The heart is loved best when
it’s stylized on paper
and not when found in three
fleshy dimensions, especially
when
found outside
the body,

when
it has true bilateral 
symmetry
and a fold down the middle
from when a child made it,
when
there is pink construction paper
involved,
perhaps a bit of lace,
certainly crayon lettering,
certainly a messy cut or two
that does nothing to harm its charm,

when it communicates a message of love
by its total being with no other function —

yes,
a heart is best when it is
symbolic, non-functional,
and not at all realistic,
real, 
broken,
or failed.

O 
squat full
of masturbators!
I have entered
either an undiscovered
ward of hell or
a poetry reading.

O
evidence of
my mistaken path,
an entire life devoted to
the twinge given by
a good word!  Silence
is honestly more
potent — see how a silent body
in a noisy room collects
all the spark
to itself?  I’ve been
a damn poet so long,
I had forgotten 
what a useless thing that is
to be until,
upon entering this seediness,
everything became clear
and I lost
my appetite
for myself.

O,
the tawdry tragedy —
the open unnecessary question —
why not stop? 

As if
I could stop,
this close to closure.
As if
the light and the sad floor
could deter me.  
As if
the better words of my betters
could cow me from failure anymore.

So,
I say, move over, all;
I will squat again
and what will follow
will be what always follows.

A day may come
when the earth will burst
into a cluster of smaller globes

and we’ll all be relegated
to one or another
collection of ghosts
randomly flung
to one or another
of those ragged stones.

It would be good to think
that should it happen
we will at last
get past the old wars
and prejudices.  Certainly
the sorting,
assuredly the mass dying
would clear our heads.

It’s possible, though,
that on the day
it happens we’ll just start over,

continuing to pass
through each other
with no impact,
much as we pass though
today. 

The Buzz says good things
about absinthe, thrill-blue smoke
and the like; offers us

sacred images of green, then milk-white.
Green, then red, then brown,
then black; black-blue, bent-blue,

earthquake blue, hallelujah
blue, turned inside out
to show pure blue again.

The Buzz says the joy of clarity 

is not all-encompassing.  
Some pictures are 
best seen through haze.  

Crooked
movement can still cover
good ground.  Et cetera,

et cetera…don’t make such a fuss
about this, says the Buzz…slip in,
take a moment, take another, another… 

Weaponized
everything I own
in my sleep
while dreaming of chasing
a big intruder
through the home brandishing
everything from curling iron 
to machete, as I don’t
own a gun in my dreams, having
surrendered even my dream-guns
to avoid the dream of suicide.

In sleep
I’m standing around all Viking-like
with blood at my feet
that never becomes sticky 
and washes off of every surface
easily, not like the real thing
at all, especially not when you’ve been
standing over it
for a while.  

Bolder than I have been anywhere
other than in an old story, I was;
as angry and fit as any warlord
or suddenly aggrieved ordinary
cinematic man.  As always,
in a dream I was
feeling it, and feeling it as good —

how I swung and connected,
how nothing the intruder tried
worked, how much I loved
the fantasy of the non-resistance
of bone before blade

because of course
I do know better. I know
much better than that.

My dance, my bad, my deep.
I gave a sorrow opening,
loosed it on
the gap within.

Ornery. Tantrum,
layabout and cry.
Going to victim this whole long day.
Grow me kudzu, funeral bouquet

for neverending grief show. Still, got
rocker hips, roller hips, jazz
in groin and hips:,
joy ends up somewhere

when pushed from head and heart.
End up one sad grinder.  End up bad
with bad sinking in deep but still
one way to set it off and hold it back,

so then to music while still in the hole:
give my bad, my deep a resistance.
Rhythm’s a big mole digging in 
under the roots.  Charged up winner

rubbling the dark village.  Earth body
a quake cracking on the light.  When
I, frightened, shake, I still gotta dance
my dance, my bad, my deep.  My gotta happen.

The archangel
held a blazing sword
edge up.

Adam strolled along it
as he sketched Eve’s hair
from memory,

as he sketched the craze of blood
he recalled seeing
on Abel’s skin.

Walked that edge
every day for hours
never looking away

from charcoal and page.
Walked that edge
while placing his feet surely

between flames, courting burns
and severance but never closing
the deal.  Over his shoulder

I could see the outline
of the Garden.  He never
turned his head toward

or away from it.  All he could see,
apparently, was Eve’s hair and Abel’s
death.  Never a thought

for Eden, never a single line
laid down for Cain, not a glimpse
in any picture he made of the archangel,

the fire, the blade,
his pivot when he reached the end
and began to walk back.

Here was the first artist, raised
from loss and grief, enjoying the luxury
of selective memory.

As for the second artist?  I stood there wondering,
watching my father walking and mourning,
then turned and began to walk

east, back home to exile.
On the way, I made this.
This. I made this

and that’s how I came to art:
I had acted, I had suffered,
yet something still needed to be said.

Been a while since
I posted notice with
a small but bright flyer:

“Henceforth let it be known
that this S. O. B.
surrenders any compulsion
to seek and attract love.
From now on, if it finds him,
he’ll accept it
and if it doesn’t
he’ll be cool with that,
even
if it’s right there,
within reach.”

Pasted up that notice,
sat back,
waited.  

Still waiting today — 
more desperately but
as still as stone;

though the old flyers
are wind ripped, rain blotted,
and not much visible,

I am a man of my lonely,
ill-advised words and compulsion
is too easily misread from outside

to move at all upon any tug
I might feel from anyone,
any tug at all.
 
 
 

Snow at midnight;
before dawn,
blurred, bright half-moon.

No sound but wind as the light grows.
No marsh hawk, no gull or tern in sight.
No boats out there, nothing
between here, Coatue, and Pomoco Head. 

I call the bent, sugared grasses on the bluff
“the bent, sugared grasses on the bluff.”

Twenty five years ago,
I might have referred to cocaine 
in describing them.

If I’d been here in colonial days,
I might have spoken of a gentleman’s wig.

What we see doesn’t change
as much as how we describe it does.

What we see doesn’t change 
as much as how we see…

so: alone before dawn watching snow
and sea..

solitude or loneliness?
In the presence of something,
or its absence?