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

Between State

rate this impulse: fill the page
errands like this reveal
streams of forbidden will
wiser even than 25 years of humiliation
not so smart now are we
repeating

wrapped around the reflection
the blue curl of 6
pillow of nostalgia
no angry fragments of tomorrow
just hours of artificial rescue

ribbed garden, dangling return
evading, escaping the familiar moments
turning as a sudden monster.

silhouette of a friend
waves from the station.
that was long ago, and
someone else's friend.
all that remains
is his piano.

whirling, the torturous voice
gratefully far away,
the darkness trembles
with waiting light.

9/10/09

Things are
as they
sound
how hard
or soft, close
or far
wood
or metal
scream, sigh
breath

07-09

There are no trophies in my trophy room.
There are no prizes in the drawer, certificates
on the wall. All the gold stars
are lost in the sky. There's only

the setting sun burnishing the bay
and the cold shadows coming
to meet it.

12/07

Grasping the railings of the song.
You don't call it that--have you
been standing there long? I
rubbed misgivings from the air,
stroking the fervid counterpane,
foraging thought, thumb in hand.
The spilling wound and the starved
alarm preceded me
in the contemplation
of the stale flake of day.

The sea speaks only to itself
in grave hollows of absorbing
and rejoinder, a conversation
heedless of the sparkle, the crazed
eons, the dead. Pale whispers
from the bite of night, huge slaps
of air, from clattered cold to
sudden hot, the force of what is
and what is not.

You're laughing at me, cradling
your insane candle,
as if prominence excuses
such fractionate contempt
for what dives beyond us
to the depths you can't
ignore forever.

2009

The Slip

The intent of your poem is oppressive.
It urges flowering
in a psychotic framework.
The moon symbol clashes with the accordion
in the third line. Isn't the punch in the second stanza
a little too
on the nose?

You have no idea how many
poems about ectomorphs
crawl across my desk like panicking
corn flakes. Due to time constraints
we skip ahead in your life
to the inevitable failure.
Let us cavort
and entwine you at 90%
off the cover price.
Call this sour lemonade
but if Clint Eastwood gets
interested, we'll talk.

The window I used to have
is fogged with ignorant breath.
The day is muffled, the
night quivers and darts.
I haven't eaten since the last
time. Still, I'm taller than
you again.

3/2009

These Severed Words

These severed words
snapped by distinction

leak into whispers
of plaintive mist

revolving like a kettle
on the rim of emotion

where dreams bear grudges
and winds sweep clean

the vision of the deep
enclosure

the foreign blaze

2/09

Swirl

There she is in the darkness, slim legs
against the sea. I can't believe it
as I move quickly towards her,
a cold jolt reminds me it is impossible.
If this moment ever existed, it is past.
What was missed, is missed.
It's all mist now, swirling through dreams.
The day's measure of breath,
the forehead of the world feverish with time,
the diffident wait for the last chuckling
off of this mortal failure.
It's rain on the roof
splashing the morning.

3/09

This dream

Monumental grass,
placecards of wonder--
retreat in the vacuum
of snow
retreat
in the flavor of night

retreat in the style of shining retreat
in the stillness
of sudden sound

the mist leaking on the glowing
brick, the monumental grass

the murmurs of autumn
the whirling muscles of night

greet the new flame
with spangles of innocence
leave the ache behind

am I the last of my kind
who rode a trolley
who wore red wool,
who watched the lantern sway
until the chant began?

If the light smacking the air
spinning your mirror
were made of rooftops
and a questioning stare

behind the heaped bows,
the feathers would drip with inky blood

while feral adventurers sand the hull,
mumbling in neon.

Hammers bathe the dazed lobby
with scarred nerves.
If no one sleeps,
whose dream can this be?

I release you now
to your faint lesson
and the ranging rub

the words unheard
in the promised distance
and the waiting
to flower

the acts of night:
flamboyant silence
pretenses of hope
postscripts of yearning

bright darkness
vestigial song
last glance

5/27/07

The News

Institutional mayhem releases official fractures
unless the tide of forgiveness roguishly washes
through the light buried beneath
the fear of the world.

Then we need no longer parse the noise
as if it meant something. We will be free
to sponge the graphic estimates with
uncontaminated mystery.

Maybe the answer is turquoise.

