A Trip Down Memory Lane - Usenet Morpheal 2002

Subject: Re: Poems: 2002 (Recovered Files =E2=80=93 Reconstructed Writings)=
=20

Cythera And Morpheal

A Picnic Basket Case
--------------------

Trapped, within the teardrop,
amber made of mirrory thoughts,
rosin upon the bow,
made of smoke;
left rows of suture thread annotations,
flowers that are riverbells,
limbless sex organs,
from the tremblings of the mind,
demanding disciplined obsessions.
The way the water floating on your voice
submerges remnants of near consciousness,
and wears her eyes,
under layers of social bandages.

--------------------------------

Karla And Morpheal=20

Subject: Re: You are not a poet - Interpolated
Mon, 15 Jul 2002=20

You are not a poet -
take the laurels off your genitals
I braved speaking to you
looking into your sandbag eyes
with you
ploughing a trench between arguments
(not knowing keeps me home)
fearful of a casually placed mine field
I'd paint the summer in Fauve
duties, obedient to common pretensions
mustard sun pressing us against the porch
a warm numbness of a ghosted flesh
you whispering "ma mere.."
from your womblike mouth
blood lips from blood wine pursed
connection to an umbilicus of language
in vowels you'd mastered caring for children
so fearful all might not become consonant
of some director in an arrondissement
in his private cutting room of risqu=C3=A9 scenes,
far from the Left Bank of my yearnings.
reduced to a latte of not quite satisfactions
"Repetez" and I'd swallow wine for courage
simply to begin reading the manuals
turning as the wind shifted plums bronzed in the afternoon
thumbing the pages concerning oral sex,
bells with no sound
the shapes of resonant breasts.

Last summer of a time
of moon stained clothing
you and your mad father the doctor
in a wide eyed speculum stretched discourse,
me and my flight from a cult
of deeper stimulation,
were stories we invoked and dispelled.
We were afraid to go that far out
Such treaties held back the roar
lingering in the wash at the edge
awhile
before our world spasmed.

Four babies and husband gone
all a wailing cradle sirened jazz rush
I hear how you wander crazy to lucid
still prodded, chastised, by an inner crowd
and files are kept of your threatening letters
another part of that new mythology, sentenced,
to judges and the President,
who whisper dark curses into your nightly pillow.

You are not a poet
having gone AWOL from the ranks of the literati,
so madness consoles --
an undisciplined, unregimented, broken pen,
let me purse this pain,
among mind spills of a constantly falsified reportage.

Only the firm voice of my friend shakes my hand from the phone.
Conversation could still be something therapeutic.

Into the twilight of my hesitation
life is sometimes the same as a finger on a gun trigger.

you are whispering "la danse"
almost daring to dream skeletal mating rituals
but the plums like hung black angels
dangle aside an introjected spear of argument,
do not touch the ground,
as if they too are another hanged man symbol.

-----------------------------------------------=20

Poems by Morpheal =E2=80=93 August 2002=20

Subversive
----------=20

She arrived quietly,
a subversive moment between=20
the first apple wind
and the peach blush cheek,
spring eyes with autumn lips,
a heady new wine kiss,
Wind sweep of finger motions,
and more longed for in her gestures=20
than any other revelations,
her lotus blossom opening to naked from the navel.
---------------=20

Traps
-----=20

The mice had evolved and were competing much more fiercely. They were obser=
ved building better traps. Soon, there were many dead mice, bodies strewn a=
round,as if a large cat had been let loose thereto play them in. The many b=
etter traps, that had been built,all stood empty. As the mice had evolved f=
urther,they started to fight and to kill each other,contending as to which =
trap was the better mouse trap. The mice who survived developed another tra=
p,a mythology,of explanation and blame,blaming an invisible cat for all the=
 carnage. Later the story was changed and it was a mouse, not a cat. A mous=
e bigger and smarter than all the other mice,that had caused it all,and tha=
t mouse was called on,in his absence,as being the inventor,their creator,of=
 the most perfect trap.

