1 New Poem

Summer Skin

When I slipped out of
old clothes for the new century,
the tired rags coming off
in great display,

I took the last half of it laughing,
luminous against backdrops of
half-filled water glasses sitting on
kitchen counters, sticky atop Formica,
sweating in lakeside heat.

I was the imaginary boy, a
boundless whirring of pregnant possibility;
all chanting in soft voice how
great the wings would grow
despite their bent angles.

Until I dropped robes of old time,
the light box of arcade plastic
and screen reflection dulling me,

As I take timepieces, calendars,
silver dollars, baby spoons,

All down to a penny pawn shop,

Sold for good firewood.

1 New Poem

Pine Tinder

In the stolen wonderland
of interlocked train cars, crisscross
traffic between stowaway kisses
off concrete paths,

We burn bright,
white phosphorus and corner store whiskey,
in ragged-end dress and worn elbow coat.

We are wonderous against a thousand
microphones held searching
for explanation, for the why/how
of it all.

We brush past,
unbothered in the acid glow,
cast by bent street lamps,
cast by quarter-shade phones boxes
with copper and change
long since stripped.

Until we round corners,
catch faces against motor oil pools
in blear-eyed dawn light;

How weary, how extinguished,
how like the spectacles-and-watch crowd,
we look in afterparty haze.

1 New Poem

A Sunset in Shenzhen

Nights in the city settle graceless,
metallic, shimmering pavement
glass of the new, recycled tins
making sturdy struts, thrust
into indifferent airspace.

In a different life I loved
school carnival fireworks,
noon tea, marching in formation
and tying ribbons on old oak.

In those lives I remember
days of thrift store couches
in three room apartments,
and Blue on hi-fi,

The days of reckless whimsy,
faced against worth of
fallen things, brutal math
of loan files and above-guideline
increases.

I remember ways things shone
in moonlit silver, before
a veil dropped, revealing
butcher’s blade beneath,

Our holy words.

1 New Poem

 Dancing in Kali Yuga

You say bread and salt greetings
to the morning, dull sun on
the damp flatpack flats of Dublin –

Remembering the trapse through
Javanese back fields, acting
pith helmet past,

Marching with
IMF retirees, teak furniture
executives: observed exotic creatures

From motorbike perches,
from cross-wise wooden windows
set over streams, between rice stalks.

How everything grand seemed greener,
eyes sharper, less bittered
by years after falling,

than now with rain in the teacup,
how things would have moved
so different, had it all been

leading back to this stuck-on
place,  where trees bare bitter
fruit, chemical exports,

that soon drift like black fleet
sails, over all skies.

1 New Poem

Star Transmissions

I remember days when
you flowed like a river around
me, arms dangling through
Thames and Seine,

Out to oceans, seas beyond,
horizons we could tell
from each other in mystic mist,
would be severed one day.

Soon, you’d say, we’ll go on
journeys separate, taking twenty-three
grams with us, as much old film,
phonograph recordings as we can carry.

I looked back to calm when
we traced, paddled all this way to
arrive at the cross station,

Soaked and ragged to bone,
marveling, still mouthing
the winter white hymnal,

Holding you against the pitch sky
as sparks faded.

1 New Poem

 Flora and Fauna Act

It is not so bad to be
starring out the gray window,
as leaves cast shade
on November ground,
and fences stand silent
against creeping frost.

In these days,
missing a clear head
before all the world in gold
intruded, that I sing
“Al-amdulillāh” to sky waters,
river banks, tracing veins
in hungry roots,
in weeping willows.

They answer back, alarming tone:

“What did you take in every step,
things lost in daily bonfires
you set off with unthinking words,
tongue held tight until
crimson leaked on bleached tooth?”

I spin on the black, no noises
left to make in justification.

I know I have cut cloth
too close to bone;

screams still echo about.

1 New Poem

Sand Castles

When I was young I drew

sculptures on the beach,

holding tight against reckoning

waves,

In bold ignorance of all to come.

They stood, loom weaving a

hope some day they would

come true:

The fantastic scenes of monsters

slain under bed clothes before

frights could reach me

sleeping sound,

Of lovers conquering the grand

canyons that tore them asunder,

heedless the cost in gold,

in bloody bruise.

****

They wash away.

Like hearts, broken each

morning in screen glass.

They wash away.

Like loving words, silenced

by callous hallway echoes.

They wash away.