Proxy

An avatar death done in internet way, is gamed for return, for a
Resurrection, for redemption, a rebirth right back to pseudo lie;
So like religion, the player becomes but sad simulacrum for life.

Allies

The habit of danger fashions the trench-coat and cloak of war.
Daily enmities and fights give rise to lengthy feuds and hatreds,
Which, whenever are en-kindled, ignite genocides in tomorrows.
There lives a little holocaust sitting inside us ready to be flamed.
Small sleights engorge to grow; become allies that tumor death.

Out!

Gestured safe or gestured out, the call is yet still
The same. As if one had never played this game.


Bench warmers, judged not able to steal a base;
Not able even to sacrifice to bunt a player home,
Just member of that roster never rotated to bat.


From the start, passed picked to play on a team.

Smile

Tinged softly to green age, her eyes of copper upon this harbor gaze;
Darkness shrunk below these waters carries smudge of soot so near;
Her somber smile frowns in stifling grimace from ten thousand tears;
Acrid, bitter, sour stench of burning flesh fills billowing skies of Fall;
Her torch is stuttering in bigger flames of torch-lit towers of the City.

Tap-Dance

Roiling clouds of feet pounding on wooden decks to hornpipe of the heart;
To skeins of stories sold on rooftops and on fire-escapes of this here City;
To the rock and rolling of slats from shifting grates under pounding boots,
On the streets; on the streets; yeah, on these streets, streets of New York.

Chess

They play with the lives of men like counters upon a board of chess.
Howl hurricanes of storm. Small ships of state are tossed upon seas.
Politicians are deliberating nonsense while the world tumbles to war.


Blue bonnets, their blossoms waving in the breezes of vast prairies,
Show ripples of remembrance, swaying leaning from passing winds,
Stretching forever, grasses of such green the eyes water with them.


What does it matter what these slick-trousered, shiny-bottomed men
Deliberate upon?  Soil will soon forget the inane deliberation of them.
Flowers shall feast upon the bones, fertilizer made from bureaucrats.


Tired of them; tired of dispositions of dilettantes who perjured them! 

Skin

Skin and the shiver upon it, stretching sensations into stunned silences;
There is much in the fingering upon a fiddle, from an E string to A string,
That gives a mournful salute and fond farewell, a satisfaction to ending:
A sweetness is intensified and a savagery slumbered by the art of song. 

Black Waters

Sounds of a stretched saturation, songs of despair; softens the mornings; quiets the evenings, with those sprays, from their never-ending plunges, plangent to the end, cuticle of streams eating at the sands' black waters.


Torn heart, throw down in your well of tears to drown in black waters.
Drowning in black waters. No one to dance with anymore. Drowned in
Black Waters.
Black waters, they be for drowning me, drowning me, in black waters.


Waves of trouble descend in murky trembling one down upon another.
Drowning in black waters. No monies in my pants pockets. Drowned in
Black Waters.
Black waters, they be for drowning me, drowning me, in black waters.


Long time traveler on the moon-tides, of the surging crests of breakers, of their spumed shaking blasts onto beaches; I am the top of the wave; I am surfer of oceans and rivers: Still-standing pile in the swirl of black waters. 

October Skies

October skies spurn the soft sighs of Summer's solicitations.
Settle down and shelter in your stiff parkas of forgetfulness.
A storm is coming. It is coming fast upon us from the South.
Sleep the deep sleep of hibernation. Spring will come again.

Derivative

Derided and despised, every revolution originates in a resentment,
A frown and a displeasure.  Contentment doesn't build barricades.


The shape of the thing unformed shall exist prior to its beginning;
Almost as a separate thing, a shadow of that self still yet to come.


Peoples of the old countries have made loud refusals to their states:
No taxes for less services; a wonder here they've not done the same.


Their silence means an animosity is forming, a surly discontent which
Shall sourly build; surely rise in insurrection, with secession its result.


States that become threats, not helps to the people, ought be replaced.

Bingo

Bingo is a secret numerology of Torah calling forth numerals and letters.
Calling of the places on the cards has as much validity and as much art
As do surahs and verses of sacred text and shares as much a certainty.
Brown bread and butter and bitter beer has more sustenance and solace.
Holiness isn't found in deluded books, but in your heart there's a divinity.

