long gone

willowisp tree prone lost in forest,
pack of sugar i found in my pocket i
use to sweeten my coffee.
and so another year goes--
poor boy can't make enough money
for cookie and a glass of milk
around here.

(date unknown)

Ed./Published 9/27/12

7/23/08

A garden stoop to sit on, peeking neighbors crane their necks
over bushes and fences, observe your behaviors as if they were birds, and you, the birdwatcher.
generous amounts of time sits with you on that stoop, trucks pass, bikers, vans full of gardeners to their next assignment.
a sound of daytime in the suburbs is a miser's foot, a flower.


fistful of coins, fistfuls of flour, a mouth in the foot, an egg in the brain.
the shape of a tree-branch, caught up in flames.


(we are:
- blankets of flesh stitched together with needles and blood.
- a soup kitchen that weeps tears like an onion.

don't hurt me, i got nothin'

10/1/10

the feel of that back point
of the skull, resting between ears
that can't hear
and directly opposite eyse that close too much
the piercing of the head to the
floor, heavy, like a dynamite egg,
like a broken machine, total stillness.
It says, kill, kill, kill.
And the backpoint sketched smoothly
from a thousand strokes of the artist's
pencil, that is the murder, too.
All falls to the floor, is broken.
Already rested, the skull finally dies, is free.

Tablescape

5/15/11

(Ed. 9/27/12)

On the last day, there was a last meal. The last bread, the last tears. Departure from this life forever- a white drifting noise, a great wave of silence.

The table is set. White cloth of course, John's drifting cloak. The candles burn with vehemence borne from desperate survival,the last of a dying breed. Bread, warm and soft, every few feet, their tops etched in paradisic perfection. Flowers bloom, the cloth is clean. Soon they will be serving.

The whisper grows louder. It is the call to the end. It pulls while it weighs, like Death upon your chest, beckons you. The blueberries, scattered just so on this saintlike cloth, turn to stone, smoothened pebbles. Let me tell you how one becomes a saint. First it builds up in your heart, truly from a whisper to an uncontrollable rage - but never escapes. One must hold it in for an entire mortal life, and therein at the moment of reckoning perform that guiless art - the exhale, letting go of that breath and with it everything - the universe, which can no longer be divorced from itself. Such is the path to canonization - a tricky art, indeed.

The table requires attention. Yes, the moment when life turns to stone, what then? A feathered platter is set upon you from the gentlest of hands. Its beauty, in which it surely holds your happiness, oh and your terror, when you realize the bird has been plucked from your own feathers, that it wears your plumage upon its lifeless eyes!

The loudness, long anticipated, does not come. Softly you cry, "ah, little mother! I am dying..."

A vision that seizes you - and is gone.

into the annals

when i sleep i see you.
when i am happy i have little to write.
i woke up laughing.
i woke up with a dream of greatness
in my lungs you stuck like tar

i cried laughing and died trying
i pounded my fist against the wall.
language what is language?
the compounding of words;
the mold to the clay
like the shape of a shoe to a foot.

as you can see i took notes.
i wrote down everything i saw
i wrote down gibberish
i even drew pictures.

What does it mean?
maybe, it will mean more to you than it does to me.

found

In front of state street fruit store-
50 state street apt. 1

Call 5:00/5:30


12 in the morning, first draft in a long time.

This typing on a sheet of almost-white paper, late at night when one has time to think, is good for
The therapy of this night time, of this gray time….when there is not a place to put the past in the past, when there is only now and no future, when you realize you are really living, oh but how is that so




Peaches period a spot on the paper neat dots elegant font THAT font that RIGHT font on labels on brandnames on handmaidens and tales of peanut butter and mango trees.

Exotic names food for thought elahe oh elahe oh oh oh seena three e’s a oh no a vowel three pieces three pounds of food blood three pounds of flesh owed owned by another.

#9 (12/3/08)

You used it. Spewed it like venom, so ripe with the possibilities just discovered. The stale food smell, the ripeness of smell. It all came through, balled up in snow and rolled down the hill, came at me. The anger, the frustration, even the irritating smell of food lingering from the next room, you brought it all to me and threw the slop bucket in my face. I was glad, I could take it, but I knew you couldn’t- so I did. Oh the moon, do not weep from the heart of your icy surfaces, the fingertip pressure that is applied for that perfect sound; that sound that is akin to twinkling lights blurred in the distance, they turn into willows, willows of the wisp, they are bringing you into the darkness, that you don’t know and aren’t thinking of, you follow them, and in this tunnel of light you faintly sense foreboding, but your conscious is sleeping, you continue, the little lights say, you don’t have to be afraid…you follow you follow, but you know that if you don’t open your eyes eventually, something bad will befall you, a still soul ready as prey, for the darkness, for the unknown.

Onegin's Letter to Tatyana

I know it all: my secret ache
will anger you in its confession.
What scorn I see in the expression
that your proud glance is sure to take!
What do I want? what am i after,
stripping my soul before your eyes?
I know to what malicious laughter
my declaration may give rise!

I noticed once, at our chance meeting,
in you a tender pulse was beating,
yet dared not trust what I could see.
I gave no rein to sweet affection;
what held me was my predilection,
my tedious taste for feeling free.

...

