Final Choices

Madam of curious chaos,
you are concealed in hands
sliding through flesh estuaries.

The sea heaps its love on
as you roll with the tides,
beach and bleach.

You are the twin
that sank before you.

Evicted on the arduous
western shore, you recall
Asian palms, a woven prayer.

And at dusk, you eclipse
the artless, decaying stars.

oblique prayer

emma cannot be

composed

she injects capacities

of life

hits back

in self destructive             exposé

smacks

over the edge

one hand irregular

in sorrow

her man

concerned about

her sanity

finds comfort in a bed

of differing          grace

emma worships him

still

with pure oxygen inhale

in the habit

of a nunnery

imprints from Rosewater

imprints from Rosewater

                  

in the course of suspension

  over

in the act of lowering

  down

in the ritual that is burying

  under

time becomes the staggered images

of someone else’s life, bleeding

frames over your bitter green.

everywhere you uncover

a double exposure;

the thought that you

  could

have been them

  could

have been caught

in a faultless Vonnegut jump

and broken over a Dali sunrise

to find Picasso reading the soft, wet

tea leaves in your evolving cup.

your fingers are pushing into

the clay of tomorrow’s dawn

remember me

call my name

one more time

define me

refine me

inter me

until the

  tock  ing

      tick  ing

hits the bedrock 
of unforgiv ing craft.

white noise from the world's stage

white noise from the world's stage

not remembering

the name of it

the title

the reward

the application

he puts it on

thinks it on

moves all his thoughts

to the place

that will be protected

he calls it

and it comes

to him alone

slowly

he speaks it

aloud

to any audience

that might find him

he waits

for the floods of winter

buries himself

in withered growth

an immersed rattle

thinking

she might return

this thought touching him

as a wisp of air

to his mouth

it keeps him alive

in the torpor of autumn

his heart

a geode

of undetected splendour

his future

an uncertain wish

of erosion

hoping that

a wild river

takes his words

to her ears

any other road being the same

any other road being the same

outside a grainy wisdom,

the highway participates

in a penciled regression

between covers

yet to be found.

in Brando white,

there is a simple plan

formulating

under the guise

of eastern routes.

something spills from the head.

travels become

inked in the flesh.

Charley knew.

and Sal left his sweat

on the fortunate mile

that ended it all.

Ivor and Leslov

Ivor and Leslov

Ivor and Leslov face each other

over hot coffee.

They talk with urgency

and no little substance.

Ivor says, “No, no!  It wasn’t like that at all!

There was snow that year

and the roads closed. 

We had to sleep in

the railyard.  Don’t you

remember?”

Leslov shakes his head. “No, no!

You are wrong.  It was the year

before,

the year Marika began coughing blood

and poor little Istvan was lost

in the North Woods.

Anyway, you were deep in the vodka then,

how could you

remember

any of this.”

A slide of disgust.

A glance of mistrust.

And finally, the slight twitch that says,

“Yes, yes.  We know each other

 far too well.”

Silence.

The raising of mugs.

Sometimes,

  you have to forget.

Sometimes,

  it’s best to let go.

Dearest Isabel

Dearest Isabel,

I am in the tarnish of cloud we sought.

I am walking in the graveyard

along the sea.  I wander only the edge

where the questionable are buried,

their bones crumbling at the same rate as

the nuns resting higher up;  Sisters

cradled together in encouraged sisterhood,

seeking to define viewpoint even in death.

There are no postcards to send from here,

no tiny stones to pick up and send to you, my

Dearest Isabel, only this small vial of soil for

  your art

    your life

      your breath.

Though you disappear for years at a time,

there is no one who knows me

in the hidden ways you do

in my tarnish of cloud,

Dearest Isabel.

Heavily Doctored

Heavily Doctored

Line 1 please,

            holding –

MY god did you see

THAT?

last week there were

three in here like

THAT.

That’s the real

shit…

Line 2 please,

            one moment –

 internal dialogue

SNAPS

mousetrap mouth

shut

perform

ORAL sur-jury

on the

weighting room

(he’s your brOTHER?)

Line 3 please,

            dropped that call –

Are you sleeping on the

Job?

patients reclined

credit declined

they were just

chequeing IN

GOD help her

check OUT

(It’s all in the eyes, see?)

