We didn't quite think it through,
did we now?

We just pushed that harrow
even when the fields were underwater.

Now the wires bring us
the yes-no grammar of old love.

Lewd sun, cloud-tumble,
violets dying in the loam:

images lashed to the lens,
the loom, the wine-weave

of the eye... well,
we held on for a while.

Moonflower,
sewn through the trellis
with your lemon scent,
breasted nocturne blossom,
your intense distaste for the
bardiche sun that swings
across the high meridians,
how I favor you -

I will be your vambrace,
your cuirass, your sabaton -
your ancient metal shadows
that cool you from
swipe of day,
     my moonflower,
until the short-sleeve
freedoms of night.

"Winter's almost here,"
the wind maintains.
Open all the wine and beer,
winter's almost here
& cold will reign -
"winter's almost here,"
the wind maintains.

The tower climbs
in periodic orange,
lung-like patterns
above the slate run,
casting evening in
long frequencies as
I run the face of
century rows.
A hilted moon cuts
swaths through
clouds of interior
peach, piercing a
gin-muted sky.

Blocks of night
advance across
the blue golf course
& empty highball
glasses clink like
bells in the porch
dark. Broad curves
of street rise in
the humid trees,
then sweep and
glitter toward
the hospital.

Four and a half
miles bring me
to the train station,
under the black
water circuitry.
You arrive in your
night-soaked dress,
walking me home.
The streetlamps
are aching yellow.
Rain never comes.
As a we drift home
I feel so lucky that
all my runs carry
me home to you.
I draw a shower,
& a charcoal horizon
tilts, tilts, tilts.

I refused you, heart.
I saw the end parenthesis.

I escaped
the ten year wall.

There was an empty,
starry sting.

I pulled my thoughts in,
raised the sail into the wave.

From every corner
I heard C minor.

O heart, I refused you
& look at me now -

stone-mute, castle-hearted,
dying of it.

It was like when you breathe
snow in your lung, gasping
into that ****** plastic mask,
hooked to the machine the
doctors sent home with me,
feeding it the foaming medicine
that was supposed to free me.

One doctor let me listen to my
own chest with his stethoscope,
& I heard a landscape of old
paper, parading. That's you,
he said, that's you.

Another time I sat and watched
as they pierced my hand for
blood, to find how much oxygen
my lung was passing on. That
doctor taped the needle down,
apologized, We don't get many
kids, he said as my blood
wandered into another machine,
& my lung smothering in its cage.

I grew out of it, eventually.
I hit eighteen, could run
without hissing, without pain.  
The long nights under the blanket,
struggling for breath, I forgot all
about them as I discovered *****.
But I never quite forgot that feeling
of being at war with your own body,
trying to pacify it, trying to beat it
back, trying to trick it, trying to
drown it out like dead television.
What's yours is never wholly yours.

These pieces move
through a morning ether
of pale string dawn:
knight of coffee,
bishop of grass,
rooks of blonde
bones sleeping
in the *****-thicket.

My heart eats a shock
after knitting careful
plans for weeks now.
The metro train
rattles and shines.
The sun hides
in castled cloud.
Everything feels
bigger than it is.

They ask so much
from me, I could
never give that much.
Still, the day is long.
The complacent heart
will learn and adjust.
I still cherish you
with all my psychology.

"The eye
functions
as the
brain's
sentry,"

but my
off-duty
eye is
welling
with
hyssop.

Dark
Sicilian
coffee
pigment
circles
my iris
for you,
around
& around.

My eye
sees your
words,
floating
like crosses
of hyacinth,
a campaign
of brightness.

And
your eye,
sweet
spark,
it twinkles
with fields
sown
with
music.
Hazel
star,
wait for
a head
of sun
& *****
into green -
your eyes
of spring.

Soon,
my eyes
will see
you walking
from the
gate,
and they
will riot
with shining
orchestras
of brown,
& whites
pure as
yachts.

The looks
they send
you build
cities in
the air.

There is a cough and a bark
& then a roar, and suddenly
the green night is singing.

A light rain hangs like a history,
the silver toad bus squirms stop to stop,
the street racers flick rubber kisses.

In the opposite building, a woman
undresses before watching a movie:
the rain begins to flop and hook.

