sOLIPSISM IN PURPLE

1

He who lays on his own doorstep,
crying as if he cannot get in.
That one ate the berries
and puked them onto a runway.

We hear the scythe of his sun's last surge
in the trots of a kitten, bound for brush
and to be mysteriously eaten,
corpse-flaps torn like fetal wings
failed beautifully against moss forest floor.

2

He chases himself around the room, she drifts
across wall after wall healing blisters in the paint,
he won't look. Now and hereafter are the same
crimson muddle. Elbows eye sockets greasy hairs
in greasy teeths.

A new bulb grown between weather
near the top of a central town statue.

LONG VERTEX SURFER, YORK BEACH

mechanical overtone dusk on bridges
rattling in darkened time, pigeons startled
in their half-numb ways, looking you far
under an umbrella robot's green lipstick,
robot's vermilion furs, robot's bowling alley:

arteries frayed in the air, holding a laughing knife

to his guts, neck deep in the bank waiting room,
a sad deer limping through the wooden gaze
of his reflection-worship, the stunned vertebrae of his
admired objects, wing torn twice on ocean rock,
long mouth beak tongue rooted to the taste
of pink sand-meat somewhere near, under ice-trays
and a radio, someone's snoring the life away,
someone is velvet laugher, someone is holder
of a license, black-shelled, charcoal battle-vest
of ink-tree, tattooed to a blade-fence
of city on sky sky on city

a mouth hot in the woods, whiskey flask
deep in the air, deer hooves left a series
of clumps; worms in pebble writhing:
dark whores on the quartz smoking

nuns in suppliers, whole dark on their daughter's pulse.

Urine-pod, the mouth without kisses, mouth that steals
a tunnel, the mouth that is alarm-clock deep in the air,
distributing waste--and I prophesy
a kitten olive in an ice cabin.

Mechanical overtime welcomes its daggers
in the mouth back of each ringing springtime--
eyes on the zipped lids across the gloss
of mirror-dagger
tonsils asquirm in the clothes-machine--

we throw terse peanuts at our mothers
in the ticket windows--there was
an old money lover
with eyes on the bridge, seagulls
raining upon his desperate mouth,
his green eyes gobbled up in white shit,
his thumb-finger combination blue
in public realm yellows, high white
podium people blanching
in the televised wilderness
of the untrained mammal spirit,
rubber eyes entering a wall--

the talons of daydreams in white shirts,
hot winds of non-history
from their his/her faces
each at its separate time and place
the science-fiction indoors
and the science fiction outside.

HUNDRED sEA Numb

the air cave of sleep,
light green where electronic women
grate the air through bladed holes
in cell walls, uncooked rabbit
eating other rabbit
the dulled ghost nucleus
a cooling campfire's iron spit,
rusting and bloody in salt daylight,
magnet ocean, deliverer
of instantaneous dreams.

There are several dolphin heads
bunched together at the port:
several knives gather around a table
to defile the game of chess,

Disembodied mantlepiece of jawdreams
bathed in oily beards
hundred sea numb with volcano's blood,
shore warm with lipstick radioactive
from day's atomics, sandstone-faced
long-eyed. All spoonmouthed, virgin.

snakes of longing, winds of flesh,
garlands of strong spice, computerized
phalluses, streetlight poles
eaten by tides, we'll dance out,
into the copulation of words, carrying
a trash can charred by acidic blood,
refusing to show the staring crowds
that it holds nothing
and is for nothing.

I'd love something to lift this neighborhood
with predictable suddenness, then drop it,
a big tar pancake, cracked all over,
powerline streamers flying saucer eyes,
pedestrians carved down past apathy
to the kind of gaze hard enough
to take five pounds in five seconds
from your body if you meet it
with one of your own.

