Quill-tongue, rippling oil,
gripped and firing gel,
a withering depth without air,
forked into the orb,
ledgers on file from dust rings,
heaps that trickle dust and rubber,
curtains cloaking dead emanations,
stilted houses shaking like teeth,
gems in fertile and gleaming coat,
milk feeding powdered bristles
in a fighting glove.

A choked rainbow, a chipped glass,
a sink arm, a deep brown drain,
a path through marble floors,
a doorway's incubus, a glass wing,
the bramble heart in plastic rags,
cracked bead of a torn wooden eye,
post leaning on a sunken sword,
rib's necklace flung through lungs
riding blood's corners, a flecked watt,
an excreting light, a hallway's flesh,
the mailbox heat, bumped
shadow of a paper bird,
acrylics in knuckle creases
pricking cells for milk.

Big drum belly
long wet leaves

lit sand on high scaffolding floors
trembling poles and wreck

a shadow collapsing on glazed wheat
grasses melted and torn combed alive with attacking light
hand tissue hammocks and swaying cat tails

claws pawing the flank
of the blanked-out porch.

Longs roads matching rivers through the broken snow
turpentine hands to pick off the clenching leeches
sandals on the hands that slap asses and paint-marked trees
nest in the hair that her tears dried
little blue eggs cracking
to dribble light on the hairline
a cavern in the bent path
by the root-torn soil
sun-blood rivulets in a deep and swerving trunk
fallen to break lichens on sturdy rock
dusted by popped mushrooms
and the whittled beaks
of featherless birds.

You strummed my armchair
and told me that I was love,
took diamond dirt from claws
and made cookies,

pans with patterned octaves
showing heat in rings
to read a glass ceiling
and rain bulbs of grape light

your haircut on fire with grease
the indoor dew of early morning haze
and the neighborhoods
shocked through with purple light
and blinking crooked

your eyes on a heap of ten men
pouring through your window way
and knocked back by a voice-like door
the half-rotten mouth
snatching baritone's rusty perfection

from the strung-out air
together with coin-tossed glasses.

GREG

My brother, your works are all around me,
your name is alive in my house,
your kitchen dancing is partner
to my kitchen dancing,
your chair I inhabited sits
in the longest empty room with nobody smoking
and I live in your outline lagging
and I ride in your words of laughter
as I soar to greet you where your music is playing,
and you have your vitamins and your vegetables
your drink and your mat of paint dishes,
your jugs of substance gleaming
and your walls broadcasting a breast stroke,
footrest of finger-crumbled tobacco
and charcoal pastel.

Hungering for the vortex,
shoe tangled in a drift of honeycomb,
the half-melted throbbing
of a parked car.

Ice poles swarming with faces
the heat of cold's touch
protected in wax.

Bearded eyes lick
the crack in the windshield
puppeteering a lunchbox.
Canine claws fly off
the rounded fur
and wag tongues
in a traffic wall.

Hand breaking the antenna's root,
the animated mandate of heaven,
searching the black frost
and battered lid of the lion

Stripe-cleaned teeth
foam red carpet robe of exhaust
mirror of a numbered room
like a knife in an oven.

Tone perfect death
light on sauce
light breaking over the poles
tossed salad in overheated Eden
tasted the stereo and its voice
the walls and closets and alleys
in wood and cotton behind it
in computer legacy and hollow staircases
the lost animal of my infant work
batting its coiled eyelashes
on broken paper.

World wrapped in baggie clear plastic
waterfalls that all have tags
spouts spouting without flavor
and without meaning
runs that burn through fur
through homes of wood and tar
feathery holes of questionable light
meat missiles in the emptiness of man
destroying lands in a boomerang orbit.

Mystery of empty panels
the onlooker leaving painted days
to mark his step on a cliffside door
fronds of mercurial beard
sifting the window way
where he leans out over a milk can;

films of butt
playing under the eaves
blip within the wasp nest
dripping electrical fangs
meat face in a lunar cage.

