Blind

the world bends and
my tires with it

 i am within the clouds
 but not of them.

I cannot see. Before me.

 or behind.

a ghost that lives ten thousand miles

away.

Our Present

I am like a can of yeungling passed
between hands reaching out from two
cars going the same direction
pressed into the cold night
drunken
streaking under overpass
fluorescent skin-like lights
headed for different unknowing
directions
spilling, shifting, heaving
toward the failed future we would
surely find

They are human houses

The vultures possess a human face

somewhere in the barrens
of a new jersey night
the corpse of a shanty--
collapsed roof
rotted boards
decorated with tall,
grey tombstones--

carcass pushed back from
crumbles of pavement

sentry faces obscured by yellow eyes
smiling
made of endless stone
carved into human eyes.

 

5 years

Remember as the sun set on James island

     Barely there beach and we sat there

Tired

Together

                 in a blaze of red

Fading into the coming night

And how after heading back to our camp

An old man

                      stopping us

to show the pictures he had taken of 

Our silhouettes together encircled by 

Fiery dusk

How he asked for our emails 

In effort to send the photos to us and 

How we wrote them down

                                                on

a piece of barely damp notebook paper

And how walking away you said

He's never going to send them

Because he was going to jerk off to them

And recall how I'm sitting here tonight

Still waiting for those photos even though

It's been what, five years?

Dreams this morning

 Vague 

I couldn't know

where you were taking me;

 

fleeting memories;

my eyes watching your fingers

curl

 

to last mists of the morning;

a yellow sky

 

a life I had left;

 

losing the last threads of

remembering;

 

how did I come to remain here

 

watching you open your eyes?

 

my mother was a sunshine of memory

I

there was a short walkway to the duplex 

around which japanese beetles swarmed

my mother was a sunshine of memory yellow at 

the back of my neck

she illuminated the pavement that soon

would cease to be my world

 

II

on Belmont ave alone with a baseball bat

I swung and took the life of a swarm of firefly 

I have long ago forgotten their names

I have since lived in regret and supplication

 

their death lights remind me of the faces of dead cats 

our neighbors killed. 

III

In my dreams I am tormented by two places

a small infinitely growing patch of grass at 

the end of a long suburban street

a gray hulking jug shaped water tower

watching from a distance.

IV

30 years ago I leapt from the top of the

tallest slide in the world

in my memory they have left it standing

after all these years.

Parallel Dystopia

 forward to come to the 

place of hanging wire

the autumn of electric civilization

moss growth on the canopy towers

walking alone

 

 the cables droop like my steps

as sinking into pot holes I watch

into the long lonely paved distance

there is no ride coming to tell of the here now

end of time

 

  I am in possession

of the last threadbare pair 

of mournful jeans

the last immutable skeletal remains

a faint clicking of branches 

brings the final static fall

of the human forest

 blinding smoke whiter than ancient

cloud bodies drift over the corpse of 

the summer afternoon

there is no temperature left

all the mercury having sunk 

into my skin

I can no longer find pockets

for my bloodied hands

I can no longer find skin

to cover their naked flesh

 

 the distant shriek of amnesiac

cell phones have replaced even 

the oldest bird song 

the last human voice lost to antiquity

leaving a message I am not

sure I understand

Darkness

                   I keep the door closed

my hands crack against the fault line

 

it breaks like the spine of a book

folding back spilling letters out

 

the pages rain slowly slipping

under the rug

 

I wonder if the door could open

without me were I to wait

 

there isn't anything left inside

the sound of breath that are not mine

 

the growing distance between myself and the cold

 

a window pane peering behind its own eyes

sees nothing but the light 

party

Standing in that kitchen

The cold tile glowing radiantly under the dying oven light

Late into the morning late into the evening

Leaning against the loose knobs of the cold stove top

Coming down from mushroom acid drunk trip holding a can of beer in my hand

feeling the open flesh under finger nails

Listening to you laugh and the sounds of your voices 

echoing into the darkened walls of the old house I was waiting for the universe 

To halt itself in momentary standstill to split into a billion known possibilities 

to reach the end of its endless trek into the ever sharpening void

Standing in that kitchen wanting to hold each of you forever screaming 

into the abyss of timeless nothing-ness and shadow

Sitting here tonight alone under the foggy light of a winter moon 

wishing it all had come true

rambling buttons

  the button has evolved into 

a noiseless vacuum for sound 

spilling out unconscionable 

silent lies           twisted in fabricated knots

                         clinging to the pasts of the

                         world    they are in nameless

   ways a detailed map

of the future rot of post-

cyber-space frontiers

the plastic encased        forests of the afterlife

                                     conceptual landscape 

                                     forbidden in un-digitized 

                                     scripts  

   the button has been transformed

by formidable lies arranged by

present visions of mankind

wrapped in napkins and placed

rather lovingly in the trashcans

of the once bountiful regions

formerly known as the silicon 

west.

Heavy

 the last episode of a particular chapter 

                               translated

I buried it

in the remains of the backyard

under the violet sky

as the moon looked down

disparagingly 

                       I tried not to picture its eyes

glowing against my back

I tore my hands at the digging

I cut the ground with my tears

I placed a stone upon its head

as the moon fell behind the collapsed roof

as the rising clouds peered up

I took out my hands

I drew a corpse 

into their rusted breath

uncertainly

 I wonder when times moves across the trees

dragging the clouds I wonder what will become 

of the hours it takes to erase the grass I wonder

what will be built upon those memories we have

almost forgotten I wonder how the glass will break

down and becoming sand I wonder what will the plants

be like that take my place

time to write a poem about covid and false memories of the past

 you could swim at the far end of the tent.     at 4am the temperature was steadily

falling toward the floor.    it would be hours until the sun rose about the spires 

that stood in for the trees of our past.     there were no sounds that could be made

into car engines.     you said it yourself      we are truly alone.

 

     there was nothing beyond the lake but the wreck of the next several years.

they reminded me of the isolation I had grown to know in the past.     where we

were going would we would need to swim.    downriver. we only had left one 

change of clothes.

 

the seasons worked in reverse until they were children again.     when the world 

would be faded at the edges with the liminal fragrances of the cathode tubes.

something haunting and safe.    to scare their shadows into abeyance again.

 

     to find what was lost they plunged their faces in.     they bit and tore at the veins

 

we drank until there was nothing

 

you wept for any thing else left.

on purpose

I am upstairs

looking like the leaves

falling from those trees

I can see outside the window

the motion of branches 

blowing in the wind

draws my attention

to puddles of red and yellow

in the street

 

a ups driver navigates 

a gray circle of concrete

the dead end turn

the bleak future straight ahead

he doesn't touch a single leaf

everywhere

Hidden away in the bathroom

the tiles are left wordless

Cold and lifeless too

Evey poem is a failed self-portrait

I am here too

making it up as I go along

Kept from the stars by windowpane

Kept from reality by the door