the needle and the needle done

it was prose

                   sure the sounds o violin
                    pack the surf in a suitcase
                   was it not

seed and burrow?

easier that way. to be too close to bones,
touching the insides where the ideas are knitted
in a loom.

my family was
stitched on the back of it,
out of copper wire, and crushed
sand specks were

dotted over my lovers eyes. in colours of melted
steel and salt ochre.

    my loins were timbre snakes
    threading
    the ocean

were wet
placed in the bucket dervish
and the caterwaul

of sandcastle angels broadcast the rain
from the eastern mark of me.

    the bits of mud my old friend
    collected from the golem

     shape like teeth the outer ridge
     of the loom.

 i ask him questions     [oh God

 what deseeded me, what
 first recluse
 sailed into the heavens on
 a paper jet?]

and he is the silence of an abattoir.


...
but its ok, mum is smoking old laundry
and the cat is coming on the first wave
down.

oasis oassing

she was idle, 

and laughter with the same intent as rain

smouldered by the corner where the 

girl was perched. 

it was crisp lunacy bathed on the frost of the 

dwarf morning, with heart-shells 

and pastures of coffee

linked by the death of sleep. 

i was howling by the forward cut 

of time, with the earnest crass 

decision to live bouncing 

like ice sculptures between me

and the sun. i was in that howled dance

of ghost chirp, molten and featherless

against the brash tongue of age, 

when you came and clipped 

the she from idle expectations. 

though, somewhere, faster than 

a cannonball...a bullet dreams 

for freedom.

candles and parents before bed

{scene: it's the girl and the family dressed around the dinner table,

two big candles like miniature suns sparkle
the father, the mother
ask questions like the other,
they are well attired and so full of things
that i don't know why they need to eat.

the dad has glasses on and looks at things like
they might break if i touched them.

the mom has more heart than most and thinks
that the more you smile the less you hide.

there is another girl here, the girl i am withs
sister:
taller and a little bit afraid to prove it,
wants to know my antipathies as to
prove what must equal my less honest desires,
i glance to her every now and then to show
her that i know,
sometimes startling, but to be brave
i don't worry about where this will lead.

i know she knows, what? i am not dangerous,
just less attractive than the comfort of equanimity.

there are plates and things too.

so the scene is set.}


after the rose, the plucking becomes easier,
a bled hand full of thorns.

we are eating, chatting casual, lurk
and duck the things i mean to say,
but the bird is tasty, i comment
on that, the mom is all "not too
dry" and i am "not at all."
...
its the fragrance that first attracted me to her:
small, casually enticing, and i am not so sure
what let her let me through the door.
...
but after the first glass of wine i left
my hand near hers and she squeezed it
like someone who was wanting to,
the dad noticed we caught each other
in the doubt that is so ever present in
roadkill.

the peas weren't mushy, no.

i was getting a little brazen
told them the story of when i was just
a boy and went naked to the girl
i liked.

i think i was just in that shirk the nappy phase,
climbing fences and mastering the art of
coffee service through dirt, 

and maybe they thought it was cute,
i told it with care but i know that it opened
the envelope to see me naked with her.
frightful- dad, with his knowledge of stamps,
wouldn't let her go cheap though,
and i think mom was caught between the 'mom
moment' and the imagining of being young
again.

big sister was checking her phone,
there was a bit of gravy on her face,
i guess i could of texted her.

the one i was with
was smiling

and cute and in her element by the picture
on the wall of her in a gown and cap,
smiling like the one she was wearing now,
smelling of rose oil and the dust that libraries
seem to shelve, i had to be myself

in that moment:
sipping from the adult glass. not just blurting
out, holding through like a hand squeeze,
aching on to words,

i love you.

it was private, and this dinner crowd
was all about the candles and the splutter
of wax, seeking out the shadows
with the irony of flame,

but later, in her room
when she was messing her hair out of its bun
and warming her feet in cute bed socks
i told her
and she told me too.

and the dinner was nice, but this,
i knew:

was perfect.

{jazz improv.}

tense, a smatt erring
a , a , a bovine
a cat, you with that
you you
you with, with,,, with that

i am on bread sticks
composed, doze,
miles out to sea


lured
lau
gh

out, and  out about
you with, dithers,
slip.... o ... o ..  ta to
go the fing--ers


it ittiitiiti
it...it
lingers
long
so


so

so oho oho oh. !!!

just dress sleeves
be the best
that  that
that
you can be. . .
   .

