Raven. Difference, between black bird and crow.

Minutes, seconds after solitary, i was on display for a higher eye, pulled by an ankle, string and into river, swift rock swirled round boundary, moss slick, in strand
among cold trout after their place in beds
became of war, of

what she couldn't say, forced to settle
rather reckon, this stick cradling a swollen grub. Sol-brush, in their doing
depending. Sky, window, touched with gray, what's human through cloud, reptilian in spring...
and still spared but down river
what lovely gush and rush of season.

Play

anywhere and do, not to get there
only arrive, flower bloomed, in perfume living out their time-must lay there, just
a little longer, in storm, in pouring, still
out and sun,.steam and faucet
hot out, with a touch of warning, and where to fall a curtain.

Your world, could out day, the way numbers run out and do. Our place little more than then this, to out do.
Longer seconds, work a tight knot with a pin, and pin taps into mussel
not sure of its way, it's own

watched on a clock, disappeared under two hands,

lingers, far to cry, easy to pinch, brought out for a Lord and his supper
in a dish there. hoarding self and hook
porridge to drool for oats
through where you go, checked
in to separate teeth

or should of left

to live overshadowed, where the truth could never take, and happening
restless, where they enfold others, and get change my dear. These truth tellers, those liers.
One forward took two back. At a table a man chews his own thumbnail. Gone round the cards, black moon, rather take on radio, that too. In the gut, a mask who took the claw.

the blackout

Waking too late in the afternoon, the room is

A cavern of questions, darkened by pulled shades, elevated on empty bottles of wine and torch lit

Fire should be licking up the walls, bringing it all down around us, but like the devil

The walls are too wet to burn, too dry to boil, nothing  but our innards left to steam

Not a crack for the vapor to escape through anyway, so the air becomes too still, paradise happened

And too much noise, must have erupted into hell

When I knelt down to wonder if the blood splashed on the sheets is yours or mine, your fingerprints

Put rings around my neck and they blossom, stretch inward to swallow hard around stone

The mirror showing swollen yellows and purple, behind ballooning glands together a 

Royal primrose, to carry me further down the road

Snail Jar

Its vision is of light and air
Breath drowning in silver light, hinged on
Sleepy shimmers under an eye
Rolled back against seeping white
Black shelved into the horizon
Where the stream puddles to pond 


Troubled is the old man, telling
Outside the door in the wolves steady howls
Shape fading behind cottony grays
Sprung and knocked over metal coils
A higher tide, soothed 
Shattering clay on rocks, pulled deeper 
In fleshy embraces, noise 
That sometimes sings of a better world 
Even out there, behind screens
And loosening rabbit ears 


Forgetting, in trembling clouds 
As punishing and soft as the gods 
Crumbling stony path, ripe fertile dirt 
Meaning in yellowing green, slithering
Gnawing, beastly boneless mouth  
Of the anti butterfly 

Untitled

Surrounded by pillows, we laid
Cupped in our quiet nest
Tented in white---
Your skin raising goose flesh
As it shivered under my hands
Your face passed over my shadow
Like tics on the mantle clock
Hard as oak, pierced in wet silk
No, not yet you, not yet
Till finally set free, painfully good
But reality apparently
The enemy of the dream 

Some Things Borrowed

O dear hearts

How many are getting scribbled on

Scrambled, torn and blown away

Flaunted, soured, stoned

For lack of mercy, perhaps

I was born this way too, kneeling

Strobe lifted on a soaring dream

Not exactly my own though

A ribbon, always standing

Straight backed, motionless at attention

Folded and holding, like troubled

Fidgeting hands

Fingers weaved within fingers

Webbed ready butterflies, amber

Sticky and slipping, from root to pulse

Forced through invisible tubes in the arm

Growing swollen, polyps

Poisoning purplish domes

Getting hard as rocks

Something else then,

Mourned from the dark in a surrounded

Wakeful sleep, becoming thirsty, obscene

Even so its kept and held there, a moth

Under the bulb or steaming

From baked clay

Pinned through the black hole

In small birds eye, darling even so

Its little to do with wanting

Tasteless pain, blisters risen so heavenly

In this sin, your features shaded, sick

Under uneven lighting

Like what walks away on death heels

Even with the memory of the heart

I felt once, hatch like an egg in my gut

And even so the children

Are going to get served anyway

Glued with thread to the platter

And down came the ax, through girdle and lace

Bastards, that kept digging

Digging in for seed, for the prize

Drunk static across a screen

Forks twirling buttered flesh

New loves sprouting everywhere

Like noodles and yellow peppers

    

