Crypticism

Ladies and gentlemen, tonights are the nights that define us

     and who we are as sad melodies inform us of our circumstances

Never forget me, and the adobe winds that whistle salvation

     across jersy shores at midnight where narrow eyed journalists

     were burned alive

And live by the scruffy-bushed portraits of veterans resting on our

     sequoian mantle and by the indignant flames nestled in our

     limestone hearths

Our times are ruminating on the golden arches of ronald raptures

     and the souls of rescued rappers; Whitman and Ginsberg are weeping

Take root in the honesty of Patagonia and Adirondack lapping the

     summations of Navajo chronicles and the butcher allegories of

     Constantinople

Dream of the Vatican and Oz on the same naked night and you will

     know the bruised bones of us iridescent holograms

The Monster (I)

It is while sitting atop tall endless nights

Starring down the crater's black infinity -

The whole of the twilight buckled up beneath me

- That I can muse and discuss disasters and epiphanies

Before it buckles and swallows me up... like a... never mind...

Tonight it will be a disaster

The drama will not even play in order -

The morning after...

We're eating with brilliant smiles at the refurbished diner

Just off Rochester tucked in the parking lot on Tienken

The waitress tells us how it burnt down, rebuilt anew

It's the first time I remember her eating a burger

- I don't think this is the beginning... it's the end
     or somewhere near

I think, yes, here it is, she had such soft music on -

It was any other night...

She invited me over, that was the thing

Yet there was nothing to say, She had nothing

Just that she wanted company so I kept her such

You can never get her to talk, not even her father

Or if you do you usually regret it

- "Flyyy aaaawayyyy" it sang, beautifully

I recall what shocked me was how much she'd drank -

Awfully insistent on that sixth beer...

Once when we celebrated my first success

She had so many glasses that night, more than me

And there she was holding me up, how I loved her for it--

... Now, her leaden head plummeted into the covers

Something was lurking amongst us tonight

- "Flyyy aaaawayyyy" it sang, beautifully

Then she asked me to tell her about my house -

My house... my... house...

"It will be our hidden circular palace of the far east

In the center a courtyard is guarded by a cherry tree

The back of the house will open to an emerald vista

Down the left slope is your greenhouse for our home grown--"

... She broke into tears. This was her last chance

- "Flyyy aaaawayyyy" it sang, beautifully

We will never return from this -

All she said was "I love you"...

So I rattled her with my barren desperation until she confessed

That she had no intention of seeing the morning. And I would 

     be her testimony

That her philosophy was firm and there was no

     avoiding it - she had taken all her medicine

I demanded she cry for help - she wouldn't - and so I cried
     for her and to the world beyond
So she cursed me for knowing what she was and loving her
     and we stood in the song's silence
- "Flyyy aaaa**"... I found it repulsive.

The songless void exposed us and revealed us for who we were...
... The Morning Dove and the Midnight Owl
She reminded me that I had ruined everything
And I followed the EMS with puffy eyes and trembling thoughts
And watched her in the hospital bed smile at one after another
All of them asking the same questions
As I contemplated the purpose of destinies
While she called it A New Experience
I stepped away from it, from her. It was impossible.

And when I took out my phone to grapple with
     the tomorrow, I looked
Beside her bed of nurses there was a monster
Just beyond the curtain it loomed with its gaping jaws
Sneering its crooked spindly silver teeth
Monitoring me with its cloud of black eyes, showing
     no signs of life
Entranced, I gazed back
Down its cold white empty pallet, through its rubbery intestines

Right into its vacant heartless void, without even a bed to
     cradle its victims
Bleached by the florescent lights, it was the darkest thing
     I'd ever seen
And it spoke to me
And devoured my loves and my sorrows and the memory
     of our sunrise
And it wanted her and it wanted me and everything we slept with
So I gave it to it...
......................Everything.

The morning after, we're eating with brilliant smiles at
     the refurbished diner
The End
or somewhere near...

Ode

(to Naved)

Behold yourself my adoring kin,

Naked walker of the East.

I have, or would be, captivated

By the cadence of your soul

Across the beating dirt.

How I long for you.

I once prepared so many words.

All for you, and your return.

But instead I take fortress here,

Before our golf course on the campus

Where we watched for UFO's

And close encounters with our own spirits

Do you remember?

It is all a foreign novel to me now.

The open green is an estranged cousin

Without you to introduce us.

I travel long night roads...

Roads we've conquered.

I run lapse around them

And tread common paths by foot.

Eight hours a week or more.

I sit up in cafes

And speak to strangers

And commune with your comrades

And keep you alive

With rampant gestures and flagrant terms.

Do I fill your shoes?

I know no minds akin to you.

On these nights, before greens and roads,

I dare to desire we were

Crooked Sinners...

That both had the constitution to be unthinkable.

You know as well as I how simple it would have been.

We could live in octagon houses with

Tigers and all your dangerous beasts...

But we were not constructed for this love.

This love I long for.

The rest needn't be spoken... I know you understand.

The Desert & The Future

Speak to me Stallion 

Talk to me on these notions
Of why you are so black
Of why you wear no saddle

You are running
From so far away
Do you run to chase me?
Do you run from the vast storm crest above you?
Or are you chased?
By the vision of a cube
And a ladder leaned upon it?

I have seen them too
The Cube
And the Ladder
They are no figment
But they degrade me
And bestow me sad arsenals of lonely void

Do they haunt you, like I?
Is the cube rotten... hard and heavy in the sand?
Is the ladder untouched... separate and erect by nothing?
No. Yours are leaned and beautiful, I know.

Then why do you run?
From the storm crest?
To me?
Or is it the Sun?
Ah yes, the Sun, I know you see it beyond me

It has offended me, the Sun.
I turn my back for it.
Does it not offend you?
That you run to it, right past me?
Think me no fool though, trampling friend
It is hot, and after all, still day

Can I slow your pace, Stallion?
If I set ablaze this bleached desert with Red Carnations
Grown from tyranny of the rotten cube
Inked with its sacrificed blood
These carnations are sweet
These carnations are beautiful, I promise you
Could I slow your pace?

It is all making me laugh, this play
Do you not see it?
This desert tells our Nows - you see a Sun
This desert tells our Futures - I see a Storm