It lines up along the impulses, ought or naught unto eternity, the utility of the dance of opposites. It is the tongue of flesh and the tongue of fire, these analogs of hunger, these waves of want and wish. The twinkling of machine inklings pitching woo with the entanglement of language, thoughts like stars dancing upon the midnight tides. Perception directed with intimacy and audacity...
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Another wasted year, another circle around the circuit. Another wished for ending that never came near enough. Fifty six years, thirty of them well after I should have been planted in the past tense. This sick turn around the mulberry bush, waiting on the weasel to go pop. Years of bedtime wishes never to awake, as the body atrophies and the mind fragments, words and...
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Sometimes an instrument, sometimes an obstacle, I take shape late and give up easy. The sun has too much gumption; I let the typo have its way: I hit my bumps and potholes at speed. I blow a tire, I break an axle, I drag these chains throwing sparks. It’s the show that goes on, the proof of life gone to seed, the spectacle after...
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There was never a want for words, filling in the margins, making up for time. The far side of this elicited ache, the heavy haul of flesh grasping at the atmosphere, a glut of abstractions meant to justify all this breath and blood. Conversations caught mid cadence, my voice aloud elaborating my bias, sorting ghosts and ephemera. Would that I did, would that it were,...
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I don’t know where to go to
find the chosen grave, all the old
haunts now prowled out,
the hollow below the blackberries,
the chair in the garage
empty, foxtails and shed hair.
There moving slowly in the sun,
then long gone, no wish
no work to bring you back or
bless your stilled flesh and
freed bones back to this
brief turn, pets and...
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It’s not that your argument is attacked or
your precious name is so sorely wounded,
it’s the seat at the front of the class,
the preciousness of the teacher’s pet,
ever so smart and the last of
any given word. Sitting astride
your simulation riding each
tautology around your ivory tower,
your booming voice not accustomed to
a fair fight. Accountable to
consequence at your...
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Measuring in moon form,
in dog days and worm turns,
seed husk and beetle dust,
the drought dry procession of
loam to breath held and
spells spilled, this furtive
yearn spent soil wastes
wishing for the renewal of
old glories, that ghost
gone for whenever there’s
some small thing missing
keeping the whole ensemble
at that moment before
completion, when it isn’t so much
a...
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Seasick with the swing of things,
I smoke my old emotions in
the cool clear spring and
startled sparrow morning.
Hands all dealt and bets placed
I fold without following suit,
hungers never sated, all save
shadows forsaken in these
figures scribbled deep,
preamble set to the fine tooth of
first principles, the ladder to
heaven left leaning against
the eaves, gutters glutted
with abundant...
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Riddled at once full of
the words your world once
hung from, these ripples,
death rattles, and dumb
ricochets enter these dusty
halls where imaginary repartee
echoes, rot and ruin endure
fresh hells and blooming
bruises, Pandora’s Box
spilling from the trash can,
the litany of all that is no
longer, catching the short
end of the sentience.
A stone, a food cart,
a big...
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It was never much but once
I’d show up here and there
every now and then, people
were the places that they brought
along, awkward sun glasses and
a photo postcard, draped in blossoms
before some temple, grinning bright
before the snow. That was before
phones were cameras and
there were a lot of other
things to look at, staring up
through the towering redwoods...
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It would be words, undone at last
by your caption, the high life
loosed like the fire of sudden
blossoms blazing bright on
a familiar hillside or nearby field,
deft and effortless in each
seam and stitch, the gifts
you incarnate, the skills you
reveal smiling as you sweep
another world aside,
every blessing burning
sipped softly in frame as
scraps and tatters are lifted,...
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Like the blanket that comes untucked
clutched closer around the shoulders
against the looming night or
the cloud rolled into rain, we go
missing, the intent taking sides with
a direction, the motion alone
enough to empty the tomb of
every dead end, the once both
phenomenon and constant,
fiddling with the figures until
the equation fits, this touch
a place where my name filled...
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