Let the quiet

seep down

into the deep

cracks of light,

bring the bright horizon

into a frame of ice,

make the sword-panes

move.

Touch the symmetry

of damp rocks

afloat above

the magnetic reservoir

where they go to dance

and I go like a seed

to explode.

Lonely stations with loud flags

bunks fresh with flower stems

light falling through

the webs of cracked defenses

pooling in empty hands.

Yards bright with painted rocks

a raindrop's

polished

tight divisions

night's cooling sash.

All my ornaments are aimed

at a mysterious beloved

hills descend to her yawning fire

and I rocket to the pines

that slap me down to her embrace

staggering to clearing after clearing

with my crooked mechanical wings

lost for the embrace I gave away

a thousand butterflies

in a long net's fiber optic fleece

that could not guide me

money landing on my beard

without lips

tasting of its abstract dirt

what I can't be

you have captured

in a golden glaze

and what I can

is captured too

in your sleeve of echoes

the root I can clasp

behind the flower

all the future I can follow

is in your furnace bare

and spirit firm.

My pinnacles of ice

hold plaintive blossoms

in the lips of their cracks

and quiet breathing

cones of subtle fire

hold sway in hologram clouds

where I keep my crazed love

and her dictionary fingernails

blankets of sawdust and honey

drape our rings of ectoplasm

caressing over dancing spheres

a pyramid's horizon

leaves glancing at the fair grains

their veins of shade attract

our glade for one fortified morsel

soft tongue in the teeth of steel

Imagine the wreath

that I imagine

placing around your halo

its tendrils winding into space

each thorn a captured star

trickling toward

your braids of bright black light

and fighting arms

take the lunar thread

from my pillow

drape it across your naked shoulders

anoint these veins of eyes

that have worked for your clay

lain in your grass

and touch your bare girl's feet

to my threaded belly

draw the acid from my guts

into a higher air

bring your copper vase of echoes

to my lips of ancient fire.

Dark threads of abandoned color

in the depth of cleft pools

winking through horizon wires

and mirrors of coffee.

Panes of ultraviolet saints

cracking in cathedral ice.

Long pews of sun bronzed clay

a blank night popped and frayed

by distant fires.

I was swept aside

by the strange transcendence

of others.  In a green light

in the cracks between many shadows

I grew and grew.  Soon

no tree or fuming human tower

could overwhelm me--

but still I stayed low,

bound with the roots in the soil,

fused into the wet

abundance of its

unaching maw.

And I furrowed

through fields that had lost their names

so seemingly to find me

that I might have sprouted there

and eaten sky.

You are the blade of a wave

prime cutlet

of blossoming sky, girl-cousin

to the infinite blaze.

Your pigtails drag imaginary runways

to the seventh sun.  High heels

place you above my magnetic core

as the engines wheeze.

Surrounding walls can't kiss us

frozen cubes and heated spheres

thorns of a green volcanic garden

let's crawl the bridge undersides

be spiders of a hidden architecture

nest in the fuming emptiness

a space-plow left behind

our haunted futures spanked

and painted fresh

by passing gravity

the prophet's pink white peak

moon from a fish's belly

bright brown flank to a tiny rose.

There she is.  And it's all

taken from me

now.  Her alternate

rides the sky

of a time

we don't know.

That's passing here.

Frost fried leaves

floating past the doorway

of a sunken temple,

its purple and

white green moss,

enchantment of bronze tinted

shadows.

She's left a throne

glittering and empty

in there.  The sea

doesn't howl

but the windows

wail.

I'm in the railyard's

rusty peak

where the old cars

crashed.  My lovers past

cluster behind the windshields.

Libraries fail

to catch her

as she climbs

the seething ground

outside my breathing

so far past

their senseless

hands.

Park Place

Where beauties gather

under a cracked roof

painted flowers gleam and slither

on determined walls.

I am here

behind their myriad reflections

in a dome of glass

that never leaves the floor.

A net heaves

over my head

and I catch their cliffs of hair

with empty ribs.

In you

I study electricity

moving like notes made visible

a song in the air

and look at your magnet pulse

bending structures all around you

into waisted charm

new frescoed and bulbous skyscrapers

springing up from your fertile frame

run reams of knotted silk

across these sterile counters

mount the god and goddess

on an arc beneath the curving sky

eye's resurrection

hair and breasts and

feet and hands and speech

above the nested gravity

where you and I give way

before the king of things

from alabaster lids

and lacquered heels

to the discus and galactic arm

all charm of eggs in ashes

that the sand can't wash away

and the water heals.

In a quiet silo

where the wings

have cut the words

and silver walls

vibrate with deeper voices

shadows traced by fire

speak to me

of places they never went

and unwritten stars.

The yoke of summer days relaxes

big doors swing into a cool light

of amber lines

and the vaporous

questions climb.

If I wrote the word

and the word was fresh

all the beds of ice-night

turning in their twisted streams

the images watched too long

would drop and scatter

from a fevered sky.

As it is on the dock,

on its reaching puddled shade

and its rails for languor

when the empty water calls

for bladelike silence

so the realms of extra life

move swiftly in their colored orbs

for no human purpose

veined leaves alleviating scorn

the cracked spring's mercy.

If your beauty would only

touch the edges,

if it could stop somewhere

short of everything,

if it could

invest me less deeply

in the storms of thought

that never part from man,

then all time would break off

and I'd be worshipping a skeleton

with astral hands

already gone remembering your voice

with blades and blooming stages,

with tongues and envelopes

and only your glass fronds

my looming master,

raw paths of ice cracked stars

the firmament's first

hereafter.

Drenched in the eyes

by all her green fibers

the forest's rack of blossoming scenes

is in my fingerprint lines

her purple paint

exudes me.

Twined into the lattice of her ways

a bridge festooned with smoking daisies

strings that electrocute

and slits that sing

the harmony

where I can hear the moss growing

and watch the pyramid's faint stem

rise in a desert's tent.

Late nights in a Georgia glade

I lay back and suggest the sky

go blank to suit me

before it pours its colors down

and I converse with them

vein to vein

nested in the shadows of the moon

and with the struggle of imprinted grasses

waiting for the bridges to moan

as the lights of many engines cross them

I remember her sweet

wicked eyes

and want nothing more

to paint me anew

let the vines reach up

on their secret feet

and the waterfalls hold their fire

in the shrink til her lips return

let the blooms of a warrior sun

stand savagely caressing.