rdking.net

Ibex ibex, dome passion diesel passion eddy
passion ibex dome diesel, dome eddy.  Dome eland

eddy passion ibex, dome diesel shell eland eddy.
While then diesel ibex journal posted transparently

along the western springs of our passion.  I think:
substring vagaries; substring of substrings.  Epistle

passion diesel ibex eddy ibex diesel shell journal—
shell vagaries.  Agate eland eddy passion diesel dome.

In springs in agate in agate ibex, in springs of passion
posted ordinarily as eddying substrings of western diesel.

Dome diesel in epistle ibex.  Dome diesel in eland
passion.  Dome diesel in dome substrings of western
      agate eddy.

Where it compiled a multi-ridged horizon I found
myself seeking reasons for some pertinent things

I hoped would occur.  Even in the process
of hiking I was happy to hum popular hymns
      celebrating
those risks we endure.  The restroom was empty
when I found reason to enter—it was a form
      of courtesy,
the opuntia raising their blue pads in this breeze.
...in this place, one eventually comes to believe

the land's reckless assignations.  Shortly thereafter
something in the austere chaparral rattles

which amplifies the option to wander off toward
the poppies—wary, apprehensive from rough life
      and warm weather.

Ablaze with the fecund arrays of his mysterious pan-
existence, he pondered distance through the deft simile

of the ocean's repetitive motions.  He was adroit
with youth—dilated—as sea lions reclined

on offshore outcroppings where pelicans extended
in the lower, non-aquatic planes.  Somewhat behind the

tide's penchant for reach he considered the odd fenestration
of what was curiously abstract:  the wetted sand

he stood upon; the land loss the water swelled up from,
the riven seacliffs crumbling onto the cropped beach—

shaken he was, disturbed by the void of panacea
and the cunninglessness of the ancient, butt-ugly fish.

Opus of afternoon; grace of the avocet—ancillary
expressionists; grace of wavelets and small, black stones.

Light on a water; post-light turning to shine; the shine,
the light finding the edge or moving quickly through.

Young men peel wetsuits off between parked cars;
the pageant of surf curl and dogs; the opuses

of kelp—graces of the long afternoon; the strength of
unbested manifestation; opus in A minor, 132.

Pageants of casual examination, the long look, the dead
left on shore; the congealing concentration.  Journal

of wet hair dripping from the naval; shrill
of the avocet; ancillary tide; the old grace of foam.

Punica bin punica, harumph tariff don bin punica
allegro.  Deck penny deck dicoumarin and deck

shrubbery.  Deck delete punica don tariff down
allegro, prunus.  Hautbois prunus in neck-scented

idle of leafy odalisque.  Bin punica, bin pyrus.
Hautbois dicoumarin don tariff in harumph; in deck

bin penny deck deck bin shrubbery.  Leafy tariff
adagio.  Molto adagio, andante, molto adagio, andante,

molto adagio.  Bosom pyrus.  Down bosom bin deck
adagio and deck bin.  Don punica tariff down deck

and down harumph.  Bosom prunus bin hautbois, bosom
prunus delete.  Bin bosom pyrus, punica, hautbois.

Outside, the little dogwood is a stunning addition
to our current lives.  The lingering spring rains

keep spring lingering; its showy self-
adoring display poised, ready and wanting

to fan its venereal resplendence.  What else
could our allergies be, other than evidence

of our certain, alien source?  Time continues
to spend itself in odd, algorithmic ways.  We

watch, charmed, attracted to a thing it possesses
we recognize as the fruit of our participation.

As it reveals its mystery, we become slightly
more wicked, love-worn, and a bit more wrinkled
      about our wonderful eyes.

The one-winged angel stood at the edge of the dance floor
with her deformity to wall.  Even so, the light

danced about the dance floor, marionette of the drum
machine.  The music was so strong it could easily

pull your pants down.  The boys were tattooed and ugly
and when they weren't trying to maim each other

they smoked things.  They talked about it sullenly,
or they just stood there looking at your waist

and licking their pursed lips with anticipation.
The one-winged one dared not scratch the itch

as other girls danced like emus until the music
ceased, when they fled behind smoke trails—sweating,
      engorged and at risk.

