Souls are safe in eyeing plenty
counting up - the days
Eyes are rock and pasts are steady
relying on the - deep

Any touch resounds the raw expectation
sly-wise to the tongue
Found in rain - and tale passwords
mundane like dialing home

against white paint
and your paintings

I’ll try my hand out

sure you don’t know
what I feel



heavy, without drink

- 2 6 -

Twenty Sixth of October Nineteen Ninety Eight Big
Ben’s iron cast fist thumbing blank
crowded streets
A homeless killed himself jarred twelve
stories of river hush to indistinct
crackle death and tubes we –
make meaning of
the red leaves

and only the fall river he jumps

spread of nerves touch like stones

your poetry gives me nothing monsieur

Phone Call Pulls me from my Reading, Various Pictures

Today I pretended
than an ex-lover
called me
on the slim black
phone in the corner
of my room

Carpet weighed my steps:
my voice was no expectation
like glass under
a blue sky.
I sat down after I
did not recognize the voice

While she made small
talk I weighed grandiose
plans, imaging one
night of reluctant leg
nudity: fleshy weight
before a testing kiss, then

A realization of
her proximity pricked
me: to exude my
pleasure at the happiness
cherry season had brought her,
I wanted her greed

The way she opens
to the world, and
I was softer: and
louder in my reassurance.
For how she draws who I was
who: I can be

There was never any kiss
She finally says, removed
of the prosaic heart tugs.
Why bring that up at
a time like this?
she holds, lingers in reasons

you’ll pay tomorrow / my friend

\It was a
nervous jerk –
and so:
unfulfilling,
I’m still all nerves.
finger-tips and
heart valves.
The rocking of
sufficient breathing.
And I flit with the
desk lamp to melt
away those lines of light
across the ceiling.
This is it: convergence
of bloods, dissonance,
should there exist
such a word –

where is all of this
space when I’m
on trains? or
choosing breakfast
cereal?

All of those pens,
clips, jagged gleams
of metal on the desk –
Oh would they fit nicely
right back
behind my eyes!

From the cycle, "Variations on no Theme"

"Negligently, the way everything begins,
You yawn and bleed, you stare at
Your cut chin in the glass, the skin puckered
Under the Swedish steel,
The eye glazed in the morning light, an animal
In double jeopardy, practicing
The use of edged tools while standing on its hindlegs.
The beard hairs swarm like lice
In the basin, and each time you shave
The haggling begins again, your fear
Seeks an equilibrium: a first plea
For the innocent heart,
The amnesty long before the opened veins."

- Durs Gruenbein, translated by M. Hofmann.

Focus is not an object,
and headache isn’t a degree.
If I knew where all this
ice ended and my brow
began – I’d sleep the sleep
of babes.

No more tubes, and pressure
can just be a word. See.
On the side of
little bottles in little print,
you keep your pipes clean,
all right.
Sleep.

Insomnia, continued, again, Wedge it on through Sunday Night

I saw a terrible sign today. I saw a terrible sign today, and I can’t forget about it and nothing about this room or the darkness or the hideous threat of tomorrow morning helps. I stood looking at my bed for a solid ten minutes, after having lost myself in various distractions, old books, music, cards, computer board games, wine, and (after some more) I pretended I didn’t need to sleep - like I was some sort of superhuman - sleep was the strangest thing one could possibly imagine, Greek Gods contemplating the mortality of their lovers and brief enemies and the children that come between, or like it was some fucked-up cultural thing like people who eat dog. An interesting anecdote, something to quip about in mass emails or parties when there’s nothing else to say. I moved about yet again (distraction here, distraction there, but always conscious of the intent, so no actual distraction achieved) and pretended I didn’t need to sleep. I came up with sentences, fragments (maybe once I would have called them “poetry”) and one sentence leads to another, and another to a jumble. It’s all vanity, but at least I don’t write them down anymore. What a mess even now, what the bloody hell... a mess of tenses, but that’s the way the thinking goes to keep away from the bed, that’s been established.

green isn’t a color
and blue isn’t its friend
yellow burns my little eyes black
this dark sure takes its time

heart ache against all this green
and people – walking home
while sands – find – niche
on little minds
of strict imagination

it’s hell being so predictable kid
when you’re not needed to mark the day
silvery gears and simulation tucks
draw them to your house alright

things don't look
too good
for us now!


what with me

up in your tree!


I'd take the hint
if you'd
make it more -


Or else I can

wait all night!

saturday afternoon - curled behind a little word play

heart ache against all this green
and people – walking home
while sands – find – niche
on little minds
of strict - imagination

frizzzzzaiddeii

Night Rate - Hotel Waits
too close - By The Sun
Hand Pub - candle stubs
Talks You out - Again

Not Quite Pulled Together, kids - Come back Tomorrow for Pith

Track edges broke in a room that’s
ice fever fever you are nothing
your bones will grind back into the earth
and there will be no mentioning of you
It is time to be self righteous
Entering, frozen, unbroken glass pivots about into statues
closets entering tracen polar limbs
The room is filled with my
darkest ambitions, smooth lines
Your little friends are waiting, cocks in hand
with purple smiles and a compact disk
so you can understand
the fingers that kept me
awake at rest on your round
belly sloppy back of your thighs raised
stalking into this crease of nightmare I
present no illusion
you read me as you will
Around—the glass steadies in synchronized
shutter As it is alive to crush the
sepulcher is to thrill trauma cracks through
the hoarse throat touching the lock
Of bleached hair makes the room shimmer
in glass, breathe like dawn and the
little friends go on probing their neurotic cocks
against swelling glands that startle them
as planned this world would
be fire but that is not real, a
tear of a page and the glass so delicate
so strummed together in grotesque longing
will suffer the bend of its card expectation
stalking with no illusions I’ll imagine your eyes
before dreaming, never act (and make associations
with the solid metal bat,

thou hast used the words melancholy and lover -a ll in a single poem!

While stepping over the remarks of ashen braenwood
along a ravine of hearted stone music
I composed a few lines
to the sky, the water, the woodsy hearth

Trees found their burden heavier
as the enchanted valley enclosed me
a sky: palm in red
blackening dirt filling to my senses -like

In wine reverie the lovers’ fists turn glassy
the waters bloat in rhymed heat
or they’re braced against the bird banded trees
lip their sing and impose gentle melancholy

With a wave this world shifts brighter
Against the pillow hemmed moonlight
Or perhaps to cast off pen and labored commotion
And stay with the morning And words left alone


(not long enough for page 1162)

Revisited: Or, South-Bay Blue times two (when the words sound So Similar)

why the 'ell not
blow out your brains

on such a
melanch'ly day


granted the April
sky is crisp

Fear Loathing
Loathing Fear

Saturday Night Untitled

simple tasks have become overwhelming:
the eyes of the wooden angles followed
my ascent across the room
to ungrateful curves of glass
trays, carrot sticks and
radish wholes a list of unfinished
errands dangles off my wrist
and they notice, strange: the distance
between myself and paranoid daily
clothing is so small, though I would act
as if no one was watching, yet from the
dusty portraits so far I am not
feverish I just have nothing to say
they’ll watch where I present myself
I am not for any kind of greatness,
as for this room