daz Herz an sich

The cold, wind-teared face of night,
the gaps between perception,
tree and eye, eye and mind, heart
and another heart hurt. The way they
damage us, our deleterious hope. The way we
still rise in the golddust morning,
sprawl in grass rising over our bodies,
sun-lid light, warm red wind
and an eye opening into
everything all afternoon again,
sunbed, cloudleaf, a goldfinch
deleting the land and landless luft
in fine-lined, bonefeathered wings.

the steam at the edge of your glasses

in the long early hour
between coffee and showering
I quiet my clamoring
body in borderless layers
the way snow mutes a city,
so even in this winter-
gray cloud-lit morning,
everything sounds like a sunrise.

unbinding into the day

after dawn,
diamond-cold winter,
before the sun
has climbed over houses
across the street,
their smokestacks billowing
white streams back-lit
against newborn blue sky
flowing out into the east
bound wind.

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