Woe is to the Home

I’ve been having this dream

In the bathroom where I’m shaving

And leaning over the sink

Running water over my face with my hands

When I look into the porcelain bowl, I see it running red

I watch the smile on my throat pour in the mirror

Around me the walls try to speak with temperature

All frosted and yeasted with cold

My impatience with them crashes the car

Because I couldn’t see out of the windshield.

Come and sit at our abundant table

Make merry and fill your mug to the brim

Of hot and unfiltered bile

Blood, and brandy from France

I offer only because I know

I know about the smooth black stones hidden under your eyes

Fairy’s eggs

That hatch when warmed in the palm for a whole day

So long as the weather is beautiful.

Let’s all just quietly acknowledge the deep-freeze

Frothing from beyond the old looking glass

Bolted from the outside.

The desperate panicked search

Scrounging

Scavenging

Looking for something else

To soften that sadistic urge

To fill up dreams and empty lives

To harvest.

Every beating heart, a lonesome hunter scrawling a page

What was written had to become real

Facts and fictions and the blurbs in-between

About apes and the men

And how their thrashing was the same

About insecurity and pride

A book that fills 20 pounds of flesh

A hungry funeral pyre begging

For blood and milk

Crystalizing against the earth

Like tears in the eyes of the dead.

Spot the possibility

In burning farmer’s fields

That seasonal cleansing

A graveyard of corn.

When the wind whips your face for a hundred years

And the canyons in your skin

Erode wide

Timeless snows fill your poor mouth

Your teeth turn brittle

Your nerves turn gummy and sensationless

And all that nausea will disappear

But it will cost, you.

So what is the value of your arms?

Your face, your sinews

What will they make out of you?

I think I hope to be a tree

And wave for centuries in the breeze

So that perhaps a child could lie in my shade

And enjoy a plum,

But with my luck and what I deserve

The burden of gravel

The lot of stones

Buried under the street

The petty Atlas of the road

My shoulders too small

For anything but the ants.

It’s their shiny carapace

That brings us down to Earth

And whispers garbled apologies into the wind

Its blackmail only complete

When the rain blurs the dirt.

Know that they’ll never find me again

And no one will worry

Not even me

I’ll be sure to leave a lookalike

To feed your hopes and replicate mine

Ghosts aren’t as naïve as you’d think

For they have built entire empires

And toppled others

Their rhythms haunt us.

It’s all about mark-making and branding

Style and memory

The art of dealing with the fear of tomorrow

Is a day-trip to long-dead Pangea

And leaving some of your decency behind.

It’s my dreams you see

Where I can never stop shaving

Until bone replaces skin

And the sink is so full and clogged

The red falls to the floor

And pools there.

Work

Fable-building in the dark, a hobby that’s been taken too far,

Wet with spatters and streaks of real glowing potential,

I think rivers are where civilization was born,

All those who toiled in unhewn dirt, tucked into the belt of Venus,

Priests of many different dusky stages, flattening their feet, their palms, to pray for you,

And go on until the sky can’t get darker.

Putting it off and banging the drums,

Going on all day, pattering feet and sticks without thought,

Coal stacks and steam and machines that moan louder than me, or my tools,

The choice was never yours, but was made long ago,

The paths your ancestors took, the heads they bowed,

Their submission from long ago,

Lingers like the smell of smoke in your hair,

And it stings your eyes more than your daily sweat,

But there’s nothing to be done but keep it on and burning a candle,

For a smell to cover that highway flavor,

So we can look back wistfully at the will,

We were never given.

Standing Stones

O Cornish country

And the corpse of a dog

A place called Plymouth

People pleased to turn to stone

Iron needle idolizers

On shores born without the sun

But how long can we go

Until caught by crooked cops, parading so convincingly

And marched into the moor

Eternally marooned with the old Merry Maidens

Those sentinels that have dotted the shurblands for centuries

The stoic bystanders to history’s end

Your own language is losing itself

Afflicted with the voices of the Angles

Victims of wolfish vagrants vying for power

Harking, hemming, and hawing

While the moor fills with dust and stone

O Bodmin! The bubble of your flesh

Where did the Barons go?

Or those ancient proud Earls

Escaped like unbound eagles

Hiding under the Hurlers

Those haunted spirit houses

A human ego thought humbled

Until reestablishing Eden

With envy-streaked eyes, downcast

And sighing

And starting all over again.

End of Winter

Blue terrace with lights

                Shining stone house glowing warm

Listen to the rain.

The Spring wind is here

                A moss spirit came to me,

What time is sunset?

All I did was laugh,

                There’s a flood a-comin’ boys

And my boat is gone.