masonry unit

and i’m scrubbing scratching peeling these shadow leaves off cement and it’s really important you remember having seen them


and my eyes shine and i’m healthy but i twitch at the shift of a bone marrow slips and sloshes every step aside from that my entrails are in tact full brain to the brim my hair static to the ceiling high pressured and are you watching my chest caves open ear cups of smelting fire arms catapult sidewalk deep


and end stopped, this is
my dislocated body my illocutionary baring
my reductive body my recent deduction is that you-
my inflated body my latent mouth
my mutable body my mute-
my very own mutation
will you ache to call it your locus?

(you can’t insert into an outpour, can you?
or can you catch that which is poured?
or are you confused by this pour?)

plaster snow pasted the look on your face as you processed
get sick get well etched on brick wall and i’m thinking
you probably didn’t believe that
some words they just stick
and now it’s fall and-


this poor state-
a decanted silhouette

skyline rule

Dusty moon hangs grandmother’s earring.
Blindly she chewed on ivory to see if it was gold
while I stroked her clouded eyebrows
that night in North Troy when seasoned reasons changed.

This the same time when the construction crane pulled me out of rubble-
and maybe it was marrow not ivory or gold.

Today, Colonel Capital, my birthday dress has turned to ash
and your sugarcane discipline is very much obliged.

Soaked in the sidewalk of your underbelly-
I wanted to tell you about the time that I walked
my index and middle fingers along the mountain ridge,
and then down and tumble down and

right up to your edifice, my dear it’s not
that I don’t want to participate,
but no one here knows chérie or why she shudders
or that precious means another thing.

timbre

the steinway stamina of your fingers
the shrugged cringe in deaf ears falling, falling deft in depths-
i expect you’ll find me wanting

but i’m sensing the base line playing you off the page
and your reverberation the first to grow tired-
and i suspect you’ll overcompensate

your notes too much like crowfeet ankles
you’re thatchworked into a faltering scale-
i’ll arpeggio you back to being

orchid, revised

The room was still save for a floor length curtain flutter floorboards creaking moths breath rustling gauzy arm hairs this is sleep

Suddenly life or tiny fireflies stream and stream and streamed roots to solitary tips of her hair and burst into orchids crowning deathly still visage flowers flourish and nuzzle into stark white sheets wrapping around stark white ankles matching stark white face even an inner wrist petal tickle cannot wake her this clustered bed of proliferation this growth engulfs this growth engulfs and veins section the floor and tether whispering walls orchids are fingers are tethers and wriggle their way through imploded drawers into the corners never dusted around a padlocked tin box holding so many secrets of the world so many secret

And yet still frozen still a statue holding breath still and yet she did not wake

Tended to cultivated cultured white petals stroke her and lull her and stroke and a captivating ruse quietly stemming demise soon the flowered army grew and its soldiers so numerous grapple gobble air sweeping lipstick perfume paddle brush mirror off and now a bare deadwood desk and now roots coiling splintering picture frames and always hungry sprouts take a breath or two while dear slumbering mother bestows life beseeches no one

So she wilts among stark white sheets only the tinted suffocating shade a delicate blue of skin only among a writhing flowerbed of silhouettes

just a moment

I have been to the land
where the wind breathes an innocent game with the torn hem of a summer dress
where sanguine fruit drips down the ribbed cage of a birch white neck.

A pitted peach core shadows and stains on a breast,
Sunflower thorns teeth at spider hands
left behind in a flood of running downhill.

Falling calloused toes, clouds
looming over a silkworm landscape,
writhing into a schizophrenic’s dream.

Loose golden hairs trickle a stream in their wake,
Slits of light move honey slow through trees
swelling at times with a gust.

My mind prays for its indian summer
one which helps tree roots break through
soil, or cement,

Knobbly knees to climb up on-
Great stepping stones to the sky
while a second is enveloped by a coiled wave and froth gasps out.

Envision the mutilated town of an imaginarium-
a cyst of refracted memories,
while time flies out of hand like a paper cup.

dreamcatcher

rooted
in the unctuous stream of the amygdala

a skull soaked
and prodded into a bustling blunder


but can the sound of dreams be caught in fragile rope centers
cleansed by wind swept feathers?
constellations being hustled and jerked by mother wind,
something must be done wrong
but meanwhile to forget the task at hand, shall we ink in a skyline?
there is a loss in these wants-
and this beaded rope work is too tangled to siphon through.


when the word no longer stems from the words

a past no longer rooted in the seasons
roots no longer seasoned by a past
my seasons no longer pass.

beef stock, revised

he sees the lengthy stalks of grass
wave and reach
and as she springs through them
all of a sudden strangely penetrable
he takes note:
the way they undulate their way
up into around through her loose licking flicking
summer dress- a smudged cream frayed hems sleeves floppy
admires:
their fluidity freedom their right of passage.
he stands
stock still.

*

he imagines parting her legs
to be as easy effortless unthreatening
as opening a tin can
to be easy effortless unthreatening
as spreading a thin cotton table cloth and yet-
he nicks himself on the searing metal,
his arms don’t reach wide enough
legs can jam you know



imagine tin cans tablecloths and field grass.
the press of an elevator button
a breast stroke through fluorescent waters
pushing through a revolving door
slipping a quarter into a jelly bean dispenser
and crank crank cranking a handful free
pushing slipping cranking-
and easy.
the stalks of barley sway with the pendulum of his imagination,
you could do this you could do that
they keep him in flux.
but only within the regular tempo
of will
I
won’t
I
be able ?



people men they you whoever dig
and scrape and pick around
at the bottom of a burnt-over pot
hoping to find the last wholesome morsel,
before the remains have been deemed scraps
before the taste wears off
or starts to leave a threatening unpleasant hint-
a dandelion’s stain under your
unsuspecting nose.

*

he watches in disarray unsuspecting
soil erodes ground slips sloshes sinks.
her arms corned beef blue in cold alarm penetrate the sky
he jolts flowers barley dirt dribble down.
he backs away roots fly up
the swallow starts.
he blinks she is cranked
up into around through
he looks she sees and you-






in his mind
you do nothing