Square Peg, liquid window

You should have gone back to bed, sleeping
Faster, rather then invade parts of private thought
Where I turn--- turn and forget: reality
With a few remaining words, raw
Alive in form, wet and still curling from their
Dirty little holes and (invisibly) straddled, a


Fertile paper door that staples shut
The places where our heads swim into fish lips
Coming undone, as we escape the vine
Ripe, pregnant and round, juice behind
The thin skin of an early summer plum, just
To be bound, tighter then ever
Twine around hips, then pinned against
The sway of a branch, silver water


Some offering to the moon
As we linger there… under the sky’s dark awning
An invented equinox, that burns the bottom
Of the pot like dried corn
A tumor trimmed back against its tender vein


And its not loud at first, you and I
Just the crinkle of a snake shedding in a wooden bowl
-- black and pink neon, that flickers
Abandoned beams down to a walkway… leading
Leading… this way to our side, pleasure and pain
The wings of greenish moths, zapped into circles
Of vaporized sulfur, your eyes


Through waffle screens, as you continue
Changing clothes and skins

The Rage

We were the vapor held in under blondish light

Smoke as it shattered and rolled under the door

Moon kissed and turning like a page

Turning, through last nights brandy, spicy

As our eternity… passion drunk

And blood starved for miles flat against your ripe lips

And a sudden electrocuting emptiness

That split me apart, sending me a thousand ways

I was dizzy in white dust, a sprout growing

In a full day of sun

But its all going black now, let out

Frost spiked into ever so slightly

-

Under an even glow

Of spinning stars

 

Flossy Lines

We draw our way through journeys, lifetimes
Productions of places and things with insides that
Indulge, breathe and become lost---
Cloud’s rafting, swimming, changing, going to
Places built from bone
Restless and blind we stir, in some limp hope
Beginning long before we met, from the first
Long drop into someone else’s life, at birth


Matrimony: to the horizon, smaller glimpses
Running deeper into simple things---
Tornadoes of sand spinning, stinging
Blooming into dark purple moons that ring
Under the eyes, blood and shrill voices that drag you
Through halls with their ghosts


Shortly we’ll be engulfed by more nonsense
Night wings that tickle and prance
Beyond the wreckage


Time fluttering home on threads of light
down, down... into curtains of the deep

Once

Here and There:
Time would surly snap
as it split in two, in the slide
down death's blade--
in the curling of a dried stem
as though scissors met a ribbon
whenever we're torn apart

Various emotion still assembles
with the change of weather,
puddling outside the balcony doors
as the window pulls in
more cold air, whenever your gone

Candle lighting, a dangerous game
as wax drips down the edge
of empty wine bottle and
onto the table---

Your shoes sit in a far corner
chewing their own leather
that moment of loss
that presents itself as echoes
stacked on echoes, when home
feels as bare as a
warehouse floor---

And you may never return
to a place that has flowers

On wet leaves

 We went together, smooth and directly
As fine as the fittings between feathers
As she adored us
In the open mouthed softness of her breast
While we ‘became’ reflections of her sun
Goldenrod globes on peppered layers
Leaning on top of the dark
Something microscopic
Flooding the blood around our
Shimmering creamed trunks


To die there, was life everlasting
Eden in its forbidden magic, between hands
And the blooming pedals of thorns and
Her held rose. Depending on her
An uncharted depth, as vast as waves
Through a sweetly salted ocean, the days
And afternoons of waiting in limp heat
Sections of cool citrus, or
A halved corpse, shaped perfectly
Above the opposite side of myself

Knowing something’s more…

The world tries hard
To crumble my bones, but never
Hard enough:

