full moon

sometimes your nails are painted
luminescence when you scratch my head

these are the nights
I sleep before you

waxing gibbous

the hand thrown over your eyes

acts as the wing of a
long forgotten bird.     featherless

and smooth as a shadow

first quarter

in the cool light of the street lamp stealing through the blinds
she glows like the angel's idea of the sun

waxing crescent

she smiles at nothing.

her teeth show through lips
as one-way mirrors

behind which is hidden bliss

V
From the setting stones

three fingers of the sprouted stem

soon the bloom
                          from the ground
SKULLS
                smiling form--

the teeth are bars
                            descending

weep        weep       little ones

for the cool gray sky
                                  blissful ones

men blow kisses kiss stems

women were once little things

to make wishes on--

IV
into the blistered nowhere

film is sequential image
propelled through time

stressed to tear under its own momentum

blotted with the sad story of life

eyes pass it
lingering like the blink
of a train

into the lessening miles
everything drifts behind

into the past
tightly wound

played back and loop
these are memories
distilled lies

it was as tho the first understanding
could come again

III
A little figure of indignant loveliness

scowl of the watch
          beaming back at black faces
checking the pace
                             the make of the soul

green fairy tales
                         laughing children grow

--ants crawl
                    & chew the meaning

an ant hill is a mark of suffering

--when all the arrogant cities
of the arrogant world have
fleshy basements full of the

great horde

                    the great insectoid civilization

--building
                 foundation

the march of generation
                                        after
                     generation

II
The Space Between the File

space between files
                                growing mildew
grown rough
                      inchoate constructs
--down in the gallery
along the canyon walls
all ago
            structures carved out

man struggles dies sweats
makes things that never last

always with failure & loss

            graves bleed into the past
--names cease to be were never

never matter

anyway

The Post-it Note Prophecies

I 
the Slow Death

the first will ever BE
                   
                        ever be LOST

       the floor is the purple room
       
             schematics of the MACHINE

pistons pump the lung
                                    of the ever-shrinking
EARTH

look deeply
                   into the glimmering
                                                    pool

THERE
              to read the name

the name sinking backward from entropy

the very first thought
                                   remember at the
FINAL moment

frozen at beginningless TIME

8

etched out lines
erased prayers
gentle wind swept balcony
debris from the highway fields
cats on windowsill perches
crossed out lights
cold breakfasts
slowly aging automobiles
dilapidated spider-web complexes
cracked sidewalls
edited thoughts
wet sugar cubes

7

7000 ft tall a year ago
still the blue sky climbed higher
still the rising curtain of further peaks
still the wider rivers curve
still the billion treed forests
still the multitude of steps to go

6

praise the unheralded gods

gods who build the windows and walls

windows and walls that protect me from the outside

outside where the old god we called the sun shines

4

helmets hang on stakes
loll like empty soup cans
spill their contents on holy ground
mix with mud and oil to dilute
boil in the glorious sun--

3

split fragment of an empty grocery counter,
powerlines run on blue light back-up lights,
digital mementos
--generator flicker
fabricated--kid looking to pocket 5$ in candy bars,
leaning up along counter, shelves underneath
hands buried in, brushing pockets--no guilt blush--
asking to know where the public bathroom is
--on every camera the authority sitcom alerted--
only the supermarket's part will out and
be vindicated and will be remembered
--cherished for its virtue

2

many names of factory walls

many names on machine barcodes

numerical values in many long books

monetary values in many broken bodies