Messiah Drowning Ducks in the TN River

The river running backwards
reminds me of the
stream of time.

Crash into the river.

Shrieking
ducks in a line
uneven.

Negroes hanging from the Market Street bridge.

We pass successors of slave-owners
with their adopted Oriental children.

Praise the Black God.

4 a.m. Drive

All sensibilities are parked away from downtown at

4:12 a.m. while you and I are tying together murderous orcas in the swimming pools with the shade behind the blinds.

4:26 and I wish I could talk, but you’re too chaotic,

and still my greatest inspiration.

Everyone likes Kerouac for the chaos.

The women of the last few years are the terror that I’m late for work with no clean clothes.

Coffee hasn’t slowed me yet;

tomorrow isn’t ruined.

The slow drip of morphine is too slowly

taking it out of her.

Hopefully the perfect wording to Anne Sexton’s question

is lying at the bottom of my pen,

a chord or so between blinks.

But everyone likes Kerouac for the chaos.

Writer's Block

Middle of the month

middle of the day

repeated laziness

every chemical stuns

to uselessness,

every song the same.

This is my longest day;

I can’t sleep without sweating.

Overruled rules of engagement.

Somewhere there are men

worse than I,

and I speak to them regularly.

The Goblin King

has only access to his fellows.

Growing older,

not rotting.

Start & stop.

Repeat.

Pass by the smells of a fellow,

one of those I mentioned.

Lou Reed might say

this is just a perfect day.

I migrate from room to room,

avoiding utilizing the AC.

Fruit flies sink to the bottom of my hand-made

acid trap I’m inclined to drink from

with its sweet tea-suspending consistency.

Life’s not complicated.

Bible of My Creation

Voices as real as my thoughts

flood the air, and I hear

none of them with distinction.

It is I, now,

with the distance in his vision.

My secrets are commonplace,

from the children I’ve not fathered

to the unattainable.

I whisper a name to myself the most

then hide with mindfulness

my muddy intentions.

Past this moment,

my words have no meaning.

The leather-bound Bible

of my creation

outlasts all rain and fire;

our unspoken agreement is

written in its pages.

All I hear gives music to the noir,

clarification.

The world is ugly,

and I laugh so that

maturity is more than

sentience, more than

immersion or separation.

The shades are drawn,

and still I keep our secret,

afraid to keep eye contact

without hiding behind my words.

Past this moment,

my words have no meaning.

Lightning

Sparks have settled today with

the downpour from last night sneaking

in through my windows.

Tonight, thunder drops the shingles

of my timidity.

Lightning explodes in a flashbang

when I open the door

to take a piss.

It finds its way into me.

Fire

Closing my eyes to feel my heart-beat,

to distance from the crowd attending their egos.

Observing the minutiae,

the room unfolds:

grimacing walls,

coffee-stained lights wrapped around

one thousand dead flies.

Smiling from nervousness,

my leg tendons tense;

how far apart I am from those

I could reach!

Bitterness erodes the seats;

the AC makes me sweat.

Irony inserted in conversation.

Yahweh hiding behind an off-white cubicle.

Smoke filling the lungs.

Blue marble tiles cracking

me up.

The ceiling collapsing.

And somewhere,

a child I couldn’t save.

Rose

A once-white yellow rose

stands in its tenement,

a waterless vase on

Honduran rosewood

out of reach of

the sunlight’s royal intrusion.

Watching the rain,

this rose and I are bound.

But as always, the rain

stops

long enough for the birds

to peruse the hard ground.

The light coming from the kitchen window

skips

and I am entranced

by the morphing dichotomy.

Indeed, do I

dare disturb the universe?

Do I dare keep writing

when this rose is still so yellow?

I Awoke to Thoughts of You

We’ve listened to hammers

hitting the same strings

in different ways

20-something years.

Silent partner,

rest your chin on your forearm

if you hear my name

lying face-down in the grass.

Never more obvious,

God manipulates circumstances

as perfection arrives

late.

