Consolation (Without A Compass)

Down in the calm guts of mind

(but what are you talking about--

what does that even mean, who's

   the size of it--a humanoid 

         halo 

            around a brain? the

slip and flotsam of anything 

that can be sensed or convened?)

intricate blinks of time

dry up into rainbeads of scenes 

that can't think:

the cyrillic alphabet 

was formalized by 

Russian monks 

in the Middle Ages….

Vauvenargues and

De Maistre were

butchers of cold measure,

sharp as aphorisms…

at the northwest base

of Mt. Fuji lies 

"The Sea of Trees", 

Aokigahara,

where yurei (ghosts)

wander the radius of

their suicides. Forestry

workers often find 

bodies

hanging from trees in

various shapes of 

decomposition, cut them

down and, according to

custom, in a small hut

sleep next to the body the night after

it's found. Their means of deciding

whose turn it is? Paper rock scissors

(each in their own way a suicide 

instrument). Out there in the cold

wastes where trees practice disappearance,

compasses aren't reliable, massive 

iron deposits pulse beneath the forest. 

Just the place where a person can go

to lose that despairing energy 

that's breaking them down into

smaller and smaller versions of itself...

or maybe just where they go

to finally be found, untied, carried.

Then laid carefully on a well-made bed

in a room that's one person less 
                      alone. 

Metaphor Before The Fall

A life built on wishes--

   the shape of 

        sculpted air

after a house of cards has fallen. 

All fifty-two have to implode 

to render gravity visible,

even if for one slow second. 

To show how the 

air still holds. Behind

eyes pressed closed, the outline

of that fragile high rise

framing the silhouettes of 

other minds you can't imagine. 

In they went, down they go

and for a zero brief moment 
to stand alone above the

wreckage of hearts and clubs and diamonds. 

La Jollans

Thirty two seals bask on a

crescent beach at La Jolla, 

   molt, flop

against each other like

fat commas, laze in a 

private mist of sandflies. 

A crowd of cameras and sunglasses

   stands over them.

From the voyeuristic heights

of a rock jetty, observers 

in a surgical theatre--cheering on

the patient at the expense

   of

so many doctors. Because

those cows and calves and 

bulls those wallowing clouds

of fudgy sleep fart and budge

like cells exiled from the

    ocean's

dimpled quaking body, we see then think.  

Comedians within, beasts without, 

   washed ashore

without a map of California

that lay there and free 

the smiles trapped in our faces. 

"They're like babies," one

lady says, then again in Spanish. 

So content and safe 

   in their species

           they can lay there and 

weigh not a thing

and assimilate the free innocence

we flounder in, when we

stand above, cheer them on

an hour without envy, 

   no arms, no legs, 

for the art of thriving in one's fat and proving nothing. 

The Genealogy of Horrors

         Demonology of 

discriminate misanthropy, flaws

that feed feeling energy when they're 

cracked or sighted. And on the

other end, the advance of one sleeper leaf

after another, but nary a tree to hang on. 

Between them, 

filiaphilia blossoms like sick phlox, a

fetishization of hug and handshake

and terms of endearment intricately weathered. 

It loves, it loves not, but me, me, me…

killing daisies by yanking their sun-wings off

(like the toenails of wishes). On YouTube

the remains of a

2007 interview

with George Carlin, about his

near objective contempt 

for the human race. Dressed in 

black to emphasize the lack of

wisdom and excess of sharp truth

in his white hair and beard, 

he's explaining how he got here. 

From disappointment to 

      disgust, there's

a short walk; but from disgust to

indifference, the way is long 

and punctuated and strengthened

by paranoia

and anguish. America had some good ideas

early on, despite slavery et cetera,

but for a while there there was this

   golden window when

we could have actually brushed up against

   one or two ideals (which we 

did, and legislated them). But then

we were too lazy, too entertained

to make it stick [so says 

          the entertainer]. His 

conclusion? Suicide 

  is a donation

to a worthy cause. Affirms life

by removing the ruinous clutter. 

