Fantastically Boring

A Wooden Effigy Built to Contain the Gods We Fear

It’s like a swinging blade

A shipwreck in a cave

A hornet husk

When the filigrees of philanthropy disintegrate

Leaving only the gheist of good intention

I find that the fridge is the only witness

To bear testament to the will of life

I want to pull back the bone and blood

To see the ruddy coves of your heart

Clamber over aorta and valve

And let my voice echo off the walls of each quivering chamber

And all you’ll feel is an insect leg sharpness

That fades as quickly as it comes in your sleep

I have buried my thoughts like a penny beneath the carpet

I keep the voice of my intent close to the reverberating hiss of an underwater television

I would be green and ephemeral in the cold

Alone like a cabin

Safe like the moon

I would hide under papyrus and ink

And twist myself into poetic riddles never meant to be unwound

Only widows know the meaning of love

Only the lost know the meaning of home

I will navigate by the memory of stars alone

Raining in California

I hope you never apologize

For walking barefoot across the blackbird sky

The rain is warm

Like the ice-toed dreams we’ve shared to ward off the winter nights

and keep the summer heat close to our hearts

It is finally raining

I fear not the ice nor wind

It is finally raining like lips meeting on alien streets

Like blue circles on newspaper columns

Like standing in front of a new mirror, dressing carefully while a languid lover mumbles into sun soaked sheets

it is the first rain of spring

and summer won’t end

I’d stand outside with you

And let the sea swallow me up

For just a promise that you’ll be on the other side

Hooks

They see that if you see one

You should make a wish,

That they bring luck and happy fortune.

I don’t think I believe that.

I’ve never seen one, but a friend from the school across the lake

said that he had seen two dancing slowly in the water,

circling each other in the rain like mournful ghosts wondering how they died.

He said that they come only near the shore, and only in summer.

When the sun is high and hot and nothing moves they come,

Roaring and screaming in a flush of thunder as they come through,

Tearing the world apart with rushing crashes and great clouds of dirt.

They only come through near the docks, where all those mysterious disappearances occur.

Maybe they take us up with them when they leave, but for whatever reason we just vanish around there.

Sometimes we’ll find one of us wandering around aimlessly, dazed, with gory holes torn in the side of their face, their chest.

They never really recover, and they never talk about what happened.

I didn’t believe him until he took me to the bones.

One had died and fallen, and it’s bones lay cold and white, covered in the mud.

A lonely piece of orange cloth still clung to its arm, smelling of rubber and sun.

I believed when I saw the bones.

Cold Fingers and Toes of Ghosts

I first learned the winter dance alone.

Syncopated steps to snowfall kept me awake in my heart,

The rote memory of muscle and bone ,

The poise of a single step hanging on the air like suspended ice.

I knew that if I slept, I would die.

My obsession with dancing in the night

Was an obsession with life.

Of sun and green and warm

and never letting the snow settle on my back.

Will you dance with me?

Will you be a ghost with me?

A memory of a memory of a time when the snow never settled

And only blew in whispering flocks of shiver-birds

We will haunt the alleys and attics

We will be thieves

We will be friends

We will dance together

And never let the snow settle on our backs.

Too Long

The sky looks like a bruise she said

I try to find the words inside my head

I came from far away

A town that has no homes

Just lots and cars and broken lights

I wonder where you came from

I wonder where you came from

The sky looks like a bruise she said

I try to find the words inside my head

November hugs my bones too tightly

I share my secrets in her hair

I leave my clothes in brick walled alleys

I walk naked in the snow

We met naked in the snow

And I wonder if your home is warm

I wonder if your home is warm

Tell me is your home warm

I want to go home warm

Commiseration of Crows

A commiseration of crows gathered on rooftop stems

The brick mortar was of ethereal quality

Like Roman rain

Or Tuesday before last

I sat with them and learned the secret of flight

And took to wing on black feathers

Caustic winds beating with syncopated breath

As car storms brewed below

And leather hearts learned and lost love

Live smoke and churning chains of iron

Progress beating feverishly in head-heart mind

Make believe friends and homeless butterflies

Slept beneath the freeway overpass

And I wandered through the wonders of the modern age

With the arcane secrets of heavenly halfway homes

Where hope is forged and burned in love notes and sweat

I remember what it was like to drive

I remember walking

But flight is so much more themarical

Like Odins whisper on Nordic ice

And broken trees sway on the seas hermetic curses

A lock of hair, a photograph, an empty room

And with incense I summon the monstrous memory of life

Born still with a due notice of payment

Nothing is permitted

Every door closes when I turn

Every door is glass