The first night:

a shotgun to your thinking,

then a laugh to disguise

sincerity.

And this morning

means nothing

except for a lasting moment

to hold back your name.

Statistics

What is the value of eighty percent

on the edge of a walnut chair

against the window?

Suppose z and x are inverses of each other.

What would bring them closer?

A red couch?

A red moon?

An infinite sky under a galaxy?

Don’t bother finding a planet with me on it,

and don’t expect me to make it home tonight.

The violins are getting louder in the

background. I should leave soon.

Outside this hallway, there is empty space.

I am never alone in a vacuum.

I am never certain whether

glances register legitimately

in my periphery or whether I

cross your county like

the impending rain.

As I tilt my neck towards your tree-house roof,

my feet lift my roots

two hands before midnight.

Inspiration

When I am bubbling,

when I am about to boil,

when I cannot expect my inspiration,

when I feel the most alone

and afraid that time stops and

stops meaning anything,

that is when I force through the membrane

with no time for diffusion.

A friend dies in a car crash

or any old-fashioned way that

sideswipes me down 24-East on a

Sunday evening,

myself speeding towards his funeral and

knowing no one.

His death reminds me of

my life,

meeting him at

the start of the day.

Taking 24-West the way I came,

I cross through Georgia

before I am alone

and it’s boiled over.

Nonsense

This bloated rose in a
flooded vase
is all that's left
of the unknown.

The rain turns to sleet
in a matter of months.

Woman in a trenchcoat leaning against
stacked bricks,
desire never came to the surface.

My feet are dirty from walking
outside the sidewalk
next to the pulsating creek,
and it leads to the horizon
after enough steps.

Garden of Tranquility

Crocuses bloom in my
garden of which I am
the loam,
of diced sweet peppers,
of which I pick one
for a meal.

Evening of the Storm

Do you remember the evening of the storm,

when we waited beneath

a natural roof and

forgot how to

speak clearly?

I do,

the cloistering of rain droplets

on our hair-matted foreheads as

you looked to the ground,

then, perhaps,

to the perimeter of the rainclouds

just beyond the woods.

Russia in Summer

Failed to let go this morning,

clenching your committed expression

to the classics with my

fingertips, mocking the

postmodern alike.

Yes, Claude is as you say, what I say

from a distance, an artist amongst composers.

I would have suggested Tchaikovsky

given the chance.

Akhmatova lived with Punin for 10 years

after her husband passed, and she was

happiest during the war.

We have a similar enemy.

Russia 1910

3 years before it began to freeze,

Akhamtova and Gumilev are wed

by the same state

that would ruin them.

Russia 1912

Akhamtova discusses the evening.

Russia,

where art is bombarded in the foxholes

regardless of meter.

I once decided not to fly there,

and it has haunted me in

a different sense.

Flash back to the present,

a magic cold steel Cold War bullet

strikes me between the 3rd and 4th ribs,

striking me off balance like a

barn door opening one way eternally,

opening my damn quintessence for you

and I without consequence of your

indecisive spurning,

conflicting envy and selflessness within me.

Knyazev shot himself on the stairway of

Sudeikina’s,

so I assume Blok won her affections.

Knyazev was always the romantic type.

We met in a valley

in the dead of summer.

It has been days since.

It will always be days since.

Friends

Now it’s 1:17 a.m.

I’ve lamented over

The Final Cut

over and over.

I wish we could have listened to it

together, anywhere where

two eyes,

two hearts,

could run dry.

Looking into the glassed eyes of

my reflection, I

cannot relinquish and reserve myself

for a friendship as trivial

as all the rest and

cannot cry again over

Neruda’s Poema Veinte, 

cannot hold back my missing partner

holding our confidences

in front of me, of us, of them all, 

in a question I

pray does not return

flat.

Tonight I have no energy

for you, beloved, my brief infatuate;

tomorrow will be like the first,

and after that,

we will be friends

but less.