A tremor

Medicine for the people

the turmoil of making a small city 

a tempest to some 

together when we rise up to a dime store prophecy

the saints are marching over innocence and someone wrote a letter to god

gold and damp white mornings together, behind and before

a root queen looking for redemption from finding romance in the mundane

showering the dime store nation for the motion of your soul

like this people are the sum of their biographies

rock and sand channeling spirits for a royal vibe india a go go, while I wait

creation meets soul rock and sand turning fate into a feat of genius

responsible to many true to none

my country has many a story of men

love is all marooned with the sea

she couldn’t be a daughter of the sun she became a daughter of the moon

in a war of wills and will nots where will represents a geometry of faith

and will nots wears out the breath of life

age is responsible for sitting on a threshold of inside and out 

something unspoken remains the same while I stumble on the way to your shore

Rome

Dedicated to Agnese, Giovanna and Minolo

we are tender machines
cicadas buzzing a rhythm for the sun to shine brighter
a place of pause
midnight migrants and their sacrifice
an exodus of biblical proportions
to sea they have gone
to boats they cling
with ears clogged by the sound of the ocean
a multitude of migrants
sullen and surprising, movement and entropy
the truthfully delicious condition secure and ready
taking into account every eventuality
a feeling comes undone
deliberate and calculating
the elevator moves without arriving just a ring of passage
ruins in reverse mouth notes and compassion fatigue
food where the sun burns the cobblestone streets, typical
for the precariat sunning themselves on the beach
bedouin blessings and figs for fate
bare and browning with tales of great fiction to animate their streets
events that tone and strengthen a greater passion
to the fruit of the lost
small votives dance in the breeze before the night presents itself
with diamond lights and maximum joy

unsettling english

At the hand of an almighty memory

At the hand of the almighty, a memory

A memory at the hand of the almighty

At the memory of the almighty a hand

A hand of the almighty and memory

At the hand of memory the almighty

At the almighty memory a hand

At the memory of the almighty hand

At the memory of the almighty a hand

At the almighty hand a memory 

At the memory of the almighty

At the memory of the hand

Rings an almighty memory and hands to hold them.

Between San Diego and LA

The wealth of networks leading me through

channels where fat rivers once ran

yawning to the promise of irrigating an arid landscape

man’s ultimate testimony to controlling nature

laid down lines that combined to make his house

Twilight stained and filling in yellow like nicotine from

traces of a summer weeks sun

to hold your language so subtle

it’s grace a membrane over our everyday in

a manner that orders a building of meanings that are

found under willows and threaded bark,

a grey, dried from the beach sun.

I bring the images of films that

dragged down these concrete river beds like

a mattress small enough to run or walk to

parallels forging feather and sponge with

an impression of your body

To melt and spread

furrowing into hurdles of plenty

the threshold of our nation, the edge of our culture

the end of our continent where ocean and fiberglass are

traded for asphalt and wheels

A sublime that renders indifferent the nuzzling of your cheek on

a pillow of dried beans

Slipping against each other to rustle

the corners of that east coast

a shadow of your former self removed from

your previous life that we haven’t shared that

I don’t really need to know until

you are ready to tell me,

a trust I forgot was possible

when I don’t need to have details to string through

our conversations weaving a past that I

was drenched in discovering through the telling.

a desert in another lifetime,

defied and jingling from the twilight of

a warbling heresy

a litany of calls into a still night when

the rest of them were slumbering with

their beaks tucked under the inner edge of their wing or

the wing of another that whisked

through my breath and words to grant all my wishes.

Ben Two

When drama is the only answer and anger meets beauty I recall the following

question clearly;

“Where are the wings that dance about the edges of what I can see?

They were so good at chasing away the shadows that haunt my corners,

I miss the lace she held with thin, plastic thread, the type they called angel’s hair...”

“She traces the lines of sewing needles to find them if they go missing, all humming a rhythm and stitching the seams of let go.”

Into days and nights that collect and run down the panes of our windows with rain in icy fingers and silver tongues

I fumbled to slow and receive a fistful of branches handed in

simple grey words that pleaded for the innocence of childhood and release

from the responsibility intended for the chosen ones of the North.

I check my grace at the door with my shoes to

wander into a more delicate anger, deceptive in it’s play of discontent,

hidden behind the trappings of a polite family’s training

His shoulders are wide enough to be those of Atlas

Instead he wears them thin from too much control over his looming maturity

He will dry to ash in the depths of pity that he refuses to embrace and then release

Chasing after his own reflection when he should be strengthening himself

to help carry the weight of the world.

