Biographies

Dreamed in a fever
high-trodden what with all the
sentiment and symbolism of the
nobility of acceptance,
we're working,
of them
callously saving a life
in the most unthinking way
beyond all the mortal suffering
you were a representation of yourself (
schwarzweiss
)
and I invited you into my home
across worlds,
and this is what you make of it,
but who am I? awake, even
there's a lot of bleeding
and it's much easier to build up
this sense of responsibility
on the side of the road
because five years from now,
living underground
with the taglines and metaphors
under an iron sky,
or teflon,
or anything opaque and limiting,
host,
Sassanid ablutions and insects,
reminders that we share this world
and I am scenery
when I forget
and you
and the revelation,
dreadful curtains and such
and the sun as a creation myth
lost to the ages, not even
symbolic, just,
tradition,
written down,
overanalyzed,
it's theory,
and it is out of the park,
but optical illusion, because
as the frame-by-frame clearly demonstrates
we never met.

We round the corner,
a stray cat stares me down
deep as if
he knows something,
and I think,
"Well,
we all do,
don't we?"
and we'd be better off at home,
but have convinced ourselves we need to earn it.
The failure of temporal significance
overwhelmed us suddenly
with great military precision,
German engineering,
the usefulness of the have-nots
with their ambling mobility and not much else,
cats and their sense of entitlement we've long since rejected,
wine from the bottle,
tonight whiskey by,
the buildings of glass and sure steel but,
it's not noticeable.
Not like our weaknesses or maybe that's just me,
you know how I get,
challenged.
We stop at the red lights, on principle.
It's cultural.
Choosing the hours,
lest we fall prey to some underground parade,
and where does it all go?
The stories,
and stories,
all glass,
your turn.

Curator

We've broken through:
tomb robbers,
a third attempt
is the charm,
breaking
into the sacred
and holy
and the profane
and mundane
and drudgery,
seeping through the edges
and preservation and self,
these are our discoveries.
Across the table
last night
you hinted at a future.
Red sandstone,
I think,
for its
uh
qualities,
such a career,
careening
and anyone claiming to tell the truth
is
you know,
if you'll allow me
O City
with your winding highways
strangling the satraps
and bringing dominion and order
standards and measures
fluorescent light
no generation more.
You hinted at a future, ghost.
And it took
the form of
a thousand.
Across the sky.
(We don't dare contaminate the land.)
And all I could think of
is what I would
tell the children,
ghost.
And you
everpresent
gently suggested
"the Truth"
thus,
the highways.
European towns
younger than their American counterparts
vigorous with unpronounced envy
and the pull of the unordered
and unfair hands
drawn
bluffed
camels and needles, friends,
charity as self-destruction
desecration,
ghost,
haunt me no more,
in these tunnels
omni-directional
and echoed with the sounds of present and future
if we continue
we can hear the water flowing
just outside the walls.

The columns
primarily
fed the atmosphere
and you can't even see
the ceilings:
so much effort,
human suffering,
to create the illusion
of being outside,
priest.
Having shelled out
for the guided tour
we never expected
to be followed in this way,
watched from the shadows,
but at least we're not alone,
the rewards of your primacy
and being the Other
in this place and time
and all
letters and some kind of reflection,
but not a mirror I don't use mirrors,
there is no glass
and you don't reflect
there is no glass to go through
and why would we,
the time and artisanship and piety invested
in these doorways
because life is movement
but not too fast
we've got centuries to last, still
and I've already crumbled enough
through the ages
darkly and that's just today,
and the stars and significance,
destined to ponder your destiny,
apparently,
if we can't get you back to work somehow,
smoke and no mirrors,
of course,
it's a classless society which is perfect for me
and you'll spoil the mood
again,
I don't blame you, I just hope you understand
the pains they've taken
to hold an atmosphere here
and, you, brooding,
lamenting spoiled endings
but that doesn't mean we can't surprise
Shaddai Shaddai
a subtle shift from a home to a den,
it's all atmosphere,
and not fear, but uncertainty,
the realization that there is a quiet conflict
between all things and we are sitting here in the cellar
of the center, waiting for one to overtake the other, or to
realize
and drop.
On these streets
we'll build something
but
my heart's not in it.

