Untitled (Static Fragments #2)

These dead eyes, this blank stare
Do not lie; they are mirrors,
Reflections in bulletproof windows
for you.

Little narcissists take in,
But they don’t project or give
So don’t forget when you gaze
into cold,

Sodden nothings, those
Unflinching pupils with irises glazed
It is you, that is your own fear

Watching you reach toward this
Pair of fogged, bloodshot jade
In time to remember it’s me
who’s awake.

November

you make it so hot here,
i sit back and sweat. let’s
not let go, our eyes
prisms we'll rust together
in pieces to get out
the salts of raw thighs.

i taste your oils—
please, savor the steam
condensing on walls
where windows thrown wide
it smells of lighter fluid,
you smell like wine.

if there are traces left
later I’ll play detective
just for a last taste of
any lingering suggestion
before the whiteboard’s erased
of incriminating links
just to make future space for
your invisible inks.
                                   let’s
hope teacher knows
to draft fresh air inside
lest the students get wind
and melt in their hides,
from steam that we made
with windows thrown wide;
that spyglass made fire,
you still smell like wine.

Dreams of Better Jobs

you were in need
of tiny arms
embedded in a chain
of subterranean gears.
he’d been caught
drinking straight
chlorophyll again
on an overcast day
like a ring of reflective puddles.
and too many
podiatrists were
receiving office calls
for anyone to recognize
the ordinary
nature of their shift
in gait.
              it’s all
the heavy lifting
you’ve done and I
can understand
the adrenaline rush helps
but maybe, just
maybe, you should
let the kid learn
his own tune. sweeping
the floor is american
              zen.

(Static Fragments) #3

I have days
when my field of vision jerks
and shifts. That blind spot
in the middle
that the brain makes
up? It’s always fine
while the rest, the processed
input shatters.

One time
I thought all the light
fixtures loosed toward
the floor. Another day
an entire room
jolts to the left.
I just stand there.

Now

Then..., what of it?
It just passed, is over, is always
The future, is six months from
Used to be flying cars and fear of
One-world government
Is a fractured nuclear age, is the deli coffee
I drink, café-outpriced
Makes me feel like
An old man of twenty-seven
...elderly adolescent.
It matters if I do or do not
For anyone can try anything.
I'm done
For...

Aspirin For An Aching River

if there is feeling more pronounced I must
         know it
for now it evades and, frankly,
         I doubt
it’s my most fulfilling enterprise
to gain from the plenty of persons near
and yet the right person never near
still I sit alone to read, reclined
as blood drains out my lifted legs
         ‘til I can’t stand
and tea goes cold
though when the nerves return
reheat the kettle without stumbling and drink
to the sirens outside
my window always open
even in dead of winter,
needing to feel that chill breeze
         on my feet

Untitled (Static Fragments part VI)

I recognize you in the print,
framed and boxed and closeted
to hang unbecoming whispers,

it was always –who?- so it sits
back boxed and closeted. You’re not
really there, you’re behind, but

I know what went on along
the paths through the reeds and sea
oat and sumac. How many burned

out carcasses did we count
for posterity; thieves’ getaway
landfill sculpted from another

man’s sunken treasure. Robert
Moses never met a golden calf he could
not leave his name upon but this

brackish arm meandering a warm
November? It’s a long bus ride and
a longer hoof-it to find your way out

there so no, I’ve yet to make it back.

There Were Warnings

we gnash with a mouthful of broken teeth; eat
each other whole. bellies with no room
for remorse; not instinct, but ingrained, inbred

crushed like statuary amidst unhewn stone,
the gap between what marks the spectrum’s ends.
mottled bleedings inhabit muddied pictures,

otherwise straight lines, any definitive scratched
into lenses; these cameras covered red swirled
on hands, on faces, on everyone: pray

and find solace in the end of the world if
this empire crumbles surely it is the last
and greatest

Bureaucrat As Religious Scribe

it’s an expressionless face in a
three-walled hole of reflection

druids believed that
writing compromised secret

mass long lost to desire,
unresponsive as trained

and memory; for all their work,
only Roman accounts of them

that’s how I imagine him
definitely a him

survived, whatever that’s worth
when I write, my memory

he, who will pass on the orders
to begin the immolation

failed; will the only traces
in fifteen hundred years

any traces of us that we don’t
keep ourselves, gone

of any of this come
back to light as the hand

emperors never light the fire
it would be unconscionable

cuffed stiffly at the desk
producing reports and documentary

but the ashes on an unthinking
lackey’s smooth fingers

satisfied, however, so when the works
of the eternal volunteer elapse

grant a pass in the eyes
of the gods, the state, enduring

without conscious notice the fury
rages inside, demanding to be acknowledged

Untitled (10/9/08)

My friend Sophie knows
all the names for god
even if she says she doesn’t

I don’t believe her
just like I don’t believe
in god. But if

it’s real it probably
doesn’t want, or need, me
to believe

Because how relevant
to its aims
could I possibly be?