Bright banks mushing his dark sword
the monument benches where he slept
and dead cars casting their last battery
all on a whim of his
biographies collapsing and rising
like tin wheat.

Lamblike roads
trim to the circuitry of trees
pacing the spring's cut
and arrangements of fallen rock
boughs to guard bicycle paths
and chain link arches
thorns in a foot-thick jacket
teeth wrenched by the stems of leaves
and wiping veins against the soft star;
through machete clouds
the recumbent ink
blinks to despoil the ripe curb
of the stopsign landscape.

Of the halt hands by hot hands grasped
ferreting over a flood of green bulbs,
bellowing under bridges
to dynamite a microphone cord
through the center of the earth
dry funk of the crunch bark falling open
the backs of beetles' dust,
crawling rings in a strip of glade.

Her mouth and scorching husk
brought me to the oval
slabbing me on beds
to poke high in the screams
too thick for the ceiling fan

make the egg squeak
springs scratch a graffiti floor
sprite's homing signal, nesting on the highway
stripes that force the air
where his hot rod swerves lipstick wheels
and happens to oil.

Ashen hand in ashen hand
paths on paths on paths on paths
vine-led swing sets and beer and long rocks
washed by lakes that never come up too far
to wade in and taste the naked apocalypse without wincing
the touch of the cold rim's water
a layer away

the cracks in the copper opaque
files of mica and fool's gold
split by a knife of silver
faint organism on wheels
staring out of an octopus tree
with a yarn-bundled heart
a bank account drained in the umbilical belly
hot lips to please the darkening picnic.

I built my antler
on a sledge of salt and ash,
watching it slide
into the hand-tray's air port,
watching it take off with and without me
over swingsets and boom boxes,
fished with in transcendent crannies
laced with milk white mice
expecting and expecting
the rim's planetary solvent to melt off,
like a wet glove,
like a fine mask,
like a funnel-full.

This potency pouring out on you
is the force of life squared,
carved to the arrowhead on your shoulders,
splitting fibers of life to their nest core,
pennies flat to thumbs
from the glued fountain.

On the mountain's long side
grey rock spreading like shadow,
in the voice of falling leaves
a footprint with a long shelf life,
tread of lunar light
reflected in bark and leather.

Dismembered highways
flashing flower stalks
whirlpool hands
crumbling whittled tar.

Cones on high alcoves
dripping chlorinated light.
Spaces where the heart
has no more body.

A fire in an upside down fountain.
Stairwells jutting out of empty land
damp cloth against fading sight
hot wings in a bed of
orange and yellow vapors of form.

Long limbs moving in liquid transparency
over the cake crushed
of rolled-up dusk
in a handbag
or kissing on a bent bridge
to brush her face off.

Plucked by a shivering cable
he leans on the pop of the voice
and smooths it back
without a drink.

Belonging to the desert
embroidered with the silk
of her gone ways.

Earth's mysterious twin
a man plants his seed until he is something of a gamble
perhaps an accident of history perhaps in methods of water
a cow leaning against a big government photographer
field after brown field, just black, black dirt in Union

Clubs on rabbit hunt mountain streams
dust masks listening to the end of the world
hollow leaves reap to eat the crucible

in the times between storms,
when the skies cleared and the winds
abated, the farmers and townspeople tried

there was just everyplace
after the big wind had gone.

Long stick-strewn paths
wheels broke and fertile soaring
wet pillars out of the earth
archways of fire and deathliness
walked firmly under
and I am the spirit that roves
over all these streets
documenting and guarding
tracks of time tampered with
a branch that's testing roots
a shadow rife with seeds and words
an empty cabinet waiting open
in streaks of see-through wall
and wailing water.

Halogen bulbs and busy scrubbers
foam hallways and slight auditoriums
opening from the belly a vast wing
rib cage airplane hangar
tongue bulbous, reeking white paint
the vending machine cast of a broken knee
coins speckling his spilt buddies.