And we would like some answers
drearily trudging
down the same stretch of road
as if trudging is the only form
of transportation
in these parts
in the form of a question, please.
It's not as if
we set the fires,
even through personal negligence
but you know
original sin
and all
and struggling just to communicate
our hunger
and deesa fur damp-tuh fee nance kree-zah
promoting us to international bums.
Welcome to the majors,
Chaldean, Italian Renaissance,
South Street after the movies,
we were conflicted but with a bright future
and if we messed that up
at least there would be a story,
I thought.
I was young.
Nature is not about balance,
and anyway
we are not natural
and your logic
and art history degree
have no parallels.
But this is just me
wondering why I feel like
waking up
that I was there for the beginning and the end
and the rest is in a footnote somewhere
and why it takes me so long to say
"I think you're cute"
and the point of a conquest
is that it is finished
and no more need be done
putting aside moral ambiguity
and realizing after thirty years that your
mood swings are perfectly correlated with changes in
indoor lighting, and maybe we're
not as deep as we once thought
and I hope that's just a momentary worry
that will fade
but just in case I'm right
I won't be jumping off any cliffs any time soon,
I promise to write
but you know what that's worth
and it's a whole new game
setting the bar so low it's underground.

First-born

There's a lot to be said for the
tendency to self-narrate,
but the undialogued action scenes
are where the money is
and that is
security
and opportunity
and goddammit
happiness
and anyone saying otherwise
is either twenty two
or looking to sell
and vicious cycles
and spirals
at least suggest some change:
progression,
and new experiences
that are just a change in orientation
like an upside-down map of the United States,
as foreign as it gets,
and the pious know this
what with Heaven and hell
and our delicate balance
and the avaricious sinners
scaring the shit out of their children,
sedentary,
and we can't even agree on a set of rules
at least nothing that can stand up to translation
like all the classic cinema,
riding the coattails
of actresses
and I have always been against keeping score
for reasons I've forgotten
and maybe now it would be good to keep score
but if we make survival a common goal
then most of us have succeeded today
and the pigeons and stray dogs
and the small victories
of having not killed ourselves in the eighties
in a mass
of adrenaline soaked inter continental ballistic
missiles flying across the room
shattering across the refrigerator
and falling into asymmetric pieces on the linoleum
and we can at least be thankful
that destruction rarely brings symmetry
though it requires it
but there is plenty of blame to go around
for all the unread letters
and forgotten names
and furor
and sentiment
plotting x y
past future
golden and rust
and changing colors
and you know,
you just know
in your various sized hearts
that it will get better or worse
and economics demands averages:
it will stay the same,
but that all depends
on your definition
of it,
and semantics
and I prefer my cries for help subtle
and rhythmic
with a backbeat
so that at least if no one
comes to my aid
in times of distress
they can nod their heads
and the melody will stay in their collective heads
because what nature has not provided us
will be artificed
but what self
acknowledged
respecting artist
seeks appreciation
when any artist
in these times
seeks only a better
time and place
digging at the cracks
in the sidewalk
and the blacktop
and in any time
and we will take our time
with a slow and a one
and a two
and a three and
because a slow public death
may be the last great form of street theater
expressionism
but it all depends on where you went to school
or how many months you've lived in Brooklyn
says me
who can't even manage to find someplace new
because everywhere I go
there I am
already
still
scared,
wait for my signal.

Past tense

'

and it was a crash we could walk away from,
allowing for some continuity errors:
the spice of life,
getting home to find my dad watching
a videotape of the 1986 Superbowl,
we could.
Are we getting stronger?
Age doesn't seem to work that way,
but what do I know
unable to even hold the thoughts
dragging like anchors along the bottom
clouding the waters
and there are no underwater kingdoms.
God was with us
but you should see the other guy.
Thirty meters
careening:
a physical prediction,
but we live in the moment
in this day and age
and I really am
trying hard to forget so much
and not just the regrets,
not even the regrets.
We live
in cities famous for their walls
long since collapsed
sending unprepared tourists headlong
into a mid-level existential crisis
easily cured by
Going Home
when that's an option.
We will miss out on so much
unless we cheat time,
appreciate the ancient landmarks
and signifiers of our great culture
now, before they're aged
and bleed a little optimism
that they'll stick around
at least as long as we do.
After all the walls
and the heights
dizzying
and other weaknesses
and thoughts
and would you look at that sunset
and that's a lovely dress you're wearing
and we can walk home, it's a terrible day
to fly.

