-glowed night, I float on my feet light as I was
in the billions of mornings before the earth turned.
Do you think we were not waiting then
as we are now, hungry for emotion and purpose?
The smallest speck of something is hurtling toward us
at tremendous speed it flies through the void
tearing through cosmos to be born as an orchid.
What is the smell of baked bread?
What is this fault-line in my chest?
Does the morning sun on white kitchen tiles
strum a 12-string guitar in your heart?
Can the trees in city sidewalk squares
grow indifferent to forests?
I want you to crash into my center
like a water-balloon filled with light,
like we've never ever been
hurt by anything before.

Sawgrass

I.

This endless errant idling assaults me.
I dream of a more purposed wandering:
Of weaving for years like a crumb bound ant on the kitchen floor,
Of cresting a mountain path, white dusted rocks, fine twill of snow
Without footprint, cold, clean air cutting into my lungs
And cut through by low sun over cliffs, I watch
Nightfall come like a lynx stalking forward through the wood,
Mountain shadows sliding up from the valley
Then swallowing back on themselves, breeding darkness, breeding
The litany of stars


II.

At the lakeshore, beneath the still water: smooth dark stones;
The bare branch framed moonlight of November,
Where white wolves snap their gaze to the crack of a branch,
The familiar haunt of dusk, coming quicker each evening;
Halt of treeleaf, growth of night, baritone whistle of wind
And a deepening dark through the white pines—
The unrecordable sound of eternity hums;

I watched the early autumn turn, the green leaves singed yellow at the edge
Frayed with fall, tired and wind-burnt after summer's spent;
I watched the wrens and warblers run, knifing through the sky, watched
When their darting paths curved downward through the chilling air,
Some internal compass swinging South.
And now in these colder moments I speak softly to their absence,
Barefoot atop the mud and crunch collage of brown and ruddied leaves,
Through the waking winter air I shape my words
As to a lover in the first morning windowlight;
Far in the forest, a Great White Owl opens
Her deep, dark eyes toward the brimming moon.



III.

I feel a soft and quiet pull within
As the flower of desire blooms in my heart,
As I burn to be brought back in new forms,
To reemerge in the Oak leaves' lines,
A resurgent rise like the humpback whale
Breaking the surface with its balletic body,
White misted spray of breath;
Or when birds break out of a tree all at once,
Flock of flight, flapping wings
Daring you to follow as they fly
To you, then overhead, beyond
The space where the forest opens like your hand
Into a plain of tall grass, golden rapeseed in brilliant bloom,
Out over amber sandstone crumbling cliffs,
Then down, diving inches from the cliff-face
To cut skyward above the canopy of leaves,
Disappearing into unbound sun.


IV.

In this spacious room of twilight
I walk quietly with my spirit, arms outstretched,
Touching my fingertips to the tops of the tall grass;
This is where the divine is hiding
As the tide hides in the waves,
As the moon hides in the tide;

This is where the fading last light preaches
Wordless, sermon of silence as the coming night
Vibrates harmonious around you, vibrates
Around the bend of a branch as a bird
Takes the air under her wings to arise;
Nothing that grows and dies is out of tune;
Nothing that arises from your heartbeats is profane;
Everything exists only in interrelation, everything depends on
This one blade of sawgrass, taller than the rest,
And the choice of the firefly who is hovering toward it,
About to alight

Adjusting Brakes

Old bike brake cable
thin cord of rusted metal
new auburn stained thumb.

ancillary inquiries

When I lean back and breathe in air
at midnight, why does it feel more real?

What is the Platonic antithesis
of this feeling of falling?

Did your peacock come with feathers
or was that just an afterthought?

When rain throws itself against a window
does it cringe before the crash?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Can I find a space in the bottomless ocean
where the abyss is seen not thought?

Where in the world did we get
this much color in our bones?

Will the reeds rustle as wildly
in a thousand years as today?

And if God is a summer's day
to whom do we turn in December?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Is there some heavenly calculus
for lightning seen and unseen?

Where do you find the thread
that stitches the hinges of knees?

