deliveries

knapsack deliveries in an Appalachian

dream, far older than any continent

you know.

given that respectability and hedge-rows

are seeded hand-in-hand,

my short-tempered corroborees no

more ratify a fledgling hate than

cast my dice so hastily in betrayal.

deeper consultations reveal the stars

appear innumerable to the man with

no fingers.

why then should the brevity of kissing

lead my deeper passions past their

squalid remorse and into seething warmth?

what dream-walking takes in effort is

redoubled in dark tellings of unseen

sleeping paths

when I need a code of conduct I’ll be

sure to yell

20-20

Sydney, Aust.

you’re not conducive to writing.

there, I said it

it stand as bleak and drawn out as that accusatory whiteness -

the page it’s own sweet testament to the ignominy of another blank verse.

seeking, as we do, the trappings of familiar writing,

we’ll find nothing hand-in-hand with challenge

as they await their scaffold in the dawn –

laughing children and slippery copulations

plague the loose associations to horror and the taste of oranges,

squeezed just so from the bank of should-be-tolds –

and I’ll laugh at your clumsy assertions that there’s a truth

in all this receivership and reiteration.

Keep greeting the convalescent talents of my interest

and run, my heart pounding in your knees to keep that

moment behind all the great sculptures as I, their remnants

force into my own moulds.

she only shifts

she only shifts the first time
as city whispers claw through your sheets
piece together your delinquent memories
and watch through a window the
leopard print lady drowning weeds in
a bucket
find patterns where they believe to be
and flick a casual glance at the half
past seven last seen glaring through a
dark half day ago
she wavers before rolling gentle warmth
over you and you seep back into
each other’s haziness
her smile breaks through brighter than
the cracked curtain
a heavy breath, a deep push and she’s
off left groaning to your own lesser
mattresses you reach to catch her
and pull her back for one more last time

keeping nights

1/12/04

out of your light and the end of tonight I see everything coming together to tell me to go back

to find me clutching at my gut like its incidence was answer enough

anyday now this fleeting coincidence will tell you it’s too much

tell me you kept some secret stash of it, hidden from my abuses and sorrows crumpled drummer boy

little by little shattered is ok and now this is the forecast you can confide in me to wreak the havoc you needed

she found a mark to go by and now she’s lost beyond the line somewhere in the great north

blinded by the snow and crunching endless through the white of those forgotten dream

was it all a hope, when your inner child freezes its deep slanted obligations to wretch into the gutter of your ambivalence?

she used to drown

I am alive and now I’m free and controlled interception is my deep dark expression in this fortitude of servery

eyes the truth and march towards the horizon, it wont recede past your vaunted definitions

and plan for nothing more than the dawn

he said go, she said to feel the stark bonds of contemplation and know the force of habit and its dark chains

this is my universal to grapple my servitude out in fresh snow angels and deep softed drifts

numb with cord and blaze your night untold

merely seek to fight the rhythm and painful flashes render memories the dangerous territory of cold beds and sleeping reels of silent reveries

a fugue on her, a reminiscence of grandpas past

I’m not so sure anymore, dived beneath my skin and kill the smell of angry men

stay there till dawns sweet steam sinks your further into seeping ambivalence once more beholden to the Ontario sun

somebody’s back

keep me warm

Desert

I hadn’t had a chance to bury her this way before,
The little discs of silver shimmering between the sealing wax -
Her face empty to the moon, her eyes sealed tight
Almost like she didn’t want to see

I laughed, the whole great study of it all –
Too much like drama to move the theatre outdoors,
Too grand by far for this forgotten dryad
Left rotting on the forest floor for leaves and worms to munch on

She turned to me and said “Boy, you’re confused –
I am not Persephone.” That look said it all, the wax
cracked open when she talked, the coins fell sidewards
And clattered to the dust, bare and silent

“I’ll be yours at the Orpheum tonight” I said -
Tilted so, I watch her dark skin glisten once again and reach
trembling towards me. I can’t be hers either - so I leave her to the Styx
and its dark judgement as I creep my way out of the desert.