She longed to work in the excess beyond
resident memory.  She thought about this

and how it might happen.  Like the planets,
she expected the conceptual image, substantial

and adequately stacked—and where to suspect
its proliferation.  She dreamt this dream

willingly and when awake; and it was, then,
a vision in itself, set like rock outcroppings

in the slate gray ocean—the sky and brine the full
extent of shades from a single source,—pelicans

winging in the low proximity to the axes, or,
undulating adroitly upon the ocean's virtual
      swells, (far pointers).

It's so abstract it alarms us in queer ways
while everything else seems in some form

of earnest hurry.  Beyond, the hills are plush;
this last light sits upon the furtive reservoir

like yellow tufts of native grass—hardy, dying,
and the few rushes or the sullen birds are muted

by the weathered light from a frontal, but remain
authentic, articulate, still unrevealed:  look at it;

between the hills set in grids upon the horizon
the distance is squashed, tiered with

a friendly haze above the moored pleasure crafts
glowing in the safety of the obscured cove.

As I laid upon my lawn, pampered by May's
languid entropy, a ladybug lit upon my thigh

and quickly tangled in its leg hair.  High above,
even higher than the tops of the highest conifers,

clouds raced toward a place I could only surmise;
but I could feel them travel as a quartet

of birds sang their little songs in consort
with the world's music and the music drifting

from my neighbor's garage.  Nothing seemed
out of place,  ill-at-ease, or frightened by

the occasional length of lumber that fell on his
cement—even the red ball wedged on my roof
      where the rain once collected.

It then finds itself as a thing we'll reconsider, basking
at the tire-marked edge of a barren parking structure:

opus of late afternoon—the advancing grace
of grace in light. We sense and begin to wonder

how it unfolds so largely unrevealed, unheralded.
A pleasant task it is to examine it keenly; the distance

squashed, dioramic, cottony with evening haze
and the odd pointers of dragonflies darting about

breast-height to hip-level—crazed, quick, dark shelled
metaphors of the too, too many variables embedded in...

It could happen like this:   you leave work late, and
find the caladiums sprawling the borders of the walkway
      languid with excitation.

Where we hoped to find a receptive dance
we heard a music drawing in, as if touched

pensively; then, it diminished as a neon buzz above
standing water.  The night was assiduous and knew

it soon became an obscured time.  Its glance
was seldom and filled with jokes or longing

for abrupt tenderness—one that might not
divulge an arrogant wish.  We hummed a quiet tune;

through the smoke of abandoned cigarettes
we sat with our company of unshaven, uneven,
      uneventful men
noting the continuum, and how much of it spread
unabated, unattended, wide-buttocked and conspicuous.

Was she brooding, or assiduous, he wondered
while she disrobed before him and looked

for direction. And what might she think
of the body's pageant, later—post-encounter, when

now slips into memory and then...  She feels
his warmth reach her loins and things change

correctly for a few minutes, followed by a few
casual moments of examination and companionship

until a boredom returns, headed toward loneliness.
She dares not scratch an itch and instead

turns toward some calico hills where, already,
a few scurrilous things are starting to assemble
      and shine.

Within the tumescent light something arbitrary hovers
deftly expressing its subtle wishes as action,

or prescience, or, the mundane administrations
of simple manifestation.  Gainfully, dutifully, it dwells:

two fellow employees share a non-work-related chat
in a narrow hall—as you pass you do sense

their good spirits and that aspect of the light
which is filled with much flotage; you either inhale,

sneeze, or ignore it.  And you might ask how this
will affect your waning fertility—but you don't

passing it off as one more incidental question
no one in their right mind would stop to consider.

Our somnambulance was briefly noted by the interest
of a youngish, balding man reading Plutarch

in an espresso bar where, outside, the light
was tempered with cumulonimbus and remorse.

