Ghosting & Falling

Like a ghost I’m falling forward
and with each step forward
to catch myself
I fall the faster.
A strip of rubber
a ribbon of hoop
a collection of sticks
that roll;
running, static
running, static
running, static...

And while I do this
a thousand songs
occupy my mind
and a thousand throngs
cavort and crash
about me and only when
I imagine
my native brother
alone in the wilds
both vulnerable
and threatening
to every challenge
and every adversity
and then all the birds
and all the small game
and the tracks of enemies
come into focus…

I collect the data
assess it and
discard what I don’t need.
Collect the data
assess it
discard…

Good things too, come from
conflicts and collisions
I have been part of many
Moby Dicks, even the parts
that suck, lived every
conflict of man
against man,
against himself,
against society,
against rule of law,
against Nature—
Ahab had even knocked up a teenage Quaker!—
every conflict, I’m against
and have survived
with lungs on fire and
drunk with the bends…

Everything is sweeping vectors
magnitudes and directions
angles of inclination
moments of inertia.
In the goodwill of
the human marketplace
the streets fold and shuffle
like decks of cards and
raucous concertina bellows
while pouting women
beautiful in their boredom
gaze down from their balconettes.
Everything comes and goes
all at once as I do, too.
I crease them
I sew them up
I clip and drag
cross a bumper crop
effortlessly slipping between
objects with a perfect economy
of motion and force,
just like the Day’s light.

Σn[in Hz] ⅟∆τ is constant

through a coiled copper tube,

distilled and dripping with brilliance

each drop faceted and radiant

a diamond third eye

winking in the moonshine

a shimmering smile that

dissolves sugar cubes

from a perforated pewter spoon

billowing into milky effluvia

cupped in the gentle touch

of crystal slightly leaded

just to soften against

lips that ever thirst

more with each passing

and are never drained but always

prismatic upon consumption.

with such a long and slender neck

you shall never be emptied

no matter how many times

your heavy bottom rises.

dropping a needle in your concha,

your tympania pierced by a 

low gauge through which steel

the caliber of Big Bertha, 

bursts with a slight dimpled stretching. 

the head now a broken womb

curst with an inequity

poisoned only by the Verb, 

which disseminates towards

a grace that cannot

be Earthbound, 

has upturned heels so vulnerable

that are held in scarred palms

and are tentatively grasped

and touched in a pledge,

that wordlessly proclaim

a bounty to avoid being

turned over to the flag 

that covers those

that bore and kicked

the ass to higher

platitudes & treasons

that shimmer downward,

like confetti laced

with fallout that rains

upon skyclad wooded

forms replete with

nothing but

another

Light twice removed.

You fade to black

Every time, lunging,

Leaving airstrips,

And precipices,

And the scent of

Long nights and

No launderings.

A plea to linger,

Or not, to not 

Explode into the

Everyday of the

Everyone, but no

Holding you

Is like pinching 

The neck of a taut,

Untied balloon

In trembling fingers

Her weeps made

the sound of

duct tape stretched

fresh from the roll

used to futilely

contain the grief that

poured from her coeur

‘Lest her soul escape

like flies from a swatted

fruit rind and not remain

intact as a beam

to be refracted

to everywhence.

Is it tract, or transit

trajectory, or the impact

that makes this mote

upon my eye?

You make me shiver, Arachne,

Hanging in your web with another

Enshrouded victim, whom you

caress and suck at like

A lover, jetting about his still

twitching body, kissing him

all over, between silver thread.

Even you cannot but help

to raise a leg and shake it in

Ecstacy.

never bet on saving a dancer's daylight

when we finally met
it was already the late afternoon
in the day of our time together
when you got off the bus
and I saw you in your sundress
how you waited with girlish anxiety
for the long traffic light to change
so you could cross over to me
I knew I had the green light
to be with you
for the short time you'd be here
I heard there's a rook, you said
sphinx-like smile
eager to start to explore

there were no dirges as
we tripped over worn gravestones
and spider-webbed crypts
remarking more about the life
left in the summer and the day
and in the other animals around us
wild turkeys puffed up at us
young rabbits ran away halfhearted
not able to pass up good clover
a young falcon gazed long
down at me
my totem giving me permission
to be me
what you would let me do

