Spilled Abstractions
Flowers emerge
a seasonal blossoming
finds them on the front lines
that separate liquidity
from gravity
nature
as we understand it
is a battlefield
we ourselves are floral
from within
an explosion of color
and deviation
the bifurcation of working systems
the border erased
the gauntness of integument
a knife drawn
a shattered sternum
the redness of mouths
that spill paint onto canvas
Jackson Pollock as an angel
in steel capped boots
a set of wings
as broad as eyelids
that quietly close
and hunch
into silent winter.
Woodstock Glass
In Woodstock I looked
into the glass and there
I found me lost in the layers
of inside and out of cars
and street and the baubles
for sale behind the panes
I was there as a man but
also there as a kind of monster
both of those things in parallel
indivisible I held no malice
against this town that trapped
and crystallized me creating
the sudden perception of life
inside that cold transparency
holding me immobile despite
your presence at my shoulder.
Cavities
Noiseless
shaping cavities
into walls of cartilage
stained with mucus
and the thrash of breathing
as you gasp for
gasp for
gasp for
the possible air
the cold clean air
of winter’s dryness
the grasping air
that twists you into shape
and back to the present tense
into a world of premonition
where you gasp
again
for the pinkness of gum
for the elasticity
of clean fresh artery
that mainlines from wisdom
to repudiation
and now your breath catches
as your lungs burst
into flame
and your heart
is only
meat
is only
a charred
and flaming token
of a memory.
Floating
If only we could float -- then surely
the air would be thicker
layers of coldness and solidity
that the light
must fight to penetrate
and trees would stub their leafy twigs
against an unexpected
hardness
as we rested our gin and tonic
upon a slowly drifting slab
of density
somewhere higher than we ever
dreamed of reaching
climbing upon an invisible staircase
to a place
where we could throw
our bodies down
and there we would sleep
and dream of the plasticity of the fabric
of everything lost in visions
of the drifting twists
of cloudsmoke.