The otherwise worldly details we had come to neglect
now seemed worth neglecting—a cup of coffee spilt

would have added curt action and detail to this
quiet place.  This was, perhaps, the first time

I had thought to notice the dust gathered
on the promotional displays, or the kind way

the women behind the counter kept the tea boxes
from rising above the framed photo of  M. L. K.

Larry thinks:  my hopes are sincere, modest; I have
a friendly view of these moored, pleasure craft

settling upon the blue bay—the dirty haze above them
only enlivens the sunset. Yet the background music

starts like a sign buzzing-on above the entrance
to an empty dancehall. It mildly surprises

the security guard in his continuous wait-and-see
reluctance—he is, without doubt, the scene's most

discrete dancer.  He thinks:  how awkwardly the light
now spreads as if this were the Evening Light

as Fate would have it—full of raw contempt, bored
with drunken enthusiasts, but ready to fuck the night.

It begins as a growth on your breastplate, round
and red like a wound from a small caliber gun.

It's life in America as you wait those anxious days
until the unfolding.  Yet the evenings are forceful,

so full of life—physical in their expressed delight
and profoundly solid.  It's two weeks prior to spring

and a couple bulbs start into bloom.  You hope
that rain won't muddy them, and continue to notice

a life mostly protracted from true, astral affiliations.
It's certainly clear:  you can hope; you can desire.

You can weed in a rain slicker.  What the narcissus bear
may be obstructed by weather, torn, or held briefly
      in esteem.

Our journey then began as a misdirected predilection
toward a median suddenly full with the mystery of life

and headlights jockeying across a raised concrete slab.
The wistful, hapless, urban shrubberies among the crowded

gray memorials—time and time immemorial and memorabilia
longing to wander off through a scattered jointfir, or, to

moor a sleek pleasure craft and then swim to a beach offering
dirt streets and simple drunkenness in tin bars; unfounded

indifference.  ...that which flaps like a seabird beginning flight
moves beyond fear or consummate worry; the imagination

drifts in like a small sun or a bulb through a curtained window
as we seem in ancillary repose, slowly headed toward it.

Only so that I might know, I want my chambered heart
(its curious metaphor) to rise up in sheets like this
      awkward light
and to hold, like its step-father, the sky, its own emptiness, clearly
in its own service and self-substantiated.  I want each chore
      to arise
as a choice I can make to succeed a constrained effort
or to dispel a misjudgment of my own, slow, uncertain
      aspiration.
If dusk propels its offers as incendiary tools
I wish to approach them kindly and with conviction—even
      if rain falls (and thunder accompanies)
I hope my shadow will dance on smoke-blackened walls
with other shadows like mine.  As stars rotate in bondage above
      with shining, barren planets
we practice our fool husbandry upon the valley floor
while in the distance the enchanted city begins to glow
      through the ardently star-splendid night.

Often peculiar and rough, sometimes dutifully respectful, what
largely remains its heir and the apparent one to continue

this heartfelt quest toward a sensual anticipation
and climax of life's irrefutable banquet is, strangely,

that skinny kid standing sullenly outside a dancehall
from which sound has yet to issue.  He is joined

by others with the same, muddled haircut and by small-
breasted girls whose small blouses suggest things
      altogether
incorporate from their physical sums.  Something
surely intrinsic seems revealed only to the chosen few

while the rest are content to merely be a piece of it,
spilling at dawn into rain, snow, inclement humidity,
      wherever lassitude happens to find them.

Deftly and without fanfare, Daddy compiles his evening code
into a binary advance exempt from their expectations

of what assembles into the associate data of his life.
His girls walk down to the water's quiet edge, bare-footed,

and are splayed by the focusless light from a western front
roosting like a deadened tide on the rookery.  Daddy exits

which then caused some men caught in pre-coastal situations
to fend through the smoke of brush piles left unattended

as their sullen looks fell like an aggressive virus on his
code:  and still we failed to sense what was crucial

as his bar closed and he eddied into the starry night—
smaller in scope, resident but still plaintive, waking
      the clearly restless.

