A star
like a spotlight stared-into
that remains inside your eyelids,
always slightly-off center,
triggered a reflex
a memory from a non-specific epoch
Practically erased
by the sweeping dull
and he mouthed the words
without breath
"Are you coming home?"

Crying Lessons

Borrowed feelings
like a stranger's funeral procession
interrupting a marriage proposal -
Poorly timed -
sometimes life needs a strong division,
borders to remind us how to feel.
But I am not one to speak -
Everything I've written has been a list of
things I don't believe in
and I don't want you to read that.
I want to pay attention
to details.
Let's be honest:
I don't even know what color your eyes are,
having been rendered colorblind
by an all-white apathy;
snow floating down
in the most unpicturesque way-
this seems a failure
- I can't even picture it myself
without adding a cabin and trees,
light in the window, someone to not
disappoint -
Which may be what I'm lacking -
Everyone here is waiting for everything
to fall down.
I just want to lay down in a field
some imaginary meadow I'm sure
I could find given the time and motivation
and not need anything
except everyone
et cetera.
* * *

St. Christopher

On Broad Street
I thought of Ireland
and it was a commercial
and too damn green.

Once more
channeling
west to east
and family vacations
are all reduced to billboards
and unspoken
(by which I mean television -
clairvoyance)
And I thought to myself,
further,
we need more symbols.
And backtracked down Market
and lost the rhythm.

The trick is to come up with two ostensibly unrelated common nouns
that trigger a melancholic-nostalgic reaction
sometimes
because we all want to go back to places we've never been
and all I know is that there are trees

Bottled Water

He was to be buried at sea

Devil in the details

Flock
out of New York New York
across into the Great Western Parking Lot
but this bridge reaches the horizon
when you're walking it
and it's a long goddamned walk
alone.
Some mystical person
had told him (once)
you could only cross
if you sacrificed your possessions
all of them
into the river
the goddamned Hudson River.
And he did.

What was his name?
The sobriquetted bum in some alley of a street;
sobriquet being another word for "nickname"
only used by classy people who didn't need one;
classy being a word for upper class.
The upper class passed the mystic in the park
as the wind passes the buildings
and the bar-crowd passes each other at 4 a.m,
and received not his veiled wisdoms
and insane ramblings.
You had to use your judgment
in taking advice from a guy
who wore his entire wardrobe
every day of his life.
Common sense.

Things to set adrift
downstream,
is that ocean-bound?
An ideal type
cast like silver
coins.
A penitent ghost dance
sinking to the bottom
and a view from the bridge,
shoeless,
and with all the conviences
of modern civilization
without the hassles
of civilization.
It's all in your mind anyway.

This doesn't work in a church
open-air
invite all your homeless friends
release some doves
and all that jazz.
But still here we are
laying in the dark
still two people
and not metaphors
just flesh and blood and silence.
We wouldn't be any happier in California
let's not even cross that bridge -
I would burn it but
you don't even have the energy to hail a cab
and this was supposed to be a dream.
I've got to stop dreaming, he said.
And downed the whole bottle.

Ambition

A lamppost burned out
on the Ferry Street overpass
as he walked past the light
upper class enough to have an ancestral home
and for reasons not:
it was complicated.
he would say

a fog rolled in from the river
or wherever it comes from
when it mixes the moonlight with headlights
from passing cars and carries the smell of industrial waste
and he found
discovered a city park abandoned of fog and light and people
and imagined a single cricket
industriously scurrying across the city to keep time
and remind the solitary that they were alone
and he couldn't sleep on the wet grass
and was reminded
and this is what it felt like

.

Stark stately Gerhard Kauffman found himself
on the main deck of a tall ship in a low bay
with others and the low wind did howl
battering the lowering and rising flag -
hammers and skulls -
anchors suspended fighting the last war

and in the galleys the beating of
a wolf-skin drum but no rowers
to be seen.
Gerhard Kauffman stood among the obvious stowaways
torchlit and disoriented
ports-of-call as the low wind blew
burrowing in the psyche
idyllic among the rhythm of water and drum.

An imaginary character he found himself without obligation or destination
feeling himself going blind as the naked moongliht receded
an onset of agitation among the crew
skeleton rounding the rocks
from blackness to blackness
___________________________

This ship
in a Coca-Cola bottle
has self-
undiscovered tropics as yet and destined
to be unchartered
this was not a voyage of outward discovery

destructed in a geographically wrong way
forming spiral architectures
and ivory staircases to bronze belltowers
suggestive of mystic secrets, but
in the words of of Gerhard Kauffman
"endlessly disappointing" as vision gave way
to pure simple sight, the difference being
urgency and weather.

depricated in insincerity-
A voyage doomed to obscurity
the moment anchor raised
on a money-making Pyramid scheme.
Ever the cynic, Gerhard Kauffman:
"You know how the Pyramids were built."

