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I.

Your fingers raking
through chestnut wreaths
gapped with gloss:
the wind mussed your hair

into a sudden wild shape,
& the canal was glowing
like a runaway filament
in the buttery dusk.

You had gone quiet inside,
months before.
You slipped a spider's lyric
under my tongue.

Summer was really winter,
& winter was a belt cinched
around a hopeful throat
crawling with clouds.

II.

I'm not good on my own.
I drink too much,
I have terrible dreams,
I don't move for hours, days.

Stars bleach me, pierce deep
into a plastic rib space.
Old friends get married,
get pregnant, go invisible.

I turn on the charm,
a smile pooling amid
the pink. Whisky
floating over two tongues...

Was I supposed to make a move?
I missed a cue, somewhere.
I feel my insides lurching
like sun-broken snow.
~
An aviation sleight-of-hand:
Random flight plan

Strange admission
This war of attrition

No friendly skies
No wings of hope

Flagship wanderer
High above the clouds
Gliding like a phantom

Holding its place in line
By sailing incognito

Without a stitch of cargo
Or living company

No laughter
No banter
No bag of nuts
Nothing for the flight recorder
To remember

Only a lonely figure
In the cockpit
Throttling down
A descent into madness

Keeping slots warm
And bodies cold

~
“Ghost flights” of the aviation industry: Chartered to fly around the world – sometimes just around an airport – simply so airlines can hang on to takeoff and landing slots.
~
Daydreams
in passing with the clouds,
and their weary structure,
and their idle loneliness,
and their struggle for tomorrow.

You and me and the image of an immense tree; satellites hanging from its branches like minacious ornaments; sending frightful messages to far out places; convincing us television is real but our lives are fake.

Nightmares
in passing with the shadows,
and their elusive silhouette,
and their active aggression,
and their march for tomorrow.

You and me and the image of a school bus sliding down into the ice...
~
I saw an old man crying at
the precipice of his sanity,
ten stories above the sea,
and the world at his feet, a helo-deck:
a principality that had the worn out lay of home.

So trivialized.
So fantasized.
So immobilized.
Transmitting pirate-radio-waves eternally.

Seized the tower.
Hoisted the flag.
Crowned the queen.

"I've no blood right, only a passport," he said. "But do have the right mindset: I can't leave, we're so dangerous. Don't be a stranger now, we'll never be this dangerous again..."
I wrote to you in broad bold letters.
I wrote it on a tree.

You know the one, remember
—it called to us from the middle of the garden.

Sassafras: our secret token.

Winter's stillbirth is soon upon us,
and our placement in the sun in peril.

But I have whispered it all to stones
now ****** into the sea.

Remember the tree, and pray I live long enough to dream in its hollow.
Inspired by the disappearance of the Roanoke Colony in 1580's America.
Senryū one

Escape from Haiku
short long breathe in time
breathed out longing to go live

Senryū two

Seed fall fruit feed pigs;
passenger pigeons,
fertilized this forest, you know.

Senryū three

Discipline, science,
since some time ago,
ready readers write old seed.
self... set... some... deal to do with Ockham's strop.
She poured lighter fluid
Over all his love letters,
Like syrup on a stack
Of pancakes,
Flambéing the lies
She once ate up,
And instead toasted
To a new day:
A woman's day.
~
we two are a moon
in our common era

a clan of rainfall

use of water as sacred currency
chanting for a once held belief
fallen through the thread

light years from home
it's a pilgrimage
to hear the brontide

to feel our own unique gravity
guide us ashore

~
Mondays in Van Nuys:
velvet morning, bee stings,
and medicating angels
wrapped in mesh,
at the scene of a fugitive motel,
swimming towards
*** and misery.

Nicotine lizard
fresh from film school,
and his molten young
interceptors
with corduroy legs,
scouting for girls
any way, shape, or form,
pinpointing them
in alphabetical order.

Flashing red light means go:
pretty Eve in the tub,
lit from underneath,
she sun shines,
her back to the prehension
from a survey of hands
and power tools.

No tan lines,
the boundaries of
this celluloid garden
begin at her knees
--a fleshprint,
start the Van de Graaff
and watch as she reels
the far faded whispers
of carnal quicksand.

A smell of peroxide and sweat,
her constant freezing
and thawing
totally crushed out,
the dark don't hide it.

Candy Bar
--it's not her real name,
but she smiles like
she means it,
lying is the most fun a girl
can have without taking
her clothes off.

Once again
the week gets lost in repeat:
a certain smile,
a certain sadness,
look on the bright side,
this isn't happiness.
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