Sense

I've taken to the habit
of walking through the building
in the dark.
It is a test of the senses,
or maybe a reminder that,
you may very well be alone,
but you can never be that damned sure,
now can you?
And as an added bonus,
I've done my part to create a mythos
giving a spirit to the place,
recycling the air,
but for me
I still wonder
why I need the light?
The politics of light bulb manufacturing
and cheap energy and it's various obvious consequences
is all a little much
when you can just miss one step
and become fragile
or frozen in a moment
shuffling through your God-given emotions
like a deck of cards; a bad hand on a dark night
and falling back to your awkward humor
because that is what you are
will be
not particularly well suited
to have been
and shatter
like
ice?
glass, no
porcelain, better
a slight exotic flair,
yet old-fashioned
like imagining the worlds hidden among your grandfather's bookshelf
at age six
and not realizing until Intro to American Literature
that it was all just antiquated racist claptrap
and we haven't really missed that much
even with our ever shortening life spans
due to genetic deficiencies of the soul
and we regret to inform you
dear customers
that class will be canceled for the remainder of the summer
due to dangerous questions being asked
at exactly the right time
and that is just missing the point of dangerous questions.
Haven't we taught you better?
So have a nice spring
see you next Fall:

There was a secret society
you knew about
monitoring
and which you've since outgrown,
and now you miss that curious kinship
and tragically nothing we can do
can convince you that we give a damn
much less that you were once and remain
the target of an international conspiracy
and twenty-four hour surveillance,
and for the narrative's sake,
ancient prophecies, phases of the moon,
it's just meaning.
Geht's weiter.
European games and shadows,
or reflections, it takes years of training
and field experience to tell the difference
sometimes.
And you?
Your father was a civil war ghost.
You inherited the characteristic persistence,
but about-faced on the revisionism and living in the past,
and flew to the moon on mid-90s pessimism,
ker plow

taking for granted that it is both at once
a soundstage
in the Hollywood Hills, pre-sighted and forward looking,
and just a rock, floating around us,
empty and silent, watching us
ebb and flow, rise and fall,
x and y
and will continue to do so
until long after we can only echo the sentiment
and blast off into eternity locked in a mute struggle,
a conversation summing up
all that can be summed up.
I think we're being followed.

We had laid some ground rules,
before we crossed the threshold
even
and then there were none.
I remember being glad to be here,
but only vaguely,
an outline,
like when my sister was born,
or the first time I went
rollerskating,
cold and unemotional.
I'd love to say I have regrets,
but, at the moment,
I keep coming back to the time
I told you I find
libraries oddly comforting:
I don't know why I said that.
I remember the first time I could
look in your eyes for more than
a few seconds, without awkwardly
looking away,
pretending to just scan the room
or find the nearest window
like the room was filling with
poison gas.
Of course,
in the first weeks, months,
oxygen supply was more of an issue
than all the social rules
we learned by accident,
that we tried so hard to
break, dismantle, bury and forget,
without turning into the kind of people
who make strangers on the street
vote Republican.
I remember not being in a hurry,
because we had time,
and it was just
open.
Frontiers and prairies and et cetera.
And now we are not hurried, tragically,
all because of bad associations,
that crossing of awful high and awful low
expectations,
recurring themes,
and having decided that confidence
is not just overrated,
but goddamned dangerous.
There is a tension there,
and I suppose everyone knows,
and maybe I'm just feeling oversensitive today,
but if no one is keeping score,
how can we know who is winning?
And what of the viewers
at home?

