D.

I continue, as if it were an isomer of happiness
which passage of the right wavelength would rectify.

But from the coffee-grounds of regret I manage to extract
a decoctation of beauty that props my eyelids apart.

My bafflement of her surrounds me, a city in motion
where I stand on every corner drinking the car-exhaust of devotion.

24.

  in green rainlight
the sidewalk scintillates

  melodious pipe tobacco
this side of the glass

  the tunnels his sanctuary
on the way to being lost

  today escaped out of April
tangled up with August

3D. "Tower of Shadow"

You are the song i turn up loud whenever i hear it.
You are the double i swerve my eyes to catch a glimpse of.

My heart opened wide last night & i wanted to sing to you
Pure vowel hymns, bitter myrrh, & the Stone Mnizuris.

Landscape i never see come speak to me jussive & blaring

14. "Anti-Pope"

Return one day we shall · to Moorawathimeering
having had our fill of · Albion's engineering.

Oolongphaeic oodoolay, · dull slub-mobled diamond,
now idylls only aidle · void of new endearing.

Dernely formed atningas · stalk the dearth-dealth, this wishness,
and we crave but the renga's · breaking, out of hearing.

How did the dreaded khamsin · intervene its yowee?
Allotrope of jasmine; · maybe just incense clearing.

Vienna ours, goodbye. I · sylvan tallabilla
imitate the aye-aye · progging tree grubs by spearing.

Nevertheless you still could · fetch the eulowirree
simply in greeting ilka · mellsylvester nearing.

2D. "Uzi Lullabye'

Boogie to Tarpeian Rock
glorification of impact

the missing bills found
now i can continue

where i left off
as if uninterrupted

believe
in the Akashic Record

4.    "Only the Word does not Fall"

Smokescent is deepest blue
is my true past, the rest dross.

Again this gift of silence
i almost dont want to take it.

Not remembrance, renewal
in that which perfected me.

i watch the fire a long time.
Suddenly i have left the city.

1D. "silence is the one thing needful

1.
   The place where the dark
deepens to infinity..

useless throwing name
after name down,

as if one might fill--
like a bullet the bullet hole.

2.
   Shiver-winds indoors
like palm to a mirror

& it's only from
what was

was,
the great insomnia

makes you remember everything
to come.

3.
   breath from a semi
surge, shower of gravel; on board

song flows into song without a seam.

34. "Thoughts on the Late Revolution"

To serve a myst'ry i am sworn;
to know the rose, but love the thorn.

Can those to this condition born
believe in a rose without a thorn?

Together even more forlorn--
to bless the rose & serve the thorn.

40. "Leap Day"

Gray we returned with
Here & there a ruby glow

Serious crashes necessitate
Rerouting, while the Y2K Czar

Is cited something i pay no heed to
This being a land beyond all that

11. "EASEMENT"

everything on this street the visible past--
if it happens once it doesn't happen at all.

& i walk surrounded by my memories,
only stirred by what connects with them.

am i seen? as part of the frieze. so be it. why,
if not for love, has shambling-time such pain?

22.

Winter sunburn, her high hall
emptying...will we meet, & know?

Day so short, so many plans
for intersections; unguessable.

Ice storm makes your ticket worthless,
somewhere you lose your sovran amulet.

F. "MARCH"

I realized I had given up the brotherhood hand-clasp
sometime between this love-sorrow, & the last.

You have such an exquisite sense of humor...
how is it even now you don't find me ridiculous?

I know you didn't ask me to come bleed on your carpets.
Like, that bullet was just a ricochet.

What kind of discipline will it take not to give her anything?
If I had tried this at first, how much different we would've been.

You the air of the fields & open sky,
I the air of a stagnant shuttered room.

Sometimes I just have to say, "look what you're giving up!"
--& it's then I know most that I am terribly in error.

What use are my opinions? No one wants to know them,
& if they did, it would only be to kill me.

You are so kind, you know I'll do anything
you say; & you only ask to be left alone.

The part of me that's dying's the only part wanted to live...
or so I pretend. How much more must I learn of Love!

Great & inscrutable Goddess, grant me that creaturely wisdom
who, when faced with death in a trap, gnaws off its foot & escapes.

Joy left a sheen on the sidewalk,
but not a drop on me.

For the first time I contemplate deliberate avoidance.
This is not cruelty but sheer derangement.

All the distractions she counselled me are flat & tasteless
--not her, but them, I think of giving up.

Everyone is "looking for love" it seems--but you,
who alone has been promised a better if you'd spurn this.

--Patchouli, patchouli, patchouli,
the world is in you--& I'm blind.

I can stand a lot more,
bring on the boiling lead.

What makes me want to live, has made me want to die
enough that now, despair seems hardly harsher than my joy.

If you won't be my sun--
shine, still, in my night.