-------------------------   August 1, 2002

Run Aground
-----------=20

His marble cold fingers in the tangled ropes of her hair,
and the fingers white as the wings of sea birds,
becoming dark flights of sharp lashes striking across eyes of surf,
scattering a salt dew spray upon the promontory of a bone stretched cheek,
a land's end unmoved atop shifting sands of disquieted expression,
awash around swollen ripples of pursed lips,
that refuse to say,
while rumours of wrecks drift up ashore,
and some of them with names partially legible,
imprinted on the remains of their broken affairs.

------------------------=20

Gun Cotton
----------=20

Gun cotton,
black powder day,
detonates thundering,
the sky crowded with footsteps,
rushing down onto swollen ground,
leaving short lived obscure histories:
puddled up reflections.

------------=20

Finished=20
--------=20

Everything being broken slowly away,
grab a few moments with one or another half familiar stranger,
never really knowing when it will be broken,
down and apart,
eventually it gets right down deep into any sense of one's self,=20
or the other,=20
in a mudslide tumbledown slide scramble=20
into undistinguishable new forms of soaked to the bone=20
grimey incoherence,
thrown together,=20
heaped,ending in no point trying to build anything up,
that will not be broken down or apart again,
into shapeless wet clay,
and whomever you think that the enemy really is,
will call that finished.

-----------------------=20

Disconnected Rumour
-------------------=20

I hear something said of you,
and I am immediately attracted,
turned on to you,
yet I cannot know you.
There is no way,=20
no way whatever,=20
no way I can know you.=20
I do not have your street address,
I do not have your email,
or your telephone number,
and we never see each other face to face.=20
I hear something said of you,=20
and I am immediately attracted,
yet everywhere I go,
being there is always about something and someone else,
nothing really attractive,
in the usual waltzing of formal greetings,
and the careful avoidance of most subjects,
including anything much of what would turn me on to you.
The rumour seems only there to stimulate my desires for you,
yet there is never anyone with any resemblance=20
to any rumour of you anywhere near enough.=20
They toss a few scraps of something of you,
through the cage of my being held wherever I am,
in my place and time,
my being a kind of victim of various circumstances,
none of which I chose,
and never saying where you are,
those who come and go being only other prisoners with different desires,
not sharing our bad luck,
and not really wanting you,
while they distribute the disconnected rumours of you=20
that fall from their lips in automatic whispers.=20

----------------------=20

Explosion=20
---------=20

The decay of hours,
and the speed of light slowly breaking down,
a broken column,
into infectious fear,=20
gathering crowded coughed out from doorways into wide chasms of street, smi=
les festering with unspoken discontent,=20
a spent wind,
and we try to break loose and run madly,
away into the night,
our pulled threads straining together,
across the social fabric,
leaping from dream to dream,
splitting the unbearable predictable patterns wide open,
rummaging inside,
spilling their colours,
auguries spent into shades of regrets gone wild,
among those futures thrown overturned into abandon,
and our attempting to recover something romantic and intimate
from in between the politic of debris.=20

----------------------=20

Undertakings=20
------------=20

We ferry the personally dead,
into morning,
crossing the edge of the river of sleep,
moving on,
to new undertakings,
various ceremonies more perfectly performed in impersonal ways,
taking them onto checkout lines,
ticket lines,
and other statistics,
including word counts,
making bank statements,
giving account,
in between greeting cards,
entering into various assurances of belonging,
wherever we can be certain that we don't know anyone,
and everyone there is considered a friend.

----------------------- November 5th, 2002=20

Tied
----=20

Forests of green twine tangled up in August,
tatters of loose leaf,
trailing to abrupt ends that we try to reconnect=20
tied across uncertain valleys,
from a dangle of limbs,
taking tumbles of emotion into tinder dry branches=20
beside tufts of marshland,
a melancholic hypnosis of sword edged cattails=20
waving legions in formation along watery eyes borders=20
where the white sun dives as a golden liquid splash
onto murky cool browns being uttered from a riverlet=20
of urgent discontent.

