Repetiton without respite

beautiful boy,

I mislead myself down the aisle of my mind,
blaming you for the silence
but not the empty
golden light is a nourishment

and a nostalgia.
faded glory and uns(c)ene plays
regrettably
defended.

Could I defend my (in)action,
tell myself that all is done,
and done for all
time, relativity,

and peace....

Sometimes the I wish for freedom,
for I tire of these games.
It is like reincarnation,
repetition without respite

Cinnamon air
and playing for keeps.

Poets

Have you wondered why we are poets,

blessed and damned to wander

the streets of these cities,

countries,

lands,

until we findlose/losefind ourselves in them

and epiphanize and eulogize

the future that has passed?

instrument

your hollow body makes a home for me
as my fingers stumble strangley over you
and get caught in that which is still unknown
but I will break my hands to get to know you better
See, even now it hurt to type these words,
but you resonate with power
and I think of the time you consume,
and the hearts and hands you break,
daunted? maybe
sly smiles lead to better plays

Goodbye

Goodbye: we're leaving now.
break the champagne on the bow,
pack our bags and go away,
and as we pass each other say:
Goodbye, we're leaving now,
though in truth I am unsure how
all this time has come to pass
and just what makes a class a class.
footsteps echo in the empty hall
and as we pass each other, call:
goodbye. We're leaving
Now, I do not when I shall see you all again
as you become another face
woven into to time and space
This makes me hesitate to say
"goodbye, now. I'm going away."

to be here

Weeks now i have watched you froth into the asphalt as i try to decipher
the words and symbols painted on your concrete
and inked into your skin
you are a blood blister
hot and ready to pop
straining against your ropes
and sweat clouding your eyes
I have difficulty distinguishing your edges on the horizon
the sunlight highlighting sharp corners
and casting darker shadows
but i have been here all my life
and i know you as such.
your confluence straining
merging currents
a myriad of one million places
people
lives crammed together under a smogged dome
are your streets my veins, my hideaways?
my scars, your pain and failure?
You are a mosquito bite and i can't stop
tearing away at the skin of you
unearthing secrets
cobbled streets and an overturned ants' nest
of twisted streets and bloodied lanes
what makes you bristle in the mid afternoon heat?
curse and swear the days away
but you ring out until
nawd fo egde eth
draws you backwards over schedules,
make work projects
and congestion filling your air
is this what it means to be "city"
?
to be 'place'
?
to be here?

July 4

There is a haze and it feels like a ghost town
with empty streets and the merest hint of trickles of cars escaping the net of your holiday weekend
with trips and stops and hours in the car
all the people glow in the early light and the faint echoes of their footsteps meld with church bells at a distance
bouncing off of brick roads and houses
This is nine a.m.
Fourth of July Weekend
Sunday
and as the bells end their knell
Sirens pick up,
somewhere further in the city

Earlymorningnotecards

{notecard1)
at 425 am
I hear the birds
at 430 there is rolling thunder
but still the birds
sing on .
There is no such thing
as a silent night
Only your moments of
inattention
Deafness
(notecard2}
that makes
the darkness seem
so silent

I thought about running
through your predawn
thunder
And rolling down steep hills
into rivers
and following the rain-
[notecard3?
my common sense says
that early morning is the time
for rest
blanketed and secluded
not the pursuit of
transcendental reality

At 4:37, the clouds break
they hold no fury
only melodious
/notecard4 \
droplets
that shower
the unsilent earth

and make the world
sing out
persistent praise
That will be forgotten
once we hit
dawn

When are you

midnight sleeps all dark and lonesome
passing through the days
and drifting through doorways
singing out sin and soul
staring you down until-
with forced, heavy conviction-
you bring yourself along.

awakening in muddled daylight
confusion blooming on your cheeks
when are you now?
tearing off covers and running through the streets
searching something desperate
as the sunlight cuts through you.

