Calypso 78

Kind Henry,
All leather barrels and jars of nonsense
Tell me about the places you have been:
Waiting for trains
Breeding lice
Burning sermons.

You are an Old Master faked for money
An envelope shredded beneath an archway
The paper flakes fluttering off

As the white slips fluttered (no two the same)
You sank beneath the surface of their swirling trail.

Toy Heart

Toy Heart
Mugged by the saints of fortune,
Dropped from high places,
Lamentation becomes an explanation.

Toy Heart,
the truth is inconvenient

The high wire is nowhere for
you to play on once
the skin of luck is lost

But there are sins and there are sins
And these skins are skins
For dancing in.

Burning Days

How long the feathers remain
after the bird is gone.
as if thin voices stray and fill
the emptiness of the
blue blue sky

tin tin tinny echo
look, here, as if
beholden to some remembered thing
where flying was not just a dream.


Last night after closing my eyes
I flew somewhere
beyond the moon recalling
a lost art

Rubber Bullets

I met the Buddha one day
in the produce section
he was the color of chestnut stain
(the stain of disdain)

Stooped with stick
he was scraping dog-shit
from his worn-out soul



But this was stepped in oh so long ago.

the Smell Of Smoke From the Shore

Insistent on visiting
the site of existing
we washed up on various shores

To be greeted with laughter
but it didn't matter
afterall we weren't really there

For Helen the felon

in practice a cannibal

watering the dam bamboo

and contemplating her place in the race.

To Chris, Who Cuts

Now that the tide is rising
now that the fun's begun
twelve short years're all
we've got between the now
and then

What is the feeling of delamination?
Where do birds go at night?
What is the weight of dead feathers?
What is the specific gravity of sorrow?



To the unborn thinker:
If you see this bobbing on the waves
I want you to know-
As a blade of grass
I was not unhappy.

http://www.wefeelfine.org/
(thanks, Laura!)

Heart Fragment

Now that I am an imperfect being who
Filled rooms with badly made chairs then
Invited none to sit
I surrender to the
Movements in the corners of my eyes.

I broke the mirrors that told me who I was
and sorted those fragments of delight
though found beauty only partly-formed.

I worked the fabulous puzzle
That defied solution
And with each failed attempt I
Added to the infinite story

Human Cannonball

A small-time junky in a big-time world
hovering somewhere above the pavement
expectantly awaiting the sweet salvation of the net.

Falling through the skylight
the softest beam yet
seeing what was never possible
reflected in the broken glass-


after the show- gleaners
slowly move through the shards
harvesting what they can.

Snowman

in the morning distance
Suguaros stretch back to infinity
and even in their tiny dotness
we know them for what they are

how strange it is, then, to value

above sweetness that strangeness

unknown to itself,

deliberate in its carelessness

selfish to the point of oblivion.

If only we could make it notice

and share its light that meager light

from a cold, dark star

where no world revolves

where no world revolves

where no world revolves

Novemberman

No, I don't remember
where I was that day
it was so long ago
only the numbness and disappointment
can I now recall

Of course, assassination is only the beginning-
a crime that will take ten thousand years to finally repay

And the criminals will be released to the custody of ashes

Skycap

the multiplication of insistence
is wrongly calculated
by a different engine


where our quantity is given
in a circumstantial heaven
when uneven angels
and even devils

Come to some conclusion
and all existence is carried over
to another enumerator
and the extrapolated answer is
X

Birth Revoke

How do you become a former painter?
with mother soon to be in the air
your birth rite returned to its lawful
place, somewhere beneath the
umbilical.
(They say it leaves a scar like a smiley face.)

Without this choice you will come undone
and float upward,
an untethered balloon-bursting below the sun
raining down on the unsuspecting,
teeth, hair, eyes.


Unlikely unseemly a dream choice
is made and you are finally relieved
to be in orbit, once again.

Eastern Star

From a distance
you can barely see
the faintest hint of
stars exploding.
Horsehead,
Crab,
Orion,
all dying things.

The speed of overtaking
simple things, thinking
is astonishing.

OnQue

Sharing confusion with you as if it were
a warm bit of pie
falling filling dropping from the margins
stains shirtfronts, ties
makes hands sticky


After this bit of theft I have beed upgraded!
a defenstrated super-hero
oh I forget to fly
(sorry Saskia!)


Before figuring out the etiquette
of flight or falling
I make my aquaintance with the ground