YOU WERE

the Beast who has entirely
confused his awareness for his environment
never comes to stare at you but
lunges in a cry and halfrips off your face
and crestfalls into tremors of a long
lost relaxed grace

his whole mask fits together
with the two halves of his face
they meet in a territory that distances
the closer it approaches straight between the eyes
so the lunge is made when sight is gained
of a vagueness that was not there --

you were

FLAME

A leaf fall integrates
through a stare between
the tarred black fence
wrought of iron stitched
there cutting off the
churchyard from our
congress. Beware of
the dog is posted on
the mirror, cracked
from side to center.
YOU ARE HERE written
on a fracture

RETROQUESTIONING

Can you keep the peace
or just the pieces.
What does it mean to you
to make up your mind.

Do you just recede and hope
that I am spinning
one too many times
for you to find.

Maybe you'll melt into the shadows
and be forgotten.
It must have been effortless
for you to unwind.

I'm not so lucky in my lovely garden
that you've left behind
because I believed you
when you told me
that your heart
was all mine.

SURVIVOR

watching pictures on the tv

i thought it was a movie

it really was the news you see

it looked like cgi to me

i've seen it so repeatedly

it doesn't even seem real to me

those moving pictures on tv

the less I watch the more I see

that in that box there's no reality

SATURN UNDER ECLIPSE

dog beneath a star
sorrow from a feather
prism in a window
melts a crucifix in snow

and later this november
after every body's gone
a fog horn scares the ravens
off the can collector's brow

(Q U IET)

d i s tant hammering .. .
sigh of an auto's doppler effect

a constant muted harddriven drone,
a high-pitched nigh-inaudible tone.

soft cricket sussuration
incessant chirping

creaks above ceiling
under the weight of a step,
tires across distant asphalt
the refrigerator coughs & starts up.

ergonomic keys rattle sporadic
skin of horned toe rubbing heel -
circular rhythm & sound of thumb's
callus skating across palm,

spin of an unscrewed lid
from a red nalgene bottle,
waft of yawning interior.

silence and stillness of water
echoing throat muscles gulping,
cellphone rings & the poem
crashes to a close.

HAIKU 10

crushing staccato
insists a dark reflection
borrowed tomorrow


tower of babel
key pins erode under base
dust never settles


chestnut hair bundled
sound of being deftly shorn
between scissor blades


life's short years peeled off
to be dropped away into
the burgeoning dusk


these echoes are gone
despite their endless fading
behind a dimmed eye


the attack is manned
and a shadow arises
unnoticed behind


watch your throat now then
quickening creepervines might
return us to them


bone vibrating song
of the halving excision
from a twin removed


airbrushed a divide
in delicate cumulus
with infanticide


the lost tribe running
without friends left to
reason a way home again