Named

He's got

a mystical name.

He doesn't know it

but it melts like

buttered verbs.

-

When He Leaves

Jagged individual, rugged when you fall, in your looking back with shoulders and wind, your teeth shaken into ridges as you turned, first with the mass of your being, then as you grew as your own. That light that kept you breathing and the mother when she whispered that you, among them all, were favored, faded into the sound you learned to make with your sliding against the rules, the hissing you insisted you taught them all. Into the flight, when you strode forward with such bravery, you were shining like no other you had known before, without anyone else, into the air that could not breathe without you so that you became that which was the only. Time fled. You were time, too. So into yourself and all you are, as you lie still now, your body among the bodies. That which you were alone, you are again alone with them all.


_

What Alone Is

.
.
.
a moment without you
and without her and without
him
creates that
which you love to be with
of me
.
.
.
an hour without
you and without
her and without
him sounds like
loneliness to her
and him and you
.
.
.
rolling barren hills
brown prairie
wind.
          What was
that tiny sound
I thought I heard?


_

A Country

Hour upon hour from dawn the rain keeps my head near
through clouds peopled with conflict and bearing straight
twitches of what I thought lashed again and again. We've
left so much out, this falling tide and I regard each other
quickly and then remain as it was and is like sanctuary.

Bodies heave and dance with enticement though they have
a smell that can't be distinguished from bottles decanted
within stalling corners, upended visions brought out
from behind and revealed with gilt curtains and tassles
and songs tossed out like cigar ends against the grass.

Where does the song go? When it's done singing and even
the echo the tile was destroyed for is done shining through
shitshoe depressions and version number two? When it's
fallen into patterns of leaves, beaten into passions for
shelter, sameness, regularity, guilt and leveling decision?

Ifthen

For whenwith we had such as Thee,

there waswith no such privacy

as we watched with our eyes

laid bare in disguise

Thou's thenwhich run eternally.






-

I'll Drink to That

See brain, sit brain,
right side up brain
leaves of copper brain
leaves when they show brain
brain, if there were
nights in brainless
golden
heaven,
if there are brains
in homes of heads
would I without mine
worry as I would brain
worry like I could brain
can I worry brain
even if the thoughts
are rainprints running
braintints on teevee
nights with golden heaven
stained since by brainprints
and raintints and soda
coming through the nose
in a refreshing pain that brings
back the brain to brain’s only home
right there in yer head, ya ninny!
Pop!

In Fairness

Dice. The unloaded kind. Leaves
On a table. Loaded with derision
For change. Chance. Deleted
For you. And your kind. You are.
Chopped up. Disemboldened.
Fear full. Of red. Of black. Of
Crescent moons. Empathy.
Is weakness. Shaking hands.
Smile. For that. Camera.
Chimera. Rolls shot. Snake
Eyes. It's your money. Use
Less. It's not real. Not
Even close.

At the End of February

At the end of February.
Have been blaming February
for all ills, and there have been many.
But the front is so many languages.
So many faces that make the call,
things being something other than
what was intended or wanted.
Those floating faces moving up
through the water thick as syrup
each with mouths forming derision,
and why not? If there is a constant,
it is that I am in a land
where I have the ability to absorb
the limitations of others, not
as an affront, but as the way it is.
The way that is is now. How things are.
There are the actual people I live with.
There are the people who I have
lived with that now live somewhere else.
There is the work that I do.
There is the band that I play with.
There is the condition of the environment
in its season.
Can't do much about the latter.
But there are things that swim
around in my head about the rest.
Things that control or influence me
in sometimes not so direct ways.
Do I write so much anymore?
Though I used to make it
something of a practice and have
a body of work that languishes
in invisible drawers, there is
the pervasive feeling of all of it
meaning less and less to me
as time moves in its inextricable line.
Music has that feeling of all of it as well.
The stomach, the heart.
The feeling of certain sounds
that thrill me and charge me
with the possible, that when acted on,
lead to the hanging up,
like an old phone with the static air left.
Possible without exception,
yet other than what was intended.
If I knew there was a way
that was better than this one,
would I do it? Would I move
in ways that I have never moved in before?
A sort of snow falls.
A sort of feeling holds within me.
More ideas fall. I sit
here in my finger weaving stillness
with not knowing.
Usual wanting to stop.
Usual feeling of decay.
Usual feeling of empty sort of loneliness.