Blood to run in the gutter and ditches, as they trade our eyes our hands our other
loose parts. If the reward of suffering is experience we need know more but it is the only
god whose opinion counts. Still we have but only a narrow window.
People engaged in. Who should never.  Still it was you
taught me the way of the book,
a disrespect for all but the white taking dominion over,  to restrain and muffle.
To be trod upon taking a short path to heaven.
What any of it means to the curious
who I am, who you see, who any to say.  We are

Done.  We are
finished.  But then
what comes next assures the best secrets.
Don't ask me
why.
Consequences you probably never thought of.
Maybe we already got the worst but
we are
not
ready
to
die.

Certainly not by them.
Not yet.

Another day of traditional pursuits but for us

were not.

This day does us no favors.

I asked. I did.

Maybe it's just that no one here can tell us

how to get out.

Another way.

To my old friend Gabriel I said hello. Then crossed my mouth, looked for other company.

Comes another. A name I don't know trys to sell just a book.

Pages flipping.

All the words disappear

under tears come

slowly down.

The radio static sounds the same as when your mouth moves. All again together. 

They are not here to be made of our remnants.  There is no sense to be made of it. No happy home. Could be we start over in another town. But we are this.  One we and not another. 

All the people see it all the same. Us to them. 

No doubt they had supper together      

slowly chewing   

as still talk 

flowed.

As a child the day I knew how to dream it ended.  Soon.  Before any of us could know. 

Some childish creature enabled of dreams til they beat it out of us. They said it was safer this way.

And so I wish you could have been too but 

this day does us no favors.

Shut up I've been
in the gravest dreams, even your nightmares failing to relieve.
If nightfall never came whose fault would that be
and why are you calling me son?
Where you're gone,
what I done.
No.

Really I don't know. And no, the rest will claim us as ours neither.
Walking down that other street and it was only the one,
only we were grey then.  It's another
one for silence when the
shadows herd the sheep.
Listen too.

The problem of us, of all the things we don't know
that I don't either
know how to want.
Not all money in the world could bury this soul less you say so. And then
of course I would do it, because you said so.
But no one worth has anyone else to add to this old thing.
Tattered, stitched, cared not a bit for our resilience.
Like a shadow herding the  sheep

What use a soul, without attached a being, of god's doing?
But perhaps not all believe that, or all the time.
Maybe there, on the other shore.
So still at last we all end up in the grave. Or burnt to ash.

Spilled milk and all that
that is the sad story of man. Of woman once man
allowed her to be.

We have then many houses in a variety of shared reflections.
Things we think to believe, we think to know.
Til then just give me
Just give me one match.  I will burn
the whole down, plus another quarter but only
because you asked me too.

Like an empty frayed kiss.  Intense

talking at a Freudian picnic there are always options. To

 talk to the wrong person too early is one.  

None of it matters but that the sky

grows big when we cry.

There are no more roses on this farm.

Blue

What he said was nothing that he was
blind to the pain of a tree the leaves of which
all dead and felled to the ground
leaving only but
a single naked member.
And twigs.
Then to get ready for bed but it wasn't our fault.
The fault was that we had to
we couldn't not but had to
channel that one other or hurt ourselves.
Always there was room for another so we thought
extending the adventure stories of youth.
Downward driven through the darkness youth.
Up above on the right
we draw our own conclusions.

it has been some
time that is
it is not that i do not
but to the contrary
i do
i write much while
driving my own self company
for when we are not
that is not
enough
there is music
always music
words
always words
that have no relation to me
to my
doings but they are
nonetheless
there
words

Words. We were walking on

The shore. Wet fogged sand packed 
our lips. Now 
we know how Winters 
war wills to Be. Like 
hell 
you Say. Words walking 
from Your mouth. Un 
moving after rigor set in. But 
still We hear. Like the native

Pulse. The suns rays
and even

The rain. 

Like an old man on the bus with his flowers
past the darkness yet still 
the things we do 
not
more than you
hoarding our ordinariness
until we are comatose

It wasn't time to die 
and so we lived
a shared epiphany 
taking in
through these small eyes

Othertimes we wake
ground to the dusty dirt like scarified seed
waiting

watching ripples the water 
smooth flat

A late summation 
for only half the people 
as if
they are facts.

yet again
waking another
book of words 
like
hope defected

you come
riding through
and there
is the other
solitary friend
soldiering on with 
letters to write

once written
not much was left
to roll on but
always
the birds fly on

we are all
weirdly armed
this night

not done

Loosely run goats the wild yet there are no words to rhyme
to complement or roll into a taco.
One plate a a time we break our plans
free of those silver-clad bohemians.
Here the clouds circle but

We are the vortex.

It was only law that made the lawless and it was
very nice but then it was the other looking in.
Some felt we lacked the wow of
more extreme ways to hunger.
And so we quit them all.

No, we are not done.

Turn on the light on all the things we made.
All the things we made are broken.   
The indecipherable language of crowds below us
floating, staring a hole
in the sky. 

It's not the loudest thing in my head
your voice it's
the drowning. 

The psychic vampires with their straws

 The candy striped bendy ones
Swirled in the pastels of Easter

 in my brain
Sucking us dry

 My friend the psychologist
Is that a disparity not seen before?

Mostly these are the endings

 Trends that are driven
as if
One drive-by could solve all of this

As though
 One view was big enough for all
 Them and you
Too

 Or
 The statement I dreamt yesterday 
When I wasn't making it up. 

Why is it
 Or do you really have to consider 
Being too carefully these days?  