Ben

like a cat, every move with

moments when boys jump to a beat that rolls and sways

soaked in remembering how

your voice is not rich when it comes to writing

prone and in need of a tenderness I seek

unraveling the city that comes with the ability to stop

you slip when dancing late into the night

drawing out the thought of soup in the dead of winter

the kind that melts my heart and spreads close to my bones for warmth and touch

my eyes turn the color of my shirt and soften over spindling arms

the branches of a tree bridging the

distance to the stillness I’ve witnessed between

a summer for children beyond Darwin’s radio

Where small fish swim near snails folding slowly behind

the secrets of a thousand weary travelers

tucked under tiny flowers in the early morning

with waiting wells of hidden language

Untitled #5

A sky as wide and long as the tower that Rapunzel was held within and from which she let down her hair.

A weave that will be hand died with the colors of a rainbow that brought about the tears of children from laughing as they ran through fields of unending happiness. 

They will be held forever in time by a color as soft and discrete as a constant appreciation of the tenderest ticket passed through hands of a whisper with a scent

Blowing from your lips and the froth that spreads over the water after a wave passes under me

Blue galaxies tucked between the edges of a ceiling near plastic candy wrappers 

strung to layers of butterflies still in their rising from the ground to the ceiling

A flock of needles that point suspended from a dozen wet lips curious that at one glance could appear and the second glance disappear

Filled with ladders of life woven so small we will never see them in their natural habitat. 

Gorging hills with mouthfuls of grass soft but turning yellow preparing for a winter that feels more like a spring. 

The solar eclipse concedes a wavering pulse of electromagnetic charges uninterrupted. Feedback loops dwindling up around with no nicotine today ladies.

A truth held in my pocket to be fondled and caressed for longevity with dreams of fountains that burst quietly oozing the heat of flesh and blood. 

Edna St. Vincent Millay

I find a memory that the theater burned
with all my lips have kissed
a savage beauty, larger than life

Launching ships to sail on seas of ether drenched strawberries
worn and mumbling along the halls of shuddering poets in mourning

my tongue is not made of bone,
my tongue is not made of air
my tongue is not silent
it holds the salt of the earth in the hands of a multitude

It was made to clean waits to be washed by your mercy
In launching the edges of an east coast
with hunger as its own mistress
I forget the chapters that were knotted by complexity

There remains a gleaning
around the edges of galaxy from my future pages to roam
glancing to grace and pushing past stars far from
the basket of phrases sought by a general intellect
growing and accumulated in a city
that swells with darkness and shadows
so far is the ocean
so far is the light of unwavering solitude

stories of giving and foam
run rolling across a surf that changed to a stormy sea
and in that storm I will remain
wiping its breath from my eyes

Coney Island George

He takes his life

pulls and stretches it to the edges of what it will stand,

the underside glistens

it yawns

he flips it, chucks it, picks it up, 

hurling it again and again, jumps on it,

sucking it into his mouth he chews it, it bubbles and thickens

a wet squeaking as it tears and drops to pieces, on the floor.

he gathers it back together, pulls it till it splits and flings it into corners of the room.

he has thrown it through windows, 

it has shattered multiple panes of glass and mirrors

cutting to draw a slow blood,

absent of heroin, drenched with nicotine and hatred 

taught carefully then beat relentlessly into him,

by his father.

Jane in the Afternoon

gelled flesh asunder

breasts stretched and loose

trails of scotch soaked air drift, swaying, dust

what outlines the air around her

drawn, is the skin and tight weave of her polyester slip

stepping carefully chin up, back straight, hair loose,

around the corner, a light roll on her heel, squeezing through a sponge releasing water

hushing into splitting down it's center

a tiny suck, pressing her out

it turns a dry jelly, crumbs of cellulose fall

lips cleared of color.

Untitled #4

grey smoldering
onto turning the phrases of paradise

the page linked inextricably
to a difficulty that is best left forgotten

bouncing back like a certain type of rubber
with dried flowers twisted in their own history

unwilling to render her broken edges
that have collected dust by now

the wind that blusters the warmth given her
by small, close quarters of tenderness

and the stars shine their own distance from the sun and earth

wearing a pitch of sound
repeating a will to power
in a voice light as flour

wet color to dry linen stretched tight as a drum

they hold much softer sounds than that of your breath
or the smell of my fingers

Romeo

In the skin of time revealing a chill

is the hush of the fall moving into winter

I gather leaves as they cover grass and soil brown - unlike wheat

For clean teeth with moments of

weaving journeys to the end of your earth

lining the edge of wet to crystal and

A child’s finger turning and dipped in wine, makes that glass sing

under feet that fumbled over steps like tango grace and moonlight

with stars breathing a growing and dimming to

breath and heart-beat, breath and heart-beat

our laughter polishing to a gloss as you claimed me

a sun that warmed your soul

Walking across the bricks of this block to

walls lining meadows of edible grass green,

turning in the palms of shine white lines and

salt that whisks away into ash 

is a tender alchemy holding chimes dangling on your porch 
under waves of bubbles from you exploding into that place between

air and sky sea and surf.