Are we still slumbering upright?
Are at least the dragonflies awake?

Does surf slide across the sand in
night quiet as could be, or quieter?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How does the layered sunrise
shoot through me like an arrow?

Why were these hieroglyphs written
so sharply in the sky?

Do the fractal stained window panes
show your faith like a mirror?

Or is there something else inside
that whispers like the wind of you?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If all the shades of blue
can't contain us, can the sun?

Do we disappear like sound
of the flint-flint-flint of a lighter

when the flame's finally sprung
for it's pure and passing purpose?

Now that we've been thrown here
when will we dance?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If I keep moving slowly through the wet grass
will my softly muddied feet feel free?

Who can make you feel young
after you've written a will?

And when the ink has dried does the paper desire
the tattoo of death written across it's face?

Could the end of something as true and
intangible as you really be forever?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Does the thunder make you hide
as the stars hide from the day?

And just what is the thunder,
this ocean of sudden sound

crashing over even skyscrapers
like a tsunami of the sky?

But when the storm breaks in half
like a cloud of red sea under sun,

do you wonder how many centuries are hidden
in the making of this moment?

No Clouds

The pure summer blue above
seems sometimes to stare right back,
one great concave eye over
creation; moments like this
are when I reach deeper down
with my small and callused hands
to grab hold of the thick woven rope
that binds me to the anchor inside
and pull it taut to tighten
both its grip and mine
on whatever weight I've got.
But as sweat beads on my brow
and I lean back to gain leverage
I turn and look over my shoulder to see
the three blind mice named id, ego, and
soul scurrying, scrambling for straws of experience,
using them with the delicacy of morning light
to weave my rope together.
There are tiny green strands of quiet moments
watching wildflowers bend shyly beneath the breeze,
thicker burgundy yarn of loud nights with red wine and revelry,
and all the faces of friends rolled into thread
in more colors than I could describe.
To watch them work is incredible,
these three fabled minions of mine,
squeaking like sonar, calling out coordinates
with bits of twine 'tween their teeth
in a twelve footed sightless waltz of creation.
They give me the sense of having endless allies
in this beautiful broken place I call home,
so I turn 'round and smile, lowering my anchor
hand over hand on my tight-woven rope, deeper
deeper down within me
into a warm and shapeless place
where there is no bottom.

Walking in the Midwest

I imagine every tree to be
driftwood in a hundred years,
branches gone, the firm trunk truncated,
the wood's rough ridges of bark
ripped away at the roots by water,
the old deciduous' lifeblood
now crashing down in an Oedipal ocean.
I see whole forests of them
washed up on the sandy shore
of my thought--this is how I escape
the towering bookshelves of bibliocracy
that reign as the primal tyrant of our minds.
Still, we act; we built and are building
language. We built and are building
and are built by words. We built and are building
something slippery that sustains us
through the moments of winter and loss,
something deep and wide and gilt-edged,
something that allows us to take our morning coffee
with cream and sugar in a sunlit kitchen
the day after our fathers die.
Maybe that's why twisting roots of wood
worn soft like rain by sea surf
make "chaos" seem like a warm invitation
to change, make consciousness less like a bear-trap
and more like a window for flowers and sky,
make the lifeworld seem a lot more like
a world of life.

Why Running in Youth and Love Will Never Not Be(.) Good.

My inner psychic life a sailor
along the shore of something strange,
he minds and mans the gap from Wisdom
eyes with envy rolling plains
from starward deck of Sartrean vessel,
destined morals : auburn clay
are cargo in my hold forever
molded million times a day;
and cardinal virtues not a quartet
nor orchestral symphony,
much more the seconds in a century,
soft touch of lips, or eyes to see;
for even disenchanted worlds--
though knife-black freedom can alarm--
hold the dictum that no other
but myself could my soul harm.

Dear Santa,

This year I turn
older, just like last,
so could I have a few more
porcelain years to place
on my granite mantel,
Hummel talismans to time?

Also, there are some things—well, lots—
that my teachers won't tell me.
Why does the grass grow and
stars shine and people
keep killing one other
amid the miracle?
Why do we always hide?
Are you and God related?