A bicyclist shines and streaks down
the sleekish funnel. The moon is forgetful.
A love story is playing out on the sidewalk.

The green night cascades smokes
with sharking clouds that drift north
into Maryland with their lethal line.

The cat sleeps on my great-aunt's rug:
I am alone in this quiet. Something is dying.
I watch the rain dry on the summer road.

Dear E--,

Sewing gold,
we walked
in the vacant
invisibilities.

In a hush-throated hall
we saw a Last Supper
of acrylic blocks,
breaks of the past.

Wooden masks
deviled the olive wall,
& we found tiles that
turned out our hands.

None of this sustained
you when the sun dropped
beams like pick-up-sticks,
aces of heat.

It didn't sustain you
when my friends
split like copper stills
across the breaded table.

The grand oil lamp
& the sea chant
became ash daubs
of noose memory

when I returned
to your dark room.
I'm sorry for every
thing I couldn't repair.

Every whorl
& loop in my hands
held you tight
as boas.

By the time I felt
your breath settle
into the delta of sleep
things had half-healed.

Still, I trembled
with sharp dreams.
In the morning,
I was yours again -

as I always was.
This is my apology.
Yours,
Evan

The waitress smiles
a little too much
but we don't care,
our little glass lung

of Bordeaux dips away
above slatish cobbles.
A Gauloises whips ash
from a smouldering hand

into the corner table fragment.
Systems of traffic evaporate.
A massive shadow folds
above the grifters.

The river laps
at knees of bread,
while empty bottles
browse the blackness

for their corks.
Beside cathedrals
a dusted dusk glows
& we follow it

back to the hotel.
It's a little room,
our neighbors make love,
& the courtyard roars

with high orange;
I think towards you
when sheets of clouds
betray a skimmed moon,

& we pull sleep around us.
The river tongue falls
& sleek stones gather
to a new language.

It's another late night
when rain strokes the yard

into gore-blue slate strakes.
Beyond the almond-thin window

a car hurtles into a red away
at the same time

as your face pushes
through the plum-colored

angelfish orchids
right to my blanket eye

as I wake from a dream
about snow in Dublin.

A moon bathes in Judas rain,
in dense yellow shadow;

although I am so alone -
I have never been so alone -

I feel your presence
in this strange convergence

of a flower's face, and
the memory of motherless snow.

Flowers that blossom at night:
those who open in the dark,
those who open to the dark.

I sit in my ***-bottomed boat,
thinking about the turns
& branches of my life.

No: my boat is dry-docked.
Let's be honest:
it's just a lonely bed, no oars.

But I am open, at last:
I am ready for someone
to come and turn their key

in this reddened lock.
Behind this door are rewards.
Behind this door I am waiting.

But let's be still more honest:
no one is racing down the hall
with a key in hand to try their luck.

I am a night-blooming cereus:
open in the dark, scented,
waiting for something in the black

to land and spread pollen.
I will breathe it - I will inhale
the sweetness, the gesture...

I'll be your bard
and write to you -
love notes, true.
In the yard,
the cherry-starred
blossoms flew,
a kiss's queue,
The Lovers tarot card.
O my distant one,
come near -
I'll read you Donne,
hold you here
while the sun
appears then disappears.

Cold rain,
& silver fork.

The date
moved from
winter night
to a gallery
where it
paused and
other things
moved
beneath the
Tigermilk.

Dazed,
I lost more
than heart
& the next
day the stress
carried me
on steel wing
to shed blood.

But I was clear.
Maybe things
were reset a little,
or maybe
I worried too much

because this
new thing
was already
spreading
across the inside
of my skin.

O little cloud,
where have you gone?
You sink to wisp or worse.
Your grayness turns bone-white,
then a cancerous blue
until you are nothing -
no, you are nothing now.
Your grave is the air
that I breathe.

I sharply decline with you;
you, up in your vault,
waiting for the densities
that will crease you into rain,
I in my mug-clutter,
my liquor-ploughed
library of ills,
try to cope,
come to grips.

Little cloud,
you died a long time ago.
You were reborn,
& died again. You've died
so many wet deaths.
I understand.
This is no world
to live in more
than a day or two.

