What crosses tonight in blood &
metal badges this place in memory.
Call this a lord's training house or
starflight's origin's, reck the want
of beast for beast a code's key or
waiting transform, these hours open
with no promise to any creed or creature,
& nay beholden to the land's fattest grasp.
******
Ruin
Old songs, new songs, what sings higher
than drums & dust? Why here tonight?
What falls truest through the heart lands,
softly, as Art, but still: Why here tonight?
Home the remain where thoughts cease, its city,
its lover, its patch of green, slice of moon, ask:
Why here tonight? Old gods, new gods, faith a
crooked spasm within, love a mold around the
heart, its poison & cure. Why anywhere tonight?
Faces snap in the fire & neon, faces lean on the tired
carriage, faces bulge the frame, faces ripe dreaming's
wilds. How will I lift the bent & lorn ones when
I've lost how to rise? That's why still here tonight.
******
Remnant
What trio of hours to burn for new light,
tap which bloom within, call for its feathers &
its shake. Nights remembered by nobody.
What to burn. I asked. I offered. It mattered.
******
Remember
Learn nothing from your driving miles &
wet angry hours but this: kindness swathes
many gaps within & love breaches what none else can.
******
Grateful
Another dream of loss, then angling for any
hook, better a shackle & whichever face than
these fields, what they say too bluntly. Wake:
she breathes with me through trouble & hope,
she walks the pines & blooms we call our path.
Grateful on this carriage midst its lorn creatures,
one for every seat.
******
Purpose
What purpose to trick from life
when the heart curls in toward its
memories & darkness? A checkered
child dances in the wind, wide
baskets of succulents, the glare of
crowds & talky avenues. Happiness
a sugar among doomed choices, disease
of desire luring the hungry to cry & crawl.
******
Blues
Call it freedom for an hour's slow stroking
& a shadow's calm explain. Tonight
the lights blink go & slow & no, I ask
for another. Mouth to mouth, thigh
upon thigh, born to breed breeders, suck
one last & die. A sentiment called history.
Call it freedom with a slave's love for tune,
for the wind in a thin skirt, for how
dreams will mock any trembling day, for
the lure of elaborate suffering, is
every pain your own too? Is any? Mouth
to mouth, the late hour's searching blue eye.
Call it freedom if it's pretty & rattles
sense or senses. New pebbles arrive on
shore & each carries first conception
of the sea. Another new one up & shining,
today & today & today. Elsewhere tonight,
going, where the knots loose or reveal.
******
Perfect
Raw climb through brush & shadow,
swathed, embraced, alone, peaking,
each fade sudden or gradual a blink
like the last & the next, thumb, tentacle,
stardust, arriving to the last hour,
next dream, first quest, broadest dawn, final why.
******
Redux
I've learned little more than this:
every flesh & eye tapped ever by
the long ruinous hand of memory.
Try it some olden way, by a pill's
twist or machine's jerk, nothing really
goes away & nothing ever returns.
******
Walking Fair
Bare comfort in careening years but
a lost sugared hour by a thrashing tide,
half slippings into secret knowing. Little,
less & less, then a dear hand freely covers
that wound, the world shifts as it cannot
toward peached light, new music, clearing path.
******
Mortal
Will it come with relief or sadness, with a
yearn for high cypress in winter, for a thousand
thousand bodies wracked with rhyme, hope
that what beholds tells of all gone hard
by, was it truest when it bit or when a
strand licked near a smile & a curled scent of
want opened its petals & naked gave its song?
******
Sheer
Toward a want clear of stricting noise,
sniff it pink & high, dream it, take it,
accept it, poison more in old gods' tamp.
Want is mind's yea to flesh, to world,
to like creatures equally trembling
with blood's hot smack, lone cries from each to all.
******
Flesh & Stardust
From the brief spectre of a nameless glance,
what this world? What clapped once, twice,
& bid it be? Lights leaning ever nearer,
the books now an endless glare, printed
noise, gesture & distract, how came that dented
face, that soft empty one, that hurt ever-
asking one? Or find answer with the
swooping creatures for a raw bite & a wordless
fuck & quick cease? Range the mansion &
the mountain & the lightless howling
canyon, find what? Event, reaction, more
hours. Sleek carriages crowd the freeway
& flame the sky. Look! How her lace
to a heavy touch falls. Listen! The fat
dark birds raucous meet the new sun. Wait.
Flesh & stardust: no difference. The music
in our molecules hustle up the making more.
Flesh & stardust: only a fool or a liar preaches
to men alone, won't explain to dogs & gnats.
Flesh & stardust: lights leaning ever nearer,
maybe tonight's dream will crack & needless to return.
Flesh & stardust: while here less to knowing's
ceaseless feed & more to empathy's great push.
Flesh & stardust: swept into one's deepest
blackness, wish for nothing, break what remain.
Flesh & stardust: what this world? Clapped
once, twice, bid it be? To whom its burden, its praise?
******
Faith
Not to cease the song til every creature
his tendering note. Not to cut dream & wake's
plotless cycle until all bear kindness' touch
& follow love's true gesture. Not to let go manacle
nor wing til neither are this one's or that
one's rare path. Among faith & justice a happier call.
******
Nocturnal
Neither lord nor king in this late petalled hour,
not the brutals nor sweet fierces of daylight's straight trade,
what remains, & rules, is her voice. Reck freedom. Reck it hard.
******
Wrack
What fury tonight in old letters, crackling
liquid talk of spiky brothers & pinkcheeked
others, nothing bites like old hunger, how a
year or an hour shone with with softer, swifter
light, what remain? What remain? Stains gone
by, stains to go. Other nights by taller starlight
will reach past again, better explain why.