Line 1 please,    

            still holding –

someone cut him off

got enough tablets

(tabula rasa)

erase – erase

no messages accepted on this number…

Line 2 please,

infinite silence –

Fuck…

air(craft)

air(craft)

the interval of country
seen high and in obscurity
while standing unsupported
over the portal of
an arctic kiss

each frozen detail
drawn as small crevasses
into your skin

and the carbon patrons
are awake, pensive
tips of fingers pressing
against sight
laying aside clear damage
of sky

the wingtip tragedy
slices turbulence
and disintegrates time

Something Like Cimmerian Darkness


You plead me give you
the membrane,
and are surprised at our
fleshless, orgiastic
communion.

We are bathing in muddy rivers
which run upstream.

Do you dare change yourself
into a molting form?
Will you reply to the wind of
otherways?
It calls you to feed on your own
threshold heart.

To answer is perilous.

Come! Make love to your
dark creature self, caress
the inner salt and kiss
your coiled deceiver .

Embrace it all!

In changing day to night
In living counterclockwise
In stepping through the mirror
In changing night to day

You have set fire to your
self-constructed soul
and nothing in you will abide
this brute ladder of longing.

You are an inherited abomination
and too intoxicated to look away.

You plead me tear away
the membrane,
and are dismayed at our
individuated, simplistic
postmortem.

Antidote

Antidote

Water snake, you slide between my thighs
and the driftwood fork of you
beds splinters in my flesh;
there is no recourse to this action.

I trace the pattern of these dead things,
pleasant punctures of serpentine grace,
sharp arrows of self-righteousness.
Quilled, I slip down, spine to stone,
send my hands trailing
liquid fingers to the riverside.

All winter you slept under me,
coiling, uncoiling,
torpor ridden and ice burning.
When the green shoots split your sides
you woke hungry for the river,
and twisting out, thread your sinew
through the stones.

Water snake, you sprout legs,
slowly they emerge,
unfolding like waking spiders;
each a jointed complaint to your belly,
and you scuttle sideways
rolling hardboiled eyes
at the drowning moon.

I, touching the current,
take up the water line,
gather it to my breast and swallow
this hot pebble left on my tongue.
I watch you flounder in the rippling;
spider twigs scrabbling against
the red scales of your demise.

Under patient moon, I pull out
each peculiar fragment;
plant them on the shore where they bud
their own skitterish legs
and weep themselves
into the mossy night.

I touch my fingertips to these
raised welts on my thighs,
perfect points of release,
and cover them in spruce pitch and ashes.
This life blood smoldering,
I exhale, and cup the open sky.

Trouble in Paradise

Trouble in Paradise

There is gunfire
       in the garden;
             a single shot
                   ringing out
                         to mark the passage

of some delicate temptation.

There is gunfire
       in the garden;
             and he licks the salt
                   from lips wrapped

tightly about the barrel.

There is gunfire
       in the garden;
             tart splattering passion,

two unclothed and innocent.

There is gunfire
       in the garden;
             one walking away
                   covered in satisfaction

considering himself             God.

The Despair

The Despair

Here, at the meeting of land and sea,
I find nothing new washed ashore.
I pick my way on the long stretch of stones
walking in solitude, salt stinging my lips
cracked by the wind’s relentless beating.

Is it time to wade into you,
sea that temps me with such sorrowed sigh?
You longingly touch my feet leaving
damp kisses of afflicted charm.
You bestow these like untouched hosts.

The shore stretches, widens,
it beckons my brooding mind to follow,
further still, far, far, I wander,
with shadowed gulls trailing, watching.
Calling out with mottled stillness, they deride my soul.

The sun filters cold, yellow and contemptuous,
through twisted, storm cowed trees.
It brings my eyes to tears, the salt of my body
departing, like questions remaining unanswered,
and falling, to be diluted by the rising tide.

I am flung back from contemplative reason
by the pricking sleet racing needles across the water.
It hits my skin with pointed precision, and pain,
that is mortal and fleeting, washes through me.
My feet are deep in sand as I watch the sea roll in.

I see the spit reaching out to the blurred horizon,
and there, a figure, mad, wind whipped and racing
stops to turn and reach for me with spider fingers.
A moment of fluid compulsion drenches the air,
the half-dead embrace of chilled need shudders about me.

My hands reach back to meet this despair,
and the frozen rain shreds the flesh from bone as I watch,
transfixed by the undoing of corporeal illusion.
To tendon, to bone, to dust and release.
What holds me together now? Desire, passion, fear.

I bleed promises on the shore,
till the sea rises with crimson lips
and kisses my spirit with terrible pleasure.