---------------------=20

Wounded Impulse
---------------=20

A sharp pain,
drumming at the skin,
puncturing the numbness of that day,
all done in half on purpose,
the wounded impulse stopping short=20
at a self inflicted gash across a deadened psyche
forming the startled trickle of red brown oxidation,
and watched entranced,
feeling a warm sting of blood flow from the wounded finger,
playing in it,=20
for a while,
tonguing the edge as if it were honey,=20
or the bitter stainless edge of a moment of decision,
across another membrane sack of dreams pierced=20
in a same silence makes fidget in tedious time,=20
being all taken as flashbacks to those words,=20
bled now almost a soothing,=20
Thickening,
imagined sweet as strawberry touched to starved lips,
hungering for another kiss that never came.

----------------=20

Waiting Is Dangerous=20
--------------------=20

Waiting is dangerous,
and you knew that,
when you made me wait,
crouched down,
holding ground,=20
forced to think about what might come in between us,=20
as I remained waiting motionless and quiet,
among that jungle of everyone else's desires.

Waiting is dangerous,
and you knew that,
when you made me wait,
until I was bitten by a staccato of things=20
that I could not see,
the way spiders bite paralysing a segment of victim flesh,
and as mosquitoes insert a sucking poison invisibly under the skin.

Waiting is dangerous,
and you knew that,
when you made me wait,
until I sickened,
feverish and chilled losing the way,
in the thick of delusions that implied you were coming
 at long last to see me,
and again I waited=20
feeling the bite of time and the sting of place.

Waiting is dangerous,
and you knew that,
when you made me wait,
until the last belief was broken down,
ground away past bare bones,
gnawed slowly and crushed helplessly=20
Seized in the jaws of predators,
a gleam of you and them,
having left me nearly alive,again.

--------------------  August 6th, 2002=20

Clouded
-------=20

Your clouded brow the only signal in the painted out sky,
now clad in muted blues and scarce whispering=20
trembles of breath brushed across a few thin reeds,
past the faded green,
those bodies stretched out along a forever of rusted roadside.=20

Something pushed at me and I rolled over the way a stone rolls over=20
in a reluctant groan,
kicked at and bruised,
tumbling out of bed into gravity:
the disastrous pull carrying everything along,
from our impossible journey towards another that is even less probable.

You have me reaching,
under the hem of night fall groping for a way around in the dark,
cutting my fingers on slivers of broken sunlight=20
where the gleam in our eyes shattered and was swept away under the rug,
among more dangerous artifacts such as love letters
and imagined kisses.

--------------------  August 7th, 2002

Nik And Morpheal=20

Iron spike into an orange, a coined phrase vending machine
pulls out all the seeds.Instant push button chemistry.
No more trees. Intravenously fed synthetic sap.=20
And I will build a railroad into tunnels of raw pulp fiction flesh
where no trains will run. Following ghosts of steam whistle breaths
I will walk the tracks,along a million addicts limbs
forth and back seeking a desperate disinterest,
because I killed all who were craving anything,
and the orange trees,incinerating each stray leaf.=20
Like you, Andrew, I punish me,flagellating my own sex,
for sins not known,striving to become a mortification=20
for crimes unconvicted,as to all the laws not yet written,
for the silence of give us our daily anaesthesia,=20
and her, rattling around, as technical connections.=20
We construct our own cages weaving the walls from routines,
and then sit in them, punishing our imginations,
looking out the open door. No where different left to go
I am a criminal, I wiped out for the sake of intellectual arguments,
all the trees exchanging wooden limbs for plastic,
with my sexually transmitted need to comply
with unease,and to keep moving on, uprooted.=20

--------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: lost it - Interpolated
Date: Mon, 08 Jul 2002=20

* * wrote:
in its own dust

no control
puppet on wild strings
gonna go off
someone lit a short fuse
on a killing spree
plucking daisies, pushing up
ones who look at me
see my television head
gonna die
a vacuum tube brain burst,
dont care if you cry
shorting out your cerebral cathode,
you'll get it first
you high voltage monster
put into the ground
when they pull your switch.

