strangers merge

in the wake

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 00:33:22 -0700

the ardor and iron-strong
the placement reads, immaterial,
as those irregular waves that sometime swim in the
physical realm at a finger’s
touch, a monumental transport
through generations

set sail upon a paper
sea of letters, of words
ours could but flounder in
rafts aground against
self-made puddles
and i can only remember the omnipotence of a tick-tock antique,
and dusty shelves of magazines,
my grandfather’s life stories
and bait collection,
and window blinds,
and metal cross,
these shrouded in vague lighting—
blonde and amber and bluish bronze that’s brown in scrutiny,
for i was not there.

to reach out and touch
those accolades
weighted against our palms
in velvet relief (or leather,
or other reverent packages)
is a consternation, a question,
hesistant and undeservéd
i dare not ask.

with it (in so remembering)
the indomitable receding tide:
its blackened shoals, resolutely ink-stained shore,
as it was once,
and it has been
an explication
of curt, hardened throats
the swell wroth with power.

never that close

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 01:51:00 -0700

the milestones read
as though from a plaque:
degrees, securities, ruby bands,
jumbled up and ground to
a finite dust
to spread with your finger

in the moment, (if you’re lucky),
you’re never aware of where
you really are as

you tell the cabbie to take
another pass watching the
streetlamps flicker and the meter
climb in a haze,
it’s all quiet on the western front
until a shot breaks armistice
through the windshield
sending the car careening over
the guardrail
before any process of coming to
any nourishment catching up
on the miles flown by

assent

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 03:10:00 -0800

low blue breaches the misshapen
shapes herein, sifting its midnight
strokes like grains of sand washed out,
blinded in a sunken valley

boxes and strewn cloth and
the frames of pictures held melded together,
amorphous in the eyes of a
figure familiar silver-glassed;
your local monolith unspeaking,
standing humbly amid waist-deep shade

your torso flat, broad
in the deep is shrunken, bent
beggarly shapes on small knotted knees
inked through to a spectacular navy pass—
and i too have walked in the desert.

fearful pariah, what may i say to keep you
from shrinking away, as is custom
may i only pass unencumbered as will be,
as may be only,
blind-backed and ragged and new.

don't engage the talent

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 10:55:30 -0800

are you new here
ask it staring, waiting

your words sink, shrinking
flaccid
their bite sags limply
as you’re covered in a
spray of warm red
teeth tearing to a fresh kill
splayed on the coarse savannah floor

corner street

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 03:33:41 -0700

millions of people
get up, get ready
for work with views
overlooking the vistas
or burrowed deep in
the sheen
of world capitals

it’s amazing, we think,
how could anyone live right there
right in the throbbing vein
of industry, finance, culture
exoticism so potent it’s practically
fetish

it’s life and death to be a part of this
somewhere
and there
faded like an old photograph
in a leather bound book
buried in an attic until chance
stirs gravity’s fingers
towards change

book burning

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 23:50:00 -0700

i sat up
vaguely aware of the
pressing heat coming off
nearby flames

and remembered as though
coming to from a long forgotten dream
the kindling,
and liquid fire snarling
underneath greedy edges
black teeth curling
up through pungent air
the night before

that ramshackle patio
promised with the warmth of
a hundred bodies,
one said to me
“it’s making a statement
by doing it,” and picked up
some trash held together
with cheap glue
no better than such abstractions
notions dabbled in some release

infernus beast, i watched thy
raging lips splutter
gnashing lustily
after chewed pages,
an insatiable surfeit
in desolation of service
to apparent wreaked silence,
finding some snake’s
sliver of truth,
a philosopher’s smirk
wreathed by resolution—

i remembered as i hated,
a flurry of fists i would level
inward in chimeral dreams to come.

shell

Sat, 08 Sep 2012 03:43:00 -0700

i touch a hand to my face
(later, in naiveté), pondering
through a slitted viewpoint
in streets of old world beaten stone
a flat mendaciousness

like a scene from an
old japanese film, cruel
as a stalking voyeur,
their prey urged to
rupture, violate

its plaster surface cool,
feeling neoprene
gliding down my fingertips
i think with some misplaced
arrogance
maybe i’ve left an impression
and in relief realize i
probably wasn’t really
around for that anyway.

satellites

Sat, 08 Sep 2012 03:16:00 -0700

this could be a personal crutch:
that arterial spray of words
forms spatial wards
craggy, half-submerged
on a pacific sea,
islands that illuminate at a touch—
a luminous multi-ring network
that pared down from macro
sends the pulse of community
quivering down our collective spine
like the parable protagonist
and the forum of great figures
we remember as friends
recounting their respective journeys
as we pair or group
fulfilled.

negotiations and glad-handing aside
this isn’t an easy job
words are just that,
can go no further than stopping a speeding
train or fueling activity into
flagging economics—
phalanx scattered,
reality balked
we realized rings are surrogate
relations swapped in and out
at every event,
no personal constants but
for settling

matter eventually breaks apart
molecules to separate cores
in the vastness of bleak space.

imprint

Sat, 08 Sep 2012 02:22:00 -0700

i feel that i’ve met a celebrity i
loved as a child
like i’ve seen that one film,
you know which one i mean,
with the director maybe i was
implicated with
in worlds

that nerve is there, shuddering,
like a twisted thread floating in
milky, electric darkness
impregnable, we tell ourselves
(sometimes to great anger)

its physics in degrees
harder to flip over than a
wriggling spider—
each image fused in a single cord,
maybe only one is true.