Our parents suggest we are less than disciplined
as if saying that would be a thing we could

obfuscate into something else largely audible.
And what, in return, were we to say:  a pack of dogs

pissed their way down the street; a woman
stopped us for a cigarette; and, it was truly

warm.  The sky was blue and the stoplight red
where we suddenly waited.  What was the point?

That night we walked barefooted beneath obscured
constellations to the pier's end; we met some girls

and saw that tucked in darkness near the highway
a bathroom door was left open and still lit.

The all-too-restless become bitter with hope, stalled
by a pale light issuing above standing water—yet

they retain the ardentness of their sourceless unrest.
Granted, it's much like sharing drinks in a crowded bar

where a pact is stricken the hopefuls knew would soon
be broken—outside you watch the tattooed haul rock.

You feel the vibration at odds with your heartbeat,
duly violent, sharp, embodying all that is merely
      fertile.
If only you could anticipate the sweep of your desires
as a mist congealing on your sleep-weary eyes.

Then it would be something you could hold in place
among these big-winged angels in their little t-shirts.

Clustered headlights, the throbbing brake lights
we associate with the evening commute—silhouettes

of pylons; silhouettes of urban palms; restricted
movement and duress.  The land blackened by shadow.

The sky orange if not blue.  Small bright lights
coming on in the downtown towers—pattern lights

or a stunning, facial reflection.  The evening
begins as a surrealist notion in the alluring suburbs

(where grassy medians protect ornamental swans).
The sun somewhere behind the diminished coast range

framed obliquely by a hefty overpass, the interstate
signing, bronchial autumn trees—their diffuse
      leafless erections.

I enjoy the way the pageant of March begins
as one dreary thing, and then stops to rest
as something else.  I like the way its clouds
break into heady banks, when the rain stops,

and the light moves in, swiftly, and illumines
in the exact sense of the word.  I like the grass
and the still-leafless trees, and the way
girls act—all of which demands a certain patience

not readily available to men.  Still, I like
the way it makes me feel; I like the way
the light will take a brick wall, a field of grass,
or a woman's neck.  I like the senselessness

of beauty and the increasingly apt way it persists—
reflective, shapeless, a shine upon standing water.

Scanned from a compact disk, the harmonica
still retains that congestive exuberance
of its salival emanations—to which my wife
taps a foot and nods the unconsciousness nod.

It is an enchanting time through which we bend
our skeletal planes and dance or smile or press
the advantage:  outside our window the pine's
illuminated trunk is stunning at this hour; so what

can I suggest to describe the intimate beauty.  I am
a dolt to hope—and also confess to being equilibriously
affected by this odd and enormous symmetry
of the pinus lambertianna...  Music can drift

through the trees and ribbon their limbs and caress
their needles and cones.  I can only watch, trembling,
      listening.

Certainly there was substance in the afternoon's condigned
movement which did suggest just enough presence
to approach the evening as adversary—an anticipation
that should prove disturbing, yet the background music

was so deftly conceived, languid and streetwise,
that it required at least a passing interest.  The lure
of promise once again hoped only for consent—
your preference of the imagined scenarios.  Meanwhile,

Miguel, the bus boy, honestly provides his thorough,
supplicant attention; this too only adding to the relative
distraction of why:  when your straight decides to fill
and stands long enough to take the sizeable hand

it is accepted as a sign of your discretionary beliefs,
their apparent margins, and the currency of your volition.

Hail fell.  The day progressed in its casual way
and those things that happened became malevolent
and remorseless in a progression that discharged
car wrecks and despair, or the smoke trailing

from cigarettes left to burn in glass ashtrays.  If
he was lucky he missed an easy shot in a pool hall
or sat with an assemblage of young, unshaven men
sheltered from a dark sky where no one wished

for more than the toll from what could be met
as a thrill.  And this was, and would remain
the essential currency of their awkward lives
which they bartered, stole, or used as insult

when the chance presented itself; then they left
with few virile reasons to begin the stroll home.

