“All conditioning aims at that: making people like their social destiny.”

-Aldous Huxley A Brave New World

Small Fingertips

like knitting needles pick through tangled wire

Awaken something untouchable

paper-fine and not human

Let us touch, but feel less

The tactile sense is not to excite the flesh,

but the circuitry of distraction unconscionable.

Our words dwell in flatlands

compressed like animal organs

caked in fur on a dark highway

no perpetrator in sight,

but if you dig deepest you will reach the other side of Earth

Soundless yet buzzing efficiently

high speeds and all thoughts thinkable.

It’s not romantic.

It’s not even sweet and silver,

but sweat, order, labor, factor and quota.

Santa’s little helpers

binge and splurge

ad nauseum.

The vertigo workers climb bell towers

to sight the mausoleum

Direction embedded

The program enlisted

Small fingertips tap minutes

into a punch card into a product

which is the brain.

2.4.12

I lost that element long ago, 
Last night I jested 
about "big brother" friends. 
I learn to roll with the boys
In a fluctuating funk and Friday 
night stretches into Saturday 
My mind scatters like 2" x 3" flimsy papers all 
over the floor and counter.
I wore knee highs today 
my brittle nails seemed 
to tell me so. What can give.

If you were a Hokusai

If you were a Hokusai, which would you be?
I have done the rounds for my seven-year cycle,
which I have never heard of
Only tonight I go out to dance, but cannot.
Caught in a lens that only I see    
My only sense is a chamomile cloud
My only life is hourly
My house too small for thought
Too big for humility
These minutes too significant to forget
what bright falling leaves we are  

11.22.11/2.4.12

I will leave my children
A body of my life's work:
An empty tarnished chalice and the contents therein
A brief explanation of how we find irony timeless.  

Tonight we burn paper
And who we were 15 days ago
What remains is what we quest to be: Fire and ash  

11.9.11

Simple Twilight

Our white dresses show through

the simple twilight

Darkness perforated

Father is a fragment

a fractal of religion,

and a lesson unfolding.

He’s fallen into

the only thing we talk about.

The practical things fall

victim to absurdity

and why care much

about the faint faces

on the window of a night train. 

You scream delicious

with bags of decadence

dripping a condition of resident nectar.

Someone mingled with high air might understand

the pastiche quilt of sameness—

like midwestern visions of the land

without a pony

a project of honesty upon accessory—

an endless reference, controlling comets

And you are another

gentle singular, solo facsimile

wrapped in a blue tarpaulin, undying ocean.

You suffocate in shine, miss a smile,

creased in the horizon at a sunrise-silhouetted bridge

a generous view, a stately reply

a drawn growth, mapped network of marrow and steel

suspended by seed and steam. I was wasted on me

contrived of brick. A sequined eye on the sail of astonished clouds

unable to blink a mistake. 

Lastly, a Limitation

Soft concentration
thunders inside
siren metal tinkle

i thought lovely
the Goddess of Speech
broken conflict at risk

i insist on a single
weather balloon
satellite lost we--
abandoned thick floatation
expanding outside
stratosphering wicker echo

i thought heavenly
seven times once
an owl echoing in the wood
twice dragon eyes
three imaginary boys
four and so forth

we garden pentacles
with cups of buckles shekels
of safety oil and wheat in the night
now nine and spins a tempest
an endless twisted
exhale into evolutionary faith
a sword of choice and fate will fasten  

Eighty-Sixed

Year of the Rabbit
rains without repair.
He wears a red jumper
and plays soccer over the river.

With a splash, I see a flash
of past on the dusty hare.
Children play cards in the black grass
A concrete impression survives the blast
Centuries swell
a countenance rare.