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