the steady swell of standard operating procedures
                                                                              crash
                                                                       
                                                                             like orderly waves
                                                                                  on the staff infested
                                                                      shore

Watercooler injections

Eating an orange in my cell I wonder--
                                                              when i die,
where will all the mesmerizing conversations
about institutionalized hierarchies go
?

moving

i looked at the boxes 

massed on the living room floor

like i was watching the edges 

of an approaching storm

out over the ocean 

that appeared more like the painting 

of an approaching storm 

as it made its way slowly to land

seeming to be static 

so that there was an eerie sense

of calm that it would 

never make landfall  

until with fury 

it would avail itself upon the shore

bringing rain and wind

and flood and destruction

and I would be left there 

after the clouds had passed 

with the task of disassembling 

each discarded cardboard box

after the contents inside had 

been found removed and inserted 

into their final resting place.

Returning to the purple machine and what that could be

The pen has callouses
                    Have you heard?

It's time to clean up the mess that is my lunch
          Bread crumbs and orange peel
laid out like the schmatics of the purple machine
          Only really, I never got to look at it
I liked the sound of the words together.

The fingers are clumsy so the keys speak for themselves.

The future is like a chalkboard
          locked away and darker than the mildewed basements acting as their graves

there are no factories left willing to produce the chalk.

I dress myself every morning with older rags
          waiting for the accumulated sand to fall out
maybe I can gather it and sell
it would be good if it could be melted down for glass.

Like me, I am see-thru without reflection
          folding each smaller piece of paper tighter
unmarked
it makes the trashcan regardless
humorless
leaving the faintest sense of itself
          that's an uneven jest
I'm still thinking about the purple machine and the sand
          I can't even process what's supposed to come next.

Alone on the train.

Alone on the train
Writing my first poem by phone
Feeling uneasy thinking I've missed my stop

Just because I wrote it doesn't make it real

The motion eats at a different corner of the brain

Having two thumbs

The letters between my hands

Bus

the hour passed like a bus on a clear day
hauling the lives within it through the street.
I felt its form move across me like yellow pull string destinations
I was reading on a bench parallel to the street
my head down in words.
it was gone before I looked back.
a momentous whoosh as a pocket of heavy air bursting.
it was gone before I looked right.
I was an entire hour older.
it was gone before I even thought to catch it.

Harper's Ferry

once the jade waters of the Rio Grande
desert cliffs painted with dry sagebrush

now the waters of the Appalachian range
overflow in green and bloom and stone

the bottom of the valley

blue ridge floor

the meeting place

once the crisp clear glacial stream north
from the border Kootenai pebbled riverbed

now the prophet of the great brown stream
slick rocks rapids slim shores

the eye of the Shenandoah
becomes the blue sky the Potomac
the Chesapeake the Atlantic
beyond

Where you wish & How to go

Calico Rocks Camp

trailing spider's web from my cap
into the swell of quickening storm

rain thrown down by wind

deep puddles

mud

weather beaten paths

yawning trees

plastic coffin shelter bolted down
shit and piss buried below

the crack of brown thunder
potomac reflects the lightning in the sky overhead

V

when the stone pauses the shadows go with it.    
then the rain comes.     it is dreary for those
who cannot drown

like the mountain made of many roots
and trunks and underbrush and canopy
and river overflowing and heavy rock

the cloud never bothers looking up.

the water never rises high enough to touch the sky.

IV

asking questions of the sky at sunrise

I am ancient

borne forth through time on interconnected rails

suffering the darkness of eight hour days

the commute from the lagging city

my penance

rush hour is my spirit walk

nirvana is death upon retirement

the abacus counting the days till expiration

is prayer

III

hanging with the frame
the image is like a blister     weighing
on the mind     an effort in paranoia
torn in the only careless moment     open
to the blue sky

like infection

iodine tinted secretions     slowed
by watercolor scabs

all effort and worry wasted     like
the rushing to catch a departed bus

finding that you are too late

II

a part of training

the earned days of life  
come from those wasted
traded      hours

long gone

those bitter hours of the past

fated youth     fleeting sun rises

each wish     gone

faster than the last
rushing toward the end
traded for figures in a book
phantoms of numbers on a screen

the 5 sayings and how they relate to dreams

I

interior of the arm
rather than bone

     cooked ramen noodle
     al dente      unbroken
     loose like drapes
     bound by dough
     dry and cracked

visible through the surgeon's window cut

without blood the tie unwound
removing the shimmering imperfection

     leaving the shell hollow
     sterilized sheets
     emptied of soup

waning crescent

like a veiled statue
without a sculptor

you linger as an otherworldly visage

I place my hand upon your leg your breast your
arm.     you murmur a tremor

the earth shakes off the cold snow of time.

you are real  

waning gibbous

dark hair waxes over soft features
the hills and falling meadows of the valley
like sunlight through splintered glass

lazy summer heat on stone

the reflection of quiet breaths

an exhausted mountain stream
meets the sea