When are you now?
Blinded by daylight
stumbling down wretch filled slums
hands grasping
and holding tight
attempting to pull you forward
and backwards

oh, when are you now?
Bathed in red light
and backed by a tye-dye sky
dark silhouette
scream mercy and surrender
all your ill-got finery
until, somehow,
again you see
your captor and your enemy
and darkness coming down around you
like a well meaning fiend
when are you, now?
velvet midnight drifting through your sleepless days

Social Network

What is this obsession with staying connected
to all these people we pretend to know?
Where comes this infection
of rote and inflection
as online relationships grow?
I know you by profile,
and you know me by mine,
but what are these but code to be viewed at the source?
We stick together by gossamer threads,
pass one another awkward in the halls:
a tenuous connection that give only the most indistinct window to your lives.
Some would use these words to recreate themselves,
while others bear their souls,
keep you updated,
keep you out,
draw you in.
And when we meet outside the screen,
well, where do we begin?

Dawn, withheld.

I write sordid tragedies while you wander twisting city streets in search of optimism--

Despair, Unfaithful, ye who hath left me here as thou comest to discover darkness.

Liars, liars, everywhere, and not one to believe

that faith presides in darkness

and hope dwells in the pitch.

my unfamiliar friend,

forgive the blind rage,

infectious anger

-- these are what I cannot control.

And what I could bear to lose

for news of your unfaithful actions.

They told me you stopped by their corner,

bathed in amber lamplight,

shining like a ghost.

They told me you were irredeemable,

unstable,

intended for elsewhere, as I called out your name.

Oh, haunted one,

did you not hear the vibrations on the thick summer air?

and the waves that pierced the winter cold?

They mocked me,

my blind faith

and reckless soul-

I should never have dared this city enter,

nor dare I fall tempted to a promise and a lie.

Why did you not return?

No saving grace before you,

Oh, darkness,

Hast thou forgotten what is meant by withholding dawn?

Heading in

The world rested softly on the dark tee of her shoulders, pressuring her boots into the snow. One of a simpler nature would refer to the sky and ground as "white," but her trained eyes identified subtle shades of blue, pink and orange. She wondered what the proportions would be, of white to the color, to achieve the faint hues.
She was alone. She had ventured ahead of the group, trudging along the slush coated streets, engendering her early arrival at the back of the house. Their voices rang out in the cold air. Excitable, infallible. All of their coats, scarfs and hats as dark as her own, but none quite as painfully aware of the light and sound. Of reality.
It was not a headache. When she tried to describe her awareness, that was what other people related to: A headache. Did the winter pain them, gnaw deep into their bones and somehow settle there, unmelted even in summer? Was the dark lace of the trees incomprehensible to them without shooting pains in their frontal lobe?
She sighed, watching as her former breath whitened, drifting heavenward. In her keyless impatience she had journeyed to the back of the yard, leaving gaping holes in the virgin snow. She could stand there, she was sure, for hours, uninterrupted, captive to the rough planks of her neighbors privacy fence, the curling, spiraling, ever-spreading vines of the fallen wisteria, the manner in which the dripping ice formed Chihuli's of the perennial plants, the bounce of sound from surface to surface. She could stand, internalising the cold, the flat blinding light, for a long while.
But she couldn't stand them.
They were too much unaware. Too much of themselves to notice. They were as old or as young as she was, but they would take decades longer to make notice of the light in the tree branches at sunset, or the blue gas flame skirting a white kettle. But even so, when the door groaned open, she turned slowly from her place, and followed her own footsteps back to the door.

Able

Diamond dust diffuses daylight,
makes bright more bearable.
shadows sleeping sighted-
infringing on irreparable,
burdened billions breathing
air unattainable.
Fighting feckless forethought
careful concern containable,
preparing pleasant repartees
removes all irredeemable.
So much midnight measures out
fear feebly unfeignable
and while we wait for time to stop
I have found love unforgivable.

Love laughs lack life
and shadowed nights are preferable
but moments beyond movement
stand
render reality refutable.

Ill I search,
the ground unstable-
continually to wonder:
Are you able?

sing me through

one month silent
and still she sits
in hunger
faded anger
glory
moon light
so much as beautiful
as she lies about it
and lives strange fantasy
iron wine titanium bent
cave in
and walks out past where
she should have been
break down the heart and soul
sing it
sing until the walls come down]
and never rebuild again
swear you'll sing it in moments lost and future plans
as she stirs up bad thoughts
and muddied waters
and finds herself a gravedigger.
so make her intake slow breathes
and dovetailing lines and youth

/but lost in the grave yard
she finds simplicity
and cruelty
from upabove
and fake laughter
what shallow reflections
swear you will sing it through
swear it
sing me through