Deoch Bhleth - the fourth drink of the morning, taken while the morning oats are being ground

The heart is drowned in dream
as the body motions towards coffee,
whisky, water, pills.

November slouches in slowly,
all sharp shoulders
& muscular knees.

The black circle turns and screams,
the beacon spits morning news,
an island of misery emerges from the salt-froth.

The wet streets are slicked to a shine;
I've gained weight. The day moon
is pregnant with blue.

Blood is thin and slippery in the vein.
The razor leaves fine lines all across my face.
My arm is singing. Psalms drop from the sleek

yellow womb of the ****** sun.
Alcohol climbs within me: I fall back on the bed,
thinking of her again. Where is she?

Is she staring out at the magpies
that gather on the wet lunch-branch?
Is she by the Liffey, watching the slate glint?

I am trapped in this plaster tomb,
my head a bridge between past and present;
somewhere a chain is being broken.

Your hair is a coy half-veil
across a bewitching smile.
Breathing comes a little quicker,
brown eyes fill with liquor -
good god, but you beguile.

You are somewhere between
my unhurried steps and
the unhurried stars that
break free and easy from
the branch of rain that
hides half the world.

You are something between
the wild words of Yeats and
the wild words of your own,
handed to me across
the four hour sea,
full of firsts.

How
many
nights
did I
lower
myself
into the
well of
sleep
unwilling,
like a
sacrifice,
my
dreams
caught
in the
net of
morning?

How
many
nights
did I
chase
sleep
but fall
into
the nest
of insomnia?

Now
I know
the night
front
to back;
but
I am
more
interested
in you,

& the
empire
of dreams
that is
gifted
to you.

What
parades
through
your
drowsy
pavilion?

What
constellations
& what
wilding,
benighted
tangos?

What
incandescence
does your
brain
gather
in those
starry,
wheeling
hours?

I will
sleep
now,
& meet
you
in the
enchanted
ether
that
seethes
between us,

joining
your
wild
tango
of oblivion
with my
burning
tropic of
Aries,

knowing,
with
sorrow,
that
the
bright
axe
of waking
will
cleave it
all
away.

Wednesday night drunk,
the sun lays so still
in its gray sarcophagus;
the sandy mid-rise
across the way
spits yellow blandings
into dead clouds;
the Aberlour bottle
raking its way
towards recycling.

O, that casual dismissal,
how it decimates -
"Thanks, Ev. You too."
But what do I know
of the little surgeries
of her evening?  
More whisky spills -
the sun's canopic heart?
I drank it,
it's gone.

There is something coming
out of the summer fog.

It abrades the full bellies
of ill clouds which burst

into sloughing rain slices
that slush and slide in soft slips

& slurs as it slouches
through the soak and sinks

sodden and silent and spent
to the wet-stunned cement stub.

Then, a pause - and it is already gone:
a visitation from an unwanted memory.

Shadows rise and suddenly fall
from slick brick gibbets:

cars throw stray starry bars
of slim dim shine from their teeth.

A palace of broken fog
escapes into the east,

leaving a black tabletop stain
fading slowly on the brain.

You are somewhere between
Istanbul's drum-lined streets
& the streaks of stars,
soft as poached yolk
from the window seat
of the plane that carries
you across half the world.

You are something between
the dreaming green women
of Yeats and the painted
women in long galleries
who patiently wait with me
for your intelligent eye.

Ange rebelle
voyageur, nomade
le sucre dans vie:
pour vous, je fabrique des lustres -
j'écris des centaines de poèmes
qui éclaire l'été en noir.
Je regarde tes peintures
et je rends grâce aux esprits vaudous.
La rue pleure la nuit sans toi.
Le ciel va dans un sens.
La rivière l'autre.
Ange Nomade,
mon coeur va dans tes mains
si proprement.

"Rebel angel,
traveller, nomad,
the sugar in life:
for you I make chandeliers -
I write hundreds of poems
that illuminate the summer in black.
I gaze at your paintings
and give thanks to voodoo spirits.
The street cries at night without you.
The sky runs one way.
The river the other.
Nomad angel,
my heart fits inside your hands
so neatly."

We built a little night
but you emptied it.

Your Dublin beachhead
is all undertow.

