Sunday, February 24, 2013


“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

Sunday, June 17, 2012

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.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

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

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

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

Thursday, April 28, 2011

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. 

Sunday, April 17, 2011

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  

Saturday, April 16, 2011

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.