Chances are good over the last three years like eggs 
Resting in the grainy sands
Of a summertime in the old desert.

It doesn't matter that
Your right

Easter the stain twisted above
Fingers drumming at a time
only one
Singly
glass crusted
With yesterdays tears
Til tomorrow another.
We had fun not
Tonight
Then what'd you have to do
But then
We didn't have to
only to cry

the fallen angel satan
there we are
what separates us
is ...

on recklessness

Reading of recklessness, the idea that nothing bad will happen if we all, every one of us, were to write a poem. Right now. But if every one writes and no one reads then the point is? Poem making as another empty gesture we all can share in as equals. Like pornography. Yet there are always some more equal than others, and they are those who write of recklessness and tell that we all, every one of us, can up and write a poem without consequence. Or none of the bad ones. If we all, every one of us, were honest right now with who ever might be with us would there be no consequence? If a tree falls in the forest and all that. Crap. There is no sound that is not heard and no poem that is not read. If we write to amuse ourself then perhaps it is not so. But a poem is meant to be read. It is an honesty from places other than. A poem is two ways or it is not. We get little from writing but that it connects, communicates, goes beyond. Perhaps nothing bad happens if we all now, every one of us, writes a poem but then what is the point? Recklessness, yes, without regard but it is more on the others part, not ours

Language aspires in redolent
circles pulsating but never reaching the far
shores draped in willow and moss
The tension of words not spoken, fobidden,
matched only by that of the words we dared to speak.
No.
Never spoken but reduced to symbols depeted of power
some. Like a school of fish convulsed on a stony beach
tearing the protective film. We see they also bleed red.
Still there are some that escape, committed,
flying if only briefly before falling to a gravity
we did not see yet feared all the same.
The stillness of our anger subsides.
Another history unknown.
We have no other choice.
We have no other words.
We deny even these.

Choose your words. Carefully.
Chew your words.
Twenty times. They won't come out so wrong.
Then it was time to dress.
There was nothing. But skirts.
There are no metaphors. Without awareness.
I will not wear any thing. That bites. Today.
Tell me then. How
It is that we learn to. Start. For
getting how we
Remember

nothing else less

books of words like
hope is dying
others we can't yet sound
the meaning is keening above in the night
like the owl to the cat who in black
comes slinking in only after
roaring round the corner like
a bat out of hell
proverbially
and then
you come
riding through like a wind
through the mountain alps
and there
is one other
another
a solitary friend in shadows dusk
soldiering on
like a child's toys battered missing their color
to the craters and the dents of exploded artillery
with letters nonetheless
to write to those left behind where not
once written not
left is much more
is left
to roll on but always
the birds fly on their famous vees
no longer for victory or anything
of the sort
we are all
weirdly armed
on this night
for this night
the one after the one we remember
that never ends as though
it never was.
But still we know.

nother

Probably we won't ever ride an elephant again.
You can come and take notes.
Then you can remember us, remember for us, when we forget.
There is no past where we never lived in the first place.
The second place doesn't count.
Sometimes saying things to get a reaction but whose?
We have to quit doing things just cause they feel good.
We can't keep doing things just not to feel.
There is no good reason to call.
You don't really like any of this.
We don't either.
We have to keep our expectations low.
If we don't the others will help, will do it for us.
We are used to only this.
Sometimes it may seem like to be so much kitsch
The drama of what can only be imagined.
But I didn't really want to tell you.
None of us did.
Not that you really wanted to know
any way.

thuds

this is the line
next to which we breathe
words detach
are shed of us
we them
falling on this or the other
side of the line
next to which we breathe
some wafting, no
drifting like the roses
shredded in the heavy rain
that passed last night
when the others slept
red like blood but fragrantly
staining the pavers
lining the space
next to which we breathe
and who the hell does that
kind of thing?
others like our severed limbs
or selves
red like the rose petals
painted with the sun or more
like a magic marker and the smell
bleeding onto the slaughter house
floor
where they fall
the cuts to discard, no one wants
making slick their metallic taste
like nails
lining the surfaces
through which we breathe
uncommunicative
without a reason

not, may be

Things you don't know. I don't know. Unless you tell me. Or someone. Like that I am. I am here. You see me. Or someone. That tree in the woods. Clapping. Crap. Room. Was where it was. One of us. One of them. All subject to recalls. Yours. Mine. The cause undetermined. I only see what is shown. The rest unseen. We will pray for rain. If I don't say you can't know. So faith is blind. And justice. Parents. Never to rain again. And what if there were none at all? One species wiped out. Then another. Wasteful. Not necessarily. Only on certain occasions. But even then. How to be if not seen. Heard. Touched. Not that way. I am what you tell me I am. Except you never said. I was not. You never saw. Directed elsewhere. I am what they said. But they never said. I am not not. We are. We are what they did. No one ever saw. Or said. It was nothing new. Lola gave us peanut butter. On spoons. Dancing on the table. Bare footed. Small. For that problem costs three dollars. We got it bad that time. All the time. But that was the only time with spoons of peanut butter dancing on the table. And the last time for Lola. they say they are writers. No one disagrees. No one says any thing ever. Maybe the rest are here but not really. Somewhere else. Like another room. It was windy. That's what he said. Dark in the closet. Without wind. Without air. There was no wind. Can't be. Unless he is trusted. Not lying. Spinning a yarn. None of the above will do. We are all cynics. Still we want to believe. We want to believe. To know. Someone to tell us we are. Not a thief.