Dead menus blow from
one gutter to the next.

Westward parks
fill with fever.

A gibbeted sun
hangs ignored.

O darling...
I'm not this way,

I'm not this way -
remember what I am.

I am staring out
at the black shoulder
that fell an hour ago
across the yard lap,
thinking about it again:
that love is a game
with no way to win;
but you can lose more slowly.

I followed him
step for step
for eighteen blocks.
He vanished
into a pool hall
called Pop's.
When he came out,
I was waiting for him
with a hand full of

Drunk because
you're not here.
Gin and *****
drop into glass.

Drunk because
I don't know how
to tell you I want
to make you mine.

Drunk because
creme de violette
speaks purple
for both of us.

Drunk because
the Casino soothes
me with maraschino -
so let's go to Rome.

Drunk because
you left me that
pink silk thing.
It haunts me.

Drunk because
you're not here.
Gin and *****
drop into glass.

On the fifth of July,
after thin string nights,
you'll fill my eye.

We'll coax the moon nigh,
bask in grey light
on the fifth of July.

Verse I'll supply,
& as I write
you'll fill my eye.

Rejoice in reply
to a gentle bite
on the fifth of July.

Once bashful and shy,
I'll soon ignite,
you'll fill my eye.

Into the city you'll fly
with your delights -
on the fifth of July,
you'll fill my eye.

The truculent sun
escapes cloud guard
& serves us day

over green bonnet trees
that birth false fruit
where wasps crawl.

Now the roads fill
with rioting flax,
rose rays, rude rain -

there's too much life -
the world's heart is burst,
blonde-broken sobs.

Lightning spit across the alloy face
of the dishwasher I was filling a half moment

before a high black throat unfastened
with a sunken bellow that scattered rain

like sodden hair along a sheer pane scalp.
Hell, a storm? On New Year's? What an insult -

because it's been a long year down
for the lonely and eroded angels, the poets

whose orchestras of synapses decay gently
into fresh stanzas. I don't know about you,

but my inbox was a chorus of No, No,
Not You, Never You. It ate me

inside out, but I pressed on in new poems,
both mine and yours - I stumbled blindly

into rooms full of your renewed voices -
reassuring me that silence is not the way.

These are not poems, you all told me -
they are beacons, telegrams, phone calls,

they are pleas, they are screams, they are alive
like the cursive lightning scrawl that paints

the kitchen and bids me stand up straight.
It's been a long year but I came here to say

my mouth is filled with thank you;
strange friends and colleagues, thank you.

To all of you, and your hard work this year.
Your poems were read, and remembered.
Thank you for all of it. It changed me,
for the better, and was appreciated.

I went to
weddings on
the mountain,
I went to
weddings by
the sea.

I went to a
wedding of
paper,
I went to a
wedding
of flame.

I went to two
of my own.
Somewhere
is a third
that will last
the distance.

Charmed alliance,
are you the one?
By leaf or sand,
whatever binds you,
are you the love
I need?

Sleep circles
with wide wings.
Pages vanish down the eye's well:

Napoleon burns Moscow,
French detectives fry onions,
Lorca dies in the greenest green.

Rain spits into the room
crooked, dark. I'm alone.
The gyre closes, soft as a net.

Dreams hunch on the furniture.
The mirrors broadcast
the Venetian blinds croaking

and rattling against the screen
like creamy swords
in enamel scabbards.

Book-addled eyelids
are rusting into blinks
of burling dusk.

Each dying thought
is a sleek Deco Bugatti
lead by a shining path

from teardrop headlamps
whose fingers pry the night
moments before tires

sing rubber to blue.
The rain gathers into serpents
in the channels of the floor.

Above you hangs
the fat black branch
of sleep's truest face.

The heart is a grave,
logic is buried there.

City of stones and gamblers,
trees leafed with playing cards,

old men skimming coins
from the fountain floor.

Here in Alphaville,
romance is the gun -

pull the hat down low,
rub your lips with your thumb,

drive in the neon-beaded night
to the swimming pool gallows

where you broadcast a red truth
before the wet knives come flashing.

The heart is a grave,
logic is buried there.