Her breath is the delicate anticipation
of need above the body's frequent sequences.
Now all things except the river are again
thinned by the slow conscription of our lives

and its stilled light.  As heartfelt renewal
pleases man and woman we tend to regret, as if
that were the consequence of our queer, impromptu
existence among the collected molecules.  Yet,

we can be content, even thankful, standing
freely in a flushed and retracting shadow near
the refuse-laden water's edge—finding a stilled
exhilaration.  We see other men in their trucks

and cars waiting to move; she disrobes before me
and displaces her content of the river while I bathe
      in the late, transitional grasses.

If we could anticipate the sway as a music
drifting where we had favored to rest, allowing
our desires to graze unhobbled, untended—which
that afternoon had seemed uneasy, uncertain

of some ill-fitting new thing now included
in the locale.  As an essence of being—inarticulate
dispute—as the child of an emigrant, or
the son of two beings traveling away from

those unremarkable brown hills always rising upon
the traveled horizon, moving toward that place
where a pact is made and duly broken with a few
virile statements of contempt voiced in a dusty bar;

we then sat and for a long while trained our eyes
on some women dancing in something-less-than panties
      or less.

Listless, droll, waiting for deliverance...   we suspect
certain ideas of regret, renunciation, or intolerance—
inarticulate declarations then found to be null—yet
we opt merely to breathe, as small birds wing

from wire to limb to wire—recent rain puddled as
bountiful amusement then made special by a kindly
surface tension; the light reaching and reaching
farther in thin sheets.  Very little had been revealed

by these assembled souls gathered at a quiet bus stop.
It had taken so, so long to get here that we, sun-worn
and sodden, expected the expected wait to fulfill
the exemplary, the aptly transfiguring; instead, time

wandered ever so slowly by—which we deemed nearly
exquisite—distracted, stilled, little crowds issuing past
	in simple laughter (and cool shoes).

I wish to be admired by others, and not left
to carry their refuse to a nocturnal site.
Do believe:  it is my hope to not be seen
as one more thing hiding out there

in the herbaceous forage.  The rain can, and does,
renew some aspects of this life for those of us
who enjoin reform.  Sharing coffee by a river,
or on an interstate—gazing from a warm room

through broad windows I see us standing out there
among the restless and the all-too-lesser in scope.
Time, it appears, is ubiquitous or unkind—and then
even that grows superfluous and memorial in aspect:

I watch you disrobe and roll onto your side
of the bed.  Your breasts swell with each breath
      as you seem at ease with the moment, sleepy.

What we conceived was a value for X, disambiguated,
perhaps, as we gathered upon an urban balcony
which was, itself, like light above standing water.
A solo cello accompanied us through a slider

left open as we elected to ponder the dusk
illuminate falling upon distance and its brown hills.
Sweat collected on our breastplates and with it left
a residue of distraction and sexual fantasy and plain,

dank love.  Some of us drank water.  Some of our hearts
beat wildly in our chests and may have been target
to schemes wholly undetected by ourselves or the minutia
of our existences.  For a moment I paused to feel this

as my heart now beat against the thought of it
and our lives expanded toward something surely elseish.

Just how often can one expect
to have a chance meeting with a beekeeper
in a grassy sweep on an oak-studded hillside
during a glorious day in middle May

where the light catches through the netting
like gold flakes in his brown eyes
and the lilac is a strong distraction
as are the poppies and the wild rose—

as are his words which seem so much
like an interior voice suggesting that today
the other path might better suit our walk
as the bees are working a bank of clover

and the general attitude of all involved is that
the one thing seen truly is only seen that once.

Their offers propelled us like incendiary tools
to uncover that which remained prized
and unguarded.  Their monument, we thought,
could anticipate our desires as an incidental music

waiting to occur.  Even when reclined our hunger
was trained in smartly disposed board rooms
to appear content.  It was a form of courtesy
that must accompany us.  So, above his bed

a desert landscape drifted—his only digression—
the Wah Wahs rising up in their perfect brown
suit from a treeless country.  Some thickening
clouds already darkened the evening light

at his approach.  Then rain fell and danced
like urchins at his shiny, privileged feet.

