All Hands Bury

All Hands Bury

Today I wear the clothes of a dead man
a boy really
not yet bones

No.

A splinter freshly pressed
into the dirt

There is something poisonous
about young bones
we hesitate
to bury them
there has been
some kind of
mistake


In our sadness
we grasp petty things:
what has mass
and can be held around you

This winter
we have broken the ground
too many times

still,
we learn nothing
from this attrition
if time does lay scripture on
new skin
we can not see it's mark
so the body is silent
and tells us nothing

we bury our own
before they may tell us
whom to pray to

when no other words
can come to mind
we gather between that
great silence
to call each other
'Lord'

They say
the name of god
must not touch the ground
must never touch the ground
we cannot take our eyes
from it
for even a moment
our holiness
is that fragile:
prone to
silent sacrifice
needs no Judas

I wrap my coat
tight against the shivering wind
handed to me
as we auctioned relics
from your closet

we press against
what is still warm
close the gaps
safety in numbers
there must be a math
to this absence
we can call this science
oncology
we can call it
exorcism
we have called ourselves
apostles

We have tattooed
new passages
line by line
Book 1:
Confessions:
we have forgotten
what divides
mantra and eulogy

In that confusion
we dig
until the dirt is cold around us
we do not stop
until we can see our breath
billow
condense
and fall into the ragged soil

today
another gash is complete
and we have carved
a suitable cradle
from the earth:
All hands
bury the dead

All mouths
form around
what few prayers
we have found in the night

We fill the grave
chanting breathless
whispering
dictating
Book 1:

Genesis.

Revelations.

Genesis.

Revelations.

It tastes a lot like engine oil and smells like being poor and small

this is just to say

No ideas but in things
yes
but what of the space
there
between those things

what of the cold air
sharp
leaking from the ice
box
chilling the plums

what of the empty
found
the next morning
hunger
too, is something felt

No ideas but in things
yes
but what of that air
cold
the next morning

No ideas but in the
faint
smell of plums
forgive
me for the absence
of things

I'm watching TV in the window of a furniture store

cliche
Framed in the window
arms with blanket draped from wrist to wrist

beauty was a cliche
of any word in that room

poetry is not the language we use
to describe such things

I have forgotten that language

but still, they tell me
I mouth the words in my sleep

I won't stop all the mighty eyed pretending

Fourth Position

You raised your arms
bent your knees deeply
in a plie
one of the many words you taught me
what a gift,
to give someone names
for all of the movements
of the body








I wanna die

My tea bag
leaks wispy threads
into the water
soon the entire cup is dark
I look out my window
night comes so quick these days
I admit that I am waiting for nothing
the shadows stretch
as though they could ever break away
from their cars
fire hydrants
the drug dealer on the corner
like a gargoyle
I wonder if he knows he is waiting for nothing
the shadows learn
to take each other's shapes
a pair of shoes tied to the power line
creeps up the street
toward me
dancing halfheartedly in the breeze













I don't want to set the world on fire

when the apocalypse comes
and I am brought to ashes
and then to fumes
when everything I am composed of
is passed to the wind

my ventricles will harden
the chambers of my heart will expand
and hallow
I will leave behind a small, black
instrument of a thing

When those lonely creaking breezes
start to wind through empty bottles
and fidget with the piles of ash
I will leave a home
for the sky to whisper through

Newer, shorter pieces

I've been thinking a lot recently about memory, and not about memory, but about your interaction with the past that you are able to call up into existence in your mind.

Delancey/Essex, October

On cold, sunny mornings In New York City
the streets smell like everything impermanent
The very end of fall
The baking of food
The browning of leaves
It smells exactly like someone else's skin

This city knows
that our strongest memories
are tied to the things that do not stay



dusty

When we talked
she would stare at my feet
like I was standing right where her heart had been buried
and when she would look up
I could almost feel it beating
dusty
Under those big combat boots
And then I would look down
and shift my feet uncomfortably
trying to stand anywhere but under my own weight





No Gods Here

If there are no gods here
then we are a collage of bones
and the entire weight of our mythology
with no blueprint