New Moon

I trace the blotting haze that

fuse it’s shave of light

felt edges step away from the breeze and

sink through the widest street,

framing the river its rustling thickness.

So many shapes, so many times

how different this new home is

after shadows formed tents I never found

with flip books in awakened blinking and

small piles of chicks tremble as mountains of

dandelion tufts before they tumble away to

seed the ground for another season

Canewdon, United Kingdom

There were no seats in early churches, the congregation gathered around the preacher and the weakest go to the wall

We arrived to devise the dream of another union as a three-headed monster of devices and derivative benefits

In provoking an expectation of grace and synthesis gnawing at lines of voice that thread being and time, temporal shifts bring about the new mystic, which is of galaxy born

Empty chairs and pavilions waiting for a critical mass to assemble around a tide that bakes like meat in the sun.

The galaxy is at your feet - with stars for air, sucking through cables to rage and technology from the margins

Class in its unrelenting affect harrow the new heroines of the seaside and fill their pockets with heavy coins

Supple, chuck and press as the moving of a limb cries its loss, tears of mascara and waxed pencil grease

Smudged by the great mistresses’s fingers as they push past a feminine that culls quick movements and little dwindling over sadness to anticipate

Eyes that were open centuries ago looking at a world we now only see in paint

Manhattan

The clouds like lint rolling in

with tiny shadows under the ridge of your brows,

your nostrils and the corners of your mouth

Hope, my breath, was wafting towards a sun that was plush, carefully, patiently present 

for touch and mercy to chase away

It dissolved my aches along a 20 block walk through Time Square 

in this city that has ceased to be the center

A phrase I have heard more than once 

All the footsteps bring me to this path, 

to a groove that opened a tin box of teas

one for men that hold grapes above my lips and lie with me as I eat them

one for steering desire into something that doesn’t bruise my skin and scuff my heart 

to warm my hands with an ecstatic state that rises daily like the sun 

that can be brought to it’s knees 

when I am bound by what I cannot have.

A Hummingbird’s Heart

the foundations for a christening of ash in a city of god 

Where life is cheap and harder than coal-crusted diamonds

You find black that cuts your fingertips to bleeding when trying to escape

Smoking voices tell me

Birth is the will of your memories.

It can be more than new borne flesh.

It is the fattest promise and the most recurrent dream.

In paused light a drowsy evening

feeds me the wisdom of street corner preachers with

names I can’t remember.

They shadow me daily watching all that I do,

nodding gently at my rituals of opening and celebration
As their spell fades into the distance

my secrets search for a new home.

A still, summer afternoon that billowed my thin curtains

Smoothing rooted buildings my arm can easily overcome I raise my hand to talk

static and sand feed the sound of Sunday morning meetings from 60 years past

Congregations remember when ash must be coaxed into flame 

within rules of seized power, without proper consensus

We labor through attempts to forget

the violence of a world we listen to 

where self appointed gods stride aside their cloaks of divinity

Birthrights reinvented in the legacies of the governing class

Fading into the secluded homes of gated communities

Trembling, winsome, sensing the tremors

of a hummingbird’s heart that beats 1,400 times a minute.

Absenthe

Before the door to the sun lies the street of the virgin of dangerous things

cluttered amongst an obstacle of particularities and temporal limitations 

only planning and less superficial presence would overcome

The pirates of our present day have begun collecting tongues that

speak of air and all things generative

A body too delicate to touch nesting within 

the ashes from the phoenix of our last temporary resting place, where autonomy is snatched and coddled for it's preciousness and hidden monstery

A purple haze settles under my feet with it's sheen of chemical interdependence

I blow softly as if into a child's ear...

Temptation as a symbolic exchange for all to see but few to understand

folds in a space time continuum where quantum computing can represent

Thousands of women gathered to build a temporary kitchen for presence and protest upon the steps of a courthouse that understand the force of a listening, expanding out to encompass an entire community

Dressed in clothes the color of milk he holds the balance of efficiency and chaos

tender lines that trace a mystery of generations yet to speak

plantlets unfurling from soil, loosening through time in

a generation and disintegration cycles of industry.

