Obsolete

There on the swingset

feeding a pigeon, one fucking pigeon...

Remember

How it was morning and bright and sleep was

to physicality and kerosene one gender alone. Both

my, my, my.

An event so rare. You come into town

and liberate the feet of the teens. We

are stranded by snow.

Falling-down-hopeless alcoholics, gag a little -

force it all down, munch our hay. The milk truck had left.

I vouched for that.

It is my birthday. Bring on the razor

make love to it and take me out to dinner. Pickle it.

Arcane brine.

...

- Pigeons! For fuck's sake...

There should be starlings

You chose poison.

A Letter Kept To Myself

Dear,

It is somewhat what I imagine knowledge to be

dark, salty, clear moving, forever flowing.

Since our knowledge is historical, flown.

A monotonous coastline, endless and sagging

delicately ornamented by the moon still hanging solid.

The poorest postcard of itself.

Bats?

I was waiting for this letter to find you home.

I guess it will reach you on that waiting room,

I am too shy to stop.

Cannot derange or rearrange.

The Islands have not shifted since.

The pale bay still wearing a milky skin,

flaunting exaggerated beauty.

Topography still more delicate than history,

insisting and cautiously creeping.

Worming back.

Like a prayer for the night to last twice as long.

Those nights, not these.

Threatens to meet

Utters words known.

Tyrant.

City erodes. In time

carves out words on flesh

in shorthand,

pregnant paw.

Hunts alone.

There is the the wish

and how the wish goes

noons and afternoons.

the jackal - notochord,

has only a heart.

Names the light.

Your river, your wars,

propped up against walls

then white, throat, then slits

of different languages

- Here's my dead body

Look at it.

Something sleeping.

Tell me again where to hide.

- It is a secret as well.

Was it spring?

- Along my dubious veins.

Come closer, listen!

- Another fruit I have tasted before.

Is it about me?

- No. It is about war.

Is it about me?

- Yes. Only the part where you're tired.

It has something to do with that song.

- About the divorced father, yes.

Is there honor in this, or a point even?

- Not in me, no.

You do it to get off.

- I beat you to it.

It's because I am weak and you know it.

- ...

Knew.

- Stupid statement.

You hate me.

- Yes.

Then tell me again where to hide.

- Hide inside me.

Some Endings

Feasible vision under bed linen, you are here and you are here.

strangely enough, that '61 talkie was on tv last night - black, white,

"absolutely not". Your parting words, your queer wrangling

intoxicated, acting sober - Misfit Flat. A beer a year

would say my friend Mitch, whose dad passed not long ago

came summer. There's the sky again, as shallow as creek

God willin'. It will. We both know. Back in my bed again, red

jubilantly delinquent. I have already lost one tooth and it is

not even September. Nothing has happened under this dead

streetlamp. I am not unaware, just being aggressively fictive.

Some practical concerns include my teenage years that were

bent away from their assigned post. I forgot where and am already

starting to cry. Looking up, I make out stars and walking papers -

my very own - burn to white. Some endings never end.

To a Lighthouse

Then again. Here, the former site

of a nineteenth century shipping dock

now a concrete slab overlooking

the East River. I was younger then

[the shoeprint gives it away], time

was for lovin' the hell out of you.

Jesus preaching for the apostles

Be his light dude, not his judge!

I try to understand what he means

While setting the table for Easter

Promisse me you'll never be sad

on my behalf kid. Remains are silent.

You call and bring forth what's within

you. And that's when the missing starts.

I write you and there's no end unless.

The kid looking amazingly cool at

the back of the Plymouth Voyager.

And I do not know where to drive.

Weird Sisters

once

a treasure taken,

by ghosts

is time told.

the walls bare

the inside of

rooms also

tell things.

twice

the things gone

by chance

a You, an I.

Reverend.

Cloudy turbulence, berceuse coming

out of this lacquered beast, a roof.

Wanted me happy before the leave,

that bushy bearded sir. It's him.

fled my country at dawn calmly

still peculiar to me.

Poses

Do the words "You are gold" mean anything to you

Let them ring on and let's not talk at all

Let's leave it there and move on. Hey, what's wrong

Do the words "The end" mean anything to you

Inmates of heartache are killing with love

Never succeeding in killing that love

Far aways from hello comes distance

But don't come unless you disappear

These are the things that matter most

Saving love whatever the cost

Just because you don't see it doesn't make it unreal

I am captive unto thee, set us free

Do the words "I know" do anything to you?

[A. R.]

From To Place

Ice cold water without any ice

there and not wanted, spent January

full glass in hand, sounding like sigh

corridor, door, rows of bed, if any

in Cowfuck, Nowhere.

Clock without hands

tic and not toc, masturbates

the boy scene, translating as youth

verses, one after the other

cum sweetly in bed.