No, every minute of my days,
to see you, faithfully to follow,
watch for your smile, and catch your gaze
with eyes of love, with greed to swallow
your words, and in my soul explore
your matchlessness, to seek to capture
its image, then to swoon before
your feet, to pale and waste...what rapture!

But I'm denied this: all for you
I draq my footsteps hither, yonder;
I count each hour the whole day through;
and yet in vain ennui I squander
the days that doom has measured out.
And how they weigh! I know about
my span, that fortune's jurisdiction
has fixed; but for my heart to beat
I must wake up with the conviction
that somehow that same day we'll meet...

how fearful is my obsession
to clasp your knees, and at your feet
to sob out prayer, complaint, confession,
and every plea that lips can treat;
meanwhile with a dissembler's duty
to cool my glances and my tongue,
to talk as if with heart unwrung,
and look serenely on your beauty!...

But so it is: I'm in no state
to battle further with my passion;
I'm yours, in a predestined fashion,
and I surrender to my fate.

-from Eugene Onegin (translated by Charles Johnston)

The Aquarium (obs.) & (p.)

(?) 2007

Relaxedly lost. Bad reception here, won't
find them unless they cross my path.

The fish are small. Smaller than at the Boston Aquarium, anyway.

They won't let us see the belugas.
The seahorses are magical floating
creatures with genius propellers. There are
gallons and gallons of water, and it
is all dirty and kept indoors.

I am sleepy, I want a nap or a
fall navy coat, either one.
However, not much chance of either.
Why do people need popcorn to ogle at the fish?

Idiots. I am sleepy, I am content.
In the heat and the cool of
the water-bag aquarium, I am content.

The Aquarium (p.)

I take your open mouth as ignorance.
We stand off,
I with my sword of fly-fish
and you, with your turtle-shield.
We were always equals,
we always matched our clown stripes.
We fought strike for strike,
I swam to hug the glass with feeble fish-arms
not the shape of my purpose.
Thievery stole my heart and
left my conscience,
like an open-brained lobotomy,
for you to devour.
In retaliation I bit off your tail
and from that day you
forever wore an expression
of goodwill.

Why

When I write, I write to exist.
I write to tell, doesn’t matter who,
A band, a brigade, a spirit or a voice,
I write during a time so that at another time
I can remember that old time
And I write so that I can conquer time
And I write so that I can keep going,
And so that I may survive…

When I write I write
So I may take that drink of water
Standing water at the bottom of the well,
I write so that I may eat,
And enjoy food, I write
So that every day is not an exercise,
It is a wonder;
I write so I do not have to
Write ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘I love you’ or ‘Don’t Leave’
I continue to write so I may always have a sense
Of self, a center that is only me
And I continue to write so that I may have strength...
And,
Although I will have to come out of hiding
And answer to the rulers of my life, love, trust, courage, confidence,
Today I may wait just a little
By putting some words down upon a page…

7/1/08

Summer, The Fourth, Life, Goodbyes

I eat summer fun for breakfast because
At lunch I’ll be indoors, typing out a memo to the boss,
about that thou we lost
Investing in the ice capades.
The popsicles and the ice cream
Left over from that childhood dream
Are in the freezer. We’re saving them for the
Fourth, after the barbeque and the sweet summer water-melon
That leaves
A wet taste on your lips glinting back at the stars and
The firecrackers as you lay on your back, a
Night-blanket and night-light
In your clutch as you had as a child, and
though imagination lifts and tries
Its best to hold,
the lead of your ever-soft body wields
To the solid dark earth, thick and vast.

You are its slave, and one day you will melt into it the exact opposite
Way you left it, many fourths from today. Stop, don’t stay. Leave it
As you would leave me, on a cool night after a hot summer day, to get a drink
Of water, with every intention of returning. Just pretend you’ll be back;
Breathe normally,
Talk normally, drink normally, I’ll never suspect. And,
If you touch my fingertips one more time with yours and form a jumbled
Word with your lips, I’ll let you go.

6/30/08

The Protective Powers of Kohl

Which is the when is the where is the why?
I’ll spend most of my life indoors, and if I’m lucky,
I’ll have windows in my office.

Turn around and walk out the door slowly, you’ll need to
Take that one last look. If it was that cigarette you took,
You owe me one- bring it back.

I wish I had fur and leather and kohl to protect me
From any future harm, a smog of perfume and dirty
Smoke to make me less vulnerable, tall boots whose studs
Would protect me from heartbreak with the message they’d
Convey, a feline atrocity, a distinctive animosity that will steer
Bringers of harm away with one silent look, and a breath they
Took, that spits blood into the chilling air.

If there was enough black eyeliner in the world to prevent my
True eyes from seeing, I’d buy it all and stock up for those pallid
Wintry months. I’d wrap myself in elevated ideas, mink and astrakhan,
Let no mention of sentimental pain touch me, I, veiled, in that apartment high up,
far from
The city streets of commotion and chance for car accidents, pedestrian run-overs
And spontaneous acts of violence,
And drink the world’s supply of scotch. In my boudoir we’d discuss
The difference between jealousy, love and lust, and pushkin’s proud paramours,
the gray lines of tatiana’s trust.

Strangers flood me and wander through my displays, they cause ruin and wreckage,
They ask questions about things I can’t explain.

I, singular, me.
Being alone is like building immunity- you do it slowly, surely, safe from pitfalls
You can’t afford.

6/30/08