WALKING tHROUGH A LIGHT GREEN ZERO

We're eating mirrors again today,
the most exquisite cactuses
are on our shoulders,
dogs who seem to smile
in our blind spots
are really panting desperately
for life when we turn and light
our darkness to find them,
we thought we were desperate for experiences
that have made little difference now
they have happened, everything that carries
the dirty fur of daylight
is now going bald with strained deliberateness,
the bones of a beloved lizard decorate
the dresser in an ex-lover's bedroom
and the dashboard of a scrapped car
simultaneously, three pairs of eyes
stare at them from three places
at once and create with their staring
a fourth, then nimbly lizard bones
crawl around on the cylinder of
a misshapen model of earth
in the skin that once covered them,
someone is eating tinfoil, someone is not.

LOVE POEM # 20

If your body falls out of your body
while you sleep in my stumped
watchfulness, I won't know where
of what's left to go,

magnets of now
hold us palm to palm
or arch to arch
while one's at rest
and the other roams,
this mirror-walking
on each other's frozen
seek has become
we're made of the same exact water.

Into your attic of hair
hands fly lightward
from the strong core
of a weak being,
each holds grim laughs
a dagger to the flab chest
of all lower selves,
each we sweep our kitchen
to see the other turn
wet from sink to try
clean steps into gratefulness
more to see
the features of the electric one
reflected in the floor
of the world.

Chests wet with the blood
of mutual emergency
we turn past the turning to look
into the force farther out,
further in that prompts
the turning turning. We walk
in an orchard of cascading skeletons,
each knife-sharp orb-cave cut

to painless enfolding
of all sight
by the thinnest clouds
brightest lunar skies
collide with all afternoon
our nearest clothing renewed
is a subway train
moving sideways into organism.

If your body falls out
of your body, my body will
fall out of my body to follow it.

LOVE POEM # 19

at times I don't know our love's depth,
sometimes I'm walking
down a path exactly the way
I walk up it, sometimes I don't know
the sex of the daffodils.

Soon I know like a tight green bulb
that we are entwined by the vines
of grapes that I went near
but did not pick
when I was young.

We're an island on an island
on an island towering
straight from a center, wielded
slightly by the strongest centers
of others, now from every molten heart
our orbits among the length of our love
longer than our progress along it, some-
times we are late to discover
the strength of the daffodils.

LOVE POEM # 18

one voice moves through time
the other moves without it
both come from the same mouth

they sing at first
as branches underwater
sometimes simultaneous
sometimes from the center
of a bright anemone
in brighter sunlight

a whole ocean drawn back

they sing at last
each is pair upon pair
of lips
opening upon opening upon
lid upon lash upon lid
between the amphibian diagrams
of each others each
rib upon rib

both come from the same mouth
the others move without it
one voice moves through two
in time, the other moves
without them, together they ride
apart.

LOVE POEM # 17

I'll kick holes in all
the hospital walls
until a clean bed
falls out of it,

until the bright lawn glints
with brighter drops
of doctor's blood,

frozen semen chandeliers
dangling over the beds
of sleeping nurses
summer clothes adorning
a mannequin.

I'll kick the hospital walls
until you fall out
of one of the windows
and into my arms,
we'll spit at the flame ends
of the tattered blankets around you

we'll let your hair enwrap
the roots of trees every sleep
and polish our antiques
to go to work on the world,
kissing each other through poised
scissors.

LOVE POEM # 16

rain-touch, fur-touch,
tar touch, far
touch metallic,
wind-touch
and touch of breezes,

sky-touch, you punch a womb
into the strides of air.

rainbrush
lady fern
micro-cut
in eyeleaf & bladeside
ripping holes in underwear
the passenger seat & then

solemnly thinking
of ice-cream you--
have your amusement--
look back, someone is riding a bare deer
into the notched stem of your spine,

LOVE POEM # 15 Opal green

I love to sit and touch her with
that part of the blanket

that gives way

even though I know she'll never end
I cannot get sufficient portion
of nudging her bedside crying,
on those legs.

I love to crouch clamped
with the right velvet taste
in my mouth and wait
stupified by the things
she can give me;

I never know whether I miss more
her feet in the photograph or
her absence in presence
her presence in absence