We lit filter cigarettes and pursed our lips
leaving eternity to burn like a match.   If
anything possessed a jealousy that could
articulate the absent night, the quarry still

rose in gray, reticent layers showing a desire
to be reclothed and remunerated for this.
The unexpected trees grew into a sunlight that
surely seemed so strong it could easily manifest

itself into something we could only honor as
the jist of our gathered affinities:  we did not
wish to remember or at any time to aid that which
allowed us to elude that which stalked us.  We did

not think of our beating hearts, or the shared risk,
or the brooding, assiduous certainties now beginning
      to gather about the quiet pond.

It was the way spring smacked me in the face
to gather my attention; then, helped me
to look at the brilliant red bush thriving
before the white, block wall—a newly-leafed birch

rising above in a photographic panegyric,
of sorts, as I waited in the fast food franchise
drive-thru lane.  It appeared so wildly unreal
that I, distracted, wondered if this was the real life

and not some errant but lovely thought:
some girls stood and walked toward
the embossed waste receptacle, moving through
the florescent light as stable surfaces

collected suddenly around some
surprisingly mobile skeletal planes.

Returning from lunch, the heady payroll clerk tumbles
down several metal stairsteps and her grief, sudden
      and heartfelt,
ensues.  Starting at the bottom—the still damp site
from a recent rain—and spreading from there, like drops

upon standing water, and into the hearts and minds
of those descending with her.  Yes, it came as surprise
      mingled
with pain.  There was a broken heal, a torn nylon, scuffs
on the hands and knee, the sorrow of embarrassment.

There was also a held concern and a spreading cloud
of notice...  and avid response that spilt into my office
      through an open window.
I watched for a moment, seeming impelled to discover
how this little tragedy might affect me.  Or, not—I
      then returned
to my computer screen where something else had just
      happened:  while (( count < ${#_a[*]} ));  do
and as we all seem disposed to react to the present
      I, in turn, headed toward that offer of what.

I did not think to renew their worry, yet I did
as they waited for it to occur.  In a coffee shop
between the diesel, the grease and the baggage, I was
for them, a thrill—was, and would remain

the already brooding lump in their throats.  They hoped
I would share the little details and renew their hope
for reform—near the river, or in a john by the interstate.
They hoped my warmth would reach their loins, softly

enough to be successful.  They wished my breath would
grow into something with their wealth of chromosomes.
They had used their eyes and they'd tricked them again
into scheming:  I sat in the diner between departures,

content among the menus, mid-postcard, ready to rectify
them, and be thanked for their abuse and afflictions.

As we wandered among the leggy shore birds
there was little doubt in our racing hearts
they would insist we were too unsuspecting—
as if anticipating our desires as mistakes

of little interest.  Just out of reach
boats drifted by.  We longed for them, or,
dreamed of peeling off wet suits between
parked cars—we could not imagine it otherwise:

at the sandy edge of the parking lot a one-winged
angel lingers.  I stop and open the car door;
it's unnerving—but the music sounds especially
like our music.  I smile.  You greet me.

The truck passes that carries our effluent
to some nameless pond.  We think:  good-bye
      to this.

A bit pensive, she opens the bathroom door and moves
across the arroyo pardo.  Evening is coming on
and I watch as she approaches her little pool.
There is less foot traffic to greet

across the arroyo where evening is coming on
and that which hurries to do so, does so.
There is less foot traffic to greet
among the sagebrush running off in natural patterns.

That which hurries to take place does so
to discover; I watch with interest as she moves
among the sagebrush running off in natural patterns
as if this were a necessary consequence

of its discovery, and my interest in how she moves.
For a while I'm attentive to some people in sandals
as if that too were a necessary consequence
of the songs on their radio.  The wind ripples and

for a while I'm attentive to some people in boots
who catch as a little pain in my head
like a bad song on a radio.  The wind ripples and
surprises Señor Sanchez in his laborious situation

that catches as a little pain in his thigh:  it swirls
behind him on the hillside and then drifts down
and frees Señor Lopez from his lugubrious situation;
the arroyo glistens.  It sparkles

behind town below the hillside and then moves
toward her bathroom door.  And when, and when
she opens it the arroyo glistens with sparkle.
I watch as she descends her little pool.