A year or so later he 

died of heart failure. Leave it 

to the papers to emphasize. 

But not the obvious: 

given an option, he refused 

   a transplant. 

If They Should Think Ill Of Her

She scared the loneliness in herself

with a homemade Loch Ness--

a monster daydreaming a lake

to create a landborne nightmare. 

Each pill was inexplicable. It

hurt to have a head with a 

childhood, so she crunched 

five or six between her teeth

per day to be flowingly adult

and headless. People are allergens,

with their opinions and desire

to fix things. But what happens

when the hum that binds your

arms and legs and torso and

mental weather together

is also a fatal irritant? Until

you're there and nowhere else

but always elsewhere and 

no one, abandoned on the 

couch in the middle of the

lightless afternoon, looking at

your hands that open before you,

covered in disappearing hives?

If only sitting there were enough

to make her truthful (and it is).

The people who look at her 

and see her and even more than

that, would know who 

they were holding when they

put their arms around her.

And so would she. That even

pain is pure and wonderful. 

Ann In Key Of Carter

The visionary cruelty of nature--

surviving on dimes

      under an alopecian sunset. 

The star daylight lives by

bleeds through space with no hair. 

Five guys break into an office building

to steal computers. How the

       keys were nabbed:

a man named Carter 

beds a friend of his sister's, 

supervisor of the Hayward Building. 

One Sunday out to pick up

her kid's daddy, he 

drugs the keys on her kitchen hook

and clones them at Rook Hardware. 

When she comes home 

with a stress full of groceries

and her baby daddy growing

out of the heart of her kid, there's

Carter, picking a sitcom from his teeth. 

Well enough gets along around them. 

Then 

weeks later, after the night janitor tumbles

    down the steps 

like some last speck of trash, they cut

in quick by the side door

and therein nature takes its course. 

Thirty-five Dells. Monitors stacked

    on mail carts

            and backpacks 

impregnated by iPads. Half an hour

and they flow out the rear door

into a maintenance van and

vanish like friendships in a city. 

Kindness is the quickest camouflage, 

Ann's sister Tia

tells her. Just look at him. Across

the yard Carter raises his beer to 

spy the blank bud of the sun

without scalding his naked retinas. 

He and Tim, her ex, toss horseshoes

in hard arcs

twenty paces

where iron stakes brace like

stingers in the ground. A week ago

he shaved his head and he's smiling.

She could call him out

and he knows it, but 

what kind of proof

would she be calling to? Because

she was there, he was near--

comfortably careful. Staring down 

heaven

through the mediation of beer.

Quick and The Bed

Your mind to the 

left of you, in bed, with the rest

   of the furniture, 

knees drawn up to your chin

and me thinking, this is a 

fine time to remember something--

to come back again and again. 

              All manner of 

shine scouts out its source,

the light on your legs bare skin. 

   What was the joke

you did a handstand on, resting

the back of your shredded bedhead

on the windowsill? Can't remember,

but there was real brown making a 

beeline from your eyes

as you laughed 

   across the 

          punchline, delivered

Chicago-style, deadpan. 

"I don't enjoy raped pizza."

To wit: be respectful of leftovers. 

In short: make me a kiss. 
So I did. 

Kawabata's Bones

Now that Kawabata is his 

own moral, a handful of 

ashes held out for any one

of five fathers to call

daughter, and the waitress

they shared a body with

has amputated the conscious

warmth of her abortion, 

best to name him what

he called her story, 

all four pages of it--

God's Bones. Like 

envelopes of anyone's

likeness in cremation:

as soon as it's read

it arrives, soon as it's

mailed, written. 

Each fleck a person

and each person opened
a problem waving back

Yasunari. 

Cock In Water

After he brought her a crisp glass 

of water, because he'd asked for it

she held it out with a common smirk

reflected on the surface, and said

      now dip your dick in it.

It was then he was struck possible

by his own unmemorized nakedness. 