Agony of Air

Not knowing is the cruelest thing. Worse can be faced.
Nothing there; just empty box of sun contains the soul,
But not even the sky could hold the heart's expansion.


Beneath every laugh lies a grimace and complaint, an
Aggression.  A world of smiles hides a world of hurts:
Mouth set and still. Throat holding in an agony of air.


No reply may be made.  Smirk lead to silence forever.

Leverage

Debt is a dagger, a stiletto poised to stab, and pierce the soul;
A long gamble on deflation and shorted bet against the future.
A demon is this debt, ensnaring populace in anxiety and doubt.


Leverage states shall employ to stifle liberties from their peoples
Is to sit the stone of sovereign debt on them, till no breath is left.

Schools

Serfs taught by serfs, these are the teachers of our schools;
Scoundrels tutoring scoundrels, to be servants of the State.
Each day that's spent in school in learning not to learn robs
The young of their vitality and steals their youth from them;
Makes them compliant to adult belief, and stifles creativity:
Colleges for dunces churning out more dunces in the world.

Saturday Night

No money left and anyway no one to spend it on;
Another Saturday, Saturday night. Smooth-soft,
Sapphire and salmon-pink light over dark alleys
Toss amber down to make there double shadow;
Sat is the shark-night here on this street of souls.

Numbers

Tangled numbers, compressed in themselves, burst forth
From their imprisonments to parse equations; statements
For the propositions of a possibility of worlds yet to come.


The numbers come before the worlds to make the worlds,
And the worlds come before me and the worlds made me,
Sum and total of all their making; but what have I made?

Wit

Small wit encased in narrow skulls have these priests and clerics,
Monks and rabbis too; add to them those teachers and professors,
Lawyers and the judges, and all these politicians too; nothing but:
Imams of Banality.

Wild

The studied vine tardy seems to born the wild grape.

Fear

In this land, a foul wind is blowing fierce, a hurricane of fear.
Companioning the stinking gale comes flashflood of paranoia;
Closing houses' shuttered windows, drawn blind to the world.
This is the New Order. It's crept upon us, assassin in the dark.

Citizen

We have no voice over them; no speech to stay our disgust at politicians.
Just
Remember
The problems with them began so long ago in the fumbling beginning of
This
State;


In Constitution fawned upon so much it's become seditious desiccation, a
Casket
Corpse;
There is shown a hatred of tyrannous states and faiths rebelled against, a
Stated
Wrath.  

After

This light that bleaches the clouds of noon of color
Scours deeply inside; decayed angels of the white
Speech of lightning, conveying voice to the blood:


After.  Yes.  Yes.  Yes.

Blue Vespers

As boxers hammer blows upon those bruises already made,
Summer's sadness was hard shown by the hallowed moon's
Blue vespers' chant; its sharp pinching blight of twilight into night.


Short miseries make for long stories by such; those stretched tellings of That Moon.
In these terrors of the night, skies bleed there the bright blood of stars.

Costume

Perhaps once; well now, it was some time ago, this sad world
Presented itself as new; and I, myself, yes, was once new too.
New dress can't hide old face. Summer shows her Winter too.

The Hurricane Season

Everything that bends, bows in.  Like a pulled-back bow,
With the re-curved shrug of shoulders, the world can be
Dismissed; let go entirely, ignored, as its string is spent;
An arrow of time hurled to future, leaving us left behind,


In this Season of the Hurricane. 

Example

Some small semblance of lived art was illustrated here,
Each sentence acting as a semaphore for greater truth,
A pointing of the way hinting at an emergence to come,
In contrast to life ending as example of how not to live;
For skin has eye to see and its sight is an original right.

Cornice

A shadow space of emptiness behind, the cornice
Keeps a bust within its corner of the dark: A face,
Familiar and concealed, set in a determined gaze;
I know not who it is nor even why it stares out so.

Naked

Bare your heart into a nudity; severance of public pose,
A disrobing of your soul, so what you are is same to all.

Strung

Sunder and forever sever the strings of love.  Go: Savage them.
Small epiphanies come unbidden; arrive sudden, unannounced.
Anger the sorrows of the soul, so to make them out loud shout.