Leper angels cradling their blackened wings

Alter boy martyrs trying to grow into what they have seen

Our fathers and sons
invisible
holy ghosts

we are heaving under the unguided mass
of divinity
and there are no gods here

I'm a cut-throat boy, your an empty grave, we can still be friends when I get off stage

here's a deluge of all kinds of new stuff

There were those afternoons
at the cafes
in monmartre
smoking a pack of gauloises
watching the people pass
we would sit for so long
that now I cannot see crowds without tasting
that thick black coffee
in those impeccable porcelain cups

Or that rooftop, on the fourth of july
the world was on fire
we danced to apocalypse
told the world it could go to piss and ash
make it's bloody mistakes
we would be here to kiss it to sleep





Tin Can

the countryside is graph paper
calculating our distances
stringing us along the power lines
we whisper through cans
that we strung one summer
when our sweat stuck to the air

"If I stand still I am lost"
my words drip off of my tongue
maybe I have been drinking
my breath feels hot and wet inside the empty can
I press it against my ear
and for a moment
can pretend it is the warmth of your breath
like those days
when I would wake up sober

"Are you there?"
your voice is a squeak
makes me a mouse
scurries across the lines
haunts the inside of the can
tumbles into my mind
makes me a dot
on the farthest corner
of those cold, distant squares

"where did you go?"
the streetlight above me flickers
a threat
I beg, fold my knees
pray to faltering light
we are in this together
we need each other
I am talking to the streetlight again
it wanes, shows me the stars
brightens
and fades
I beg for one more moment
"Don't go"
the inside of the can presses a red circle into my skin
your voice is fading
"Tell me where you are"

I cannot answer
you cannot be here
the inside of the can feels hot and wet
like my cheeks
like my breath
the street light whines and sputters
I beg for one more moment
one more shred of light
it gets so dark here
"I am standing still"
a flicker
"Where?"
At the end of this line
stretched between the two most distant points
in the countryside
"Where I've always been"
one more sputter
then blackness all around me
I tug at the line,
feel it jerk, in the night
against your hands

and your voice leaks out
telling me to come home

standing still
at the end of the longest line
that we strung up one summer
when we were so close
that the air cracked like lightning between us
I whisper
"good night"
wherever you are




Werewolves
Werewolves

Swing from the subway poles
wrap your fingers around the edges of buildings
propel yourself forward
howl like a werewolf
howl like youth has consumed you
set you ablaze
you only fed the fire with endless toothpick joints
and pints of cheap beer
scream, snarl at the moon
charge the park ripping at the grass
howl like vampires
you are limitless
this city will be burned to the ground
we will dance and stomp and fuck in it's ashes
build it with our own hands
a temple to distant sanity
and then tear the walls down with our bare hands
we are Banshees, we hand each other poison
sing sweet mortality into the night air
we wake up ghosts
haunting our own footsteps
gunpowder burns on the virgin sidewalk


Phantom Float, For Mike Hail

A phantom floats
sifting the cold morning air
as it haunts the shuffling ghosts of the tenderloin
it keeps company the skeletons of mission bay
in the concrete and closets
the dawn passes through it
and kisses the foreheads of the
tiger eyed saints of the holy vein
it does not speak
nor touch
nor even scatter light
it remembers substance
a body
it hovers above the water
in the shadow of the golden gate
trying in vain
to catch the falling angels
sinks with them to the stygian depths
it's hand resting on their broken fingers
in it's most desperate times
it spirals within the foggy banks
gasping for weight

A desert beyond anyone's reach

These are all super rough first cuts, most of the lines will be discarded, a few good ones will go on to become parts of different poems.


we have sent foraging parties
to each others bodies
fingers finding their eyries in sunburned shoulder blades
staking claim to favorite stretches
the patch of chest
warmest under your morning breath
we have scattered flags
and unknown to us,
land mines
triggered by the cold or absence
an explosive loneliness that
leaves the chest caving for breath
until we ravage our skins
raking for an eventual peace
turning up now and then
an unexploded round
we choose to keep
waiting for more delicate hands
to dig it out







I've got those new city blues
and I'm breathing cigarette smoke through my nose again
maybe I just want to smell a bit a like home






more later, as always