Today I stood at the window
Still as stone, watching

The sun sink into the ground
For more then an hour, I

Let my eyes adjust to the fading
Purple light, to the tortured sky

Till the tentacle that anchors
Everything became visible, just

Beyond the soft curve
Of the horizon, as it detached

And settled back down, into the
Shapeliness of its the womanly arch

And you know what you want
You want to be carried away from

Your fruitless labor, somewhere else
Birth to crows and vapor, a husk

As your former self falls dead on
The floor, all flattery failed,

All history erased,  more and more, then

The end of the print

Underworlds

The castle loomed through another persons dream 
A shadow that hid behind the lashes of tight lids, where their vague swelling walls


Recalled moments that twisted oceans so droplets began
Walking on skin, essence


Of all things that seemed to crawl up out of thin air
Birthed as though mother from child, seeding out of wet green wings


You were trapped and screaming, your voice lost with the path
Upwind on twitching legs that God himself reached towards to pull


From sticky paper, to keep going, architecture of thick folding quilts
Hinged on the peeling skins of blazing bruised fruit


Clay balls in a swinging planetary orbit


Life and earth that dangled from a ceiling fan on string, everything inside
Ears that ticked on a small dainty rose cord 

Domino Blocks

((Detroit Welcomes You))



Sunlight fades at a bent angle and winds
down the slope to where the neighborhood
holds at the chapels garden axle, then
everything crumbles, just outside the gate
traveling in a slow spread of devastation
a snaking vapor of liver rot, odors that
never wash off, like what
swells in the room with a live corpse 


And the nightmare ran, in a horizontal vision
mixing with gun shot echoes, panic
of a caged bird, flapping against its own bars
and a heart that thumped, hard
behind little blue lungs
blood between pin feathers, curls of heat
whistling between Gods
fisted  palm


A strangle hold
of a wooden puzzle you can’t put down
numb energy to twist 
down crooked table legs, tangled amongst
gutter twigs, greenish white rope
at the end of each last breath 

Paper

Forever, they've been here

These strange rectangles, sponges that float

On the sea's abundance

Only it's a desk, sucking up the floors spillage

Filling the space with their scrawled hope

What else could I do except write on them

Thousands of hearts, that implode with

Free wishes, glistening black feathers

That parade around these long white halls

They are funny pink mats, that twist to

Silver, molten metal that have been everywhere

So, they crack and release steam

Thin air---

Barely trembling, getting away from me

A road, a long silk ribbon, flowers

That delight as they crumple

These stupid moons, that run me amuck, they

Love like fish lips, turn fancy, fluttering blue tails

Kisses, safe

Behind globes of flat glass, sharp corners

That go crazy, they'll be the death of you, under

A live licking match, tiny shrunken bellies

On long twitching stalks

Mermaids

We watched a generation laze around
on sun bleached lawns
like in the portraits of saints, shadowed orbs
wrapped some of the heads, bent olive
and thorns stuck to skin, that
tunnel down to relive a time when they
thought they saw grace--
If all our lives
were a crawl through hot desert sand, some
would have to give in to bitterness
or hide under the pain, spend the pain
bleed free of the pain, learning ways
to vomit it out with dust, in an
adrenaline rich haze, you'd see it as it
exited through a shroud of talk
Instead we are windows, rows of eyes
Monasteries of bone, tied
Once or twice to a soothing rumble
Heard from a train a block away, crosslegged
On the floor in stages of non rest
That took us to our first unpolluted breath

Neighborhoods crumble

through plate glass and the ex- chruched

sell out a few dreams to some

green waving flags

ANY COLOR USA

Your ankle stays,

Chained to the skinny leg of a metal 

Folding chair, you can pick it up

And take it with you everywhere or drag it

Behind you in modes of constant noise

To get the salvation found

In the jelly center of shortbread cookie

Its a cemetery circle

Of the same cult mistakes, where seven years of

Suicide and internal animal screams woke, then

Picked the scalp like an old scab

Getting to the center of frozen flesh, that went

through the spirit like a discarded suitcase 

kept packed so its always ready to run

Because her tentacles moisten there

in the penetrating rain

as the cool blue bubbles up 

and around in the sinking of the slide

found in the lushness of all that under green

that gives life and takes it back

Sentimental Moods

This time its easy, with less to do

As the darkness lays

Down to plunder

As shadows tangle in the corner

And fold

This is lamplight

While the candle flickers down

To less then

A dim

Periscopes, up

Views of paper lanterns

As they turn

Through

A

Liquid sea

Though it ever stays a room

Ignorant.

