In cold cobwebbed cellars
underneath the back
of your mind, the far back
corner of your mind
there is hot ambition combusting,
bubbling over lips of
clean concrete crates,
there is a new collection
each moment of moments
unsorted, unembellished,
there are villainous words
holding blades to each other
at the throat – whispering
sharp eager threats, fighting
for belief & release.

In the strange sturdy valves
of your heart there pump
poems that will never be read,
beat rhythms you only hear
in your head,
bleed language that hasn’t been said.

In wanton fingers
sit stories you’ve been through
before, are not waiting
to be seen but making
this happen:
there is a soft pretty girl
with her brother sharing
pictures with one another
downtown,
& when they get up to go
she walks quickly ahead,
eyes down where she steps
not slowing for him
to keep pace.

In the back of your mind
there are thugs
without faces writing
words in the blank
bathroom stalls. There are
great banners that read
DREAM THROUGH THE NIGHT,
DO NOT LET SLEEP
AWAKEN YOUR NIGHT,
NEVER OPEN YOUR EYES
AND GET DRUNK ON
THE NIGHT –

there are sleeping in the back
of your mind pistons with
crippled hind legs, frost
snorting from the holes on their faces,
teeth bared & broken & white.

In the black bright patch
behind your eyes
there is you, blinking
speechless & barren,
building dreams in the night,
trailing empty banners
of sleep, catching villains
& thugs, sisters & brothers,
youth captured in full –
in the corners, in the walls,
in the pitch of the vast dim
back of your mind.

I want the end of the earth on a platter,
For all of this to matter it would take a miracle
That would cost a lifetime of yeses
And nos that none of us have,

It would take more than what belongs to us
To sort out the difference between a beam
And a truss, to raise high the studs and kings
Of a stiff hammered wall, straight enough

That we trust it will never fall over, or
Splinter and keel in the strongest of winds,
The stiff-backed spine, leather hands
Of a man the color of the Appalachians. The sounds

That he makes are whistling songs
From a whittling stick, the scrape of an end
Without means we will never forget. I’m tired
For the scourge of blue Virginia’s lost

Who clamor up roadsides relying on faith
And the balls of their feet to bring them home
With more coal in the bag than was there
When they came, I’m afraid that they fear

And trust that they don’t.
I want a line of work that scabs my dry hands,
A day so long we use lighters to find our keyholes,
Memories I never had but wish were my own –

I’m tired of sashaying, relieved
Every day instead of reliving, I’m tired of not being
Tired when I wake. Where are the ends of my earth?
The beginning of me was more than I’m worth.

of winter storefront dazzlement. Hello,
sundogs loping at the edge of sight,
goosedown on a wet and chilly night.
Hi, summer afternoon. Good morning, snow
that drifts us in so we don’t have to go
to school today. Hello there, startled flight
of doves with whistling wings. Hi, time to write.
Hi, ringing downstroke of a cello bow.

Voluptuosity? Go down.
Cascades, cataracts: fat in a bra,
globes of honey tickled into
some palm, but only Anubis,

lover and coroner, sees the yellow drupes
of cells stacked inside, parts the lips
of the Y-incision most tenderly.
The living see only the juicy

dive, meetly and sweetly, between
strong marked-up thighs. What moving
finger writ these runes? White calves
bellow at night. Painted hide,

and the brown hands of a wicked, wicked witch
on a strapping white ass. All poses are coy.

I got root access through you,
root doctor, root guru,
ghost in the UNIX shell.

Penguins taught you and you
taught me. See? How a mojo hand
trails off in rootlets, a taproot

where saxophones divide,
a girl named Truffles brushes the drums
with hairy ginseng from the holler:

you knew these blues, and you taught me well,
chords of the Buddhas unborn.

He said:
The leaves are falling off the trees,
browned to the color of the cancer
rust edging up the fenders of my car.
Usually just the leaves die, but
I think the trees are dying too.

She says:
My head is swollen. Pregnant
with ideas and failure. Full of mourning
and morning sickness. My feet so fat
I can only wrestle in my sheets
and lay with open mouth counting peaks
in stucco ceilings.

He says:
I’m hungry for change.

She said:
It’s time for me to go.

You’d look swell in such a place, I swear
you would. Not far from a lake, it’d all look
just out of this world, like some pearl-strung
still frame from a faraway screen, all blithe

and fair. Small lights, I’d have them there
too, bugs that each hold a piece of moon
to build as gold fades to a June night blue.
What would you think of such a rose? Of “I may

be wrong, but I think you’re wonderful.” And as I
mean it, I’d spill my drink, honest I would. Please say
at least, you’d smile, at me, at petaled songs, the beat
of thumbs to thorns, and of love, old, gone Deco.

The stroll of it’s step,
says it’s drunk.
And the shine in it’s eye,
says it’s high.
The whisper in it’s words,
says it’s dreaming.
And the curve of it’s lips,
right at the tips,
says it’s scheming.

The way it goes on,
it’s delirious.
It’s drum is a beat,
walked on by feet,
that won’t do to be naught,
but mysterious.
The taste on it’s tongue,
says it’s displeased.
The fire of it’s wants,
says it won’t be appeased.

The steps of it‘s dance,
are contagious.
The sweep of it’s words,
advantageous.
As it walks through the high grass,
in a field never tilled.
And it rambles like a madman,
for it always will.
The madness in it’s mind,
says it’s seeing.
The high grass before,
when it was something more.
And the memory,
makes sure it keeps breathing.

ii.
What instrument
does it take for you?  to lift one and return to the Old Country,
       not war-torn Russia but to
      Hackensack to the paper prints of her     My
          Grandmother young and dark in this way:
               there is one-
          The Crepe-Paper          dress
               as though she wore a Maypole and the streamers
               wound around her waist, her curls, her fingers
          Look at this one young and wide-wild-wry-eyed
               the cups in their saucers, her eyes
               in their saucers The sockets kept
      and cleaned by the moment.
          When she lights the candle how can we not
      hang our heads
               at least a Little

iii.
Do you remember-      the fear in that kitchen candle Yellow
      Not like of wax, of corn But
      cloth stars kept
      in the spring sink.
          I could not sleep when it sat there,
          while our eyes closed and It stayed
          alone and lit.
      Now in the dream-velvet not a
          tune, but the dripping arrangement of my house
          pooling in the sink.
               a handle of wax in glass

iv.
      the bees in the light swam,
      their last buzz and collected
      in the sink         In what melts in
          ribbons with the fear of waking
          in wax.

The bump tucked
up near the nape is touched, is then spread and
the sting’s thinned
          how a bleached
          scalp breathes in milk.

It is a grievous occasion,
for brown mice cannot find
their grey mice.
Blind to the terrible, terrible.

And do I dare embrace the branches of this singleton
          tree
blowing in the wind like the delicate beauty
          of my past.
She whom my heart will not let me forget yet what is
          Now gone:

Dressed in a crown of green, a gown of Splendor’s
          Richness,
She is beacon unto me as desperation cries out in complete
          Fullness.
I see not ancient limbs that call to me at this time
          And how!
But faithfulness as I draw nearer and closer to my
          Once
Abandoned home. Still so full of the fullness of life as
          always.
And with shaking hands like the wind through your hair
          Now
I remember my buried woes, a dream that failed in life,
          a…

I tempt future emotions that are sure to come and
          place
My hand upon the soft bark to see the youth that once was
          where
A lost engagement was swept away in the tempest of my
          youth
I am he, who dreamed too much what ought not come to be
          passed.