Spent

 

Something’s spent.

It’s like the Father left the Holy Spirit and his Son
to deal with the Existence He engendered

and has rendered

his remaining Duo impotent.
Not unlike what this new spike of loss

you’ve undergone has done to any prospects

of another tolerable dawn. Strange you
can’t identify what’s going on.

Your warp and woof

have lost their weft.
What left?











.

140 Characters

 

Say a thing to somebody
so someone else can listen in.
Existentially you'll rub
the feeling in. Like a purring
cat. Nothing wrong with that.

 

 

(to the uninitiated: 140 characters are the limit of what you can post on Twitter. There are 140 characters in this poem.)

This Thing

 

This thing that’s always
running with you,
will it go away?
Is it supposed to stay?














.

ATP

 

There’s a sleep switch in the brain –
a toggle in the hypothalamus
which flips to fog you into slumber –

put you under – undermine whatever

keeps you in the active grasp
of conscious living’s strain: exacting

your obedience to an expedient

immersion in the vat of its luxuriously
soporific stain. It keeps you sane.

It’s gained through the beneficent

release of some availing molecule
called ATP. ATP’s okay by me.

http://discovermagazine.com/2011/jan-feb/32#.UfbeXG1GbN4

Promiscuous Acquaintance

 

Fallow growth –
loosened  thread –
hollow intricacies waiting to be fed:

painted, sullied, tainted, vandalized –

irreverently compromised: making
the promiscuous acquaintance

of whatever isn’t us –

a minus turns
into a plus.












.

I’ve Lost All My Allure

 

I’ve lost all
my allure.

I haven’t

any more.

I used to be

so sure

I could disarm

with sexual

vicissitude

and kindred

kinds of volupté,

aplomb,

and not quite

licit charm.

But now

I just alarm.










.

Talking While You’re Walking Through the Water

 

Talking while you’re walking

through the water
in the warm dry Summer air
suggests a rare conundrum:

what is going on beyond

this range? Partaking
of so many elements
at once is strange.












.

Another Surreptitious Sibling Moon

 

Betting he’ll be
better at it
than his brother,

another

surreptitious
sibling moon

has moved

into the place
of ours.

His unscarred

face now
scours the sky.

We’re hoping

he’ll find
evidence

before his callow

lunar curiosity
runs dry.










.

Ambiguity in Summer

 

Ambiguity in Summer rides a different breeze

than it is prone to fly in other seasons --
as it undergoes fleet shadows, blatant beats
of heat, and unapologetic angles of the light

which generate unreasonable generosity: to dare

to reach for, eat the peaches that the Sun has
undertaken to incite into voluptuous exactitude would
seem completely to reject ephemera and subtlety –

and yet we sit in each translucent coolness

we can grab, the ever-hesitating you and me,
inhabiting our comfortably sweet uncertainty.
We will not give it up. In our way, we live it up.










.

The Formation of a Point-of-View

 

You're never through 
with the formation of a point-of-view.

It’s always in the stew

of some new

brew

of blue

unmentionable aperçu

it can’t eschew --

to do

with you.










.

Parties

 

Foolish

smarties!

Ghoulish

parties.













.

Mojo

 

Mojo’s in the shadows,
not the jeweled blue and red –
though sometimes may reside in those
instead. We’re never sure what bed

in which he may decide to sleep --

or where we might discover him awake:
how shallow, narrow, wide or deep
he'll be -- or if he's there to give or take.











.

Buck-Ass Naked, Yodeling

Everybody thought they knew what color they would be –
but nobody came out the way they’d planned.
Suggesting untoward existential possibility,
their hues appeared themselves to take command.

Orange-yellow, violet – instead of pink and brown --

seem to lead them now through life, against the sky’s background.
Exhibitionistically, they amble through the town,
buck-ass naked, yodeling: and glad to be around.











.

Depressed Woman Daydreams at the Beach

 

Oh golden goddess from the sea!
Who’s sitting on your head?
“Simulacra-mom,” said she.
“The real one’s dead.”

Can mothers of divinity expire?

The goddess nodded yes.
“They'll die to take away desire --
and leave the habit of distress –

so that forever unforgivable, you might

reside inside their sorrow
which wouldn’t hold you quite so tight
if there were no tomorrow."













.

This Pot of Blue

 

Tasty little
slew of stew,
this pot
of blue.

You wonder

who
commands
the view

of it in back

of you.
Perhaps he wants
some too.










.

The Love of My Life

The love of my life

was requited today.

New York inspected me –

said I could stay.

.

Invading You

 

Out of the amorphous air,

cumulously prodding
you to care,
the understanding

comes: you’re from

somewhere not evident.
You sense
its beveled edge –

you’re on the ledge.

You've nothing you can
point to of your own --
except the vast exquisite

moan of everything --
invading you
and baiting you –
creating you.









.

Three Subtleties

 

Three subtleties

are huddling
in the heat.

They’re losing

nuanced
ambiguity:

the Summer’s

lambent cruelty
has got them beat.

Each endlessly

translucent
trait is dripping

through the grate

like thin diluted
purple paint.

Exquisite

sensibilities
they ain’t.










.

Ignore the Art

 

Barter

for the larder

of my heart.

