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.

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.

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.

The parable of a parabola

forever approaching zero

I told you about the last time

I was in Toronto there to give

a book by bob Dylan to a friend

and pretend to be Artaud

as I listened to her memories

wrote about the street cars,

the rickshaws, the many people

little china, the old lady

with eyes like jade

abrogating my existence

in the parking lot, simply

cursing me for being there

across the street from old gargoyles,

sun scorched farmers

setting themselves on fire

for better government funding

Some girl who asked me to buy

a pack of cigarettes for her

I had no clue that there you were

across the street huddled

in some hooded sweatshirt or parka,

parking your car or something,

slow jogging surrounded in darkness

Warm halo like an angel, waiting

to save me three years later

in a room inhabited by the world,

the window open, our conversation,

lost like a fork at a dinner table

The wine sweet, our eyes

meeting for the first time all over again.

Might as well lose yourself among the coupons

the obituaries aren’t ready yet,

throw yourself over there, next to the fireplace

where we throw old news, you aren’t even funny.

Look, a new edition is out, the headlines have changed

something hopeful, something scandalous -

three dollar ham sandwiches down the street

an arms race, all of us stretching out at the elbows

to better read the fine print, and soon realize

we never lost our jobs but we figured out how

our performance is being appraised by our readers

and, so here I stand, typical, lost in the typography

the geography of my mistakes lingering

somewhere behind me, the scar of fate

trying, struggling, wanting to be mapped out

pounced upon by some ponce de leon

of good comprehension, finding a way to it

coherently but seeing no treasure here nor there

and now the topography says I’m falling

and I cannot argue what the lines say.