easier

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 02:59:33 -0700

i’ll bet in the nineties we would laugh
at all the cues for tropes,
as though the actors were serious
as the grave over the subject matter
in a passing gag
for, what, continuity

it wasn’t prescience—

effort and synthetics:
not a recent trend

apothegmatic

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 00:52:00 -0700

in the burned out building hollow
visible from across highway wreckage
is it possible, that ascent,
hoarding supplies and water
blindly selfish to the effects of touch
in its most vital stages

in that time desperate love settles over
blackened camps,
the progressive highrise looming
as urges collide
and illness’ possessives
(inept, fearing curios)
broach lustful indifference

impossible future

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 22:14:00 -0700

we lived in a time without photoshop
and cracked our heads against
slates that were video screens,
hauling stones in heavy woven
rope nets
we’d brush the sweat
and grime from our damp arms to build
and find nourishment in each other
when we tore our clothes,
savagely beating old steering wheel columns,
fucking like animals

face of another

Sat, 28 Jul 2012 18:31:46 -0700

as we talk i’ve realized
the contours of your face
entirely work on this stream
of words splashing, breaking
against that outer perimeter
blooming as i exhale in a steady
listing of letters maybe mildly stricken
by mingled minutiae,
the glow a radiant incandescence
i can’t quite trust

step back and maybe
you’ll have painted another picture

follow the world with your eyes

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 01:29:00 -0700

my headlights passing, the once over
and vacant construction signs,
packed away till the next
i recognized in a loft’s windows overhead
the presence of
when i had stood there once;
i was sure of it.

it went as quickly as it had come,
a sliver vanished up its white-faced side,
panes lining up in a singular existence
betraying an inner openness
vaulted free to its rafters
that might’ve been six dens,
eight sanctuaries,
places to throw keys and
flop down on mattresses
and i wasn’t sure.
how could i be?

this night air dips in the cool
there, lovers strolling under darkened trees
their currents pulsing elsewhere
and i at the door with my blood beadle,
fahrenheit crier—
and all over, hanging smells,
mill and baker
with moment enough to abruptly mouth,
close to surprise,
“maybe it wasn’t me.”

lair

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 23:20:00 -0700

strictly speaking it doesn’t
matter how many hallways
you construct or turns you make
in the plans—the flat edge of the
paper neutralizes everything
back to zero.

you’re living here.
passing in revolutions with knickknacks
and framed art to hang,
after apartments you’ve visited.
for a moment, you’re enjoying yourself
take a load off, kid, you’ve earned it.
the place looks great.

the square footage layout a careful process,
one you know well. underneath the grain floor
are subterranean tunnels, barren and sunken
deep below the foundations, just to remind you
there’s an outside void of earth waiting just
beyond the corners of your vision.
it’s breathing,
it’s all ground down
are you watching someone

new

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 04:16:00 -0700

what is it
we’re all after it,
so hard,
whatever “it” is.

and so take blind paths
happily—adhering—
with glittering pricetags
printed on new old-fashioned
paper in that style everyone
likes so much.

there is a typewriter that sits
in my closet, a broken jaw
it could still bleed if only
its lips worked

the dust on its hard shell
worn-in, the dirt its own
imprint of passing hands
and history
and the gift
i no longer care
about

once it sat
maybe you could smell the oil
and there were others
and others exchanging
excited hands,
utilitarian, dreamer’s,
time lapse
a slow coast of rust
ground down, untouched

i tried once to nurse that broken jaw

time immemorial

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 02:36:04 -0700

flipping from cels
in a prismatic side profile
the two things
we don’t approve are
“memory”
and
“the face you’ve become,”
but like so many
wrong turns in the
bloodstream,
its evolution
too far gone.

out of a grove

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 23:23:59 -0700

i had a dream
alexandria’s library burned
in the distance;
“is it true?” i asked an old man,
seated on a perch overlooking
the flames.
he spoke, “it is only natural
we forget,” looking absently
at me.
“it is never as right
as memory bears.”
i said nothing. the fire cut
the night, its mark powerless.

too many ants

Sat, 23 Jun 2012 15:53:00 -0700

from the chopper circling you
spy a black seething mass
irritated, oft trembling
or distended,
an undulating, pulsing mound
angrily formed of innumerable
phalanx infantry without
ideology or
directive.

how can it be a sea (but it is)
earth’s crust bitten
and worn threadbare from the friction of
a horizon of panicked legs
here at your safe distance
the atmosphere—
reality—
shudder and break,
collapsing under what’s impossible to render
how can you actually see, you think,
a dark wave rising up
toward the spinning blades,
the piecemeal stone
overtakes.

celsius

Fri, 22 Jun 2012 03:13:00 -0700

heat rises, writhing,
mingling, sinking its
tangential mix flush after currents
through the night air,
airborne-bound for a golden
city in clouds

and i
mayhap absorbing
seize on a cloudy escape
knocking free from its grasp
a stench of warmth
here, in the hallway standing,
back to the sink
pressure dissolving gently
to rocked waves til
i’m returned,
this once summer home
where the sky rises in darkness,
a humid yellow
dripping before noon.