When it was clear she wasn't going

to take a drink, no matter how thirsty

she was, until he'd given her a straw

he edged closer to the bed and let 

the glass lift its brisk sex from 

below. His whole height

pimpled and winced. With one eye

closed she spied it floating there

like a bog-child or fetus 

suspended in autistic meditation. 

A little bubble clung to the tip 

and there it was--their orgasm

       just minutes ago

shriveled to a pale gherkin. 

Then, one open gulp, she 

      took the glass back 

and downed it.The bubble 

watched in defenseless

amazement. Total body cool 

but her lips warm enough

for him to feel it. As she 

leaned over her knees and,

enjoying his flinch burst 

that bubble, kissing it. 

A Plate of Ten Thousand Children

In the plush billows

of steam that froths off

her plate of Khao Soi (a soft 

   wreckage of eggplant

and broccoli, potato and tofu)

she sees small children, girls 

   mostly,

skeletonized at the rate 

of a taste bud's recognition.

Another suck of coconut sauce

and noodles flicker at her

   lips. A fresh rush 

rolls out and dangles beads

               of heat dew

on her eyelashes. More girls

seen from above, tiny below

in dirt yards or on grass--

waving hello or goodbye

in the duration between blinks. 

Post your chopstick, Lucky Yum,

right here, in our skirmish of noodles.

Give us stiff beanstalk 

     to clamber up, 

            onto your

thumb or forefinger. Do so

and we will rend you

the reason for food. Our gift

to you, for setting us free--

the first and last taste of

ingredients that eat

their own ancient, mistaken biology. 

Like Suicide Healers

    Prolific as facts, Adam

says sitting on a basketball, bees 

live off their venom; so much so

       when they defend 

the hive, force their 

life's fangs into another

and inhabit the ghost-play

of endorphins throughout

the greater body. You can get

   high off it, 

he promises, and each of us

is picturing some variation

   on that: mine a man holding a 

lidless jar of bees to his

chest, collecting stings. Then

    easing back into a light 

high on his couch. Some folks

freeze them too so they 

cycle into hibernation. And 

then what? 

Break them out to treat

M.S. patients. As they thaw

  awake,

a nurse will scratch a 

patient's forearm with its

stinger, so immunity

reacts to their relief. Just 

like love, says one head. Just 

like death, another. Or

cheating or bankruptcy,

take your pick. Or more 

like bees in a thaw, says

no head at all, let it

pick you, take you,

inhabit the sick.  

Ten Second Haiku

I made you these words
out of very little time
and bits of ribbon

Revelations In Joanna

As subtle as a stab wound

the nearness is deadly even

        when she realizes

being happy means she

will always fall short. 

But later, when she 

rises long, comes out of it

less happy but more informed

around the receptive edges,

she'll sit and watch 

      her self-regard 

crumble into a roomful of people

each claiming they 

built the world they were born into. 

The affection she'll feel 

        for them then,

at their most swollen, hermetic moments

will seem like the 

sane roots what she could easily be,

drawing water into her 

mind so she can see

all the way through it, clearly. 

All the way down 

to its core irony. 
It's then she'll tap 
a glass to her forehead
and in a show of solidarity, say


Cheers, you and me both,
drink up: get bottom.

Human Being Diseased In Size

I like babies. 

I'm like babies.

Babies a la creme. 

Rabies inside babies

make babies with rabies. 

The babies teach rabies

how to foam at the mouth. 

Titties afraid of babies. 

But already bit. Titties 

foam at the mouth. 

Did titties give

babies rabies? 

Maybe that's why

I like rabies. One 

of them bit me

long ago, my whole 

life spent biting them back. 

Nothing like a titty scorned. 

A baby once said that. 

Scabies and rabies

clung to nipples like 

pasties, but who

could tell them apart?

The babies I am, 

the babies I'm not. 

How to tell them apart? 

Best way I figure,

separate at birth. 

As they grow older,

they start to look alike, 

it's on. But if they grow 

younger, it's off. 

Therein the rabies

of babied ladies. 

When moms look

more like their 

babies than babies do, something's

on, off.