Icarus, undeniably indignant
and entertained by his own flagrancy
incandescent and foolish
flying naked beneath the burning star
how much further must he recede into light
before his charred body reminds him
of the other half of the moon?
What does the jungle afford a survivalist if it is concrete?
In drama they seem to break so easy
off the tongue of great actors
only to fall miserably forgotten by the stage hand
trying himself at home to be the hero, failing
to take the mirror seriously.
& In a recession they are monotonous
reminders that we hunger
in hoards hunched over each other
like discarded clothes,
hurt imitations of stale bread.
the throes of being unable to rise.
In my face, they become mere
delineations of my age,
boundaries for the eyes of passers by,
binary code for the facial recognition
software of the sky light.
One wants to elongate
the etymology of these pronunciations,
this adverb pronounced nation of syllables
and retching inaudible iambs vying
for one ingot of clear measure –
a moment to have arrived
somewhere familiar, an instance of rain
when it wasn’t called for, existence of truth -
justice within a mob. The yellow-jackets have eaten
the once-throbbing heart of the fallen crab apple.
In a poem, the line too makes a new home
for itself, desiring the center of something
sweet to sink its teeth into
diving into the shade of its own
created spaces,
brave and broken,
breathing easy beyond the light,
blood or ink, drawing
circles around the mouth.
Quantum free sonics,
auspiciously surrounded,
suspiciously sounding as if
hooked on phonics worked for me
hounding me for answers
that didn’t just sound good
but fell off the tongue like drool
and the commentary: “you rool”
said the friend who was
by the way imaginary
and disobedient
always saying something
you heard before
but scantily clad in wisdom
you shook your head
to the rhythm of not knowing
not agreeing on the rools
the rhyme, or the reasons.
*
The door ajar
at the start of sleep
too tired to get up again
to close it -
like a last minute sale.
Too far away from snoring
the way you are currently
you decide on passing kernels through
the synaptic straw,
compactly soldiering the days thoughts
into sleep.
Go ahead, hurry into unconsciousness.
You are a sheep belly up on a fence
indecisively falling for a dream -
counting each leap
in quiet repetition,
each steep desecration of borders
& orders to keep going
in the direction of god
wherever that is.
On the eve of Friday the thirteenth
fifty people fell from the sky burning
No, this is not a metaphor
The black voice recorder
was unable to capture the color
the roman candle in suburbia
the red white and blue of their burning
An American flag in the neighbors yard,
marked with soot,
furiously moved by the winds
of change.
*
Yes, we can
imagine ourselves there -
singled out by God
his huge immaterial hand
bitch slapping the whole lot of us into silence
but if you claim you’re free
of this wrath,
you tell me
are you brave?
Written in blood,
first class
like a constitution,
the name of a man’s mistress
on the back of the seat he melted to.
The shortness
of it
none of your concern
never having experienced or learned
of long hallways outside of your own self-isolation.
The tether of your claustrophobic probing of space,
a displaced regurgitation through darkness
out onto some veranda awesome only to you
the smooth Rhine between your toes Dionysus
frozen strawberries, line up all your poems
your beauty surrenders to the truth
imploding unlawful juries of faith and rhetoric
loosely judged & biased – broken like silence
beneath a gavel of berries, busted, burdened
into self-righteous wine.
The deletion of the word “love”
from the body of poetics
precedes its own construction
as if animators drawing flesh on a skeleton
had misjudged the proper width
of a torso, heart to breast, abdomen
to waist – the proper length of a leg
encased in its own delusion of scale.
So, forced to erase what anomaly was
misrepresented there, they sketch new
boundaries hoping mistakes are masked
as mere shadows, where the aorta once was
some invisible gradient unspoken of,
taut with history. The capturing instead,
of the inept incalculability of college
ruled notebook paper predefining the chaos
being held in its space. The ordered flatness
of having nothing to say – a frightened or
contented face driven through and drawn past
incoherent strangleholds of silence -
a thought deterred from existence
not through its lack of clarity,
but interrupted by a kiss, misunderstood
by a touch, by a look, by a word
interjected for effect.
Listen to the music
of thumping drums,
four invisible white Broncos
bruising the landscape flat
with snow-
Listen to the ploughs
pushing angels aside
the 3 legged north american reindeer
sabre rattling in the wind-chill
at night, for fire safety, a father
like some municipal clicking a pen,
shutting down the
metropolis of xmas lights flashing
in his living room.
When you went to bed last night
only the tv script and plastic personas
of late night talk shows shrouded
and scrolled their back to you
a teleprompted reality
you scarcely remembered
so you started
talking so you could see your breath.
Mario Lanza singing spaghetti and angels,
Tony Danza on pause, always on my paws,
I have many memories of you that I can remember,
the earliest of them involve wearing pajamas
myself, ear to the train track of nylon braids
getting smaller towards the center of a rug
my eyes flamboyant and unregulated by tax
thrown about by interest and attrition to light
to shapes, to being, born again in a moment
when one can believe in varying degrees, a logic
to cope w/ this forever fluctuating darkness
yet to be challenged by our waking
rolling over a soul mate to get to the lamp
hitting your knee or shin to stop the sad music
starting the day moving from blaring to flamboyant
one seemed always a boy at the beginning of sleep
a man after waking
his volumes living and dying
as he stumbles to get dressed,
voices murmuring like a seashell
a depressed and uncommitted sine wave,
circular like the infant ovals of space
in the center of a room.
Like your pupils when you lie to me.
Go ahead call me scrooge, I already gave you my soul
I’m done giving. Scroll up,
It’s all there again for you, just like you asked for.
The slow hum of the water heater
inquiring a way down
into silence -
the muted scream of
the failing snowflakes outside,
the shiver of fleece
that keeps me warm momentarily
like the synaptic jerk of a thermostat
a pilot light warily wavers
like some ritual engulfed mayan queen
seducing the darkness.
I can’t sleep & neither can this storm.
Or “Eros” as the buzzing neon sign read,
Candy was busy kicking
a loose piece of gravel from her stiletto
some stranger lit her cigarette
but they didn’t look each other in the eyes
she rode his lap inside
her drinks were free.
The stage music was muffled and exhalted
each time the front door opened and closed.
The night was somebody elses whisper.
