NOT DREAMING

Grasping that magic remains 
the framework upon which 
our existence rests 

we must hold our breaths 
without the hollow reeds
to carry us hidden downriver 

stacking up into thatch-roofed houses 
we blow our dreams through
to set them afloat 

on the sea of eternity
which is to say 
the fire it takes to burn

those homes down 
would never have been set
without the water with which to douse them 

and from which all their kindling grew 
into the fallen monarchs of the forest 
we are so deeply within we cannot be seen 

even to ourselves 
when discovering each other 
in a place where darkness

becomes impossible 
while time unwinds 
from the stellar depths 

haunting us all visibly
each night while we exhale 
our pent up sleep

so we may reawaken 
the following morning
to a brand new day 

having secured 

that after all 
we are

THE GARDEN OF COMPASS FLOWERS

The passage of spirits through time 
describes us; one soul refracted.
What came first, the beat or the heart? 
Of course, they are inseparable
aspects of the same thing. The difference 
between them and epochs of galactic evolution 
amounts to YOU and ME.  This swiftly becomes 
all that we can know about it. Every cell in our 
bodies has captured a drum beat, like a bird 
in a cage, or a hair emerging from a single pore.
The lashes of the eyelids, the glossy vitreous mirror 
of the cornea, pivoting on the center of its own 
self-reflection; the distance between a black hole 
and a star: that's precisely what we are.
Like spun nickels on an iced over pond,
we unfold. Holograms of silver trees
lined up on the looking glass.
Drinking the scene in on our knees
with our vision as moths migrate 
beneath the moon.
 

LULLACADENCE

for Zane 

Sounds in the attic 
merge with timid 
stirrings from out
doors amid every 
wooden creaking
with just one window 
left open in this old 
house as the curtains  
surge and whisper
like ashen bridal veils 
to impart twilit mystery
sunken in the dark
murmuring unrepeatable 
secrets with the night
already half dissolved 
into hushed dreams where 
rows of pale eggs await

RoRsHAK PaRal-lAX toTem SPIne

Nature's face 
beneath a caul

Torn away 
revealing all

Born to see
vision's sight

Knowing truth
in the night

Reflecting eye
side by side

Seeing why 
one is copied

Folded twice
along the spine

Read the book
written divine

CONEY ISLAND GUY

for Lou Reed


“Pass through the fire up ahead,”
One I wanted to be my friend said.

Lou you somehow plugged in to the machine
music for all our dreams, “a bit of magic in
everything, and some loss to even things out.”

When you passed on to the other side I learned
how a person can transmutate themselves
into the expansive essence of the universe. 

For someone who touched so many lives
you’ve filled in the shades of our hearts with
your ghost. You’re there behind every cloud
with your sunglasses on, flown into the Sun

DEAD FRIEND BOOKMARK

for Andrew Thomas Phillips


Artificial lucidity stares back
from the future accomplished. 

Having engineered a hole 
in xeroxed black and white
we peer through just like a window 
pressed between the leaves of a book.

A marker used to keep track 
of our progress and saved 
to escape through once 
the story is done.  

The tome put away on a shelf in a room 
of the basement of a house on the moon.

(A crease in the paper across the bridge 
of the nose underlines the left eye out in 
the dark half of a hypnotic magician's
divided face folded back into the heart) 

You are sorely missed, and the feeling 
we will never meet again intensifies 
because we achieved our past 
set in concrete, and memory 
remains the only portal to  
the future we'll ever know.



SL/C 9/10/15--Five days ago,
you would've been forty-five.
I've found you after all these years.  

OF FEATHERS RELEASED FROM TIPPED SCALES

In our craft a boat is built
Around us which carries us home
On a cradle floating down the river
Coursing through the thicket of our hearts
Pounding in unison at the door of our song
Escaping between the bars of a cage
Fashioned of pure molten nickel iron 
Spun into the flowering gravity bound well
Beyond our electromagnetic capacity to resist