Imperfectly

the city sleeps.

sin rises like a dirty
vapour from off the crazed
paving stones
and permeates the darkness

sadness and regret
fall
like dirty grey
snow upon the stiffening
corpse

the ragged girl
walks up the steps
of the
theatre with dirt-stained
feet, her bare
flesh
on the stone
like the slap of wet
fish.
briefly she listens at the
door’s narrow
crack; then, hearing only mu…

Oh no, you can’t come out.
Go back inside and wait.
You’ll make me say or do
something, I am going to hate.
Please don’t come out
when people are here.

Oh, god where’s it coming from?
Thru’ fingers like dry sand.
I know I haven’t cut myself
but there’s blood upon my hand.

you have your whole life ahead of you son
when I was your age
that felt like an impossible burden
*

the cold war warmed us
enemies guarding secrets
collecting and trading them
disclosed on a need to know b…

gossamer riddles
without spiders
hanging by a breeze
barely a ripple and you are wrinkled
a bag of bones in a rib cage
there isn’t enough time for smoothing out the syntax
there never was
what an asyl…

this, then, is the night,

curse & effect
is a law of mysterious congruences
physically eradicated flourishings
fully infiltrated gatherings
the food the water the heat the housing
locked up in a wall-less vault
of imaginings
wh…

there are days that steal your speech
and there are other days
that steel you for speech
a day at the end of April
on the cusp of May
as mild as if impossible
so used to heavy weather at best
all gentlenes…

give me a task and I will advertise my idiocy
something with passwords numbered accounts
loans and interested others
coherent in their contingencies
I have lived all but 10 months of my life
here hanging…

when I stand listening
to the chorus of tree frogs at midnight
looking up into the clear April sky littered with stars
exhausting their fires in some inexplicable service
of birth
I know I am participatin…

sex charms make object(ive)s fly
Suntan Road ride my teddy bear over the river
raining bats out of low toffee colored clouds
the storks scatter gossip about bad weather
balling at the top of their lungs
t…

Flip a switch
Turn a knob
Push a button
and
what he doesnt see
isnt there

the sun is out
meaning it can reach the surface
of the earth today
unfiltered by thick gray clouds
typical of this latitude
this island playground for yachtsmen
but I am sick of being cold
for all its glit…

the haunting parody between pipes
playing a blues harp for your own ears
and lips eyes closed on the porch
like Abraham Lincoln getting stoned
when he found himself with an hour
left alone
I won’t k…

it is 7pm at 3pm I don’t know how that happened
the babe is in a nosedive bombarded with chronic doubt
crushing the couch when the sun breaks through after years of rain
the big top wobbles in ce…

where words fail is achingly beautiful
you get caught in reflections
with the knowledge now
to dance the steps backwards
that can’t be altered
or sheltered
anymore than before
*