O rebel angel in the whitest shirt,
with a smile's arrow in a quiver of air,
I'll down this whisky now and flirt:
blotted, besotted, bleary, bared.
After rugby cup the talk converts
to banana slugs and wine-sea hares,
& when you exit to a silvered next
I don't wait at all to ask about you.
Our hosts' reply, uncanny quick as a hex,
etched in glassy-cheeked tattoo:
I already know I'll send a text.
I leave and ease a dream, the eaves askew...
Now dawn jitters in on dewy, burnished feet,
swinging over sleepy skirt of new-born street.

The crowd
busies itself
selling lemons
and shoes,
but beneath
the sweeping
scrapes of wall,
a pyramid
of eyes
greeds for
a death.

I am the Empire in the last of its decline,
That sees the tall, fair-haired Barbarians pass,--the while
Composing indolent acrostics, in a style
Of gold, with languid sunshine dancing in each line. -Paul Verlaine, "Melancholy"


I am the Empire, in decline.
The elm tree is yellowing;
the rain-arm is broadcasting
from the cloud station.

I am the once-loved voice,
now a tired smear of memory;
the ghost of a market thrill,
a bed of smoke, a red register.

I am the Barbarian, grown fat
after the stuttering blonde pyres
are stilled: finger-flickers of ash.
I am the white noise nocturne

after the rerun is over.
I am the cathode ray,
the scent in the glass.
I am the Empire, in decline.

My skin's
fever,
your gaze's
brook -

Join me,
even if
to reach me
you must use
the milky way
for stepping
stones.

Each mile is
conspiracy
against us.

Each hour
of division,
is poison that
I am forced
to drink
with you.

You, with
Rapunzel's
tresses,
you are in
poems that
have always
existed.

No matter
how much
I want you
to lay there
and let me
read to you
by the light
of comets,
you can't
hear me.

You are
too far -

My skin's
sun,
your gaze's
moon.

I was once told that I wasn't
afraid of heights, but of being
thrown from them -
& this was a comfort, for
the flaw wasn't in me, per se,
but in my reading of other
people, my trust in their
intentions. Even so, crossing
any bridge was breathing knives.

Then I met you, and we walked
over Taft bridge, the largest
unreinforced concrete structure
in the world, rising above
Rock Creek gorge, 128 feet
above the bright green floor
I feared until you.

We crossed it in style. I was
in the angle of the eagle.
I walked on the backs of lions.
I held light. My eye surveyed
the depths of the glen.
I walked with you by my side
all the way to Dupont,
& when we shared coffee -
I spoke endlessly to comfort
your excess of sun -
I felt a swerve of glory, a sense
of the world that I only shared
with you.

Dear J----,

How many suns died,
out in the black margins
& burning headrooms
since we last shared
any words of importance?
I look out tonight from the roof
towards the endless upper branch
& swear a few have blinked away.

You strolled in so casually
from my dream, as if from the wood
or park, and common strokes
moved in the air between us.
Your words fork across
all your grassy miles,
as you tell me about the fox-scream;
I can almost see the starlings
hash across miniature cubes of lawn.

I live in silver -
the cars that flicker right to left,
the metro's metallic hide,
the strange inflorescent cloud
that garottes the coinish moon.
I'll lend it you on afternoons
when the rain deposits itself
in quiet blue discs across the city.

Go now, and know
that I am always grateful
for another friend, especially
when they understand
how hard a heart heaves
across all the bent years.

Yours,
Evan

Apple trees
bow silently,
& meadows
burn evening
green. You
strolled out
of a dream
into my life.
Paintings wait
for your eye.
Bricks wait
for your feet.
The city desires
what I desire -
that you come,
& live with me.
The swansies
have had you
long enough -
let me have my
turn. I've placed
a bookmark in
my life, turned
down the corner
of the page.
I walk the same
circles, past the
same apple trees,
the same meadows,
but I'm only
half in it.

Across thousands of miles
you lay your claim on me
with your purple stockings.

My body is your riot, full
of blood's disobedience
& a climbing incandescence.

I am your lamp. Coyly
you insinuate provocative
thoughts. I'm helpless,

I'm guttering like a candle
on a caravel, burning
despite the danger.

Thousands of miles, but
there is only me and you
and a thin, thin stretch of purple.