I can't understand
how air bathes the globe.
I can't understand the words scribbled in the sky.
I can't understand how death fits so firmly
in my hip pocket each morning.
So please help me shore up my defenses;
cast my soul in iron, my hope in brick,
plaster over my fear and mortar my faith,
teach me to see the empty fleeting nature
as a flitting bird in flight,
as a fact like a flower,
as a bowl of warm soup.
Teach me to be

Yours, Truly.

Where Are We Headed?

The hawk glides in place-
Effortless anchorage over
The strong summer wind
Barreling down the cliffs,
Lifted by nothing
But the air of the earth.

This is where we are
Supposed to talk about dreams,freedom,
Maybe God. This is the point, the rift
Where grandiloquent proclamations of hope
Seep in through a crack in the poem’s foundation
And collapse like wet cardboard
Under their own weight.

But maybe it’s best
Without all that?
Maybe this is just where the hawk stands
For himself, where the confluence of the universe
Who put him before me
And me behind him
Is enough, maybe this is
That part of our story:

A day that once would have been
Nameless, predestined at a point to be July,
Under relentlessly loving sun
Plants growing
A universe of their own
All around us.
This is where we are.

Summer Rain and Such Things

Flowers tickle the back of my neck
like cigar smoke, curling in
and out of me, blooming vanilla
and pearl, a scent so fresh
as the birthing of souls
it's almost enough to forget
the gauntlet that lies ahead,
the endless trap of the gray mundane;
Red alarm 6:15 glowing through the winter void
anxious lines for coffee that steal
my kindness like a fly in the gaping maw of venus
where our lives seem simple as cigarettes
in geologic time, regret and relaxation but
burning, always burning
down, it leaves me feeling
anorexic again at the table of life,
no communion, every line on the menu
a brand new way to be damned.
But no ink of despair is so dark
as to blot out the spin of our sphere,
and Heaven as the sky and not a mandate
turns ever around us,
and the only way to wash out stars
is light
and the crashing storm always opens
cloudless blue
opens again, to purple, to green
to all the layers that allow
grass, gods, bodies.
Grow.

The History of Post-Medieval Love

If the body is a temple
For the mind
I could use a reformation,
Though the thought of theses
Nailed between my ribs unsettles me.
Still, I read somewhere in a book
It’s not the nail but the hammer,
It’s not the cross to bear but the witness
To the way the aurora is unspeakable,
Before we all supernova sometime
Out into our otherworldly light.
Yet despite the stars
My worst moments feel terrestrial
Godless, scarred all over with scorn
Like a poor man’s memory,
Like the August midnight hours
Awake, humid in our earthly autoclave,
Thrashing through black bedsheets of guilt
Until I calm at the penumbra of dawn
To open my heart to hope,
Nestling my head between pillowy prayers
And hollow doubt.

Dear You,

Under the Half Moon of the Almost Twilight, cream-blue sky
I looked at the flex of your body and thought,
We have such beautiful machinery,
Instruments of the Universe as we are.
But also that and how could I forget
My Instrumental Self was always programmed
To endeavor to show the Ultimate
Ephemeral Nature but Persistence of Love
in all things was my passion, my passion was
in all things, You saw the Great Coalition of Doubt
grayblack and shadow-edged, lurking in the abyss beneath
and through the retrospection
of the Time we are not thinking,
when we wrestle ourselves awake,
when will we dance?
when will we dance?

Cracks in the Compass?

Unless a raindrop contains the universe
The Way a map contains an atlas,
Differing in its essence without
We are lost.
Unless we all come to bear
Witness and hope and
Its essence within
We are doomed to decline
Down the tar-pits of time
and hesitation.
Where is the captain!?
Where is our firm voice through the spray
Barking orders to men
Who know but still hear
Their duty and place
In tongues already understood?
Even the oil painted boat with blue sails
That owned five years of this café wall
Was somehow sold to someone,
Leaving me in a familiar seat
Under an unfamiliar SOLD,
And as my coffee cools
The café radiates
Something that speaks
Of life as all impermanence,
New belonging.