Ignore the art.

Make a deal.

I want to feel.

Call up the drummer.

Set up the dance.

Throw me a summer

romance.










.

Trigonometrically Stuck

 

The world
is madly
arousing
itself --

trigonometrically

stuck
on
its shelf.













.

What Are We Doing Today, Today?

 

What are we doing today, today?
Oh what are we doing today?
Perhaps it’s the day to roundelay
and sway and play and sweat.

Or maybe today’s the day

to fade away –
stay home --
forget.













.

Taking Off Your Pants

Destiny

and chance --

promulgating

everything in one

unconscionable

dance.

Strange the stuff

that comes to you,

taking off

your pants.









.

Unanswered Mail

 

Open me.

Give

me
a grope.

(Ho-hum.)

Fold me

back

into
my envelope.

Let

me

mope.

.

Buerre du Soleil

 

The sun came out today like some great naked
melting butter man stuck to some lesser naked
melting butter man more palpably averse
to dancing. Their flagrant vagrancy could
not keep one from glancing. And oh, the rays! –
one sweated hollandaise.












.

All But Glandularly

 

Transcendentalism recommended light –
opining that aligning with it was our right: that
there’s a kind of all but glandularly openhanded

underhanded understanding looming in the Universe --

grander than the reticence in woman or in man –
spanning and expanding without any irritable thought

to every motive, notion, source and outcome --

ocean, bird and tree – not to mention you and me:
nothing fraught, left out, or banned. But ah! –

some unforeseen thing seeps into the sea, another

creeps beneath the bark. Not everything is sung
by some celestial lark. There’s also dark.










.

Your Physiognomies of Thought

 

Your physiognomies of thought

once brought you comfort:

back when you were sure

what faces meant and could secure

an explicative gestural expression

to each whim of yours –

each was purely good

or purely not; simple as a drop of ink

in milk to spot. But now the faces flood

ambiguously – and no set of eyes

apprises you of what it has in mind;

there’s nothing now to find. Strangely

though, you undergo no

crisis. The eyes are kind.










.

The Scrotal Sac, the Garlic Bulb

The scrotal sac, the garlic bulb,

the sacrum and the ilium and their
associated ligaments, the backward

forward pivot of the ankle, foot

and knee, all balled and budded,
nippled, fleshed, and ripened on a tree,

wrapped up in apple skin and lizard

hide, astride the breasts and muscles
of the bride, the roominess inside

the blooming  groom, the scything

of a sigh into an unconsidered breath,
the histologically complex kiss of death,

exhuming body truths of fishes, figs

and ferrets, marmosets, root vegetables,
monkeys, parrots, garnet, granite, freshly

incarnated newts, carnations, penises

and fruits and lava flows, and guavas,
roses, noses blowing in the bumbling

wind: no one’s sinned but everybody

who would dare to take a form
and stumble out into the storm.









.

The Moon’s Inverse

 

The moon’s inverse.
Vicarious.
Ostensible.

Immune – and worse.

Nefarious.
Insensible.

A swoon -- a curse.

Precarious.
All tinsel wool.

The Universe.

Hilarious.
On principle.











.

The Terwilliger Trio

 

The Terwilliger Trio
hang out
until dawn.

Willig would

rather the lights
were turned off.

Ter and Er

like them
kept on.

A minor dissension:

they’re happy
enough.

Now that it’s

morning
they’re gone.










.

Dissonance in Joy

 

There’s dissonance in joy.

For instance, that sweet
meditative boy all woven
into yoga postures on the beach,

intent on fostering serenity

through something
out of reach,
and that bleached blond

quick whirl of fleet gesticulating girl

whose feet kick-danced and twirled
a touch too rashly past him.
Got him in the head.

Then there are the joys

one knows in bed. Perhaps
we ought to have investigated
those instead.








.

In the Piety Exacted by Anxiety

 

In the piety
exacted by anxiety
when you would kneel
to any god

and promise it

your soul –

if only it would

leave you
wholly
as you’d like to be –

when psychically

you’ve bled unholy red

and all the reassurance

in the world
will not assuage
the sinking dread –

the rapid blink

of imminent catastrophe –
 
effect abrupt
distraction.
Think
of me.







.

The Thing To Do Today

The thing
to do today,
you think,
is to

consume

an idea
unlike
you.











.

Prosem

 

If homo sapiens had a full palette of emotional response 

and the capacity to understand that we each will die -- 
but lacked drives -- it seems to me that ability to foresee

our own deaths would cripple us into complete inaction,

and foster a single resigned logical belief in suicide.
It is those drives -- our ferocious insurmountable lusts

and hungers, and their sublimations or transmutations 

pious determination and moral imperative -- which deluge
us not only with the compulsion to go on, but with the ability

to 'forget' for most of our drive-impelled lives that it will

all end badly. They are also what permit -- in fact,
require – accomplishment, 'good' or 'bad'. Where are love

and the 'spiritual' in this? Somehow they contain it all.

But I don't think we can ever get at them the way, biologically,
we can't not react to our somatic blast of a lust to live

and to keep on going. All the selfish megalomania that fuels

the world is as bright an index of vitality as our insistent
acts of generosity. The drive to be alive trumps all.








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