The catch and clasp of lust's compulsion, broken now at last;
In smile and with farewell wave to former capture of desire,
Your strung harp of passion, place aside.  Untune the heart.

Drum

Blast this scarred rock, and scrub it phosphorous white;
So, it seems to shine, by a glow that pulses from inside.


This rock, this small arc of aorta, smacks a beat, a pause;
Then becomes drummed again by serum passing through.


Smooth passage, the cleansed artery, bends the blood;
Guides it through all the locks and levels of the heart,


With every pulse, with every drum-spasmodic thump,
To wash life through each portico of organ and of limb.

Dogs

They scent us by the smells of our tongue, by our
Speech; four-legged and fierce in inquisitiveness.


That bitch-bureaucracy of tenured hacks forcing
A curriculum imposed upon the young of simple
Subjects, easy courses; that have no reflection,
No bearing, upon reality and which convey skills
Not needed, nor appreciated, in the workplaces
Of today; no skills necessary for pupils' survival.


These teachers and these professors, are dogs;
Are slaves to the leash and to the reins of their
Faculty master, lecture of life they know nothing
Of; that they are not acquainted with, and have
No experience of, and poison the minds of their
Students in deluded, preposterous propositions.


They leave behind them a devastation; long debt
To be repaid by jobless graduates. And this, this,
These dogs have an audacity to bark and declare
As a public education; when all they've imparted
Is dead language, a swollen tongue of nonsense
And meaningless syllabication; speech of howls.


For the youth, such education is imprisonment;
That jail that keeps them from their play of joy.

Foam

The blare-smacking white foam tops of the waves
Barrels into beaches, smashing sand from its way;
Heavy tread of sodden feet of water tripping over. 


With every wave, some reverie is brought to ruin;
Deluged by a suddenness of an unexpected spray
Of regret, that hangs over the present and bursts;


Smearing the small quiets of a mild summer's day
With intensities of images and sounds, broken and
Distorted; glistening spectacle, in spumes of spite.

Hurricane

Wine-reds and stout-blacks, rivers of blood run
Through the vast infinity of desire and of space;
Making hurricane of sentience and immortality.


A still, soft summer's night holds many a story of stars;
A fascination of bright ribbons of delight floating above,
Strung pearls of brilliance shining there in silver strand.


They who seek a crutch of faith, who lean upon beliefs,
Might pause to gaze above, astonished at what they see;
Currents in heavens, that cause tornadoes of the heart.

History

A telling of it is the making of it to form a history;
To create replacement for sweat (stink of reality),
That fell into silence, not to be recounted nor told.


The park-bench bound traveler sprawled dying;
Destitute upon the green hickory slats of wood,
Hobo to death, drink-dried of surfeit of alcohol,
Was common sight in that day, known to many.


Such sights; served my youth, my adolescence.

Wind

A tumble of the wind tears branches from trees, 
To swing and sway their twigs and silver leaves.


Midnight upon the waters and a moon in the sky;
Mirror to the mind, this sky reflecting sea makes
A melody: Tell me if you feel forgotten.  Tell me
If you feel alone. The stirring of the seas sends
Ripples to shore, long arcs of waves of memory;
Of terrible imagining, tripping over sand-dunes.


Then, after suppuration, slides out again to sea.

Days of Presence

Stretch yesterdays to erase tomorrow to shorten
Sorrow: Struggle to express contraction of days.


The thoughts of today obliterate the past. Should
Give to future some hope of a goal and a destiny,
Without regrets, in days of presence and delight.

A Thunder Upon the Hudson

Old pilings poke their ways to air through water,
Submerged, thrown away and abandoned; were
Proved all in vain, succumbed by seasonal tides:


Weathered gray piling poking to heaven. Then, a heavy rain;
The lightning spikes. Left under a thunder upon the Hudson:
Pier.

At the Terminal Bar

Lingering there, lingering there, at the terminal bar,
Lemon light and scarlet shadow, flair and form again;
Marry light with shadow on floors at the terminal bar.


Dancing in their solitude at the terminal bar.


Angels of the morning, turning to the rough
Religion of the night, dancing in that dream
That doesn't seem a dream at the terminal bar.


Dancing in their solitude at the terminal bar.