6/07

This dream will not be televised

Monumental grass,
placecards of wonder--

retreat in the vacuum of snow
retreat in the flavor of night
retreat in the style of shining
retreat in the stillness
of sudden sound

I'm telling you she loves verbs!
She knows three adjectives!
She's so great the elevator
can't stop at her floor
only her ceiling

it's the leaking mist on the brick
glow, where the monumental grass
smiles, the circulation of living glass
hair of the mother, father,
lover, child, cat, enigma

we will flood the baskets of crust,
the murmurs of autumn
the whirling muscles of night

register now for the
pale undershirt of dawn
greet the new flame
with spangles of innocence

leave the ache behind in
your other throat

no promise too viral
no stone too placid
no finger too hidden
no better dampness anywhere

one more word
come on one
more word just
another

I am the last of my kind
who rode a trolley
who swore with real wool
and paint, who watched the lantern
swaw until the chant began.

No one can see what I
have seen as if they care
as if the light smacking the air
spinning your mirror
were made of rooftops

and a questioning stare
that never leaves
and never returns
and is never there
but is always present
above and behind

the heaped bows
of the performing ships
honking their way into history
of your heart, of your
earnest nouns

and the feathers drip
with inky blood
while feral adventurers
sand the hull, mumbling
in neon. Hammers
bathe the dazed lobby
with scarred nerves.
If no one sleeps, whose
dream can this be?

Victory

We have seen your visions of platonic sluts
gurgling in the backwash of victory.
Stables of ermine corrugated peaceniks
verging on plumes, nailed to freezing
clear rain. The evidence is
formulaic. Worship from urgency
sells books and flares blood
but reality frags its irritants, bulging
with flu-like symptoms.

I think the reason for this is
evident. It creeps through
the version of fatality you
urge on the unrequited.

Idiotic flame-throwers on sale
and belabored grills flopping
on the shore. There was
no prison so clocked
as your agenda for the banished fame
of our weary and sincere.

Now that you eat wet forms of
tribulation and spit out the former
fuming reliance on fortune,
yes, you can exact the pallor of your
resentments and call them deep
sparkles of destiny but

the clinging clanging dancing plate
inside the wobbly body
flips through the glare with its
own long yawn
regardless. Regard
is for us. This is
where you truly fail.

12/04

hastening, the obligations

hastening, the obligations
furl, furrow the pinky
of fair Minerva, bathed
in fright. Edge

of leers, pounding
smooth with repeating

the bones of her hand
fit in your hand

near now, the burping drip
and corona of fuzz,
as she returns in her abrupt
pale orbit, humbly
awaiting worship.

Slipping the mousetrap
of identity, reedy
wind, you remember
the ocean. The ocean!
Just in time.
She can't get you now.

near normal


oh let the candle
handle the last
details

your knees will lock
as you don doublet
and whistle---

each bleak step ferments
the reminder,
eggs
on the rivals to your

green flame,
bundled
like so many back aches
in tribute to fur,

we walked,
arched
by penniless softwoods
unable to buy their freedom.

Black waves cut
knotted fingerprints,
leaving
our normal amazement.

1/05

Until Leaves

I see the gripes coming like silver whistles
Battling the flickering mist
Gene pools of aggravations, placards
Of grand flame
Until leaves planet the floor of nothing.

We cry like gulls on tragic garbage piles
Irritants to the sky and wheels
Subservient to tears unshed
With raised fists of mourning
And grief in the shadowed step
Towards glass.

9-00

the journalist's lament

musing is amusing,
punctuated by regular
practices: meals, walks,
more rigorous exercise.
But writing is all momentum
flailing into the unforgiving
changing the destination
by the path I hack,
the streams I follow,
the peaks I glimpse.
All habit becomes a stutter
of impulse and the necessity
to sit in front of it and do it.
The rhythm now is measured backwards
from the infanticide of deadline.
So meals lose their borders,
exercise is only exorcism
and the desk feeds needs
into the motherless maw
of words and their prison:
sentences.

The story

I am worried about the tomatoes.
Crisis licks his master's face.
Greed stoned wind
hollows her smile.
No memory

ensues. It's one
pitch after another.
The frozen trance.

The long day groans
flares of stubbornness.

The night seeds.

10/03

Of No Consequence

Usually the night fastens
onto my nerves, ushers me
into the whispers of waking dreams.
But not tonight.
My heart sinks in the acid
of wide awake despair.

The silence clicks like a clock.
Numbers and letters swirl
then stare in sharp final salute,
etched in joy, laughing
at the murderous irony.
My legs won't bear my weight
yet I am light, a thistly seed
blown by the wind
into the sea.
I am embarrassed
to still be alive.

9-01-03