Watch the pulse
in my skin,
"my heart
moves
for you."

Or does it?
You say no,
"I'm not
the one."

I guess
the heart
has its own
business
to run,

& who am
I to speak
for it?

Little chips of evening
hang in air like
laundry on the line;
they bring to mind
the blue slot branch
dissolving in summer,
glimpsed from the roof,
or the way the metro
cascaded the station
in rippling silver armor,
or our little burial
under sterile spruce -
I remember you
in your dress of cherries,
your cola-tinted glasses
reflecting a gold hoof of sun
as you threw sway.
But now it's winter,
you're gone away,
the evening slithers
over battlements
& night wrenches in
with fists of crows,
the dollop of moon
clots by the back,
the heart sheds a skin.
Nothing's like it was
when you were here.

I do not want a plain box, I want a sarcophagus
With tigery stripes, and a face on it
Round as the moon, to stare up.
I want to be looking at them when they come
-Sylvia Plath


because you're often here:
my head is booked with you,

heart wrapped in your worm;
even my feet walk where I do not want to go

thanks to old paths you laid to bone,
invisible, revived by instinct.

Don't get big headed about it -
you know my memory, I recall

every figurine caught in the web.
Many have no names now

& some of the rest are only names.
But unlike most, you're wont to escape

this night scribble brain garden,
percolating into a shapely world.

From time to time I wonder where they go,
all those strange and lovely yous

that leak in photo negative
from my mind's eye with dusky limbs

& that unforgettable voice,
paroled and incessant...

If you are ever out strolling
by your canal where the waters are so still

& so black that the drunks swerve away
& the sodium vapor eyes recoil,

& you hear following steps and look back
& there you are...
                               walk faster.

In the attic
with sister
old computer.

Insert disc 1 of 9,
King's Quest IV:
The Perils of Rosella,

argue about
who types,
where next,

do we call
the hintline,
5 a minute.

Rosella walks
screen to screen
in red dress.

We direct her
to act and
to die.

Reload
Rosella,
start again.

It took
all winter
to complete.

I remember
everything,
the whale and

the bridle,
the ball and
the hen.

In memory's
treasury
this is among

the most dear:
walnut table,
voltage hum,

sister yelling
watch out
watch out.

The simple sun today
just aches away.
I go outside,
bloodshot-eyed
with trembled lip,
& join the withered pip
on a whisking walk
to break away from surface talk,
to escape my vacant nest,
the closing tightness in the chest.
When I'm back I yearn
for your return
from the green,
the awful, awful green.
But I would take the green
with a smile if it would mean
I'd be with you,
no hopeless queue.
But today? The simple sun today
just aches away.

Alone
In black park of bed
-Elise Nada Cowen


Bedding them, saving them -
(or maybe the reverse?)
it was all the same to me.

All of them, like that;
One liked to wrestle first,
another wanted to be tied down.

Their eyes loosed in the darkness,
swimming at me, sparking
& begging, always begging.

But all of our skins need touching,
all of our faces want remembering.
So I gave them what they needed:

I loved them all with unclouded heart.
Ivy trellises inside me,
but memory is still sterling.

Black park of bed -
yellow crush dawn -
I am the giving snare.

I feel your thoughts turn
in the wild plum twilight,

as we stroll from
the crooked grocery

to the empire
of mauve carpets.

Your hand draws tight.
Your eye is wet and sharp.

You don't need to say it,
I know the hue and tint

of your just heart,
I feel the cutting wave.

In Arabic, "poetry"
is related to "hair" -

both things sense
the world so finely.

Well, let this poem
know you as gently

as your Rapunzel's hair
knows the evening air

winding through silver
avenues of moon.

I was a knotted shadow,
walking under a bridge
in Dublin, brick water vault
under the grand canal line,
on my way to the coffee shop.

Now I'm a sun-ray, lost to scatter
on the bolt-broad walk,
lost in a carpet cloud,
lost, lost. I'm in another place,
where the wind off the river
tassles the tops of slate roofs
on its way to my corner windows,
a mocking push that carries no salt.

I am sure I will not see it again.
I will go out instead, forward,
out into the alleys and greeneries
& grassworks and cementings,
to find something new
that might replace a wet shadow
full of coffee by the sea.