________________________________________

Oar for oar
The natives had been warned
but patience held
like the ocean held the land
and the air
and it was only steps from the treeline

began the war of gray areas
and technology like God does not play favorites
and the ocean is a suitable gravedigger
he found himself in someone else's mind
- the Captain was certainly dead:
serves him right, the bastard couldn't even go down with the ship.

Nature had prepared a fortress
and the forethought to kill off the guardians
three men and a corpse started a fire
and roasted a wild boar,
nothing native to this place.

How I Have Included Christian Emphasis on Teaching Young Boys to Swim

A penny broke the surface and liberated a hundred
thousand tiny perfect bubbles
oxidized
and cracked the concrete base,

draining into catacombs a torrent of off-color
crashing swelling past the tombs of rememberd heroes
in street names and memorial bridges
(Goddammit it's always bridges with you.)
among interred and to my surprise a Civil War general

stole a statue from a local park demolished for a
community swimming-pool the color of chlorine
and where the sun always shines from an angle forty-
five degrees from horizon

onto

A June lyric

Awash
in reflected sunlight
who would believe Charley
had never before been to an
American baseball game?
Hopeless on Canal
as Barca's charge careening
comets into plateglass
tropicalis
Charley on the mezzanine -
A drummer on the side
in a jazz combo
decidely Old World -
will make a feast
knock off every bowler and gray suits at the ticket
counter
bull run from seven cities
and seven corners of the isle
- skull capped bishops and the seventh inning
Charley was misdirected
There ought to not be
Behind Knossos sank
fearful Jesuit.

Fireworks

A New
Jersey row
burned us out
identity in a blaze
and inhalation
made streets twice gilded
and
too narrow for a regiment
even shoulder-to-shoulder
now filled with regiments
of the huddle
partisan
and Charley surmounted
in a military park
years before Apache
and Commanche were on our
vernacular
side -
Dust-bunnies
transcended through
the ancient glyphs delineating
the attic window
Cronos overlooking the vinyard
Sandy trading the bitter
for the sour
We walked.

August

The post-season
speaking to practice -
boys in ragged suits
melting
just because
and taking stands hazed
and valiant in their immemorial qualities hastening
none talked about past twenty.
Manic in white coats
Maniacs in brown -
and red sunset on concrete walls
over those walls white and blue and
red sunset on burned out cars
before late nights
and later days and dialects -
your eyes are changing color in this country.

The warm autumn

Slow days speeded
Charley drowned in the Lincoln Tunnel
in a dream -
never breathed
a sigh (of relief or otherwise)
not like Hudson
an antecedent, springtime conquistador
in the bank lobby
bars of gold in a safety deposit box -
A Jaguar.
Now we're talking.
Sandy in an Italian restaurant
faking an accent, a police officer
faking confidence - reinforcing and negating
the other's flaws.
A hundred thousand eagles
thunderbirds circling
feathers trailing staircase
winding through windows, billboards
stern faces stare down in judgment top-lit
lightning spears into the rooftops
Charley enters and the symbolism ceases.

Mischief Night

Burning a seasonal
The floodwaters covered the warpath
in late September
but did not recede
and engulf
the low reeds
and high smokestacks
and plateau this reclaimed land -
Atlantic and bay threshing
ships and immigrants
into an ill-conceived tapestry -
not regrettable except in the moment
we started a fire -
Hesperides yielded tithes of televisions
Saul's first color
once more the association
fire and identity
concerned citizen's association
and cavalry in division:
saber gleam reflection
Havana and televised drama
Charley got a record player
and spent Halloween alone.

Icicle

Nothing good could happen-
Revealing one-sided grudges
the hall clock neglected into Mountain Time
fell its tones on the first silent
snowfalls - an exploratory mission
- falling from above the third story window
but passed by Sandy
with no serious repricussions for either
and no marathon
and on a cross-town bus low-brimmed
friends became strangers eyes
on the texture of the floor
and the bus skidded on the sludge
rowed
colorless-uniformed toughs
shivering as a badge of pride
Charley wrote her name in the first
snowfall in cuneiform script
and the moon fell
on the immigrant storefront and its spiderwebbed glass.