The only thing they feared was god himself
and even they must have been slightly amused
in their ill-fitting gymwear and audio headgear.
Like a thrill, which it was, will continue as

even they must have been slightly amused
while I coaxed them to smile for the camera.
Like a thrill, which it was and would continue
at this odd hour with everyone gone, scattered.

While I coaxed them to smile for the camera,
this odd sort of alluring brilliance arrived
then scattered, with everyone gone at this odd hour.
You would not turn your head to witness

this odd sort of alluring brilliance arriving
only for us.  You wanted to leave, to exit
as you would not turn your head to witness
the handsome, quiet one standing just outside

waiting for us—as you wanted to leave, to believe
how benign at first this behavior appeared;
the handsome, quiet one standing just outside
was like a thing we could not fix in our lives.

How benign at first his behavior appeared; which
I endured long before I was anxious or considered
it to be a thing I could not fix in his life.
I held a strong bearing, a notion of truth which

I ensured long before I was anxious or considered
that the only thing they feared was god himself.
They too held a strong bearing and a notion of truth
in their ill-fitting gymwear and audio headgear.

When we were young our skin was brown
and made special by place and a tension
clearly empowered with the abundance of
now—a staunch ally of the young and breathless.

Made special by this place and tension
this rain must be the carnal pleasure of
now—a staunch ally of the young and breathless—
even though your heart bobs like a buoy.

This rain must be a carnal pleasure
as I can feel it reaching toward my loins
even though your heart drifts like a buoy
to uncover that which remains its moor.

I can feel it reaching toward my loins
as I want you to want me.  I want us
to discover that which remains our moor
and to appear content.  It is a courtesy

to want you to want me.  I want us
to let it not be considered otherwise
and to appear content.  It is a courtesy
that I disrobe before you and wait

and not let it be considered otherwise:
a pleasant dimness precedes the consummation—
I disrobe before you and wait, humming
a quiet tune that carries no notion

of the pleasantness dimming our consummation.
When we were young and our skin was brown
we hummed a quiet tune that carried no notion
of how clearly we were empowered with abundance.

A splashing harmony was taking my thoughts
where it hoped to uncover the not yet disrobed
in their own trembling risk.  The restroom was empty
and all things inside were lit with the hope

to disrobe what had not yet uncovered.  Modesty
and innocence loitered at the shadow's edge
as all things beside it
commenced what they loved to do:  innocence,

modesty and temptation lounged in shadow
which left us feeling like weak, sudden lovers
commencing to do what we longed to do;
the faucet screamed with anticipation

and harbored the sudden lovers' hands.
A wallpaper spread in associate patterns
and met the faucet with anticipation
of spreading its mildew about.  How deftly

the condom purveyor assayed its protection.
I was moved and drifted through hypnotic lotions
which spread an odor about in a benign way
like fog humming a perpetual reminder.

I was drifting and moved by its hypnotic motions
and the scarred stall door—just often enough
to imagine it and its perpetual sway humming a short tune.
Even as existence spooled unabated and conspicuous

the stall door shut often enough to imagine it
through the fractured harmony of my thoughts—
existence spread unabated and conspicuous
in its own risk; the restroom stayed empty
      except for some flies.

Thinned by the conscription of our lives,
standing where it could remain safe,
the morning light falls as if from above.
Seeming content in just being visible,

standing where it can remain safe
to see the morning as a light that fills.
Seeming content just to be visible
in this place--one eventually comes to believe

and sees the morning as a light that fills
what we failed to discover.  In this place
one eventually comes to believe
what's revealed too pointedly for our liking.

