
It’s not all chandeliers and shadows.
no matter how fine
the crystalline filigree of light
marks the darkness
in shifting monochrome geometries,
tempered by bandwidth and perception;
but holding steady
in these moments
of time.

It’s not all chandeliers and shadows.
no matter how fine
the crystalline filigree of light
marks the darkness
in shifting monochrome geometries,
tempered by bandwidth and perception;
but holding steady
in these moments
of time.

The protagonist of my dreams
is often an ideal,
cool enough,
aware enough,
looking good in tight jeans and
black tee shirt;
an age chameleon who blends in
with everyone,
talented beyond effort and training.
Yet,
women don’t want me, and
men don’t want to be me.
Even in dreams
my powers are at an impasse.

A bellowing woolly rhino
crashes into a Pleistocene
clearing.
I can't shake these beasts
from my bones.
Stuck in the illusion that
we are changing,
or have changed,
or will change,
or even want to change
our lives,
take a good look
at yourself, and describe
what you see.
Energy and magnificence
make an argument viscerally
in a triumph over
vulgarity and speed.
Accomplice of a nameless
obscenity,
a metaphor for
nonconformity that affirms dark,
creative energies
that orthodox
political-religious-scientific
thought would repress.
Diabolical energies flow
with the most swiftness
and potency.
But in America
there is no recent poem
everyone in a bar
would recognize;
so turn up some
unsuspected star chart
that leads you off
in search of
evermore distant
constellations.

Litany of a nation;
beyond box scores, excrement,
and inflammatory holograms.
Litany of nothing;
scattered attention wasted
on gossip and garbage.
Litany of the end;
impatient benedictions of duplicity
by the dozens.
Litany of giving up;
throbbing exhaustion and
acceptance of an end.

empty movie theatre.
alone I walk through the darkened lobby
without a ticket,
and pass the concession stand,
unattended, with the comforting
chemical aroma of popcorn.
I take my seat,
always the same seat,
although the theatre is
consistently empty.
then I wait.
sometimes I'm excited,
sometimes I'm bored,
sometimes I'm agitated,
sometimes I fall asleep.
but always,
I wake up.

Relic of bygone days,
nautical dreams,
exotic wealth
and danger.

Bridge
over vast space,
connecting
not imagined
to intimacy.

Mind-tired,
akimbo and askance
the twirling imbalance
and involuntary disappearance
of right procedures.
Lifestyle adjustments gone the way
of Rock and Rye,
longing for pineapple sweetness,
while immobile
within the splatter
of one’s own uniqueness.
Lost in concussed redemption,
skeletal wandering in forest
of pretense,
though devoted,
thoroughly,
to donning wings
and mask of
angelic impersonation.

Psychic flame
of jughead nonsense
shrieks, not
for laughs,
but vigilance.

Fleeting impatience,
maelstrom of
perpetual disintegration.