"There are some things you still need to get."

No one tells you how or if
to trade the purity of longing
for the dull daily sting of certainty
either way.

But it says in the Great Book
that to grasp is pain
and to seize is crime
and to fly under-over clouds is at hand
but don't desire it.

And it says in the Great Anti-Book
that the ego can be an instrument
if you let it, let it
love with radical abundance.

Then there are the fringe groups
whose books are all embossed
in a language still waiting to be understood.
But even as I fold the fringes
into the endless center
and carry the pocket square of infinity above my breast

I still find myself out in the backyard
each day, walking through the rain water
to glide along the inexplicably green grass,
to trace the circumference of something
with my softly muddied feet,
to mark the point with a cross

section of breathing and movement and
time, this is where doubt starts seeping in,
like a cut under water
red wisps waft
and then, deeper,
for sharks.

On Returning from Six Weeks Abroad

It is being born into a dream
who is strangely familiar.
It is forgetting and relearning
which key is the laundry room,
admitting you have no longer any use
for the skeletal subway map in your pocket
that held fast for so long the flesh of life
at one past corner in our flooding pool of time.
And you can't quite grasp the order of things
so your actions take on an air of superfluity,
an extra degree of difference, like ordering
another espresso just for the accompanying cookie
that they don't even have here.
In some cases, this sense of semi-permanence
may seep out in circles as ink in water
'til November days feel less autumnal and more like
Fall, as though the whole world was,
a playground at dusk,
emptying of its children.
But of course it is always
summer somewhere, though to hold this
in the mind's anxious eye
is like trying to track the flight of a single bird
the whole afternoon, which will render refulgent
the shadow-angle season change endlessly
conquering territory to frost,
retreating beneath May's bloom of birds.
It is choosing which old pain to forget
and which to wear like a soldier,
medals shining sun
resplendent scars
splaying soul
across Horizons
you're yet to see
but will

The 21st Century in Germany

The slow motion
forward, the creeping recognition who comes
sudden as the flood—like falling
out of love—your train has begun to move,
Boundless for Berlin. And in minutes
you've left Leipzig and her
soon to be ancient history
behind, concentrating only on
the white arms of what once were
called windmills, watching them
grasp wildly after something
they never fully reach
but always have.
In this way we are the same,
you and I, with our common language and hatred
of the times when only void flows through,
when the incorrigible heart and her allies
usher us only on
and never to.
But this is not now. Now
we are going back to Berlin, now
our only concern is the singularity of this
village road overpass we rumble across,
our only concern is who here knows
this small corner of being so well as
I know the walkway over US-441
4.3 miles from my childhood
home. Or at least that was
our only concern, before we were hit hard by the inscrutable
yellow brilliance of rapeseed in bloom,
flashing by like a plain of pure sun.
Hand in hand we bend our bodies into birds
and fly through the fields, breaking stems and stamens
as the pollen paints us
Gold.

That With Which We Name The World

When the seasons slip
Too fast like sand
Paper across our foreheads,
When our penumbra of pain crests to spill
Like a moon bleeding her dark light
Ink night all over our muted stars,
When the ever unassailable awareness of
That which will outlast us fires itself awake,
What else is left to do
But gather up our things
Write to those who need to know,
And sing?
Perhaps I retreat forever into the Transcendent,
Perhaps I am the only monk left chanting
To Myself in a once forgotten temple,
Perhaps the golden ice that drifts down in flakes
To shine the people and pavement
Alive is a myth, and comes not from heaven
But only from the tenuous delicacy
We call words.
Still all the questioning qualifiers can't
Pull the breath from my living lungs
Unless I command them out like marching soldiers,
Still my heartbeats will never be numbered,
Still the World sits as the trees breathe for us.

Striking an Equilibrium in 24 hrs.

