draft of work in progress

DAY-THE-VERGE

for days the ceiling was racing
and the silhouettes clung to seance
the wind champed at their scornful habits
dangling a snowflake over the edge of a mirror

manholes stood on ladders to see
a rocket fail to ignite itself from off a sundial
while a slim coitus of wands held the room current
must I exist in these saliva-tidal breaths

fever chalks the roofs where
I imagine my venom is at home
all the figures tidy in their thimble poses
it's like pricking your finger with lambs

how shall I keep when oceanmere falls
everywhere lying idle or exile I sigh

/
so shall I keep when oceanmere falls
wide shall I hide when oceanmere falls
hail shall I hide /  halt shall I hide
then shall I hide when

///

happy

*
I want to reiterate my thanks to Gary Young and Christopher Buckley, editors

of "One for the Money : The Sentence as a Poetic Form," published by Lynx House Press in 2012,

who contacted me directly for permission to reprint 4 of my poems, and which I was happy to give,

I sent them permission to reprint my poems at no cost, no fee,

and I would have been happy to grant similar no-fee permission to any anthologist—

I would still be happy to grant no-fee free permission to anyone who wanted to reprint my work—

http://www.amazon.com/One-Money-Sentence-Workshop-Anthology/dp/0899241263/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1391024231&sr=1-1&keywords=one+for+the+money

///

drafts of unfinished poems

*

WHO SEES

I know the alphabet of loss is like a man

who sees a woodblock print

each time he looks at a tree

whose yardstick measures all the span

between his gaze and its reality

his books are filled with what he holds

between his gaze and what its leaf forsakes

beside a shrine where waters lapse to pray

his ego may not vacate the years enough

the distance that only the foreswear hears

can I detain the ruins a little with my life

that toad whose aftervintage pages vanish

laden with update escapes my anon descends

flopsteps where I stand sneezing into a crown

/

*

WHY IS THE SKY BLUE?

Maybe it's the blueprints

Which the sky must use

To build another house

To move into since

It must leave from here,

Leave its first home here

For a second residence

Without parents,

Because parents fall

With the sunset each day,

They abandon us all

Again and again to

Night, or some bright new

Domicile.  We cannot stay.

///

draft of unfinished poem

*

I believe I existed

as the blink of no one's eye

I woke unknown my face

familiarized only by sunglasses

by all the sun allows to follow me

like the shadow I am

the blink of no one's eye held me

for a mote moment

orchard articulate

rose wise

my eyelids were

carrion wafers

I was the blink of no one's eye

delighted to be the blink

of no one's eye under

so many eyelids or garage doors

pleistocene ferns burst from oiltruck vents as

I pull my old blood over me

and enter
the blink of no one's eye

///

draft/worksheets of unfinished poem

*
VISITED UPON

Throwing dice at the bomb as it descends

will not decide the outcome of your body blown

apart by which action, yours or the bombadier's:

drone missiles fly contraire, unmanned for the sake

of purity, not marred by the sordid human hand

wiping grease blood feces off its digits.  The muddied

moment passes and we move reinspired by

this vision of non-involvement, virginal

again from the shame that mercifully excludes us;

and therefore we leave it to the computer

to choose those targets whose distance ensures
our disinterest, its infant consequence

declares those boys' volleys of war a game
because as always the enemy's to blame:
the error inherent is theirs not ours to seek

or repent since its intent was innocence
aloft with the javelins of desire, that devastation  
visited upon the son's own weapons grown

scattergun shattering some backyard calm, saved
thanks to the prank-indulgence of childhood, each strike
shrived blameless by your aimless mother's 

wince, you know each target will forget this crime
the way you too have all but blanked out home;
forgive this day your father's arm its harm.

/

Throwing dice at the bomb as it descends

will not decide the outcome of your body blown

apart by which action, yours or the bombadier's:

drone missiles fly contraire, unmanned for the sake

of purity, not marred by the sordid human hand

wiping grease blood feces off its digits.  The muddied

moment passes and we move reinspired by

this vision of non-involvement, virginal

again from the crime that mercifully excludes us;

and therefore we leave it to the computer

to choose those targets whose distance ensures
[our disinterest, its infant consequence

declares those boys' volleys of war a game
because as always the enemy's to blame:
the error inherent is theirs not ours to seek/shirk/see]

or repent since its intent was innocence:
pray for the prank forgiveness[indulgence] of childhood, each strike
/thank the prank-indulgence of childhood, each strike
unbloodied/left harmless by your armless mother's wince.
made harmless/turned harmless/ poured harmless
/
or repent since its intent was innocence
thanks to the prank-indulgence of childhood, each strike
shrived harmless by your armless mother's 
wince, your father's perihelion apogee/trajectory.

/thanks to the pranks of childhood, each harmless strike
unbloodied by your armless mother's wince.

/thanks to the pranks of childhood, each stab or strike
stays harmless as your mother's armless wince.

[thanks to the pranks they forgave in childhood
when each stab or strike stood for bad or good
depending on adult indulgence, punishment pain ????]