Layers of light shimmer there in smoke scented air
In the soft stillness of the night, at the terminal bar;
Shaken from the stun of sound from sax and drum.


And them dancing there, all clad in their sad solitude,
At the terminal bar.


Falling, fading, lights smoothing out the rubber
Faces of the dancers; dancing there, in their
Crimson-Yellow visions, all alone at the terminal bar.


Dancing in their solitude at the terminal bar.

Breeze

Long coolness-es prolong these late afternoons,
Giving yellow light to make mellow of evenings;
A softness and a song of the mists of memories.


What seemed but newly formed in blue mornings,
Love that spun to form a turning axle of the world
In a golden dawn, when we had nothing but time,
Our pockets empty, 'cept for talent and ambition;


They talk of it and they speak of it but they know
Nothing of it: The cause that carries us forward;
The breeze that sweeps into whirlwind of power.

Heat

The gabardine of sorrows was worn and frayed;
What shade there is was narrow and was spare,
Pruned to give solace in shadow of gray somber.


High window and a burning sill let a still light in;
Mote-filled spotlight falls an oblong on the floor,
Spilled there in twisting shaft of obscene white.


Under this heat men die beneath the same sun.

City-Scape

Clouds, dirty and blue, preview coming storms.


With hook on block high upon wide shoulders,
We have made of ourselves stevedores of art.


Raw egg and stout is good breakfast for the City,
Down with fifth of whiskey on a table for guests.


The romance of a yellow warming of the sun
On brick walls resounds strains in the street.


Rain comes unexpectantly and unannounced. 


A small pattering of drops smooths the heat
To smoke the pavements in hisses of steam.  


Life at best is but the briefest of enchantments,
Spaces filled between the cradle and the grave;


Empty of all reason, and savage within its boast
Of meaning and its many religions of conformity.


A hard rain washes away all traces of our sins.

Acquaintances

No more tomorrows; that time has past.
I'm become acquainted with the wind.
Wind has made acquaintance with me.


This is nation for passage of strangers,
Of nodding heads and no word spoken,
Of the sideways glance and the snicker:


The white wine of indifference is served
Cold and chill.

Red upon the Green

Crimson shadows creep across the face
Of an emerald sun, red upon the green,
As the apricot sky floats copper clouds
To sail over a planet of silver and gold:


Invasion!

Mimesis

It has shown itself to be of something else,
Other form entirely; of that spectral music
Of the long expectancy come home at last.


The past is forever denied to us, a foreign
Land; that strange country alive in regret,
But sweetened as it is by passage of time.


Soft thoughts pervade on a summer's day
To give shrewd promise of high tomorrow;
Hot breeze, forcing a mimesis of memory:


Of new hope.

Twi-Lights

Summer wore her white moon glow
With a simple woven gown of night;
Sweat of dreams encased in pearls:
Twi-Lights.

Midnight Face

A sculptured cruelty carved in stone,
Midnight face, a darkening severity,
With storms creased upon its brow;
Somber in its death mask of repose:


Lincoln.

To Sail In Space

A hard religion is it that steers the green gaze of
Peace towards space; towards that travel by the
Smooth sail of worlds sounding distant harmony.
But still, to sail in space is to see the Face of God,
Stark and bold, far across the ocean sea of stars.

Boxes of Glass

Transparent things that live in boxes of glass.
Boxes of Glass. They live in big boxes of glass.


In dreams they'll remember twilight worlds,
Spaces of moving shadow glimpsed on cliffs;
Of still silences and of glances cold and bold.


Boxes of glass. They live in big boxes of glass.
Transparent things that live in boxes of glass.


Calm monitors of skies serve as only company,
Laser hues of brightest blue bath softest faces;
No lines of experience are carved in character.


Transparent things that live in boxes of glass.
Boxes of glass. They live in big boxes of glass.


No cares save clouds of memory follow them,
Dent impressions of dampness and of storm;
Ghosts plagued by the forgotten glory of Art.


Boxes of glass. They live in big boxes of glass.
Transparent things that live in boxes of glass.


Spotless minds are shores of every sweet desire,
Sunlit landscapes of delight and meadows of joy;
Of running tinkles of streams in green horizons.


Far from boxes of glass. From big boxes of glass.