Fighting couples seen on the street: 3

Toddlers ordering ice cream from their parents arms: 3

Times cut off by traffic: 2

Beautiful women seen riding bicycles: 4

Vices indulged: 3

Times made uncomfortable by bladder: 2

Courteous apologies from others: 1

Scowls from strangers: 2

Lost opportunities to do good: 7

Times disappointed in friends: 2

Times disappointed in self: 12

Children's laughter heard: 1

Feelings of insecurity: 37

Times proud of self: 3

Times self-conscious: 9

Feelings of guilt: 7

Children seen crying: 2

Feelings of doubt: 11

Times laughed at: 3

Times lost faith in self: 0

Times lost faith in people: 0

If you want to see your Clavicle, you're gonna need a mirror

In a white porcelain shower
that's still unfamiliar
I run a few fingers across my collarbone,
and it too seems a foreign thing
this primeval harness.
Though while the water hisses and trickles down
me, this ossified Collar of Esses
feels less like the reins of destiny
and more the foreign spike,
a bone-sword who pierced me from behind
three million years before.
Look down for a wound, but of course
I can't see; and this small revelation
is perhaps the only moment
throughout my adult life
when I've discovered anything on my own
that once was called “a natural fact.”
I rub the thin skin that hides it
and know, I'm always only millimeters away
from that which keeps my consciousness
afloat, feeling majestically delicate
as the water all around me
pounds itself into steam.

on refusing the final merit

what was it he was hiding
that refulgent summer morning
behind lightning crystal eyes?
and what was it you couldn't say
trapped behind this concrete city,
plastered to the pavement like graying gum?
but then again, what more could be done to tell
how all the pretty pundits platitudes fall prey
to the simple profundity of the platypus?
and as the planet dances forever around its axis,
helping the dewy grass smoke to life
again, i pause to consider how
to give account of the unaccountable,
until i once more notice the way
the warm summer rain rolls
to and off the oak's cloak of firegreen leaves,
pooling perfect below.

The Lotus Position

was never comfortable, was it?
And when I was a kid
we would, both accurately and not,
call it “Sitting Indian Style.”
So that wouldn't do.
And to pray without ceasing
was hard enough on Mt. Athos.
Hell, it doesn't even work in novels,
so that was out too. Then I started to get a bit down.
I mean The Oversoul was all well and good,
and I still dig the fact that Svetaketu and I
are both made of honey; I sometimes picture us together
riding in the back of an old convertible,
his dad driving with one hand,
all of us resplendent in gooey gold
getting the seats sticky without a care in the world,
but when someone cuts us off and we ride up to his window,
I still struggle to see the honey in his eyes.
And that the Enlightenment
is already the name of an Epoch
passed is enough to make me rise from my room
to mount my bright red bicycle
and ride, fast and deep into the soft glow of an empty night
until the wind on my face becomes itself
the only prayer that I know.

19to20.04.10

When the morning comes clear as crystal, brilliant blue,
it is hard to believe
in the fragility of my being;
and perhaps that's the point,
sharp as the early air is
with sun and chill and spring.
And I watch
the windows across the way,
the steady stream of traffic below my own,
the clumps of cocoa that cake my coffee mug's
white porcelain walls, clinging like dark cliffs of Dover
above the surf, wanting nothing more
than to escape erosion one more day.
But when my window is thrown open
to give a little of Mulgrew's delicate piano
while taking in turn the syncopation of the street
the equilibrium feels fine,
and I feel myself also
flowing into perfect pace
with the piano and the people
below, at my staggering seventy-two
beautiful beats per minute.

Kastanienallee 103

An einem Samstag im April. . . .

With patience full of joy
I watch the linear boundary between shadow and sun
creep across my table outside this Prenzlauer cafe.

But as clouds blur the border
stark to soft
my coffee cools.
like a bathtub draining water.
until I feel far
from everything
in a way neither good nor not.

For a moment that gray abates
to resurrect the line
and I reach across the table
as for the hand of my beloved
and it's gone.


I gaze over a shoulder to read headlines
through whose syntax I stumble
like a child.


The clouds deepen.


Across the half busy street,
whose pace itself seems to slow,
the fruit seller and his apples, bananas, oranges'
colors cool in the cloud-cover.


