3rd Rails

3rd Rails
1

stand up for me
somebody green and filthy
noises in the arc of songs
blasé and fruitful, recondite in their
pleasure and fortunate in gloom
all risible features are unclothed
in this tentacle forbidden rose
implanted garden of rails.

2

through the veiled window of her grounded vacuum
did you flirt or munch the frail potatoes?
arguments on this point reverberate
through glass knives echoing in forbidden ruins
History will not record, it will regurgitate.

3

smooth is as smooth does
flip reason and grouse about
the griddle. Heed the ringing,
ignore the flume. Nobody there
there.
It's all noise.
The only salvation
is song.

not much
to look at

or hold on
to

nothing
to eat

2002

Flight of the Philosophical Stork

The cornflakes of memory
are like the
airplanes of lamentation,
neither are they obvious
or scant.
They might be orphans,
the orifice of artifice,
orphic, oracular and orange.

Steadfast at last
in the virtue of green distances,
or fog embracing time’s
wounded tonsils. This reverence
becomes you.
The text is not toxic
nor fleshed code.
It is blue,
uneasy, flighty,
unfinished, feared.

They stood in the breach
between civility and purpose,
gauging whether this notion or
any notion could peal
prettily, anyway.

Don’t hold it
against them. Cold
makes cold.
That aching drink
could talk.

Is free will predetermined?
You can’t say that on the radio!
Ivy climbs the cop’s umbrella.
This lack of something that’s not
there is reminiscent
of smeared paint.
Someday tourists will come.

Sorry, we don’t listen to
dead Romans now
roaming through whistles
winding
nor do we attend to echoes
of flown ancients
timeless in the earth
and the trembling they delivered
as rooted wisdom
to the eighth sea.

Now spasms
of gilded tendrils
deep fingered, are silent dreaming
a solitary song.
The captive lamp in earnest
volume is like
the forged passenger.
The mother ship.
The parent company.

Fly now
bundle
2002