What did we fail to discover?
It elicits the anticipation of wonder
revealed too pointedly for our liking.
That afternoon had seemed uneasy

as it elicits our anticipations of wonder:
what will you do when you get lonely?
That afternoon had seemed uneasy
as our restlessness elected to darken.

What will you do when you get lonely?
As if saying that would be a thing
our restlessness might not elect to darken.
Who knows (what's going to happen)—

as if saying that would be a thing
thinned by the conscription of our lives.
Who knows what's going to happen?
The morning light falling as if from above...

Brooding and assiduous are the trucks at night.
Brooding and assiduous are the trucks at night,
vibrating the inroads through our country's heart
like cellos, sad bellows, slow solos in dawn light.

Brooding and assiduous are the trucks at night
drawing the young men from out of the hills
like cellos, odd fellows, slow solos in dawn light
to carry our effluent to the quiet ponds.

Drawing the young men from out of the hills
—big-winged angels in little t-shirts—
to carry our effluent to the quiet ponds
in silver cylinders, slender, shiny and bright.

Big-winged angels in little t-shirts
with coffee steaming from a thermos jug:
silver cylinders, slender, shiny and bright—
big-winged angels in little t-shirts with bellies extent.

Coffee steaming from a battered metal jug
is witness to this release in the holding pond.
Big-winged angels in little t-shirts with bellies extent
joke and make wishes regarding food and sex.

Witness to this release into the holding pond,
the night is our savior.  The rain falls like a boxer
telling jokes or dreaming of sex from a girl
vibrating the inroads through our country's heart.

The night is our savior.  The rain falls like a boxer
brooding and assiduous as the trucks at night
vibrating the inroads through our country's heart,
vibrating the inroads through our country's heart.

Inside, a hankering for troubled thoughts
reorganized to value our patterned selves; we sang
a simple melody.  Our hearts pounded with remorse
and a swelling that purports to know our gender

organized to value our penised selves; we sang
tight parts, the whole loose and endlessly repetitious—
remorseful, swelling, explicitly gender-based.
Larry enjoyed this feature.  The afternoon moved on

in tight parts, the whole loose, endlessly
repetitious with abundant X and Y chromosomes.
Larry clearly enjoyed this feature.  The afternoon sent
its light catching him squarely on the structured jaw.

With abundant X and Y chromosomes, with
movement that was charged and anticipated,
the light caught him squarely on the jaw
while ample women strolled the palm-lined strand.

Anticipation could be interpreted as movement
or as jokes and wishes for sex from a boy
by women strolling a palm-lined strand
near a smoothly-weathered landscape of ochre sand.

She makes jokes and wishes for tongue sex
as her throat taunts its brooding shadow
on a smoothly-weathered seascape of phthalocyanine blue.
Its restroom offers an empty risk

while her throat approaches a brooding shadow.
Inside, a pastoral of troubling thoughts
offers its restroom of empty risk
as our hearts pound with melody and remorse.

			for Charles Wright

Our lives begin and expand toward something
humming a quiet tune from the night before.
Its clouds from another country—some thickening,
some heavy with slumber, shinning, orchestral—

they're humming a quiet tune that delivers the night
as pilgrim wonder, to question the divine presence
heavy with silver and incense and the evening light.
Astral expressionists; orbital supplicants; wavelets
        of grace
and pilgrim wonder questioning the presence of divine
presence in the violet-colored and budding night.
Astral expressionists; marvel advocates; wavelets
        of space
where structure is binary, moot, intent on resolution

in the violent and already thickening light.
Time, like a fabric, intricate, imcomplete where
structure is binary and resolution moot.  Intent,
we stand at an edge—near a vestige of weeds

as time, like a fabric, intricate, incomplete
then longed for a place where it could linger.
We stood at an edge near a vestige of weeds,
some points of reference casually withdrew.

Then, longing for a place where we could linger—
a traveled horizon—moving toward a somewhere
as some points of reference casually withdrew
to where all things remain safe from examination:

a traveled horizon moving toward a somewhere.
Our lives begin and expand toward something
where all things remain safe from examination
lost under clouds from another country, some
        thickening.