And now, now with the border a pencil behind my ear
the Sun makes his Odyssean Return
and somewhere half within me
a familiar flame flowers
that will stay aloft all night.

In A Place With Love Locks

Here in this planned park
East of the Atlantic
small Eurasian Tree Sparrows hop and dart,
the same precision as their brothers
in the States they will never see

as cotton clouds uncover
the sun, flaming the grass green,
cumulus veil of difference drawn away
like dining room blinds before coffee.

And with a skyward squint
I glimpse the breadth of our sumptuous span
of life, and the wide and seamless human horizon
stretching out in all directions, illimitable
and in you.

Torch-Bearing

In this new city of red-brick houses
your memory might be a ghost
who shrieks at odd hours of the night,
or a cage I rattle when I'm alone,
if it weren't already the sword I use
to parry the blows of real life.

I'm setting up camp
in the red boxcar of jealousy
where I rot with the wood for weeks
before wrapping myself in velvet night
to gaze at milk-drop stars
who wink behind a million-mile blanket,
dripping their glow onto the weed-ridden, rust-covered rails.

And now I want to reach out
and touch everything that's true,
bringing it into myself
sudden and electric
purgative and dizzying
like shooting penny vodka with the boys,
all of us fresh, the restorative power of communion
coursing through us like lighter fluid
for the torches we are sure we'll become.

In the Space Between the Snowflakes

The seeming loss of everything
still has me swaying as at sea

but the time when I was falling
into and out of myself
far too fast to focus
has receded,

and you know,

I heard somewhere that the Self might be God
of a warm and familiar planet
where we all are the savior of something.

The Flood was Never Coming

Bated by breath that bathes the Earth
I stand at attention
my senses poised to filter in
the bloom of morning.
And I swear beside these quiet stones
that my grief will be interred
before my flowers wither.
The fear that, could we backtrack
the landscape of our lives
we would not find a footprint,
is it you that binds our tongues and bodies?
I see some brothers and sisters moving mute,
ever scanning the horizon for higher ground.

Cafe in Mid-February

“To be surrounded by beautiful curious breathing laughing flesh is enough”

~Walt Whitman,
I Sing the Body Electric

There are other moments I encounter in this

one when everything moves slow

and I realize there is no difference

between drinks at the Groveland Tap and Guitar Hero
between God and drunken bike races in the snow

and I believe for half a breath

that if I bear myself in perfect honesty
if I tell my father and mother that I've done drugs and fucked
up my relationships with rash selfishness

then everything will be clear as the glass of iceless water

and maybe they won't turn in shame
maybe a hand would fall to my shoulder

and this weight of proof could be lifted
to fly from me like a flock of sparrows fleeing a bush
who just for a second
seem like they'll never stop

releasing something that continues
like the lines that are not segments
going on forever beyond where they end

Fairview Ave

Over ethereal haze of traffic and urban homes
the evergreens tower, but fade
to something less than backdrop,
vague notions of nature beneath the daily Real.
As we coast with complacent frustration through custom
their majestic singular green
blurs behind like highway passing lanes in the night;
but two minutes beneath the swaying scented pines
pull me back to my senses like a ghost into a body,
and all the invaluable infrastructure cracks like dried mud,
falls away before our living breathing bodies

On Being a Drop of Water in a Rainstorm

No one thinks you're special,
no one cares for the drama of your fall,
how you clung to the clouds fierce as fire
and fell with Luciferian grace when they pushed you out,
wings pressed to your back in the infamous dive
that could only happen once, that happens everyday,
and you wonder who is watching
and you wonder where you'll land, and you wonder
what music best fits your fall
as you plummet symphonic power
an inverted crescendo to the ground.

The Cigar in Berlin

Soft, slow burn,
power and comfort in carbon.
Caramel-brown paper wrapped round
so perfect fold lines snake in circle,
a helicoidal progress
like Breugel's Tower of Babel,
beautiful spirals that crumble to ash.
But it's all just window-dressing,
accoutrement to accompany
the ever-approaching ember,
my smokestack flame, my guiding glow,
a signal flair for God.