In anguish unaccountable
the steady ship that burns at dark,
the small shy streetlamp of the night,
floats out of Alexander Park
in the exhaustion of dull bricks.
Like a pale-yellow, tiny rose,
it drifts along, past lovers’ heads
and walkers’ feet.
In anguish unaccountable
sleep-walkers, drunkards, float like bees.
A stranger sadly snaps a shot
of the metropolis by night;
a cab with squeamish passengers
jolts loudly [...]
Where was I, where did I go?
Under docks toe-tracing sand,
waiting for the phone to stop caring.
I wait, and speak when asked.
and there are gaps when no questions come
so I shuffle around room to room.
My twenty-ninth Christmas came with no candles,
While strangers on checklists tear my paper
In yearly waltz of mandatory love.
At the place I have [...]
I only wash my finger
around your dampening eyes
to hear words and find others
to waltz with you beneath
these lowering clouds,
Lighting small torches
hoping to find the one that
burns the right part of me
away, to scent the world
better for you.
I only want to find
the hymns that write
your story in ways that
it no longer makes
your blood faster.
I only look [...]
to a.h.
That warm bright California rage
throws sunspears, tans smiles to leather.
a place half-here, half-there, still home
only in irritating sense of red, white, blue.
The racing dry river of midwest west
covered by the metal plane’s bridge.
Knowns dot it, rocks breaking the stream
with turbulence and glances downwards
Here seen a velvet envoy, from a land far flung,
Always scratching letters, [...]
In corners, when the party tent folds,
there you’ll find me. I promised.
We droned earlier, when spotlights dove
into glossed lips and walmart earrings;
form show and dance, elegant pathetic –
all while we revered one unvoiced howl
which brooked no pain, no ten dollar merlot;
singular, it blurred me twice a minute –
but shook nowhere. Rooms rocked and headached.
But stars [...]