Rainbows

Bespoken rainbows are true commerce of the air.
Brave temerity, their stately quietness pervades
An sending light. This theater was done for you;
Bought and paid for, to spy golden illumination.

Corridors of Power

Cypresses expanding into corridors of power,

Long avenue of tall trees, matching distance,
Arrogance and desire; to illustrate and show:

Ambition.

Notes

Too long in the waiting and too slow in the coming;
Such a sweet anarchy is love, soft notes of nihilism:


Only the dead remain famous and possess renown.
Those still living share an obscurity, a false identity,
Inside mechanical existence; martyred by celebrity.

Calm as night-seas asleep beneath the moon of gold,
Remain unknown and doze in your peace of solitude.

Signs

Sudden sincerity, a small movement of soul,
Silent apprehensions, smothered by kisses,
Danger signs of non-intentional discovery;


Sun-shower tears.

Tulips

Stems stirred in soft breezes,
Tawny red and ruddy yellow,
Dark golds in orange collars;
Chalices, on long stems, hang


True-Lips.

Spring Descending

The authority of Spring is held in hawks circling.
What seems that bright enchantment of wings
Hide talons sharping night in their cruel grasp;
Desperate climb and drop, descending death.

Gravity

Slag and sag and twist of space,
The dip and ditch of gravity sets; 
Drags, distorts, and follows on
The disturbance of dimension.


Row upon row, the crosses grow.


When the rich decide to play at war,
It's the poor of the world who'll die.

Black Tea

Flush with boiling waters the empty pot.


In vapor, which past perfidy will evaporate?
What heated whisper shall slowly dissipate?


Sizzle and escape of steam in the crock.

Rains of Fire

In cursive sickles of falling flames,
Rains of fire welcome the napalm
Mornings; starts of long, whiskey
Days, waiting upon night-dreads
Of dimmers of lights; those dark
Bringers of delusion and illusion,
Who dye black the stage of life.

Rope

Strung twirled, gives to rope a sisal strength,
Binding it into a winding solidarity of strands.


The floor of heaven, so swirled in stars inlaid,
Winks dark-ling lights above the turning Earth.


Into that mystic reverie of stars and strands,
Stuns suspended some strange connections;


Dark, light, earth and heaven, seem entwined;
For these are days that spark such memories:


Recollection of places and of faces juxtaposed
Against a background theme of twisting times.

Blue Sun

Sown unseen by some wintry wind off the sea,
Making a mean, moaning, wandering melody; 
In brown blowing fields, the wild barley moves.


Occasional ripples, long and slow, pass smooth
Over ground, ghosts of torn, tortured breezes;
Each passing cloud making an edge of darkness.


An inscription of monotony sits under a blue sun.

Marathon

In this so short a life of trouble,
By a mumble of time distorted,
By a distance blurred by years;


To sing another's melody,
To cover another's song,
Seems a waste of effort,
Seems a waste of tears.


We're long-limbed shining ones,
Who've refused caterpillar lives;
To stagger moment to moment.


We're built for the long run; for


Marathon.

Changes

Shirring sounds from oaks of scarlet
And from chestnuts green, precede;
Coming into view are changes new.


Fierce imagining, threnody of groan;
Waking from a long extinguishment
Of desire, Spring has sprung again.


Season of buds, butterflies and bees.

Congress

Chinks and edges show through
Lumber of the nation, a disjoint
Of fitting, and from these holes
A bothering rasp of mosquitoes
Is heard; hiss of madding voices.


Congress


Sits a boil upon the backside of


Commerce.

Celebration

In plain occasion, lacking rich celebration,
Silence stammers to a soft-voiced Spring;
Stutter of anticipation, of new beginning.


It brings waking from Winter's deep sleep;
From hibernation of desire, from the coma
Of ambition.  Action is granted a possibility.


A green fecundity forces buds from twigs,
Its sap pushing forth, an emerald stream;
Not content until it lifts its head into a leaf.


Tipped to life, crowding to be hooded born
In bloom, shoots shudder into tumescence;
Brightening of bough, sweating into flower. 

Sown in Suns

The school of night is best studied in a silence,
A curriculum of contemplation, of meditation;
As the thrown rug of heaven is sown in suns
And is woven within a tapestry of spun lights,
A chorus of colors spread in vast assemblies.