I Trinity

All these words are second-hand:
we preferred our ammunition
time-tested,
lethal.
Practical and cleansing,
like a forest fire,
domestic.
Healthy,
per modern television psychology.
This is what we've trained for.
The dinner table is a hanger-on
of prehistoric days, a basecamp
for the world we're trying to leave behind
and it's gaining.
Doctors and treading water,
backstage,
the view from the spires must be magnificent
but it is resigned to the 12:00 bell and not us.
Catholic bottles,
infinite wishes - the major denominational appeal -
and dramaturgy. Bridgeside,
praying to break the suffocation of tolerance:
martyrdom was such an easy out,
and your convictions haven't aged as well as you.
On your side, of course,
it's not about hiding weakness:
it's about removal.
Not in front of the children,
and the Son
and the Holy Spirit
Amen
Th-th-th-that's all, folks!

II Parking lot

Secret meetings
in church basements
lose (contextually) their
appeal but retain all the
drama and politics
of the 17th century
Vatican.
Hunter / gatherers,
circling obliquely. Wide
awake &
goddamned hungry,
it is a generational whirlpool.
Save your strength.

III Interred

consumed
and in the process
where are you even at
spiritually
physically
?
reduced in numbers
this evening
and worn down,
shot uh milk
& beer
it takes all kinds
brother.
atheists on crusades
and quiet the game's on
champagne for my real friends
and I'll make you all background noise,
willowy and awkward and disordered.
listen if I can just
borrow like
five bucks
I'll tell you all my secrets
okay?
but first
what do they have on the jukebox?
I bet they play some great music in Heaven.
And in Hell?

Industry

We rode illegally
thinking we could fake our way
out of anything,
and what a disappointment
finding out how right we were.
This city exists for only us
and we keep to the alleys and fire
escapes,
eyes open for the dull ache of sirens
and syncopated rhythms of the old after dark,
skirting the parachute factory and years
around the defiant maypole smokestacks,
the holy trinity give or take,
rumbling.
Out in the hills,
it all burns the same.

Coal

Harping
on this tune,
but who has the time
these times
I leave to my estate.
A timeless melancholia,
engendered,
all dressed up and nowhere to go,
our overdeveloped vocabulary:
and yet.
If we recast
the daily routine
in the form of a ritual game
we may divine
and what of life?
We are to be the last of our generation.
That's what you always wanted
us
to be,
distantly,
vacantly.
All regrets are choices,
distantly.
Calliope and eucharist
and we're revived,
cleansed of our ambition
that we never wanted,
the blight that held us
degrees
asunder
and maintained
iron contraptions
forcing the blood
from our arteries.

Pursuit

What breaks this away,
sending dust and sparks
and whatever, rivets
cascading, falling,
I don't have some ideas.
We are scavengers
a remnant
living in an ever deeper
soiled temple complex,
names and local lore giving way to
geographically neutral designators
or at least that's how it felt,
the cranes and steel frames seeming so rare
and hardly missed.
Bones of Detroit, and all that,
but that's not our point
and we aren't looking back or
spiteful or whatever they
the eternal
say,
if you can manage a smile
even just to be polite.
Some revisions were needed,
is the company line,
they're drinking in the corner
to forget their vocabulary
and the very concept of
proper nouns,
from now on
improper.
Society and its functions,
et cetera,
the realm of
science and its betrothed,
mostly boil down to warmth.
That's water and fire,
if we revert to the
elemental
and we just did.
The questions
we just added later
to add some weight to
the answers,
asterisked in the original.
The pursuit
is a dowry you don't need to pay,
God willing,
but I wouldn't count on that.

Antioch

The things you left behind
were quite a mixed bag
of the sweet and cynical.
Ten thousand years of human civilization
and what are the chances we would run out of new ideas
in nineteen seventy two?
Ann Arbor sounds lovely,
but is it really?
I feel like I've lost
been deprived of
my capacity to even know
what I enjoy,
and in such an event,
I am glad to know you're here,
underground or wherever we've been
driven by our own
haunting
pasts or whatever
excuses
and the rain is clearing up
and I wish it would stay.

