ogre me, ogre he, ogre-ogre-ogres see.

i eat the dew of my
grandmother's grandfather's
family recipe for
pork-chop, onion,
and tomato stew.

i eat it in the morning
with my pill, while i sit and
listen to the hum of a
family of humming birds
from the window sill.

i eat the color of the early
morning with my
breakfast--some milk in
a glass, jellied toast--as
the quiet dulls her.

i eat and i am tired
from this mind that let
itself to wander 'mong
her quiet world that,
quetly, has
turned too old.

Beer Belly

If planning is the map to success,
or if to nap, obligated
by fat couches and lazy cats,
despising mileaus every day
is tiresome attack. Who needs
a hounding when all night the yelps
of artillery across
abandoned immobile train cars--
silence as anticipation
already is a key device
for reaching future goals: attain,
attend, accentuate yourself:
articulate your soul's demands,
unwind by asking, caking life with pray.

A Mother Gardening

While marigolds can entertain,
cats attract longer attention spans.
Age six is rooted in the sand,
where castles and the prince cast shade,
with many thanks. Grilled cheese and pickles
and a baby anarchis is born,
voracious appetites need more
than salad made with flower blossoms.
She always is the last to know
when sun appears and when it sets,
appropriately stable,
adroit without a dash of light--
she peppers the lawn with her steps,
appears as an angel to the pea plants.

SUCCESS

in dollars
on an island
the band of calls
collapsed.

i straddled your plan and
and –

stockpiled the icebox
for the setting sun to come
comes once, to celebration.

said unsaid and said some more

did you hear the children in the lawn. did you?
hear the children in the lawn. now, go to them, now...

why are children in the lawn? why? why? no, i said
why. answer them with a response, don't forget...

i was but a silenced nephew. i was, but
i is also much more. is was taken too.

when we were babes, then. when we
heard away the lawned men...

Weekend

The ever ending rhythm that
is enigmatic for its end.
Energy we've harnessed, released
outdoors is framed with peeling pain,
patios and porches: a perplexed
person walking, a puerile puppy.
We party as if the patrons
had as much to proffer: we prevail
over Saturday--the scratched hours,
suds, the sultry nature of sex,
or jubilation of the sad,
pitiful; what is smart assail.
Green prevails, garnishing our moods,
we we: gregarious and mad charming.

the dry and famulous maple as a tonewood

sometimes i might just be
too much for trying--

or sometimes the light takes two
touches. when you speak "oh

seldom have you seen..."
the maples we've sent

within your workshop...
RANG-RANG-RANG-A

LANG. "de
stroy the
ant" says tree.

and we did... when we were little.
'till they flooded, and we were melt.

it was sad when, then, we slept
away the after before noon,

sitting in the shade of too
few shadows. "the night is

nice like the color of my hand
shake, nice like my tired eyes.

nice like a goodnight.

Log

I have not heard the hollow sounds,
the hot tree rotting, the whole soft trunk,
however humid, heaving, what
has been exhausted here-to-fore--
the brown bark that's been well eaten,
and is bearing soil, birthing weeds.
It folows pure but inbred seed,
of blotched mushrooms--blooming about.
It cannot be in my conceit,
I've see it catharize and keep,
not seductive but concealed and sweet,
it capers to the maggots, but cats
who preen so kittily, don't seem
to peer inside the moldered trunk.

pliers and doors, poised on your surface.

bottled babes, they fable there, and a play, while a
midnight xylophoned to summer-sets, rainbows to the
dew, blooming through three speckles of a reeded dawn.

shoed, in the lawn, we grazed the slept with your dreamies,
surfing on the sounds of your freckle, mouthed in the dreary
of our sight. this was the hour of the tantrumed: for it boiled

on the soil of your patterned slack, suckles creviced our
spilt; and we followed rivers to your chest, all no-more-noised
and sick as the rivered morning bloomed to you a tune.

three.

Amidst the mess of sleep and sweat I am beginning
to understand there is no quiet here.
The whispering of windowsills,
hums mmms ahhhs murmur lights;
gentle electric ostinato to my breathing.
Slow, helpless breath
and eyes that focus too long
on smooth surfaces
that leave no room for shadow.

EMULSION

bent-kneed sirens perch on the immersed rock
in red bathing suits. the crust is smooth
beneath them. their blonde hair
does not wave to the sea. they are not
worried. the women,
in white suits, wield knives.
they are beneath the rock
gouging crevices in arcs.
ropes tied around their midsections
are fixed to wooden buckets nodding on the surface.
their legs scissor-split, their black goggles
smeared in sea-salt.
the women will never reach the sirens.
will never crack the foam nor
best the scalloped shelf cups
only scrape from the bed polyps swollen
and secreting adoration.

THE HANDS OF THE BARGEMAN'S

The hands of the bargeman’s
hands inside my hands –
We are moving through an ancient
table of contents. Out of our heads

comes the now-hoof, the now-hoof stamping
always from the front of our heads.

The bargeman watches my
sideways anthology
digging out from the skull that I carry.

It is a formidable sight:
the eye-socket and knee cap
wanting like below-grass-moles to meet.

I am a little afraid. If I touch
the antler, then I am the antler,
twice as long as it even, but I’m also
just the antler’s dream.

Out of the back of our knees
the bargeman wimples
his glowing ropes onto this present time’s slush.

There is a beaver swimming beneath us.
Compilations of our lives
reflect in the cedar branches he dives for,
toothing his dam with the rudder’s timed creak.

Damn, I think. Even though I’m
the hero, the story still’s going
to say that I die.

We look down. The oar-handle
in our hands -- between my fingers --
rings with the threshold of its
not even being.

two

stare.
stare.
stare.
don't worry she said
we are under an overhang
so your new jacket is okay
turn.
when did it start raining

coffee table; sheeted; (rewrite)

coffee table; sheeted.

i don't believe in seeing sleep. and i
don't think it's something that we need...
as these, the shoed--the is, in midnight-run, the
fumble caught her ankled stump, while

meow meow--the table kittied noises.

oh table, scream so loud; meet eye, and sheet
beleaves: to keep me your eyes that key that be; while,
we, angered, lip to silent the linening white--with

a moo moo from you, tripped across the room.

and lone, to noise, i metronomed away, while,
all keyed in the streets, from her, from you, 'till

boom boom--some children mound a boom. these

steepled children sound themselves a muse.

Linguistics

I have come to understand, or
created understanding to cope with
shrieking howls of some half-formed language and
blood-red scrawls that assault my senses.

Direct translation is impossible for
those who speak it don't know what they're saying.

It is a dialect of creeping dread.
ancient, (un)natural.

Whispers of worry, grunts of confusion, shouts of fear,
Cacophony of terror.

It is as an Alpha wolf,
well-fed, expert hunter who,
for the first time,
finds himself alone and feeble, starving and scared.

A rumbling noise he has never made burns through his throat,
bursting out behind clenched teeth and shivering lips.
The sound and feel of it scares him
as much as the circumstances that cause him to make it.

Our tongues move strange and vocal cords left frayed.
Our bodies feel alien and numb.

I have come to understand these things a herald of a new age.
The desperate new/old language of our blood.