Attached by a thin slender thread of gravity,
A justification of arcs and tangents underlies
This plenitude of stars: the hidden equations.


Attend the intercourse of torches of evening,
Of far fairy worlds of blazing incandescence,
In awe; in a quiet, with bold astonished eyes.

Party Politics

A curse and a condemnation befalls them
From the public they were sworn to serve;
Still they continue in the enmity unabated.


So sure are they of their own importance,
They have not noticed their constituents
Long ago deserted and abandoned them.


So they dialog with themselves, a congress
Of gnats; every argument delivered with a 
Smirk, a discourse of banality, of innuendo.


Spit sarcasm sprays small spumes of wit,
Foam topping crashing waves of ridicule;
Pulled under, the currents of anger swirl.


Hatred stalls with it the entire body politic,
Sails the ship-of-state to strand on shoals;
Stranding its passengers on passage home. 

Origins

The naming of a thing is its beginning;
Its signifying assignment makes it so.


Name thy-Self into existence.  To do so, say:
This now is who I am, and not another; not
Employee of that, nor even follower of this.
Sunder oaths and ties.  Fierce be and bold.


Be not a foolish adherent of a faith.  Nor just
Some resident of such a country.  But be at wild
And at liberty.  State your name; never your
Number.  Break the binding bonds of destiny.


Small men are obeisant and obey the times;
Great men are defiant and make their times.

Colony

We are each planet for others, a colony.
Leaves that fall in Autumn are as mulch
For trees sprouting in the Spring.  White
Water crashing salt-stained rock raises
Mists of flung spray filled with sea lives
Born in waves spun onto sandy shores.


Day unto night and night into day again,
A great sadness overcomes us for them
Gone; weighted presences from our past.
To render to spirits solace for their death,
Whistle cantrips of joy to those departed.
Pipe to vanish by cheerful plangent sound.

Spells

Magician me with such enchantments.
Fine spells spill out from play of music.
Banish misfortune.  Shorten the long
Face of worry. Summer is at canter
In pipe and chanter; the gallop season
Of lemon-pink dawns riding in on song.

Doubt

An assassin of doubt steals quiet in the night.
Arrives at scarlet hours, in between midnight
And dawn; times of paleness, of blank dread.


Knowledge hides great sorrow; for knowing
Wisdom will make for worlds of lamentation.
Only ignorance is ever satiated; but curiosity
Devours; eats at everything; assimilates all.


The moving clouds shadow upon the moon.
Black woods of mourning fill deepness dark;
Northern wind blowing ice crystals in the air.

Oligarchy

Bend the knee but once, bad habit is made.
Consign those few to the slums of history
Who would dare to try to tyrant over you.

Reconciliation

Surely the wine of love serves music of sad melodies,
Composed of old songs celebrating bygone days:
Sweet enmities should be surrended in embrace.


Luster red, foliage of late autumns, bidding trees
Farewell in bitter parting; give an apt comparison:
Love and leaf, both crushed beneath heel of time.


Chained concatenations, rueful rosaries of slights,
Broken promises, cycles of lies; caught, captured,
Reduced to glib fabrication and smooth invention.


At ending, sigh of reconciliation, smile of redemption;
None of it really mattered.  A loveliness lives on to fill
The heart. The sound of things happening is enough.

Conflagration

Freedom is prairie fire; a fierce conflagration,
A flashing sound, that crackling of mesquite;
Hopping, jumping, flame, from field to fields.
It's yearning incandescence; a wanted light, 
Flaring far in despot lands to topple tyrants.

Helmet

Set onto the skies at night, a diamond ring of stars.
Caps and gowns; letters and degrees, soon perish,
Extinguished by their dimness and by their vapidity; 
But the helmet of honor sits upon the head forever:
Some leave behind a radiance; some few, a glory.

Lamentation

Summer's melody lies silent and unsung in Winter's grave.
My heart lies buried beneath it, under a white more white
Than white; a napkin of new snow covering depths below.


This be our glacier season; a slow grinding of ice mountains,
Scouring down canyons of the soul, sunken valleys of tears;
Deep crease of lamentation, rutted by the sorrow of despair.