/
[no taint is what our semaphore quests for

and therefore we leave it to the computer
to choose those targets whose distance ensures

our disinterest intent, each infant consequence
prank forgiven by your armored mother's wince.

[pray for the indulgence of childhood, each prank
forgiven by your armless mother's wince.]

[repent since/because innocence was this war's intent:
pray for the pure indulgence/forgiveness of childhood, each prank
forgiven/unbloodied by your armless mother's wince.]

... 
///

drafts/worksheets for unfinished poem

*
/
GASTRONEBULA (octosyllabics)

The cannibal's head up your ass   
and the angel's noggin gnawing  
its way down your esophagus
may meet someday in the midmost
of your hunger: and as their mouths
kiss there at that primal core where 
a black hole's born or an atom 
splits cold each time earth's rats and worms
devour our dust's ravenous quest
to taste the apple Eden lost,
will this lust find consummation
in the appetite to which it's grown
when the sun peels apart the one,
the only world you've nova known.

/

[title? Gourmet/Gastronebula/?]

the cannibal's head up your ass   
and the angel's noggin gnawing  
its way down your esophagus
may meet someday in the center
of your hunger and as their mouths
kiss there at that prime core where 
a black hole's born or an atom 
splits each time earth's rats and worms
devour your dust's ravenous quest
to taste an apple from edens past
will this lust find consummation
in the appetite to which it's grown
when the sun peels apart the one
the only world you've nova known

kiss there at that apt prime core where
/kiss there at that heartprime core where
/kiss there at that prime-whole core where
/kiss there at that prime-sole core where
/kiss there at that prime-old core where
a black hole's born or an atom
splits each time earth's own rats and worms
devour your dust's ravenous quest
to taste apples from edens past
/to taste an apple edens passed
/to taste an apple Eden passed
/to taste the apple Eden lost
/to taste an apple Eden lost
will this lust etc

/
for the taste of eden's apple will
/for the taste of eden apples will
/for the taste of appled edens will
this lust find some consummation
/
for the taste of eden's lust will this
find at last some consummation
in the appetite to which it's grown
when the sun peels apart the one
the only world you've nova known

/

[title?  Formulations?]

the cannibal's head up your ass   
and the clone's own noggin gnawing  
its way down your esophagus
may meet someday in the center

of your hunger for eden's apple
and as their lips kiss there at 
that prime core where a black hole's
born or an atom splits each time

rats and worms devour your dust
is this the physicist's[gourmet's/connoisseur's] lust for
climax orgasm consummation

and the appetite to which it's grown
when the sun peels apart the one
the only world you've nova known

/
[the cannibal's head up your ass   
and the clone's own noggin gnawing  
its way down your esophagus
may meet someday in the center
of your hunger and as their mouths
kiss there at that prime core where 
a black hole's born or an atom 
splits each time earth's rats and worms
devour your dust in a ravenous
quest for edenic apples will all
this lust find some consummation
as the appetite to which it's grown
when the sun peels apart the one
the only world you've nova known]

/
devour your dust in a ravening
quest for eden's apple will all
this lust find some consummation
in the appetite to which it's grown [etc

/
devour your dust in a ravening
quest for eden's apple will this lust
[devour your dust in ravin'd quest
for eden's apple will all this lust]
find some final consummation

/ the teleologist's  /  the eschatologist's 
/
and[or] the appetite by[to] which it's grown
[the appetite light by which it's shown]

/
the cannibal's head up your ass

and the neanderthal's noggin

gnawing its way down your

esophagus may meet someday

in the middle of your hunger but

as they kiss there at the core of

your thirst will their lovemaking

reflect that life that lust worms

and rats consume your dust with

shall all consummation resemble

the end of something illogical [the [disastrous] end of something's spiral]

the formula[appetite] by which it's grown

when the sun peels apart the one

the only world you've nova known

drafts/worksheets [unfinished

*

AS IT SAYS

as it says in the epitaphs
carved on whitecaps

each wave announces

another death

until the ocean agrees

hulk-deep 

drowned in its ear-coring shells  

to sail that bloodstream

that dream clinging

to the life raft of the body

held afloat by

the inner tube heart
the day to day boredom

whose undated incisions of spray
mourn every shore they beach
in order to prime our pores 

for cessation for ruin

because like the impetus of comets

to peel off heading nowhere

into their depths 

I die at my dire window and

time's orbital stats ejaculate me

until I too agree

that honesty must be

ragged and its linebreaks shall

curtal or hurl themselves out

alternative in thrusts

like bakers kneading lava like 

waves carving away my headland

predatoring all I pray and

who knows they might even

peninsulate the poem

/

*

I comb my crack with a lit fuse

My hairspray sticks to the gods

I cannot find you phrase of mind

(Devour is my favorite flower)

[Snow showing nothing but its normal nil]

Entering the Frankenstein Hall of Fame

Why did I pause in the foyer

To feast on those pajama trouser flies

Or get caught in the act of playing

Peerposssum on my clone's back

How did I let that embarrassment trap happen

[Still pranksters give my chair a hotfoot

Oh no you don't I cry preferring

My legs raw not fried/charred ... [

/

///