max is a mill man working on a hand stand.

one night in the early evening
light--the light-dark blue,
three children spread their lips--
while, solar bound, on the roots
of a yes, a mule screams too slowly:

"you are alone with the
mirrors of leers from your
cowered asymmetry"

and, echo, it echoes in the room-
world, and they stay and sit to watch the words
curl spirals, new and fruitful sound-whirls, till
the tactiles, no longer tactile, filled
till...


...the three children refused
to stare, and chose, instead to sleep
away the maximals.

one.

sharp smiles feels like a kick in the eyes,
and inhaling,
inhaling.
breathless pause before
pulling -

away now for rest and renewal.

chomp chomp

noise in the hair,
rising while

tyrannosaurus rex rides a spaceship,
lies real sly and drools

when a baby comes to lick
his eyelip, he stuttered, there, and
twitched a bit.

this was when the
silence fell, when

little baby swelled
and felt the nightswitch

STATIONED AT THE WATCHTOWER WATCHING

Tonight we are tuning the watchtower’s staircase
to a certain song of the sparrow…

a beacon fire inside its gullet…

its nest a heliotrope of musk. Don’t
be afraid.

Unthread the horrid whoosh of panic…

behind you, a dusky light-box swings
from the deer’s neck; his hooves
are static flickering.

Our cloaked maneuvers are long. We are
wearing our ropes. It is cold.

Think of Gretie’s garden. How one bucket
swung towards disintegration;

how champagne poured from the birch tree
& it tasted like the stars.

hungry days

Not just inhaling but
seeing smelling eating cool wind warm air
full of yellow glaze.

smells alternately like New York City and a
cheesy amusment park.

We step into nothing before our foot hits
back down again and
I find myself wishing it won't.

just rise, slow
rise above buildings' brick and city's street.

Thinkin' about magic.
Hoping for urban dragons, socialite dryads.
Flashes of energy, bangs and pops as sorcerers
practice in alleyways.

Dreams are easy on life-hungry days
lazily existing on sun-ripened air
floating a little
between

each

step.

felt hoses for a fire

a happy time is a
happy thought:

when hundred million years is terrored, held;

when four or fourteen children melt.

when muses blink and stick a sale

or, now, with sleep, i smelle and talk

while melted children, screaming,
smelt.

rain rain go away come back...

a blue
jay whip-poor wilts.

ouchsplash
ouchouch
ouchsplash
ouchsplash
ouchouch
splashsplashouch

a blues
man sits and wails.

i like birds; you like whirls.

mornings swullen in their cool. the morning
left a mind a-living in the sunlight.

here, i close my door and
and make my pictures leg a walk

of unkempt blackness in
smooth wet plastic

chalk.

color crayons dropped from my
hands, and landed in the darkest,
bland and care-all body caulk.

swullen mornings lost in
leftturns--black night turns that leave you
yearning for the spider hand across your eye,
the spider hand, killing light, the light, the night, oh

where is twilight,
swullen

at my door.

languid. the liquid where i've hid.

monsters on the knoll have hangers in their hands
they're hunched; fingers and knots and warts
a-ringing in the afternoon; a-ring a-ring, they ring and ring.

monsters flying kites, and flashing teeth--too bright--too
white.

i sleep the morning of a night,

manufracture! hear the gears a-turning... turning...

never neighbor, leave me to
labor on my stool, leave me to
slink and sleep to my story.

a man at a microphone. a tie
on the stage. a sleep in his eye,
so bowed and so stale.

the wind on my face. the wind
at my back. i'm running away
to join my sweet lass.

LISTENING TO THE MANDOLIN ON OUR PORCH

Wait. Stop playing the mandolin for a second –
Do you hear that owl’s note rising from the
sunken garden? I wanted to touch that owl
behind the castellated Gothic style house, but
you were not with me, and you had the owl-
touching gloves. The air, all around, was
geometric with rhododendrons. Think about
what it would look like from inside an
armadillo’s clear shingling…Alright give me
the mandolin for a second; listen to this song:
Out past the barracks, where it always smells like
waffles, a basset hound empties his lungs and
bladder in the hummock. What does this feel
like, all this calm? Being clothed in a suit-coat
of devotion so fully, I begin to soak inside my
own twin.

motive

through windswept ambition, we've left
the lily-pads of our past to shine
as beacons in-in-finite sludge.