this is not the white page
this is my life unraveling slowly
this is the sound of energy swimming
these are words doing their broad sounds.
a period is not the mass communication.
i am going to smoke a cigarette
and contract cancer;;
why is poetry so evaporating
why do i love my parents
there is something i want to say
in this unsaying of it
there is some continuity in the
patternless routine of my
orthodox hierarchy

little failures

i dream of hair.
like a line i have tied
to your hands,
all over, everywhere,
this is my kind
of love, the unabridged version,
an excursion of the mind,
a subway line
take to where you are
underground, warm.

Lovers

The moon on a Monday is placid,
a dog silently gnawing the bone
then waiting in the corner to be told.
On Friday, it exposes a white throat
veins pulsing thirstily
against a darkness that chokes.

There is no poetry in a rock
on a shelf
examined with twelve eyes
scraped to powder
while the craftsman works tirelessly
ignoring the murmurs
in her own chest.

Sinking flower
sinking like my heart
do you laugh at the wind
that lodges in your petals?
Do you hang upside down
invert your pretty head
relinquish its white crown?
Do you betray love’s light
by splitting yourself,
do you beg for the
release of your little shelf?
Have you danced with
death’s mirrors, planting
nuggets of wisdom
like shy crystals in my
withered ears? Does your
scent drift in like a mother
tending injury or fear?
Are you correct in assuming
that life gets rich off you
and you alone—do you
drop, drop drop
your curtains to the floor?

hello my name is charlie

i have words to back me up
words that eat through everything like fire
words that hang on the line and drip their
wet filth into gravity
i want to know what the words said
on a rainy, cloudy day while
driving another car hit me
i want to know if the words spinned
and spinned and did not
grasp the wet road. i want
to know how the words ruined
my plot with a bandage of smoke
coming off them and when
they penetrated my
skin did they finally understand
dying

oh these aching worlds

tired of banging home
i hang rhythm on their loose
eggshell bones.
i leave something for you
each time i go astray;
a bleak song in your eyes
when your eyelashes kiss me away.
now there is another love
resting, a home in her cheeks
fat as a dolphin, newly-smooth:
in her, something’s released.
















what i’m doing in this city

crashing, wings
folded and bruised.
running, feet
aching and used.
loving, empty
heart and shoes.
waiting, crisp
littering news.
wondering, wide
morning my muse.
faking, angry
sheltered excuse.
patient, words
grappling a truce.









seal of me

with you in a coffee cup
with you in the empty van of my head
with you under the heavy blanket of cigarette smoke
with you in the natural epicenter of my bed
with you under the bunker of my thoughts
with you in the goldenrod of your hair
with you in the acrid night
with you in the petulant daylight steaming under a lamp
with you in the dark, a crisp tightening mood
draped on our coffin shoulders.
with you, another road to fly down
passing shards of a house
a field
a lion faced deer
on my way home












bridge over this night

i will drink water
i will run along the brook of my thoughts
and i will count my muscles aching, twitching
vainly, i will number their
bird-like longings
each time one rules over me
the sound of carrying weather, the
stiff heavy heart of ransacked emotion
under the tunnel of my life.