---------------------------

Subject: Re: t h e b a n d w i d t h w a r s - interpolated
Date: Mon, 08 Jul 2002=20

the bandwidth wars
book of the dead

a million brains
strung together, beads,
turned to day old pizza
pepperoni faced
saw it with my own eyes
as they were sliced thin
sticking out of my head
and carted away in wheelbarrows
bouncing on springs
a night soil of visions
housebroken to your ways
dreaming rich and famous dreams
of incest and mockery
plagued by greedy fleshpots
in camouflage tents
wounded by their mortar fire tongues
painted sky blue
with cryptic insignia
at least your optimism
gave us reasons to mourn
kept us out of prison
served up breakfast in bed
being vanguard elements
the crisp starched precision
of the weed eater brigades
flaying various conversations
well manicured faces
trimmed of individual features
a delight to zealots
of utter disbelief
who gaze upon a world of
blank stares, empty words,
snarling dogs and hissing serpents
leaving behind their mythologies
our blood their food
the congealed ideas pan fried
never ask to go
never expect to come
where you've never been
or where you are planning to go
that's opening an up
breaking through the roof of the mouth
a serious can of spiders
becoming cobwebbed with data
teach yourself a new language
and have fewer ways to communicate
even if it's the old one
revised in unprovable ways
hail California!
dreaming, wake up,
grade school children
playing grown up, with breasts,
into kinky sex
purchased by Rhode Island adults,
90 miles of highway up your ass
a black puddle of apartheid races
into an ideological trance
of demonic shamanism played out
by the mountain of tires
a modernized voodoo right
wife swappers
trading dead chickens, and the news,
of the Stalinist writer's union
scrawling words with broken penises
the mall Santa depravity
a strip teasing elf strokes his knee,
little and scared
in a moment of continued castration
hail to thee electro shock
ultimate orgasm,
gateway to the eccentricities
bound and gagged with gold lamee,
atrocities
desperate for release
beneath it all
everyone turns tricks
and aristocrats of image
mass convert to nihilism
it's what they do
as everything cancels out.

---------------------------

Dark Horse=20
----------=20

You did the same as the other did,
leaving me to no more than a closeness of familiar things;
something more solid than what you gave me of California dreaming.
The arrowhead planes leave smoke signals in the jet streamed sky,
making me feel at least half wounded,
counting the added scars,
drawn out across my mind,
much the same as waking up suddenly=20
to having been thrown from a very dark horse.

When I hear something scurry across the roof in the middle of night
it reminds me of the restless spirits of a few of our conversations.

--------------------- Morpheal=20

Monster
-------=20

Prankenstein's monster with a P,=20
not an F,
where one of us has to,
absolutely has to,
fail completely,=20
in the make a pass,=20
and fail as to a system,
there being no way for both of us to end up being right,
according to the rules,
one of us gets left out and behind.=20

Either I am the monster that you have made me into,
or you are the monster,
and the villagers are trying to find out,
so they can cut to the chase as to one of us,
with their torches lit.=20

----------------------- Morpheal=20

Collapse
--------

Running
heavy limbed,
strides,
stretched out thin
as a bed rail
track
going around the bend,
the collapsing tunnel
rapid closing
of wind pipe,
falling in
from behind.

------------

Cause of Death
--------------

The corpse stretches forever,
and I dig for answers,
after each exhumation
of the body politic.
The cause of death
unknown,
and dissection of motives
reveals no useful clues.
The organs are revealing
of misleading signs,
examination showing
the heart has been removed.
There is little left
beyond the rubber gloved
handshake,
pure and simple,
with some usual forms
of preservation,
scattered around
among stainless implements.

