Presence

Ω


The quanta ignore our restrictions
flowing where they will, existing
already when you arrive, reminding
sedately of all that is and of what remains

They do not flow, nor move here to there
after all, the motivation is unknown
despite our need for engagement
we trace the particle by whispering

We can not blink to reveal this new
world, a crystal that never breaks
impossible to drop and by its virtue
out of reach in the first place

That place where things fall together
without comfort, without resignation
there is no first among equals here
nothing first at all, only angels

These restraints ignore our description
existing as they will, tranquil in
ways we are not, so we tell ourselves
enough is known, no one dies or
disappears

palimpsest

graphing desire always leads you back here

to the place

where her lips fade into solips

all is becalmed

by that circular solace

that can only describe itself

so you may as well

raise the shade

the sun broke the clouds today

now

and then

dusk reveals

its lazy philosophy

as you are your witness

some smiles

lack the spots of leopards

yet leap

with the same vigor

remember?

The Weather

Wonder is an open sky
and a
green field

Later
it is dull amazement

Seventeen grains of sand
caught beneath
your fingernails

Forgotten
it is a shroud without label
a tower somewhere in the city

Love lives in that tower
with it's long coat and field glasses

Trundle

I am a project, sorry
it's my life's trajectory
my birth was a thing of wonder
accidental though it was
I push the result around in a trundle
when I tire, I lay down to sleep
did you know
subsistence is a brand of gauze
wrapped around yourself and belief
is mined at night from a quarry
the remaining pieces of flint
lie there, gray eyes struggling to emit
a sign or decision
uninfluenced by derision

Worship

Let my description wilt

familiar words appear

vague in your arms

let my definition remain

where it started

lips parting

goose bumps

rise in explanation

saddened by your charm

is this the gift?

the moon eclipsed

its evocation still

as dream's residue

of no moment

I am unquiet
imagining
my water's disturbance
its seeming

in its simplicity
it's base nature

how can I explain

water is not base
though its limits
wear

at the edges of
all it touches
leaving fewer traces
than my desire

I dream less
than when I was a child
no

I dream as always

but retain
less
sleep
the thief takes
even the smallest
leaves
the trees
have no use for their branches

I preserve
a path in the familiar
where the definitions brood
a single synapse
searching
for self rule

not Waving

I wish

I knew how to talk to

you sprang

from your sad father's brow

fully formed

an errant thought

begun as chicane

I am

a shoot

a spiral tattoo spent

in your garden

bidding return absent

shadow or

the mantle of evening

black

rivers flow

from

beloved sea

I grow tired

the words

inert

in the font

of my mouth

Is It Raining or Is It Just Me

There is something more real in this concrete

than the desperate words you made me eat

I didn't need a new pair of shoes

mistrust to violence often construes

it was the headphone wire of my ipod

that caused me to swim with the scrod

I wish you'd listened to my mp3

not assume I was with the gendarmerie

that's what I get for hanging with bad boys

whose characters are made from strange alloys

they broke a cue stick across my poor pate

please call my wife, I think I'll be late

Folding

I do not always write the poetry I love best
it gets stuck on the downward slope of my self
resting between the pump and the bellows
stilled to sleep by rhythms and wind

Being willful I speak to the paper after all
it cuts my fingers and eyes with strange forms
in the shape of newspapers and novels
demanding fealty and discarded dreams

Seldom do I wish to wake into a world
of easy smiles sunsets eclipsed each morning
by dawn's promises its narcotic
borrowed from the night before

equilibrium

a budding philanthropist with an
inclination to drown the man-child
she washed her hands often

using clues from a different crossword
than whatever was at hand
she was always surprised with the result

despite her father's weight
and the antigravity of her mother
standing beside him on the wedding cake

ars petalica

I


the mule is loose in the garden again

while my uncle's breath fogs window panes

his right hand creeps across the land

throttling poems in their earthen beds


II


uncle rubs his brow trying to recall

when fingers decided to count themselves

why tired tulips their stems turned around

release their petals sighing to the ground


III


his rumored left hand dreams of lost at sea

displacing desire the tide falls asleep

and the quarter deck of that mossy ship

where neighbors' hearts wander darkened charts

sails vacant in the breeze

antipode

I take back what I said

perhaps I am ill-read

the angle of my cant

is biased toward rant

the flue of my chimney is stuffed

with mice

leaves

creosote

and breeze

no self-possession

in a

moment of digression

that

river of confession

has the

aspect of transgression

perhaps I should stop

right here