Wonders of the World

you told me a story
over wrought
iron fences
bought with
the money
(accountant money)
that sent you
away to
Berkeley
about Chicago
and the second
city as a
metaphor
for Babylon
and you winked
self-conscious
and aware
in the ivy halls
and we didn't
believe in God or revenge.
I still read you
in all the books.

Weather and other life events

Enough with the self-reflection
those that prefer mirrors to windows
tend to miss the context and current trends in fashion

and the years
were not all bad
in terms of subjectivity and the weather
and the idea of pairing the good and the modern
as if they were otherwise incompatible
may have had its appeal
but not to me (the protagonist)
and you may have spent the whole summer
writing something to that effect
but I'm sure you didn't believe it.

I will slowly creep towards the third-person
("I'm beginning to sense a general trend.")
and maybe some character development,
which in a fit of apathy he (the antagonist)
decided was a device devised purely for television,
but he's just being cynical,
and is actually very happy
rain or shine
and the weather
should not be used as a metaphor
for grander events and internal struggles
("Amateur hour.")

Hopewell

and also
i am not visually oriented:
my hands shake like a presidential candidate's
and my memory of shapes and colors
plays by its own rules, which are not
so much abstract
as uninspired.
i am also not auditorially oriented,
and i find a carefully orchestrated silence
to be the best part
typically.
Which may mean I am on to something,
but it's hard for me to set a goal
of doing something amazing and affective
with nothing.
I would prefer to have an impact
(in some ideal over-the-horizon future)
on something internal and intangible and tangible
but that is not visual, and that is not substance,
and I fear I am approaching a sense that is
not real,
and encroaching into the realm of Science Fiction
and goddammit
that is not what I want to do
and again it has gotten away from me
and I will end with a thought:
the city and the trees.

east

i have never been able to sleep
i don't want the good days to end or
the bad days to give way
to worse

Remembering wrong

At some point the colors changed
Not all of them, and maybe not that much
But the oranges and yellows were brighter before
and you wore a yellow ribbon
like that terrible song
and your eyes were wide and bright and
I can't even attempt to find words
metaphors, similes, and such
(I'm not sure I remember the difference
to be quite honest
that was always more of your field;
I was playing an acoustic guitar
poorly, to impress you)
and I thought you knew the whole world
and everything and everyone
and I wanted to be everyone
but not at that moment because I had so much
and we had so much. Pause.

Again I find it easier to avoid
the concrete
and descriptive:
a joke, for historical context
('avoid the concrete' is bad advice
for journalism
but good advice
for skateboarding);
But really I just
can't remember
if we parted on good terms.
Or if we ever actually rode the Ferris Wheel
and watched the lights blend and blur until the
world was a carnival and a highway and music
and we blushed at the things we said
because they never came out right, and that was
mostly me in all honesty
and still is
So as a favor
if you see me
in the same town
maybe buying groceries
wondering why none of the fruits or vegetables
are as bright and colorful as they should be
maybe we could try to catch up
with the same questions and the same vague answers
but maybe we're better off
with the memories we made,
though I doubt they can compare
to all the wonderful times we forgot to write down.

Meaning

You're supposed to write about personal life experiences
But I didn't have any so I floated a B-
Which is a bad grade for a perfectionist but I'm not
And you have to understand this is fiction because
My experiences are a series of photo-opportunities
Which lead me to sarcastically refer to this
modern age
And advances in photography as reinventing the idea of
experience
But the truth is that half of the time
I am thinking "this
is okay
because absolutely no one else
has any clue what they are doing
either"
And I think that is the secret
Or rather a secret
That leads to so many words
Meaning something other than their literal definition
Meaning symbolism
Meaning imagery
In electronic photographs
And dystopia has been done to death
And I really want to be an optimist
But I find for an optimist
That pessimism is a better bet
Because when everything becomes unexpectedly and impossibly
Wonderful
You won't be taking an economic approach

(Which I feel
As a B- student
Is always the wrong approach
And I would love for some confirmation
Of anything
Because after a certain point in life
You stop getting useful feedback
And all you want to do
Is have meaningful conversations with strangers)

Out of context

Let's not do bitter
or make eyes
or worry about what we're supposed to do
because this summer will last for
three weeks
that you'll remember

So bless this mess
and the New Jersey shore
that I always thought had no meaning
except in songs written in the Midwest
and I still think so
but it's a nice place to be
when its warm
it's nice to be
where it's warm

