autogeography

the sly presence

the wind backing 

     thru the chainsaw's tines 

the insistence 

     on witness 

     on sacrifice 

the ice blossom 

     pending 

the clouds 

     scrolling 

     

the weight 

     waking 

   
apart

     breathful

           the heavy root
                greening

           like

           phosphor 

linear b

if we insist on

bonsai-bearded
         abacus

      or

mystical weapons
for buddhists

      or

human sacrifice
naval warfare

       or

titanic oranges

let it be divorced
from verbal loops

dealing, as they do
with holy mountains

a trillion bells

she looks Israeli
her cocoons
drizzling
prehensile burns

sunny lumens
          over Pennsylvania Ave
blue jays glisten
under iron dreams
enhanced
by armor

bulleted hot core
sends steam
into night

Blacksmith

in calcite, trimmed dark
cubes in blue detail
wrote you in smoke
your habitat, I went
hesitant, someday
a willed structure
reaches, limes, a
monk among crossings
since the future curves
write me back
for I am in need of words

10

Our body, released of vaccines,

and rain skids down the sides of the sky

anvils resemble themselves

the world is a forest of flesh.

my kindnesses are clean, my voice

a book of gems twisting

like a Persian prince, the day sharpens

the icicles of Easter;

unfolding the mystical carved boxes

with my nauseous fiancee

I will live in a cellar,

the only antidote to fear

9

On my way to becoming a tornado

I say, "equally empty," my mind

resting on a fluted thought

my love for you is a city

of atoms in trespass of a flower

Nature requires vedic moments

a day of aerial threats, balsam

half a clamor, but it goes

just like Mars, but not vicious

in tuesday's canyon, low and light

the salesman arrives tearfully

a trilogy of air seeps

from the perianth, black

on him who made it

8 (union)

What is undone by the ungreen river

and are those strands

rain, or the ray's absence

winnowed, left for me to find

the water keeps us

it's what I offer, my being

a cowboy, a doorway

the ground is littered with houses

trees, sawblades, the heads

of seahorses

lean close, in case

the angling light grants us visions

a dream of the sun

gone to greet the sea like the creature it is

7

I want to be a Japanese fisherman

one hull per trip, a frantic

abalone, she tells me

crows and monkeys love peaches.

I work on every thing at once

the sky makes the earth quiet--

that's our fear imploding--

a kicked-on generator, his head inside

bitten in the black like

a bag of glass eels

offering an Indian word, father

and I chatting in the tunnel's

limit. This on America, an island

6

Violence: where is that man
the round sash of the future
in a wash of September spearmint
pulsing toward supine city love
in canticles, the sound of opals
and bunts against the shift.
The curtains rumble, so soft.
Now I remember my dream, the drool
an epicycle, halogen crust
breaking into books. Now I know
the spiral demesne, the
movement, wrens pooling
everyday into their cave

5

Anger: the wire that is

knocking in the night

yellow sounds appear, no glass

and ponds, hissing plants

the bridge's dirge, fallow

smudge, I leave the car, next

chapter. Do you have a rope,

a cigar burns the blimp's threads

for money, a fulcrum

the stove creaks, it is a breath

doubling towards a dream

the cat tilts the chair

whose inflowing thoughts have ended

4

The sun is loafing in antarctic tents

still so far

from the very next star

the small Greek man walks South

denies that they are distant

they are rising, realized, equal, an

ellipse, their hulls always

disappear--why no one thought

the imperfections were mountains

they couldn't bring back

like a deer in face and bearing

I sensed each second of the year

and it hurt, so I spit

3

Great chins of rock drip,

a Tulsan slept in Tulsa.

There was a beautiful noise in terrible Chrysa

the city beneath my brain

a chemical ripens

appearing, awn-like

a basket of steam in the Everglades.

Darkness is only a function of sleep

my trickled heart drops through dreams

selected by flowers he disappears

a weed to remain worldless

This is his last body.

The Drift, Together

Astonished that you have turned to go.

She stretches a hand toward the toothy sleeper.

Is it almost honey, is it snow?

Wind, sleet. The branches sway.

Or else, like us, sunk into some long gaze.

Grateful, I know, for just such compensations.

Stars, the last day, endless and centerless,

The bees are buzzing,

The earth beneath his feet, in its dark cape.

Left and right, and far ahead in the dusk.

Jones Sound and Beaufort Sea.

In the sound of the snow. How countless.

Of meanings like these, the world created.

And melt the spirit; his mouth will distend.

Of a far barn, just where the road curves sharply,

The motionless farm couple trudging.

The Calyx

He had been jeweled, just, acrylic, washed.

The botany of dreams, the snow on the mountain

Stirs the air. Pleasant enough, a future with

Fish, let the nose be cold so the lungs

Stay warm, it's what I've learned, it's what

I've done. Who knows, and when we blend

It could be there is morning traffic,

If all plants are monsters and they eat

A final image. The lodestone sings a service,

A triangle's bones, the outermost whorl.

The calyx often remains. She gives her night

When white they beat them, the brothers, each

Told the other, found stars among the grasses.

My cares are beggars. I'm done with society.

2

The wild mare drinks from a river in Cabo:

a pilgrim's dream.

shooting upwards like a cat

I feel so total

petting the roots rocks and moss

paying my loans--

I think there's a creek for her

dim in the damp woods

of a cat's green eyelight

bits of mist shunt

my Chincoteague, your

Cleisthenes, I realize

it's too late for the states

1

watching the wire out my window sag

the silence should be like animal life

elbow knocks the thrush and

the sun is chiming thru my slanted windows

I drive downtown against

These storms. Shallow rooted trees

on the way to Ian's

the sky pole of jet light petals up

covering an interstate

with a green shackle and

the scrounge of coins to buy incense

For Kate G. & Drew G.

here I am thinking of you two,

passing the night without my drug

acting, as they see it, effeminate

you are my sister

but far in advance, do you look

as snowflakes bond to earth

on diadems so woody and inert

when you marry can it be so cold?

what's that cardinal link

when now trespasses then?

to the left, my rigamarole

percolates the blue ridge

like maybe vapor through

January's ductile buds

greening the way towards

what you want, leaning

an arbor growing round

the two in love

unchained

Alabama Slammer

my atmosphere is taking revenge on me

a puff and the sun opens

a puff and a hatch of sun

ruining my day off

the bees are still alive

this stirs

the slow orange

the fear

you can feel it jump to new

meanings all by itself

other than that

I like the weather

it enhances the silence

monday night

I've rooted for the Bills

seen shells on the hills

and a pearl's depth guided

to reveal fault lines,

the chirp bleeds knowledge

to a bird's ear, if it exists,

beyond what is told by birds.

Broad across the path

stretching toward the mind

chapeling the heart

its salty-fingered wind

knows when not

to smoke--