I miserably tried to get you
to sit by me hidden in the dell
I wanted to seize you
and run my hand up your dress
feel your dancer's thigh and butt
that's why I laughed when later
you revealed you wanted to
take me in your mouth
on top of the rook
the roof of the Hub
treetops already blanching
but the yard's workmen disturbed us

by the reflecting pond
while we talked of politics and feminism
I looked down your dress wanting
to see the nipple of your small breast
I wanted more of what I could see
I wonder if I'd have been surprised
it was pierced if I saw it
then later only pleasantly so
and too when I lifted your dress
kissing your stomach and found
you were shorn
you are a dancer after all

and funny too how I ridiculously
asked if you'd like to come to my home
and your concession was so blasé
I was still perplexed about
that sphinx-like smile
at my place I tried to think quick
about how to invite you to my room
and you honed in on my photo
of victorious Victoria Pendleton
I mumbled a few things and then
took you in my arms and kissed you
to shut you up
so you'd not wake my housemate

we both had surprises for each other
when we stripped one another
rocked and flickered in candlelight
cool sweat coating us for hours
your brown eyes twinkling in candle-dance
with each thrust
deforming that cryptic inscrutable smile
in your rise and peak
shudder and fall
nice to meet you we joked
glad you stopped by

we paused at turns
I didn't want to finish what
your exit would
we enjoyed our company our secrets
our jokes our honesty
and when the car came to pick you up
I should have known it was
already midnight in the day
of our time together

The Drunken Bike

To the Reader: A janitor at
36 Bromfield St. found this bit of prose scratched into the wall of a bathroom stall, and felt it would be of some interest. It was apparently signed only by the moniker "52".

The Dawn storms Dusk, too soon,
staining the curtains with the blood
of a New Day.
Never the Earlyborne, I unfold
myself from bed like an old map
with destinations obscured
in the creases.
Sirens, horns, alarms play like
drunken, Arabic fiddles as the
world wakes with a perpetuate
hangover, yelling catcalls
and profanity.
The bare bulb overhead is a full moon
reflection on the North Atlantic
in my coffee cup.
At the basin, dragging the dull edge
of the Republic crosst my chin, my
throat is crimson as the Morn.
I strap the vestment of my vocation
across my back, unstable my
well-oiled pony from the ceiling,
run my hand up a still, slumbering form,
from leg to lumbar (to the coo of a
window ledge bound mourning dove).
Door latch, downstairs, out on the streets
without a key, now in the shambling
euphony of commerce. Dropped off the
curb, slipped into traffic, I call out into the
static, am dispatched, and the profession,
immediately employed with the
invention of the Word, sits lightly
on my shoulders, like a witch's familiar.
Through veins, arteries, corpuscular, like
hemoglobin, I deliver tidings of the number,
the tort, prayers of complaint, the bottom line,
the red tape, beneath a sky as grey as
other launderings strung out to dry.
By noon I am rich as a dog, and
gobbling a chunk of soft cheese,
and a tin of fish, between a loaf of bread,
the sky breaks blue wide, and
my head is peeled like a Sputnik-sized
orange, too easy.
Revitalized, I am pound and crank
within their rage and fume.
Perspirate agony precurses the
the endorphic uprising, red and sonic
pulse in my jaw, ascension in
chrome and glass, redbrick
and puddingstone.

Yet on the granite and asphalt
everything is concrete,
as I whistle to turtledoves,
and whisper "Hey kitty-cat,"
to the clip of heels and
curling red mouths that fold into
the flips of horses' manes,
and are eclipsed
in truck rumblings.
But not to fear little bird, for
stories of cupboards bare
except for jars of sugar and honeypots to be
ladled out with silver spoons,
crookt and scorcht, are rumors that hold no air
under pressure, and I am no more
impressed by their storms that
come and go too soon and too easy.
I have dined on pigeon shit and
broken glass, defied the idiot factor
tenfold; metal yields quickly to my
skinny, sweaty frame, tight as a
long bow, but this city has raptors
that uncover all bones and cache I
stash like the rat I am, and they'd pull
me up to a high roost, save for the fact
that I know all the shortcuts in this place
where there is no such thing as almost,
and asphalt does weird things to the
skin, which it has, and I will bear these
scars as badges of intent and not privilege.
And this is shown by the Sun, who
beats me in her transit, 'cept her
proud flesh is broken all over the
sheet of the Blue Hills, and mine
is merely matted 'gainst black wool,
but no matter, for the race, so sweet,
stains my rusty mouth, so that I
must chase it down curbside and
crotch-level, with an oily moon-cratered
slice and a cheapsuck brew, whose
vessel echoes down the ally in the
empty rattle of Autumn's gusts.
The ember of the snipe I flick
is in tribute to my victor's course.
As I mount, a silent chain speeds
me away from from the words
scratched into fast curing cement:
"Though over-caution is not
a virtue, it is one fool-hardy in
Temperance, with no faith at all
in Luck, that forms and forces all action,
until it cross-threads in follow-through."