******
Music for Noone
The night curls around a warm cup &
the sad memories fewer til I notice my
foot's goofy dance to the tune at hand &
there's little left but everything hungry remains.
******
Death Fragment
World prophecies nothing I wish to
know tonight. Blood squirming, another
fist brushes something soft. Barks before
dawn, everyone up, three trucks &
another braindead flash of conquer. We
have learned nothing from our hopes &
fears, from trees, from children. We've invented
good gods to ignore. Carry on—
******
Day Labor
Nothing reveals fully, scummy yellow leaves on
wet trees, pink trinkets in the empty shop, sloppy
day, sloppy heart, sloppy world. Someone gifts me
an explaining word, the bus driver smiles, I scuttle back,
this hour passes with little rise, a little wrack.
What moves us along? Is it memory, hunger's clue?
******
Acoustic
World revealed by its puzzles, answered by
its wonders, found simple in its fragments:
the solution is love, yes, the solution is death,
yes, the solution is conquer, yes, the solution
is God, yes, the chorus twists & magnifies & calls
its ruin of bones civilization. Builds blind anew. Yes.
Then a few tinker & poke at ancient pebbles,
study calcified wings & a telling fracture of spoon.
Dig into smaller spaces, the mathematical wilderness
of atoms, the secret humming tracts of molecules.
Closer? Yes. There? Never. A relativity only by
dance or fire or high song revealed? Yes & yes & yes.
******
Harder
Some nights further than dreaming,
there was soft, open code in the broad
night's flames, translation home simpler
than time's bitch try, the drums cleared every
mind, this was not another tough explain fell by
the easy word god. Every rude flesh vibrated to know.
The skies read the hour's drama & slipped within
the rhythm, moon sleek with pull & pulse,
stars their long message arriving, some nights,
dimensional attraction, the same red cosmic
tangle engulfing all, taste it in the dark
field's clover, how the happy lunatic traces
laser beams into trunks. Some nights voices
broke of their drone, daylight's entice to lean
& seem to know, fell open, the wider cry,
the crossed red moan, behold the ticking
chug in every moving soul, now reck beyond too.
Some nights truer no matter this lean carriage
of hours, worrying tatters, muscles working a climb
over a least bare hill. Behold a year countless
before you woke & wanted, & another remembers
you with a leaning stone. Some nights further
than dreaming, no other ride to reach for, &
many years gone just a prod toward knowing to come.
******
Through
With the years a black sentiment, a lean
back to soft old songs & howling brotherly
nights. Two great tankards smashed in a
blinking street. Called it Art. Collision
of flesh & want, called it love. Now look through
for what remain. Less & more, by fury & release.
******
Want
Strum it once. Now again. Ceaseless in the years,
one hand to the next, great tomes of wood
can't sop it up. Touch begins life, & never lets go.
******
Surrender
to nothing. Again ride dearest hope on
trembling breath & away, look everywhere
now. Calm, calm. Help me, Universe, again,
great noise within, bright & flagrant to sing
as ever, arching with wettest cries, four limbs
smack & many hot reply. Sing me deeper,
strum me elsewhere, new, where long hair
& dreaming vines legislate, where hands know
& touch, true to every hour's pink murmur.
This autumn wind blows stone & the world
twists warm toward mercy & dull toward gain,
feel it in the strumming pour & angry wrinkles
of the slurring beggar, pretty faces in plastic
chatter by. Help me, strum me, teach me
high magick in common spark, surrender,
Universe, to nothing, but breach city's suck
& grind, dreams more with brick's grit & neon
jibber, release without crack, faith with
open hands & eyes, new love over old wrack,
bulb & root of peace over spasming pounce of
conquer, help me, Universe, strum me, stroke
me, whisper what I love & do not know,
what craves me in petals & lures me in sky,
will to live in dearest hope & show others why.
******
Brief Funk
Where night's farthest growl?
Is the hour to heal or to dance?
My hand opens. My heart clenches. Which?
******
Midnight Yawp
I am trying to know with all that
I am. I call this Art & breathing
both. Is there anything else. Love.
Love the remaining corrosion & clue—
******
Glaring
What rare-told revel swoons through common
streets & masking days, what enigma girds
& bears, what clue neither shadow's nor
brute's, streaming lemon dusk rimming
empty pale sky, what finale the old man
saw on his fall that night, what did not
arrive when a branch clipped his demise
but took a good toll of flesh for its mercy?
******
View from the Shore
Wield it finer, that rhythm & muse,
your thorns & lilies hardly sum a life,
hours when sugar dabs your fingers &
the light murmurs, "grace. . . fun. . . miracle,"
hours gnawing at heart's nearest gapes &
night barking, "regret. . . wrong. . . waste. . ."
Wield it finer, do good now, rhythm folds
within a moment's gasp, the muse turns
from you, passes through, singing without pause.
******
Night Flight
Rare hour, what magick blows wide &
subtle here, in the jet's coarse humming,
now, when hardly imagine the world below,
this, the sweet between of mystery's
perpetual flight, you, my glad partner
in scraping the pearls & twigs together,
me, raw singer of pretty tunes & tried ruins,
them, quiet strangers in this winged carriage,
something else, crying to jeweled awareness,
higher now! The earth bears all fine even now.
******
However
What was it like when this city was world
& home? Blue days lorn for a maiden, flushed
nights high in taverns, roaring brothers in
song, hours alone near an answer, many
books, the clutch of mysteries, their near sum
to—? I found new construction atop memories,
wrinkles & sentiment where another year would
lean, cut wild, endless hurt. Power fallen to treacle & ash.