SHED

that ol’ skin, written upon,
spine-cracked.

habits and scratched jewels,
encasing the sound

of matrix printer symphonies,
a flashback of some left behind
love, a lash

draw out the lines of flight,
for others, a trace, the red
shining tails of cars

at night, the television hums,
concrete teeth fall outside or

inside—the urge, to saw off
a skull cap, a bonetonsure,
to expose one’s inner

and wet, grayish labyrinth
to trace out, with one’s own

fingertips.

APOLOGIA

forgive my too loud untutored breaths
a thousand slimy Tudors swarmed my nostrils, fortified my lungs, expelling proclomations in coughs, hangings in hack, half-hearted reformations in a soundbarrier breaking sneeze.

I am reduced to dodging calls
like slick rubbery balls, in sweatmatted dark middle school rooms, a purgatorial pummeling, a baddreammemory of greensweatpants, first glasses, limitless limbedawkwardness.

all the dishes are sunk and dirty
a dry well, inkblack, some where fielded—a shrunken day, away, a way aways, I hum as I avoid the chores, an office unfloored almost, the siren call of sloth falling down
like dread pollen from trees.

all my beliefs become pseudodoxical
an untoward sigh, signs left unclaimed, a path you stumble along, pebbles to place on rough, red tongues, on smooth white tongues, on tongueless gums, to pound into place replacing teeth.

all my words become apologies.

TOSSED

the television is a flood,
the cat a gray anchor in
gray waves—

my dreams become
increasingly unreliable
navigators,

casting away

their dull brass astrolabes,
their looking glasses, and

watching with bare eyes,
my driftwood limbs swept

up in an increasingly un
-friendly current, driven

onto the rocky shores of
another’s morning.

“, HIS BRUTAL BROKEN MUSIC,”

scattershot suns

sink below our
indifferent horizons:

sliced into warm-
ish blankets for
some other part

of the world—

:;: :;:

our favorite songs
are just juttering things,

beasts whose
discordant roars

rip into themselves,
futuristically beautiful.

:;: :;:

all our words lie low,
hoping to slip beneath
our white, wet tongues,

hoping to stay un-
chewed, unspoken
and warm in the thin

spittle of our throats.

COAT

a decade, less
decadent than
implied—

worn but not
worn by the
particular grayness

of pavement—
it was less
obligation than

idea, a rejuven-
atory potential,
but not a re-

placement.

BUS VIGNETTE

Oh, methought, there–a–was nothing–a–meet.

He’ll apologize and
forget;

expectations of age
and wasted words,

but, when he gets
to his stop

he’ll clank his
rust gilded shovel

against the transit
sign as if to remind

me of this arbitrariness.

“…AND SAY / SOMETHING SOMEONE WOULD SAY”

swallow your hurried now,
the almost choking sunny
oversugared sourball of your

day. tell us the time, un-
watched, a literal mime,
hands popping as they

stumble to tick, unshouldering
what you might think every
one should think, not know

-ing your heart beats in
someone else’s breast—

MISTER DUCK (R&R)

you and me against the world / world about to end

by the neck, under netting,
you become our blustery best
abroad—an antic-frantic
anger, a guileless smile, the
scene-stealing wise-crack
ing, voice-cracking—never
as worldly as the wabbit,
but every bit as dangerous.
even when it’s your blood,
red and Pollocked around
those whisperthin hostel walls,
a half a hostile world away,
before you settle your bill
back into place and slip back
into our dreams again.

WITH THE EROSION OF THAT UTOPIAN HORIZON

This is all you are. / This is all you are allowed.

—wake the
toobright television,

the unmythologized,
as of yet—

our dreams wander
off while we sleep,

grab cigarettes and
a smoke and a Coca-

Cola down the street,
they bitch about our

lack of pizazz and
hurry back as day

is about to break.

“THIS WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US”

du, dem unaufgeschlagenen Buch nah,
sprichst mich
wiederum los.

an opacity,
a walkabout
the streets of
dirty water—

we give up
going—we
remote, the
batteries die,

then this is
a night un-
candled, un-
mug the drunks,

their drinks
caught up with
them, tomorrow
I will read the

remains they
leave, sidewalked,
like tea leaves or
pigeon guts in Rome.