subtext

events in a field like light
from a star bending about the sun
each affecting the other in infinite exchange
a bee drifts with lackadaisical precision
linking flower to flower before heading home
across an open meadow covered with dew

the sun the flower the bee you me
bending toward each other collapsing
in a field radiant with life

in a field radiant with life
bending toward each other collapsing
the sun the flower the bee you me

it’s all so succinctly repetitious
another day, like the orbiting moon
its tidal force pulling on the sea
(no thought or will to dissent
the current catches all like a net)
then releases to wash freely along the shore

water light time you me flows
quick slip twirl and fall
slow meander to merge with all

water through water air through air
events in a field suffused with light
separate yet bending toward each other
like the sun hurling toward a point
a somewhere beyond the center which holds
nothing but all in a twirl we turn toward
like a bee in a meadow covered with dew

(August 2001-April 2003)

any second i will be exposed found out the fairy tale emperor nude on the street not that anyone would notice for after all who is interested in others more than oneself enough to pay attention that closely to find more than surface faults a button dangling loose on a thread a slight intrusive consonant shift when speaking after several drinks a thought would never be noticed embedded as it is in the language like sand wedged into an oyster a small irritant yet still enough with time so obviously it is not the stares and laughter of the people on the street that make me cower like a simpering syncohophant but the fear that i will expose myself to myself the mask removed as yeats went on about reveals another mask but to me without a mask it would be like staring into the face of god annihilation not because of the omnicious presence but rather the omnivorous absence that waits beneath all the fluff and blather that spews from me like the clouds of black ink from a squid in full retreat it is safer not to look to avert my glance to watch the sand dance then settle to be stirred before again returning to the shore certainly never watch the waves nor think about the moon stay at home burrow deeper instead of breaking walls cast up more i self advise mask upon mask layer upon layer bury everything beneath a multi hierarchical camouflage yet without a convergence without a center to be revealed bury the sarcophagus the king is dead long live the king

(August 2001-April 2003)

Fear lies in the demarcation
between this desire and action:

a hand trailed, fingers dancing lightly,
down the length of her spine,

unrealized except in the metaphor
of this pen’s nib across the page,

the sensuous play of the word
as it unfolds the world we become.

Yet to crawl out of my skin,
to escape the constellations

of my collective guilts,
would be to woo myself away

from all that I am and cross
into only that which I deplore.

this world unfolds
like a bad script
the dialog
the plot twists
become the cliches
of these lines

yet they are here
in front of me
despite themselves

as if my friends are reading
off of this page now as I write
the words spill from their mouths
like grapes from Dionysius

do I write what they say
a stenographer documenting the day
or is my script their script

creation :: imitation :: mockery :: me

A conversation is cut complete
from nonexistent cloth.
The idea embedded in a casual phrase
slips into the sludge of my meandering thought.
Everything’s imbued with meaning;
Nothing lacks for significance.

Days pass, then weeks:
I return to what was said
like a child picks a scab – –
Look! there it is again
bleeding its tendril roots
into paranoid fantasies of desire.

Each word, each syllable,
each intonation massaged
like fingers fiddling over prayer beads
for a meaning (my meaning),
some pattern in an ever-shifting context,
squeezing, like nits, each carved-wood rose
until the tenuous links in the chain snap
scattering all across my unsteady floor.

more than an amalgam of voices
images fly in a mad pastiche

the connective threads flit out
like fly fisherman in rivers of dream
casting lines to catch more
than what makes up my world

lost in what to say
I cough a stammer
take another drink
mumble another inanity,

“Yeah, right, what a game – – “

then like a squirrel frozen
halfway across the street
not knowing, like Macbeth,
to go or return, I flee

so much goes by – –
thirty years and still
the same play

nothing to say
on the events of the day:
which celebrity is fucking who
what Fred said down the hall
what television show is so hip

It hurts to hear the delocution of my soul

I can do nothing with the words given me
no one hears the words I say

I move to a corner of the room
glance at the cover of the one book I see
a burly man half-clad in the arms of a woman

I heave a half-smiled sigh
eyes focused between here
and somewhere that does not exist

(December 2009)

In an infinite array of choices,
none of which, in their multitudinous
unfolding of kaleidoscopic cause,
can be explained nor understood by me,

I hold myself at a distance through fear;
fear I can not hold myself together
in the midst of so many divergent
voices fragmenting space in centrifuge.

I speak to myself to define an edge:
where I manifest and where I leave off.
I whisper little self-absorbed mantras
inaudible to the most astute ear,
building tight levees against an onslaught
of other people’s infinite chatter.

conversation alone
will not heal
despite all my talk
how we construct
what we come to know
through words we share

silence is often
the only answer
the only respite

My baby has flat feet
Down by the liquor store.
My baby has flat feet
Down by the liquor store.

But I tell you baby,
that don’t make her no whore.

(circa 1980)

if life were like art
then there would be
control enough to make
decisions that mattered
more than now as
entering this room
I turn on a light
automatically
not really needing help
to see what lay ahead

routine is no more
than what we need
to survive the day
we make ourselves

I watch people,
observe them in the grocery aisle.
I feel, sometimes like a predator
guiltily, as if I were doing
something wrong
by watching.

And then, as if sensing my glance
they’ll look up,
from their sleepy-eyed study,
leaving alone momentarily
the price of mayonnaise,
to catch me on the periphery,
as I move my cart down the aisle.