So let's prove them all wrong
and maybe make it to thirty
and maybe be glad we did

Start over

we already lost
and they were nice enough to throw us a party

Greyhound

Don't do it
she said, half-heartedly
you have so
much to look forward to:
mortgages, thankless jobs;
a laundry list of middle-age
failures and inconveniences
is what registered, at least.
And despite
his not looking forward
to children
dining-room arguments
and Easter Sundays
he turned around, suddenly smiling
(This was originally intended
to be titled "Ledge"
to set the scene;
A less depressing context
seemed appropriate
for the purposes of
escapism
because I didn't want you
involved
at all.)

Dig

Let not the masses
speak
in the third-person
inscribed
he mouthed the words
and returned to his tent
torn between
the revelation
and good old-fashioned apathy

And
(in what would later
be celebrated
as the last great outburst of
eurocentrism)
quoted aloud to the canvas
O God!
I ccould be bounded in a nutshell
and count myself a king
of infinite space
and wondered about the punctuation
and wondered why the radio
was white noise
when you can get that for free

Patty Hearst

Talk to me
is the way you answer the telephone
when you've become a success
You will say this in hallways
and lobbies
and movie theaters
and in all the great architecture
Today the terrorists
Baader-Meinhof?
knocked down a cell phone tower
like a statue of Lenin
(dated reference)
leaving a full regiment of Wall-Street-types
in a local coffee shop saying
talk to me
like a question

Lifestyle

A song without words
is elevator music:
Just ask Grieg
or Bill Haley.
Yet a monologue without words
speaks a thousand truths
in some ancient Buddhist tradition
perhaps

James Joyce would
have been an enemy to the state
had there been one
He,
to the best of my knowledge
did not involve himself in 1916
but I'll let you do the research
if you'll pardon the name-drop
of an author I've only skimmed
like a Hollywood pool.

Last call
overdrawn
overdrawn
Like that episode of "The Twilight Zone"
which I am damn sure
is a metaphor for how we live our lives today;
I won't question whether we live
since I am trying to be upbeat
as a favor
for a long-lost love
who had great respect for Buck Mulligan
and rhyme schemes
and deadpan immortal
and putting the life in lifestyle
and putting the style in lifestyle
hence the long-lost

America is not a place

America is not a place
for the meek
or indecisive.
At our worst,
sharing of any kind
kind
will not be tolerated
with the exception of the Red Khmer
says the hypocrite
this is a work in progress.

Irony is a remnant of the prepostmodern age:
like segregation
and bowling.
Like an affair which goes on
long past the initial spark
of something new
forbidden and West-hemisphere
has faded to orange-black embers
that will burn you
if you stay still long enough
but continues only
because married life
has traded the oranges for beige.

Emerald City

He's got real heart
and ain't much of a scarecrow
they said
not quite understanding
the joke
(if there was one)

And took off
to North Africa
in a storybook;
No South African surgery
could give them what he had
and deep in their chests
burned their statues with envy.

He'll be back
once he's run out of money
they said
not quite understanding
that love
is and isn't time and money

So they fell
asleep at the rudder
of the metaphysical tramp steamer
mid- metaphorical Atlantic
halfway from the Unreal City
very real when the fog clears
to the very unreal Algiers
Casablanca
Tunis
Alexandria
Marrakech
until they ran out of places
to never go
(and weren't sure
if they were still in Africa
or sub the
Sahara)

They'll be back
once they get off the ark
he said
not quite understanding
the joke
(yet sure there was one)

The Clockwork Man

I have seen
That
which was meant to be seen
That
which never was
across
the jagged symmetry of radio
and television
waves
beaming from satellites
God-like
beaming
as they share
their message
of global harmony
to the inter-galactic
and their message
(to many)
of five past-meridian
This I have seen
with cogged eyes
and filmed lenses

It is forgiveness
from one grain of salt to another
grain of salt
A tale of automata;
of typographical errors
relentless
determined
intertextual
and failure,
explicit:
the second volume is forthcoming
the revolution
is divisible
by ten and sixty
one nation
bell-towered
and wethered
numbered
orthodox
pandemic
trans-
and post-
all the glowing qualities
of the gilded clockwork age

writers block of the severe existential kind

but i haven't even been trying.

i recorded some songs. certainly you know that by now.

90% of people liked them all, and some only liked one out of three. so at least i know who's lying.

life.

oh what to do what to do.