I will hide myself away.

Prayer

God watch over the hard-riders, the fast-movers
The ones with music loud in their ears. May they
Ever supernova upon heaven's blessed highways.
Keep us safe from fires of the mind, ever watchful
Of our disease, our wounds we carry with us.
Keep careful watch over all of us, as we watch over
Each other, as we watch over ourselves.

At the Soundless Dawn

Commensurate

Sometimes, sitting here in the park, I forget
the bonds of sand that hold me to the bench,

and I don’t let your lines mark me too easily,
like that shape of airliner, bubbles of zinc

from a bath of acid for metals, the clear blue
pierced the way a lacquered chopstick

penetrates seaweed and rice to the tuna roll,
leaving something for the fingers

to roll, a ginger examination of self, the rivets
of taste buds rumbling loose in the satin

aftertaste like eyelids staring too long
over a field finally, restricted by the cost,

folding together, the cards on the table
too severe, the bluff over the water, the bay.

I can cut you out of mind if I call you, ring,
cellophane, bandwidth, restricted use: foreign.

Fire in the Belly

In the song of this season, the trees that ring the fountain
Are ablaze and the One in the fountain is no longer there.
If I am to be burst apart, to never get better, if this
Is what is required of me, then so be it. I have been reduced
To less than the sum of my parts, I remain defiant in that
I am what remains, defiant. I am pieces stitched together
With a current run through. I find myself forming the position
Of a man doubled over, eviserated, clutching whatever is left inside.
I am one of the lucky ones, I have been blessed with eyes unlocked
And I'm not listening to anyone anymore. This is a gift,
You'll get your chance if you're lucky.

I have been told to wrap each night around me to grieve
And sing my song to God. I am spurred by it, I travel by day
With fists against the ground. There are waves of grief,
Bigger and bigger that rise in the dark and I cannot describe
What I've seen there, I sometimes find myself making an animal growl,
And if banishment is what is required of me then so be it.

It was Dvorák that reminded me, playing out into the yard,
That I had been hearing the sound of violins all along,
That the maples lining the street had finally exploded
Into crimson and orange, and forming this golden corridor,
My three year old daughter running under it and her perfect sky,
Up to me on the steps, I am reminded that holding her
Is the only thing that feels safe anymore.

Sunday Detox

There you are Hotel, collapsing
onto my sofa

so, along with some strange fibers
I found attached to my arm hair
like bulbs of cured resin

we matched wits with a game
of memory
centered around which tree
goes on the color circle

I confessed in the dust I dated
Ms. Remember,

the dopest stretch of prom queen
who taught me whiskey

can stretch the children
we don’t even remember being

I twist my arm hair into a mat
for you to sit on, my dear
then pull it out, yank.

I feed my plastic cup to the recycling
bin that staunch carnivore

What room are we in anyway
does it feel like this Hotel
is falling in on itself

its like the tree, the self imploding
in on itself then popping up
each spring like the killer in this movie

I’m watching with you on the sofa.

Ground State

My family plot is laid around the grave of my grandfather
except none of us is buried there yet.

My brother smokes a Marlboro and flicks his ash away
from the marker.
The smoke makes my lungs hitch up a little but I never cried
for him.

Bird call, traffic, tractors,
a little but of noise draws small circle around us.

The gray sky closes in the world, makes it finite.
Open sky
is depressing especially in the cold as it reminds us
that everything goes on and on into further cold.

Absolute zero is when all molecules stop moving
even the coming apart of cigarette ash stops its crumbling

Somehow the small sound of a gray sky prevents me
from feeling sad
that another one of us will go off soon,
erasing from the picture.

We do not discuss the fact that
my brother will never have children.

The sound would cause the ground to move
as my grandfather rolls, shifting markers

where headstones are not permitted. Only flags
for appropriate holidays

on the specter of future graves, each of us
a chorus standing in line, waiting to thaw from the future.