Tannenberg

It's the easy way.
To know something
and make something of it,
pretty heavy.
And lesser thinkers than we
pulled the airtime
necessary to call for their heads.
Waves bounding
and bouncing across
generations, vaguely,
connecting the tame rebellions
of our forefathers to the
graying bulletins and bullet-points
of the Sunday edition.
That's nothing new.
On mountaintops
surveying plantations and social experiments
they we they
look on the bright side:
geographically.
Alpine climates pass in pine-framed paintings,
coming of age, but who needs
an autumn there.
It's not ideal.
Three thousand
years
of medical advances
and most of what we
they do,
is let us heal ourselves.
But we cut the cancer out.
We should know
it's all misperceptions
and inflated childhood memories.
My mother explained Kent State to me
at an impressionable age,
and I still picture
the John Wayne battalions of
Monte Cassino and Normandy
coming down on Kisthardt Elementary,
the blood still on the blacktop
sending me into a dizzy spell;
I can't get past that,
and if anyone can
how can I move on?
Heritage,
is the name of the game,
and we are all born victims,
barring Providence,
there go
and corporate intrigue
and an overwhelming
and keeping it topical,
and sure, he's a fascist,
but by God,
the ratings,
by God.
and scheduling,
and ten-years down the road,
will we have anything to rebuild?
Is that optimism?
an emotion
we never learned in school,
despite your best efforts.

You are evasive.
And I avoid challenges.
Knowing that we have gotten this far
drives me from atheism
to believing in a cruel, distant God
at times,
with all due respect.
Self-awareness
will only get you so far:
even the broadest social circle
starts and ends at the same point.
And you don't do overlap,
I've learned.
And I am no community pillar,
not even a suburban catcher,
not all things to all people.
When we can't even trust in name-tags,
what have we for society?
A rhetorical, at best,
and yet we know who we are
(collectively)
bearing
down
on whatever we'll hit.
It's basic physics,
speed and distance and trajectory,
but we're running parallel
and all over.
And across the table
a symphony
and so on
all politics and foreshadowing.
Blink twice for yes.

A Sunday

Flickered and dimmed,
even the stars paled
in comparison,
the sun,
even.
The sun,
you hadn't even seen in months,
months of calculated and minor
abuses,
transgressions,
a winter wearing.
You know the ending,
why fill in the blanks?
And such reasoning,
you can't unring.
We wished we'd died innocent,
sometimes.
It's waiting,
only.
A beautiful accident,
anything.
It's getting too dark even to read,
trading the halogen
for perpetual candlelight.

Repentant

A sinking
reflection and reflecting
on our situation, ourselves
poured from
the heavens, galleons and lines,
soured on work
and un-impressed,
fell upon pillars of drowned sunbeams,
a bed of coursing phantoms
living and dead and allegorical
and skeletal hulks.
At this depth
there's a lot of weight pressing down.
Fire and water
and that nighttime fog giving an illusion of place
to this vast empty
spirit of the time
and unholy noises and crashes
is not much of an education.
And honor,
respected,
is sometimes a shorter voyage
and an easier way out,
but these decisions are
culturally-specific.
And we
polychromatic
but less so every day
in turqouise wood and steel
breathed deep of the ocean,
drinking it like Coca-Cola,
and found new worlds to,
drifting,
explore, but nothing
to find.

On counting the steps in the Barnegat Bay Lighthouse

I wake up most days already out of breath:
justification can take a lot out of you,
even as a residual effect, an aftershock,
a slow withdrawl.
Southern drawls
that stand out here like not much else does,
and a change in personality we are told about
but I've never been able to recognize,
drowned out by the wind,
when you think everyone just got so quiet.
And it's not quite the same
as a postcard, but still,
a view.
If you missed the windows,
well, some people prefer it that way.
Facing out bayside and knowing that all these places,
destinations and curiosities and anti-landmarks
will be passed on the drive home soon enough,
and not the ocean, with its empty promises
and mantras, and walking towards the parking lot
we can't even remember now
who is watching who.