Pausing only to swallow the stars she turns to hear her voice has changed

no longer a child of her age but a woman gently wicked and unearthly pale

A savage beauty whose visitations give rise to what would have once placed her in certain confinement to contain her chaos embodied

Under the asphalt lies a garden of the avant garde with flowers for the anti-optic

we step to a stillness that only noise and speed without examination makes possible

Opening drawers buried deep to find a multitude of tiny, tin arms and legs

made to carry away a critical mass

Milagros crusted in the walls, embedded in the curtains, 

Armies of milagros to march upon the bricks building the engaged withdrawl of an invincible summer.  

That same summer melts into an arctic past in the haunted radio waves of low frequency.

Wall Flower

Dreams of fountains that burst quietly

the dimmers of winter call a certain type of glow

A stage of stills where the patterns were

assembled to build ladders of life

Electric circuits through silk thread

around small glass fingertips

polished of their distinguishing characteristics

Felt wheels soaked with watered talcum powder

a blanket of grazing animals in

a forget me not transfer of forgiveness

Pockets of change that fill a monastery of past harmonies
dancing around the under-side of stones
carried across oceans of time

from ancient cities with their palms open to a master of fantasy

skimmed from the top of twilight falling about my memory

I lift my eyes that glisten with galaxies

Gleaning air and water mixed with light and stirred

Inhabiting lyrics to fold into

my suitcases with forests of rain misting ashes curling

a tiny disguise preening the water of shrimp

in their emergence from the wallpaper.

Reverence

stop the presses cause we found our man

seems the thick was just too thin

dialing ease against the wind

the swell of desolation

in suffocated shame

still you walk the same

certain things he didn’t need to know

like when the saints are marching over innocence

taking you the wrong way home

investing in a dime store prophecy

one by one days they are behind us

side by side together when we rise up

on the dusty road

the trail is for the lost and found

heavy things we take lightly

giving me the courage to fight on

Weather Winter Warm - San Diego

Filling worn stones with salt water

The mist lay down over your tiny flowers in the early morning
Tucked under small swaths of spider webs bowing

The dew a bridge between North and South
as quiet as the discovery
waiting in glances shielded from the light of day

Galaxies of forever dwelling in fire places and small fish

Fearless dreams of passing flights and turning tides

The ones you trust may not be who you think they are

A summer for children born
until harvesting becomes a choice

Surly glances where complex words laid bare
reassembled in a manner new to the chosen 

within the realm of deep harmonization

germane seeds and waiting wells of hidden language

Along the steps
around snails folding slowly
across the concrete you laid your hands on when you arrived
close to Hollywood

beyond Darwin’s Radio
programming for twine wound to fill small crevices
A whispering android that holds the secrets of a thousand weary travelers

Flutter Sink

To polish the night

In patches of memory

hints of a past

Fastened like dried fruit

A dot of fire swaying around

a cinder of string

flutter sink sultry sugar crust

to polish my skin

a rest-bit for temperance

passages of power spaceships

lines that indicate “lift-off”

silver and gold leaf

gilding and lilting a steady rain

all revolutions exaggerate

relinquishing my sense of purpose

light and volume weave an ambience

while holding the love of someone

gentle, egregious and forlorn is a key

to an alternate universe

Untitled #4

horn blows that helium floats
in spirit calls a command rising
who taught you to be brief

you dont feel
you don't lie
and you dont see

long gone radio
thrice funk de noted
In the home
to become her to speak her
until she crafts her own

you dont feel
you don't lie and
you don't see

this salt bread and
strong cultural manners
unsettling english

you dont feel
you don't lie
and you don't see

this sugar cake dancing
the same steps
reaping the sewing of signals

you dont feel
you don't lie
and you don't see

Startling

the gold of grace
in the tongues of women
that came before me
static when
there is no static at all


keys to
my own ghosts
polishing words
writing your touch


A prophecy
the price you pay on the dusty road
a trail of both bodies


saints are
marching over the wind that
startles the silver sheets


folding into
the candy of the blessed

We're still young

and so I go  move gently towards a place  where I find  a self that defies


the limitations  i have drawn before twilight without fireflies  because fireflies need  a yard to dance in

about the streets  that will open  where night meets day

the treasury of  a moment  in all its glory

peppered with  good intentions we’re still young 

rattling around  your brain  are unfinished arguments for things  that toy with your internal tide

post information romance  has it’s place  in the realm of transcendence screen and muse  at the same time

salt and snow  building a rythmn  that she maintained  with the blessings of rain