Gloves

Kazi

Kazi

–

–

Who do you think of

with the smoke of cigarettes?

A dry, unsweet smell.

No, not who? Where? Where, then. Where?

–

Do you think of the morning, cold and clear:

Filled with the sound of sun and it’s reflection

Across your greasy glasses,

In a courtyard of bricks and unvarnished wooden benches

–

The frozen pond foot

prints followed in snow: falling,

Flow the black water

–

And do you hear his laugh

Standing around scratching his middle eastern beard?

The hand-rolled cigarette

Ostensibly waved about;

His white teeth

As you discuss the day’s philosopher

–

Admiring him like you’ve never admired yourself.

–

Discuss your love and

Your hate (and your love?)[?] Realize

Sameness, meditate.

Assayer

Assayer

that if we look through flames at people,

quite plainly we shall     see

(between eye and some star):

–

the comet’s flame is like our flames,

with the same nature:

the star’s blaze is a candle’s fire—

both can and we’ll be snuffed.

–

though the blaze be brief

and the fire steady

and because of a day of sunshine

breaking the night better

than overcast years,

be one of the stars,

give not to the fears.

–

we are now only ourselves

—never photographs—

—nor dreams—

—(isolated in time)—

so why look to sea

if ruffled hair

and disorders are all there will be?

instead leave it to others to look on our cowlicked Sundays

for though some stars somewhere are already dark, they burn brightly here.

Pipes

Ashes

Ashes

 

It shatters into ice-tray chips

That melt to ashes in the atmosphere,

Softly floating down to you.

 

Flakes landing in your front yard

Like the burning leaves of autumn,

But then blowing elsewhere

Caught in the breath of heaven’s air.

 

Can a child collect

The ashes of a heart

And roll a snowman on the lawn?

 

No answer is certain,

Not even the coming dawn,

And my wanderings, like the ash,

Wonder on and on.

From the west

From the west

the sky changes from (filthy) yellow to (antiseptic) blue (littered with rose-colored crumpled Kleenex clouds, their dark bellies half hidden, facing away from solid ground, upturned like poisoned fish) some hospital floor of the dying

 

the death of the day

hand in hand with death of the

self, to be reviewed

 

the sick phoenix sky

consumed with an actor’s woes

bites the glass pill tonight

Becoming Attune

Becoming Attune

5

Two stags warring snag

Their antlers and begin

Negotiations.

4

Forever ago

All Stars went out … now we watch

Infinity die

3

Rippling water

Reflections, Nature’s static,

Only beautiful

2

When do you go from

Your Home in the world-Mother

Little dying Bird?

1

Seven Ravens hold

A vigil in the Moon’s Light—

The Fallen lookéd on

0

Is this how

Memory of Heaven Smells?

Fresh Pine

Modern Empiricism

Modern Empiricism

For Public Broadcast:  A Biography of a Fanatic Who Found the Edge:

—Stumbled off an ignorant ledge.

—Waved the sign: Forget Knowledge.

—Planted sixty-six trees in an apple orchard.

—Squatted a field of brimstone shard.

—Preached that living life ought to be hard.

—Shouted the words of a red-faced preamble.

—From door to door did amble.

—A fount of fate, hold the humble.

 

Biographer Critiqued: If nothing more—they will say—the heretical dog was American,

The author did his best to conduct—nose notably not in air—a hopeful skeptic’s recon,

Separating empirical truth from mystical ordinance, and judged which best to stand on.

The What If Game

The What If Game

 

 

 

 

On the couch next to her, in a thoughtful lull,

(Her eyes—brown, warm: they were like that, indeed,

But amplified by an amiable lens:

Or friendship, that unexamined window

Which I feared to dirty with greasy doubts sown

In a dream of opposite things from

 

What is.) I suppose I looked far away. She

Asked me: What are you thinking of? I

 

Thought some and then said: What if I were just a

Ghost? What proof do you have that I am real?

 

Well what proof have you? Perhaps I’m a ghost too.

 

It’s Funny, I said. What, said she. I only thought…

 

Are not ghosts supposed to be see-through?

Ω

Ω

you fancy yourself a sidewalk daisy,

you compare yourself to the grass,

you’re a pen on the ground, alive with ink—

but deadened by your past

in the teeth marks

and the broken clip.

–

this seen together

(a mosaic of recycled glass) and

forgetting your spectacles

(Heineken green integrated with)

curling your first finger

(Red Stripe brown embraced by)

and peering through the pin hole

(Budweiser blue)

it’s a starry night over the Rhone.

–

Running together like water

(or wolves)

–

But

apart from the well-written résumés,

–

a child of

Cain…

seeking a salve for the pangs of loneliness and you’re noticeable different,

caused you to raid the mead hall,

or society,

your ill-suited cocktail manner,

shuffling around the room,

trying to make the toothpick cheese cubes last…

–

Who will stay to

stoke the fire keeping

night away while

you sleep and

dream of

day?