Maybe the art is not apparent
maybe it isn’t real.
Maybe the silence out there
of embarrassment, of incomprehension,
that absence that is refusal
is wholly correct.
I no longer care.
I no longer expect
more. I ramble
on, being what I be,
as busy as the blood speeds
buzzing and humming.
Lonely,
sure.
But in here
with the light and the rain
the moist flaking fog
the dark boughs, the flashing trials
the golden trees, the melodies
in breath and out
why bother
stopping.
We can all
talk to the future.

12.10

This is not the silence of the cemetary
but of the soul world
of shadows that must be named and arranged,
of the explorations they force, and their rewards.

This is not the echo of the crypt
but conversation with a friend unknown,
another echo maybe, or another time
never to be known—
a phantom, or a future.

11/10

Twitter me this:
mania phobia
LOL
SOS

2010

So here among my fellow parasites,
the jibbering and buying, a warm
steady hum that cumulatively strangles
the given world,
and me scratching
the itch of writing, for that is--I've
come with alarming speed to accept--
its only remaining function.
We are the rapacious guests
and all I've got is silent gratitude
for my muscles working through this world,
its trees within the sky, its insects
ravening without conscience,
and for this brief moment
our fellow killers hidden.

In this most
comfortable age for as many as have ever
been comfortable,
easily sowing the seeds
of total destruction with every
happily stolen breath.

9/2/2010

The nerves of lemons, may they
peacefully reveal the limits
of forethought. What is the moment
when it's over? What is the future
when it's ignored? Eating can't
be remembered, not really.

Stan got on the subway in 1967
and got off the planet in 1983.
Where did he go? Does it matter?
He's gone. Was he ever here?
Or ever there? A fashion for two-toned

cars began in the model year of 1955.
Boys sat on hills overlooking the highway
shouting out their names. Ford! Chevy!
Buick! De Soto! Little girls squealed
and jumped up and down.
Now they totter
and smile, at being still alive
and yet, maybe not.
The fog before my eyes, the sudden clarity
through the earphones,
a dance.

7/2010

Boy’s Life

This stem of obvious
cool dark wheels
silence of night clicking open
and clasping shut--
me in my hiding place watching
comings and goings, magical only
because I’m hidden, and it’s night.

I sway in the tree
or huddle in the window-well
with the warm bricks around me,
safe and excited
no one sees me

...

Now the night phases vaguely
outside the melding glass
after another round of noise
beat me near numb,
dumb at the dinner table,
the prattle of forks and tongues.
After another day of busy light
locking me in illusions of action
eyes and mouths everywhere
feet and wheels, hands and money,
opinions and desires
and no one sees me.

no one ever sees me.
I must be hiding still
I must have learned invisibility
too well
the warm bricks around me
swaying in the leaves

To be seen is not to be
much more than a target.
The bigger you are in the plundering eye
the blacker you are
in the hot corona.
Better to eat this candle
and keep hiding in the night.
I trust no one.
The warm darkness around me,
silence in the tree.

7/30/98

Let the buzz slip by
as the flowing architecture
wakes you.
Across the weary fog,
the ancient plot, the passing noise,
the relocated stone, the patient water,
the apples in formation, the air
in retreat. This fervent
dalliance.
The echoes of pain,
the anticipation of everything
changing forever.

7/2010

What is the measure
of this dislocation
that I know myself
best in anger.

But note another
sign:
of dry mouth,
sounds collapsing in throat,
mind dismayed
at the weakness of anger
to make myself
understood.

No eloquence comes,
only wholeness
in that instant.
It is the measure
of what I know
I know.

early 1970s

The Chain

By gripping my eyes
in helpless insistence,
I see what is needed

instead of what be-
fore them is behind them,
forever and for
now.

For friends who will not
touch,
insolence
is my only clothing.

Forever forced, I am
lost in the needle
of these
eyes' demands,

squeezing mud
and scurrying to perceive.

early 1970s