The numbers called, if your prefer,
loosening the solid gray, weight the back carries,

No one is left behind to put the players
on their marks. The sounds come down to zero. Stop moving.

Japanese Techno Doom

Just this slight laser beam to eternity
nor gross brass glitters high
high into morning, bears
backlit jiggy down so low
ladies are embarrassed
to be a species at all

dig the disco ball blast back
sparkles a dizzy to fall you down
down, trans the bee in your
ice cubes melts, flies
into the break down, hustles,
dips, does it all again

Genki girl in less dress presents
ass cheek to your eye haven
your two drink is diminished to what
what, cage me a rhombus
slathered in heels, wallet creases
ejaculates of light, smears walls.

I Am Convinved Yo Yo Ma is an Incarnation of the Buddha

Bach Cello Suite 1 III. Courante

Elijah

At her tea parties, my daughter always sets a place
for suffering.

Next to the stuffed pink leopard
she sets a red Hello Kitty tea cup and saucer

across from the empty seat a button eyed zebra
stares at the ceiling as though enraptured

before Suffering arrives chiffon is placed
on the miniature wooden seat and I

am dismissed through the pink doorway,
umbilical seal closing upon me

and I retire to the teevee where I observe
cans of Coke-a-cola poured over corpses

to speed the decay process. I hear my daughter
greet suffering, muffled voices in a distant room.

All suffering is product placement.

Supplement/Ghost

::



I would like you to look here and see
you looking here back at you.

Beside you here looking is you looking
on as you look down at the you here

beside you.




::

Holberg Suite, Op. 40- Rigaudon

Meridian

Residual

The Steelers are winning so I know it’s my brother
calling at quarter to midnight, Monday. Wind up
the oaks are dropping their small acorns on the roof
like the hard containment of a spring rain in single doses.

This late in the fourth I don’t answer the phone.
I turn the light out and the bright clouds surprise me.
The reflection from the slow turning wind-chime
makes think of ghosts. I lie still as the past washes.

There is a myth that the wind moving in the trees
is a spirit. My brother is lying in his room
with a IV drip in his arm. Once a week the nurse
arrives to change the dressing.

The trees bend under the spirit. All men are phantoms.
I know already that my brother
wants to say a few words about the rage
of the coach, the errors in the player’s virtues,

to describe the silent
balk of distance that separates the viewer
from the player’s violence as an order of corn.
When the spit flies from a coach’s mouth
it is referred to as “an order of corn”

sometimes Creamed Corn. The reference
of seed on the vine, the mystical ability
of life to become of itself through the grain
comes from the digestive encounters of corn.

Queen Elizabeth examining her first
phallic stalk could never have imagined
the lobbying efforts of bio-fuel companies,
the farmers interests and deforestation
necessary to bring about this tiny glint of joy

I can hear like acorns produced from the ghost
of wind on the roof, the distempered revelry
in my brother’s pain, of rage and therapy, bright green
cornstalks like the skin of the Incredible Hulk.

Deal with the Drive

What compliments the Christmas tree farm
more than the rural liquor store? How about
the Klan memorial across the street
with its car dealer sized rebel flag?
A trio of obsolescence, the trees
awaiting execution, the flag as limp
as its social prospect and the parking lot
of the liquor store, empty yet.
Though it’s not yet noon enough,
blue laws aside, for the needy
to wheel in for a lunch of blue light.

I drive by at 65, worried that my fix-a-flat
fixed tire might not handle another week
of seventy fives.
I notice still how even
travel itself is a redundancy. Some coming,
some going in lifeless vectors, caravans
of weeds and browning horizons, here
a creek-poisoned valley, there an impotent
cell phone tower mocking. Or worse
the dead houses still standing on the road
like zombies, decaying, lurching
to consume me back to the past, boards
on the windows like coins on eyes.
Doorways unhinged of doors
like the mouths of the beaten agonizing
on after the beatings have ended.

Dvorak -- Serenada for Strings, Op 22 in E Major. 2nd Mvt. Tempo di valse.