the room is baring its teeth

This is an exercise in blankness. The angles of the bare room stand out and compute. There is a certain western loneliness in every ninety degrees, so I invert. I consume. Out the window, across the verdant hill, a light flickers. It holds some meaning. Someone in that room twists his allegory, defines his scope. I wonder what he lists and where his crumpled notations will end up. This is an exercise in doubt, a belief in serried numbers. This is an erasure. This is an exercise in blankness.

and on

I got creosote lightning footprints
I got a finger, cracked and leering in
it's own solopsism.
I got a hundred yard stare
I got anodyne jumpers
I got frostbitten aunts
I got the devil's paw in my ass pocket
next to a pint of Turkey.
I got some ugly roads
I got a dollar dinner
I got that love note from Erica Jong.
I got a salvation plate with no army
I got the last sleeper's wink.
I got a denial letter, and a sloppy wish
I got four flowers, colors
and a plethora of indecency.
I got to see you fall, wish
I wore your shoes.

The waitress who played the poet like a cheap violin, and revisited

Emily, I am drowning in the miasma

of being

and i wanted to tell you

how lovely most things are

but

I think the poison has

eaten my voice.



Emily, I am wax, I am clay.

The gloam reaches over dusted remembrance,

The fire is dying in poems of calibrated light.

Lumenescence for failed generals, a signpost

Like a drunken scarecrow. Emily,

I am the direction of silence.

Saint Joseph

I woke up early and traced

The ridge of your cheek

With my finger, letting it brush

Under the fine lashes of your eye.

I wanted to press my lips

Behind your ear and tell you the

Story of Tristan and Isolde,

Taste your downy skin with

Whispers, but your sleep

Was too immaculate

To touch with words or kisses.