(please) don't get ahead of yourself

its not common,
or the safer path

at once the purist with with brick noise
hand clap, the red blood crane
tip-toeing marshlands, you; picking fish;
printing ideas in the back of your mind.

i was afraid of this.

that you would fancy
your loved, that i am your beloved.
or that that the wet smell
pooled on your carpet, so
astringent, so well rebuked
could form a tidal wave
and pull my body into
gravity.

flightless against the clip
of your devotion.

i was searching the Beehive for answers
in the cello bathed sky light

i was roman with my first name,
a tawny emperor with socks

to match
the
ample shades
oozing from errant goblets.

if thirsty i am sure i could find my mouth
somewhere sucking on grape-vine.

and my hands plucking at the fish-bones
the songs to make the widows weep.

after all,
what is power but the slavery of sense
by something
i
sluice with imagining?

preamble

they was -
that's not right,

they us,
no-

a pair: recluse, dancer

 the former on ad break
 asking:

what's it be like when you are your body 
and nothing outside of it?

her eyes limp into seeing:
  a coral reef
  and 7 million fish
  slipping socks on the ocean.

he was battered, more
internally busted than dancer.

she was just trying to enhance his
something.

after the show, when the chairs were in the glee
of whispering,

she aches a little into him:
    ...the last
    prairie,
    inches,
    the smallest
    wave to
    grass
 

the otherwise king of these

he was,
after accidents in braille with the dots
lurching into drunk
attempts to kiss the

girl in the room,
the one with taffeta cheeks
and bruised eyes
sweating onions
on a hassled pan.

he was,

too full, tuning into
the wavelength
of granite

or maybe it was just the way
she handled the pan.

rabbit origami

i am considering just lying on the couch and staring at the ceiling

look at me, with the parting smile
of a violin and the grace of a man

i am violence tonight
smirking at corners and
lighting fires, there was a brace of birds

or was it rabbits?  nestled amongst
the praline limb of a debonair tree,
ears flossing out the secrets of the wind,

i guess they were hung there by a gentleman.
a man with teeth, set in gentlemanly positions.

and maybe i am too earnest when i cry,
like when you were on the pedals of a steinway
coming across the ruination of chopin
and all i wanted was to slide my body
from all of the coffins i
dreamed of.

  i thought it was nice that you played for mom and dad,
  that the origami of your fingers was something
  folding out from love letters
  i had meant to write you.

 was that something else worth considering?

eschar

it was the slow turn of pages that dribbled into

sound

and the round cancers of katherine

that rounded into sounds 

---

i think i tried to write there and failed. mostly i wanted to use the title word as to remember that i had found it after "eschatology" had wandered up to me and said 'hello'. 

its not about thought but feeling

think about this:

 when i see you looking at me i hope its called
 falling in love

thinkthis:

  i love you a,
  so much that i would stop looking at you
  if you stopped looking at me

what???


i was dreaming this:

cuddled into you, paraphrasing
a lava lamp as it murmurs
into darkness,
brushing your skin with my knife
hand and the only thing i cut
is the fear that you will let
me go.

because i know that you care, and my heart
is ok, because it keeps its count by listening
to yours.

talking

sometimes i say to me: "move on

the birds too close to your skull," 

followed by straits of nothing, yellow dots, 

my lines like loops are tangles are 

continuous, are tangled. i hold

the rails. i forgot how to spell 

your concerts of muttering, aching 

garbled show tunes, they shelter 

beneath my tongue like pencils 

in a soft-red case, somewhere else 

there are clowns and they are hollow

now. 

the wind has checked their spines 

into atomic halls for waste, wastelings, 

and wastage. your waiting, i can tell 

by your clucks. they come like 

seaweed lapping at my feet. 

you turn sideways from the birds, 

cloaked in your feathers- black 

and bristling, your still turning, 

and the skulls that you pretend 

to feed have grown into men 

who, later, you will pretend to have known.

--apr, 11

frame

i look at my toes, 

 the other way is easier, 

in a gallon of lysol, glasses 

gleam 

nadir of something cute

and sideways. 

i look at you. 

you are there but for the thought of you, 

getting older now, grass stains are now just stains, 

the trains run away, your feet lack toes. 

i look at you- 

deformed, waiting like a lion

for its queen to feed it, 

  but you are the softest pink, 

  somewhere in a park 

  memorising the sounds 

  of ducks. 

one swan might die, they mate for life, 

your scars have selected you as their heir

and silent throne.

you want another to crawl into the skin, 

probably below the knee, so you can see me

stare,            

skirt swishing against the tide

frowned upon by your sweater, 

like a symbol for awkward 

juxtaposition- i cower behind 

the sun. 

i know that you like trains, like their gait, 

their soft rhythms and clicks,  

clipped of toes, pretending the rails 

were sand, 

i think i made you out of clay. last night, 

when 'The Old' had shut, the clinging 

hands and beer nuts had overwhelmed me, 

i think i think

i saw you kissing the sky, Hendrix would not pretend, and i borrowed you from some abstract, 

stuck you on my wall.