Visions that fault a world

I hardly know them

As they tunnel down to be

An Underhill

With all the mystery of ants

Colony’s that wither away

In the cold, pedals of beauty

That crinkle as they turn

Maybe 

They were always

Plastic.

Used to decorate a long hall

Ramifications

That could doom us

Forever 

As I know

As I feel

As everything that’s always

Been there

Still is

Love and lust

Fire as swirls within

A soft fall in leaves

Where smiles and beams

Of light

Play down

Through branches

Of heaven

Raw honey slowly licked

From fingers

Cradles that mesh

Through our very bones

Rolled into something flat

For jars.

Or pieces of soul

That you

Can’t

Abandon

.

No Rain

After everyone died, she was left alone
Among the living, an upside down amputee
With roots burning on a self in a square of
Whitewashed sun
Drying out to powder, in a sea of animals
Past button holes and bullet wounds
Zombie beads of chlorophyll sliding down
A jeweled leaf


In the haze, she could hear 
The watering can ignore her - as electronic
Ink dotted her stem down, in
A shadowed landslide of bee’s bee’s
Rattling metal against metal, then brought
In from the snow

The Traveler and the Sky

In a remote area far off the path
you begin to feel lost--
because you are, one of smallest
in the vast pavilion bringing in
bits of the sea

Dreaming here:
means dreaming forever
getting down in saltless dunes and
never dreaming at all

Your one with the wind, a spec of color
that rides out of the moon--
wild in spurs of bleached coral
pinned tight--
under your weights slickness, trembling
as your acclimating body
releases from bondage of skin

One of the headless, weightless now
and sick... Sick!
Of the clouds you painted on the ceiling
they aren't as useful as the stickers of stars
that glow to lead you through the usual dark
your gasping in your own absence

watching a strange flower bloom where
you slowly lift its roots, into a jar
and its anchored, captured in solitude
perfect there, in wet gravel and gleaming

Its essence is (everything) and nothing
spinning in restless ripples, wings of leg bone
that wrap a strong trunk
soft pedals of jasmine, yellow purple from the
dragons snap, beads of sapphire
as they bled from Saturns rings-- touched
and fading...
It can''t live, not in the real world

A thick bubble drops, another
as a timer resets within
A plastic ferris wheel goes around
revealing....
sparkling bites as it falls, flipped
and continually turning
into the silver side of the mushrooms trip
as released from mosquitoes swarm

Amnesia

The tight bud from an iris
split like eggshell as it infused with dry heat
spilling a pattern of yellowed pollen
crisscross stitching, across the table top
like little bird feet, from toes
that hopped across the mud--
More of the outdoors brought in
for Christmas, I watch
from where I am, try to wear my face honestly
But feel hallow, lost in emotion
Between dangle poinsettia earrings
that do my time for now, a paint on smile
a vision of sunshine and ecstasy
as the center of the room gets pulled
through a twist of twinkle lights
Behind my own hugged knee's, I swallow
thin air, as the world goes to shreds--
In the dream,
kitchen linoleum would grow fat in the cold
swell like furniture legs in an attic loft
dog-eared in a jungle of propped up sheets
bands of light, ghostly fingers and string
that wrap a sleeping giant

A coin fluttering
through the fountain, wishes
on sun kissed dice, vanished
through a thin curtain of smoke
A reality that gets trapped under a crease
of invisible tape and stuff is just
supposed to stay up there, forever 

as dry a color from late autumn

  

Stone Cauldron

--nothing and something, closer and then
whistles from a distant train flowing from my fingertips
like a brush too thick with paint, might as well
be the lone feather; fluttering, between journey
and destination, as a species of words
clouds bloom from grey to winter rain, heavy sheets
changed slowly over to sleet, silver window glass rippling
lapping at square bowls of milk with
the same movement as the sea, that sucks back
like a distant faded memory 
--beyond, in the fading backdrop, a sun
plucks a darkening thread from its eye, down further
the house sways, moaning like the hold of a sinking ship
--later, bottomed out and dry, the roof becomes
an overturning umbrella, searching for flavor 
in the deep scratches left in chipped porcelain, rose hips
and lemon grass, what's left of a dainty cracked 
cornflower ring, and an ember glowing from a fire