---------------------------  Morpheal=20

Subject: Poems: August 9th, 2002=20

Wanted
------

Scarce recognizable,
signs of personality,
torn away
left traces scarred
across previous announcements,
wherever no one replies,
moving along,
no standing,
reading one another
the same way they scan
all the billboards,
storing up the information
finding themselves
half consciously
being wanted,
in between public lines
identifying with a variety
of wanted posters
announcements
found pasted up
in between graffiti scrawls
that pass as anonymous
attempts at signature.

----------------------

Writing Reports
---------------

Most events of any importance
are clandestine,
operations,
and too often a lesson
in getting in and getting out
fast and clean,
without forming attachments.
A surgical strike
cutting around the heart
of the shades of grey matters,
removing the other connections,
stimulating only that momentary
loss of nerve,
that failed to say goodbye,
failing to move on, fast enough.
The alternative,
is a terminated conversation,
an isolated organism,
cut off, septic
in mid sentence,
followed by capture
into another deeper level
of more complete boredom,
held only by the complete lack
of any real events,
a specimen in a specimen jar,
the way the origin was held
before it all happened,
forever kept under examination.
Even there it comes down
to writing reports,
so the word is then given.

-------------------------- =20

Ambiguous Strangers
-------------------=20

You talked to me about your voyeur psychiatrist,
and your intimations about your peeping tom government,
the way you were never alone in your bedroom,
and no longer cared as to exposing yourself in front of cameras
or to the startled eyes of ambiguous strangers.

You talked to me of hearing voices from under your eaves=20
going out of your own mind the way Marilyn Monroe went crazy,
diving into the wrong pill jar,
that being as sane a prescription as politics ever chances be,
and you thought the congressman was under your bed.

Since you became another sex goddess,
I only get to masturbate to your mental image,
while storing away our talked of sex lives in one of many closets,
throwing a bedsheet over top of myself,
becoming transformed into the sudden purity of a Klansman,
saved with a sacrament of bourbon.=20

---------------------------------

Requiem
-------=20

Orange blossom veined tissue on the opened wounds.
Everything,=20
including that,
is seen through,
leaving a thin chill mist where the flesh was meant to be.

Every winter is the dread of spring,
spent in the cold solitude counting=20
the losses that always arrive when the snows melt.=20

The mental struggle for continuity becomes sutured into place.
There are various parts gathered at random,
nailed together,
repairing the fences,
somewhere in between the blinded eyes and the broken tongue.=20

Those bits of crazed glass,
and some pink plastic that is moulded into perilous shapes.=20

No matter what you expected=20
you should have known that I cannot dream=20
of what I have not seen and shall now never see.=20
Everything remains shrouded,
and the sanctuary of my opened hand is empty.=20

---------------------------=20

New Mythologies
---------------=20

When the lived portion ends,
it is then that new mythologies begin,
and we can begin to say that the sky split open all of a sudden,
the future crashing to earth as a spilling of words,
leaving a pale slit strained between the linings
of two silver grey clouds,
rushing bedsheets,
and torn shreds of skin deep,
as we mentally attempt to suture up the various incisions,
as to his and her's,=20
has beens,=20
teased apart,
from once convergent romances of thought.=20

------------------------------=20

Cataclysm
---------=20

She moved an eyelash at one end of the world,
and the tree in his yard,
at the other end of the world contorted,=20
Spun,
and in a cyclone of wind driven rain,
that Pinocchio danced wildly until it split into two,
the one part falling,
in the same manner as a sweep of a hand gives way,
then nose dives,
sliding along a bad break between the sinuses.

