in a cabin on fields of snow

I took the steam train to you for
the sake of hovering crafts
and automatic vending machines
filled with pot and coke.

fifteen hours.
asleep with all
kinds of cargo.
one stop, but
this is Alaska.

I arrived, and went in, and slept;
I did it for 3 days without waking.
but would you believe the things I would see
on that cot—through it’s blood soaks

the most fantastic and the most grotesque
of beings and all of them spoke
in a way that spilled and flowed over
everything, filling beautiful crevices.

last night’s was an excursion—
it was done there; it would be left
there and never tasted or smelled
by unsympathetic ol-
factories.

it’s just me and you now,
the day is so tired with us
sitting around every one,
swearing every little thing,
passing back the joint,
the bottle, the line.    

canary bomb

she possesses the skill
of flight and
every time
spins the wind and
my drafts of paper
about the room.

sore knees—
spare the stacked files
of a life’s
work from those
wings.

I choke on some
gelatinous noise and
say nothing—

that she could actually
love sadism in artform.

this is what I learn or un-learn,
sitting motion senseless,

but without an understanding
of the sky nor of her depth
from getting high.

burial

down
is my placement—
chimes,
wrap my fleeting and,
doors,
slam and spit dew—

this soil is so cold;
they wriggle
and have found me.

after the mid-night fire

the tenement is a
lump on the street;
he hears sirens
after the crisp
cuttings of grass
smoking on that used
house—his and his
sister’s room—
in rolled caves of
quilt he used to see
the dark shades of color—
the one that matched
her photos and wardrobe
and the back of that chicken
Father once brought
home well and good humored—
laughing with mouth opened;
tie hanging loose since the
whistle closed the graveyard shift.

flooding the Thames

send back-and-forth
bouquets of Tunisian Jas-
mine from the end of the Nile
to your love at the delta

and lion’s manes
from the low savannah,
tied in vines of
deep Beijing
reds and greens

birds from paradise
encased in Venetian amber
carry the candle
scents of Italy and the tropics

moonstones from
high in angels’ faults;
with Styrofoam,
red-eyed to London,
fan the light
like her porcelain visage

these are not reminders of faith in words; but
know that they will relieve the Thames—
the crystal silt—
glass ash—
dust from her whitewashed sill.

sangreel

the ladies love him now
that he’s got the act
sharply polished and

the sky, lucid
blue with clouds
so he writes
his first ode
to the sun.

rookie
hand model;
that old nature
wiped in
the blinding rays
of a new mastery—

four-on-the-floor
works—
it works so well,

but the roots,
obesely,
are bending
back up
his sole;

ask him of those times he droned
for all our dark and sleepless:

from the inside out
we were formed; and
from the inside out
we will fall

he does
remember something.