--may,11

smile

she was left alone too long, 

sitting and quilting, 

crocheting little destinies that she imagined

would crown her in all the heart 

and happiness she would ever need. 

it would sharpen her resolve

and her lunacy would rise like the sea, 

hair would flutter about her face; so solemn, 

as if that hidden expression were 

studying every nuance of its obstruction- 

    and replicating the shade her eyes would seek. 

she in summer, her darkside like a wistful cattail 

would wrap around the afghans leg,  

and in the cinnamon dusk, the shrew 

would fall to shadows, wallow by the window

flit at the teethmarks on the frame. 

soon she would die, and she knew that, 

but the lost part would never return, 

knowing this and a smile were 

all that she could suffer,  

so die she did. 

--dec, 11

smiles

thank you for the escape

we're here- - 

where the fields pop like bubbles 

vision of sepia, grain, a murky bible 

of pastures popping 

presided over

by electric sheep, 

my slash of hope 

and somehow you find 

a ship in a bottle 

we step inside 

and board to be
whisked into a
world we belong

in a truth: no matter how tired 

or trite the handhold, the smile, 

the freckle 

a glimpse of clouds and 

feet dangling out the bottom

sometimes we run up the sky

and down to the sea to take 

a sip

paling salty water into our hands 

sometimes the others abandon us 

and the moon has forgotten to die

we drown in the sea, but the waves 

ripple us into smiles, and we think that

is nice, 

we smile and float back 

and some storm by and vacations 

and suns and planes going 

to other places, 

smiling. 

--aug,12

visions of orange

we were once children playing at the sky

letting clouds droop in like postcards from the far away, 

ship a little thunder in, mince up the heart 

sausage it out into pretty things: 

 little lemmings leaping 

 little lemmings 

 leap. 

you can alter wine with the glass, 

mothers always seem to do. 

sunset comes, it has a brush and molten mouth

like painting and glass blowing all at the same time, 

once older the thing is shadow, older then;

we stretch our bodies into light. 

when orange is the smallest colour 

i open 

my eyes and it is screaming 

i hear, 

opulent sands, banked to the jaded blood 

of the sea, white-wash

heaven screeching at the rocks, the

twinkle of told fortunes

sifted in light fingers.

--oct,12

it was raining permanent marker
and you had the only umbrella

wishing i could shelter
i poached my fears and cracked
a smile, scrambled to
to be in front of you

but the shell was weathered,
and you, well, chocked on
my forehead.

spat me out:

there were dicks chirping on my face.

smack baghdad

(le) i sm

bad ab

crunching butter

spam 

sams bad

smack! bad dad.

new post: writing new post: poem for posting:

well o,
that was fun

:
you were half an emoticon from
the erotic terror of grasping my plain
civility,

where were the blue lights?
water wheels, and sharpies, the
candelabra eagled on your fathers mantlepiece?

i was breathing
(think the snow was mouthing sweet nothings
to my mother)
and why are my parents so in
on the basement brushstroke
of my poem?

i was sure i was trying to picture you:
   aqua, charcoal, bent candles
   nifty in the pants.

the kettledrum spoke over,
is shrieking- even now,
the lit

ermine couch is growing fur,
(i was trying to get it
to soften)

but you weren't into it. and after
the wine had left i was
tasting the whip

and kneading my hands into better versions
of my longings.

i forgot this thing even existed

but maybe i shouldn't have. it's corrupted by my faulty keyboard although blameless for my mistakes or gruesome visage, surely, you can't smoke it it for being ghostly in my absence.
I am the absence. Help i'm a rock!

if i wrote more then writing you would come the fore. thanks to my sensible head i am stuck in the night sky when all around me is the short embrace of day, i cling to the moon, no? a small purpose in an otherwise grand telling of this cosmic joke:
 life. la.

 i should be unfettered, should be poet more, fridge-light less. lit by stars not the junked containers and cold air pushing waves of moulding cheese...yes, regret.

 i am going sideways now, focus dear. the vision i need is shrouded. the sounds are all tangled in each of my speakers.