Love Canal

And so it used to be
that one Roebling
took another
a thief.
What once the realm of kings
and conquerors was,
today: city -
planning.
Mother Brook
once no longer safe after dark
is no longer safe.
Koschey walks the waterside paths,
even now as the eighteen-wheelers
and business suits ply their trade,
speaking:
This town ain't even got a skyline,
why should I?
Graffiti-camouflaged,
his minions stand
unaware of the creeping menace,
a flanking vanguard of picket-signs,
and non-commissioned school teachers.
A lot can happen in the city
in a dead afternoon.
And the chemical colors,
bronze and crimson and gunmetal,
change with the speed
the acceleration,
because all of this
all of it
is just about getting somewhere
else
and when we reached the end,
we already knew where to go next
(but we'll never tell.)

The Prison System

Walking towards the horizon,
flat-planed,
or hat-tossing anachronistic celebrants
hanging from a red and silver street-car,
all captains of their respective football teams,
and head cheerleaders,
in the days before helmets, shoulder-pads, and
endorsements
bring us back to the modern age.
I dreamed I was dying and no one cared.
The blacktop skin of this ceremonial parade ground
bled gasoline and blood
(the real, ancient stuff)
and we circled.
We all breathed deep the same toxins
and yet only I had the stunted growth
to let me pass through the meerspiegel
even now
was the culmination of dark rituals
to keep our grass green
fences white
Christ.
I dreamed I was living and everyone cared.

Over fences

We don't dig deep -
the union tradition has skipped a generation.
You could mention, here, our values,
but
we never fell asleep,
we just were, when the time came
and transformed what had happened,
took it away from us.
Geometry forms the basis of my self-constructed memories,
I don't remember how you wore your hair,
but the path to your house wasn't quite perpendicular to the sidewalk
and the windows of your house
took me further back.
The sunset seemed so old-fashioned,
out-of-touch,
as if we had no more room for the outdoors
and could just spend the small hours driving around
basements and back alleys,
the haze of the irreverent lights,
telling us in the most explicit way
that these nights were not ours.
Destination is an odd concept
in that it leaves so little out,
so much to the imagination.
The subtleties of arrival, and
what story do I want to leave behind
when I get home?
I've always felt five years younger than I am
and I expect this to catch up to me
any day now, because something is building
or rather, unbuilding
and I find myself
more often
telling myself
that it's just a building
on a street in a city
and the people inside
outside
are not part of any significant universal theater
and on and on
until I don't even hear myself anymore,
and will only go down the streets I'm supposed to,
and only knock on the doors where I'm expected.

The function of this city

is to encircle
its own beating heart,
pulsing out rhythms
to a foreign chorus
bannered and proud,
(in the broad allees)
and
(in the third-ring slums)
capitulated.
The lights in the downtown
- we have not yet earned our neons -
beckon a fog, through which to break,
but it never comes this far from the sea.
A minor aortic disorder, that won't
bring the whole mess crashing down.
It won't even keep us indoors
despite the lack of parks;
the riverside is a mess, though.
The current should suggest
escape
progess
anything movement-related,
and yet
our nights
a screen around the center,
approaching borders,
hinting at movement
in the corner of your eye.

Concentration at the State Fair

Second place
in weighing your stuttered human relationships
against the tragedy of your birth.
The satisfaction of a job well done
as a consolation prize,
and the day-to-day.
I'm ten steps behind.
You heard it here, folks.
Science has failed.
This morning,
we weren't even in the same location,
can you imagine?
Contextually,
of course.
I don't aspire to any great revelations.
Appreciating the small things seems to be your game today,
if I may venture a guess
as to
the break:
the lights,
gravity and its consequences
(the weight),
candy apples, always a quick regret,
and the inconceivable transformation of a parking lot
into a vital part
of a life together.

Theory

Placated
are we standing
bold
in the corner
aging like books in a library:
structurally intact,
but oh the relevance lost.
You realize
this
is probably what we wanted,
we can live off the dust.
It's all pretty cancerous outside
anyway.

You got blood on your hands
from trying to help.
I understand you're lost
broken-down
and such,
but the misunderstandings are comic gold
and that is our blood.
Wasted talent
is what makes the world go round,
and I'm staying neutral.