Reticent sailor exciting envy,

impenetrable even to sharp teeth

tiresome like never before, a dialogue

lisped, carved, scrimshaw

in the wrong ivory bone

Elegy To My Son Or What You Will

Scoot, kid, in any juvenile contraption, please

impart your light to my understanding of the world.

Yours are the funny hours, the funny job and some bad ideas

still young and drunk and to bed not long after ten or eleven.

I am so dumb. Cowboy of old swaying a hat, cornered calf

my world's under mist, loving razors, no dreams of any sort

the handkerchief is a traveling bag, all mouth is the bartender

dramatizing the meanings of nature - the poor fool is hanged

While little bunnies turn guns on themselves. Go play,

and do not leave. sorry to bother you fatherly ghost,

das nachtgespenst! To this day still, I am amazed and hidden.

Apostle

School door to summer days,

being ridiculously transparent

in the actual tones of speech -

seraphic shit, hero of gist.

Your consciousness and me.

When others are sleeping

believing the lies we rue, tiptoe

for we mean unseen beauty

and rapture in a garden of weed

rivaling our own words.

To this day, on the outskirts

of my body rich with moronic

ideas of two, the longest spoon

floats in tar colored themes and

variations of your piano lessons,

and for a long Nantucket minute

everything is celebrated in secrecy.

To a city

Gaslit old woman with hair and no sex

looks over a river that thinks is the sea

itself. What pride is there in having teeth

as crooked as your paved streets. You

torture everything with your calm, your

shallow streams, your trust in time.

You are that stinky river, all of its salt,

its brine. And disappearance, you die

by the West with infected pigeons

flying as far as your mournful prow

buried in the pleasures of your chosen fate

celebrating this life's lasting damage

a peninsular incapability to mate.

The long year.

New form, started all over again, new play

mastermind english rose or violet at war

head in a silver tray, hair in wash basin

slaughters on mornings, no names no date.

Letters announced in muted horns. These days.

This day, still beautiful when something breaks

My maudlin lexicon you know oh so well, see

starts over again, like a weird and simple pleasure.

Of you, for you, reincarnated cradle tongue

everyday things like cigarettes or the long lost

art of tipping accordingly. things of urgency

all the gold hidden behind cellar doors.

The hour between the time of obstructed sight

and waking up as kittens, that is milk that is

honey. A company of horses, your banner mine

all the books in Latin, a thimble of cinnabar.

Horizontal snow blowing upon acorns sweet

smell of smoke, not so far he proved it, bombs

at least we're still alive. At least we're still alive

and bottles washed against our throats of thunder

These guarded truths for a long time yet

no memory of it either, watching the wind

and fate, what is there to say about the future

exempt, sometimes arrives late other times fair.

German shepherd

As you led a dying bird

on the back of your

throat,

to a stream of water

and I could not bend

my tongue outwards

to bite how much I

love you, not

bark.

Or a paper cut as shallow

As it smells the last page on a book

as exact as the first one.

Like drawn to it. You moth to flame

tell me is it you or is it we.

Like undone, I dog to bone bitting not

barking at these jagged walls

your collar bones. My jaded bones

your treasured pearls. And words

for you in the afternoon. How slow

your iced tea and your periods

and your sinking in as I disappear.

Like hair, spit, like hallmarks

Sleep, combining death and tourism

as furniture discloses itself

Undressing now, like an apprentice

matador as distance equals time in flames.

We're both naked. Drinking like a house on fire.

I had never slept in a bed before.

Grasping knowledge from chairscapes

all too new and sudden were sheets.

Now you are naked and I have been here

before. This skin is rust and a phrenological

map of rooms in myself, into the lining of my coat.

The white handkerchief stuck in my throat.

Pirate ship with a broken mast bending space

and forgotten words coming from somewhere

else meaning absolutely everything.

Shelf Life

Talking about the days eyes

pink, herbaceous, double blooms

and the kingdom of bondmen

or the use of weird [fate] ziplock.

The canny lasses pass us by

leaving faint traces of smile.

We are interesting mannerisms

to the eyes of night, in the mixed

behavior of genetic produce or

lait caillé, MA. Dust settling on

a lightbulb in the supermarket aisle

[dreams of pushing my son around

canned food that does not expire].

Smoldering tobacco trance, the waltz

of fumes and days like old jewels

laying there as if digesting mice.

Expiry dated, unadulterated good,

a chapter of bringing charm to nether

perfected as the summer ends, sibilant

in the dairy section of a ghostly train.

Obviousness

Things speakable and things

unspeakable, untiring and

un-painful strife, battles and

slaughterings of men. Piercing

[cries?] of horses, mortals [on

the beach?] warms good things

[mixed?] with evil... two to me

both. Gold greatly angered being

burned by blazing fire, having

kindled. Sea-faring the wave

[or the noisy sea?] in war and

might. One after the other and

these things... Gold.