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

LOVE POEM # 14

I love the smell of acid rain
gas stations lit up
by useless signs, fish-scent
in the oil of ceaseless electronic air:
our two mind-capsules heavy
under the lash of eyes
from the belly of a tree,

slums answered with barks
of celebration, the poet-warrior
slumping to his last mirror.

I love the docks untidy with guts,
hammering lemon & tomato odors
in the hot air of forever,
stunning its sights into scarcity,
behind the pink eye's beyond:

one nickel parked
on a cooling driveway, I remember
a truck rattled in the empty road
until you closed the window.

early dyers, living
forever. Stuck in the eye
of a monument.
All doorways open
grapes in the threshhold
to the outside air,
fish in the black blur
of a holographic moat,

fishscale measured to the eye
snail feel menstrual protein
under the ridge
of a snarled nail
coming home to computer dinner.
Sad frog's frozen, eyes
looking out over a desk,
legs ruined to a chair,
to sit & observe: retinas
of chainsmoke,
a bad pastiche of mustaches,
sit and stare each other's
beings until the body
and its clothes are turned
high white quartz
then marble deep
in the eyes
burst-first.

lates

answers came from other fields,
out around a colossal central mountain
to chains of reaction

the taste of a lemon, by anyone

the alternating sugar
the backbones
where they are paired

LOVE POEM # 13

the yellow
four petals; the white
the red
navel; the green airy,
whisp-

(((())))

he eyebrows the
union
the head spreads

to identify himself

liquid by water;
the incandescent

direct symbol.

LOVE POEM # 12

the white of this dog's fur
is so white, the black of his fur
is so black, his mongoloid angel
eyes, sweetly bulge

on paths toward no path,
he runs island edges near
the bay's lap, an ocean's

reverberator, his teeth & tongue
are greetings to the air,
that dog makes a man cry
who can't cry,

his white fur disturbs the black
of one room's sofa, his black
the white canvas of another.

LOVE POEM # 11

we are lust,
that is what we love with,
the skies we push out of the way
the numerous umbrellas that sheathe
our oversides,

we are a crown around
the root of a cliff-grown
sapling.

our heels dig in the same places
where our toes very recently did,
the beach we invent
overlaps the beach that invents us.

LOVE POEM # 10 Red Admiral

music-threads, my little bird
connects the connections
to the other connections
makes fertile soil moisten & surge
around the roots of the
telephone poles,

takes my poor head up into
the territory of my rich head,
moves my shins through my
elbows feelingly, the bellies of boats
are above our root,
the ceiling thatched
with underwear-leaves,

pillowed for every angle,
our bodies jutting
with bones in the tongue,
tongues in the bone,
quiet satisfactions that get louder
at their most
intimate ebb.

my shadow has two tails
one turns into your caress
the other is a spray of surf
that your caress brings me to

that room is an empty channel
I look for new ways to pronounce your name.

Sometimes I want to find
out if I have a spirit,
the way the tip of the tongue
tastes sourness,
the ceiling of everything.
-----------------------

----------------------we finished the page, the
brilliant script lasered into our
tent wall, green canvas in
a maze of birches, toothbrush
pathways sand-scrub bath

in faded cooler, finish, in blue
sleeping-bag interior finger vulva
finish, finish the tides with
your feet, dance the poles
upholding fishing docks, deep
into the beach, all restaurants

and deep computers shut off.

NO LONELINESS

there is a ledge where you
continuously flow over

even when you are pinched
in a silver mask

even when you hold your bag of guts
with stoicism, reptilian poise

you are continuously flowing over
the edge of this frozen verge
of nothingness feeding on a flock of chickens
feeding on a field of corn
aisles painted white with shit
there is a shovel you hold

when you want to kiss a religious woman
on the softest part of her mouth
the hardest edge of her
continuously overflowing
a multitude of dainty hands
(the wide white air at all backs)
on bloody balconies over and over

SAD ECSTATIC COMPANIONS

for Greg

1

If we see the star tonight
we'll know it's a planet

fire from our mouths will almost
consume it. Our own planet,
our own star, will remain

as we stand within their magnetism,
patting each others spine-tops,
swilling each others pine-flavored
liquors. Vein-mouths open,

bloodshot slots of eye, a hurt flicker.
Even if we can no longer look at each other,
we can at least look
at the same things
at the same time.

2

All our late nights & early mornings
lumped together, two drunks gang-fucking
the dawn in multiple forms,
springing from corrupted wreaths,
our rustic crowns. Speed limits
kept far outdoors, unable to touch
our louder & louder lives.

Crack the one window wider,
caterpillar & moth crowd in
around several bulbs, first
sun-rays conduct
half eaten shadows of leaf,
orchestral twitching plays the grime
out of the old floorboards, our friendship.