Everything else remained unscathed,
other than the huge limb sprawled,=20
fingers spread leaning into thin air,
touching at the ground as if trying to get at something
that was nearly sensed,
across thousands of miles of endless fences.=20

------------------=20
Cythera And Morpheal=20

Dark Horse,
broken from a carousel
emerging from the closed eyelid,
whipped furiously
leaving,blood stained thoughts,
familiar,as the black cat
of dreaming,ill fated, crossed paths.=20

Smoke sky in a pissed off haze
unbound across the eye,=20
of blurred recognitions
much the same as immersions into not knowing
waking up suddenly more murdered than alive,
on the very dark horse,
feeling the spurs,=20
across the roof,
in a broken up time
of night,
ghosting possibilities
Lit as shadow in a dark cave.

------------------------------=20

Date: August 11th, 2002


Alone
-----

Distant invisible cries
mixing human and bird sounds
with the rushing white water.
The canyon disappears
below a fringe of cedars,
their reddened fingers
and strained arms
wrapped around worn out stones,
bodies leaning into the wind
and holding back a blur of sun.
I feel as if I too am holding on
as desperately as they hold on,
alone on the edge,
as to another abyss,
a mind left painfully cramped up,
forced to clutching
at sparse hand holds,
of broken off communication,
still struggling at a climb
mostly beyond reach,
of anything that does not break away,
to vague ideas threatening
to become another marriage
of no more than tumbling clouds
and broken rocks,
some light having fallen
breaking everything
in between.

-----------

Unknown
-------

We never met,
yet your unknown image
flashed repeatedly
as an unexpected jolt,
of rare beauty,
another hard blow
to the edge of the mind,
an interruption, hitting,
at the usual programming,
and then leaving
a mind left to wondering
about identity
and other lures to meaningless
attempts to fill in
various unknown details,
details and surmises,
as to who that really was,
conjectures would intrude
into that sixth sense
of eidetic disquiet,
adding false labels,
and spurious descriptions
that become story lines.
It always opens some avenues
as to potential fantasies,
giving rise to more
sleepless speculations,
that never get to touch,
though I refused to dream,
that anything could grow
from that strange seed,
planted in a derelict psyche,
never having known
dreams as being anything
except as what was terminated
earthed to ground,
the moment it was dared
into a specific anticipation.
I simply assumed
it was all another tease,
and we too were never
ever destined to meet,
the way it is as to stars,
and as to lesser deities,
as well as how it is across borders,
and beyond the margins of pages,
that are the no man's land
containing the fields
of inner battles, fought
by the forces of she loves me,
and the forces of she loves me not,
plucked from random daisies,
and rendered into painful
variations on the same
scrawled love letter phrases
then dared into a tiny corner
of the world,
defying all that remains
as yet unknown.

--------------- August 11th, 2002

Wide Open=20
---------=20

She strapped him down to his emotional bed,
letting the meaning sink in sharp as a knife sharp glance=20
sinks into the dead heat,
a glass of iced whisky kept a finger tip away=20
and destiny all going into total melt down,
racked up precisely out of measured reach,
and it's right,=20
then,=20
that something cracks concusively wide open=20
to really knowing there's a new religion playing it's sex up tight,=20
and cue ball crude,
pushed right up,
against your politics.=20

---------------------=20

And Again=20
---------=20

You were in the dream that I woke up from,
and again,
there was nobody there.

No surprises,
being had,=20
a lot of packaging,=20
and always something,
to get all wrapped up in.

This has happened so many times=20
I hardly dare to close my eyes,
blindly expectant as to anything else.

Each time the same happens and I awaken suddenly,
to being put aside,
struck down,
in the middle of the story,
getting nothing other than labelled a little older in time,
and being made wiser=20
only as to uglier than the time before.=20

---------------------=20

Wavering
--------=20

A sprig of moonbeams,
the dapple grey mare grazing head shy among white lace flowers,
the whole scene a field of stardust that's wavering along the sword=20
edge sweeping hand of sudden wind wipes aside all regular numbers,=20
pushing everything back across the clock face=20
leaving premature burial,
at sea,
among the dwindling few=20
remaining options.=20

------------------=20

Beyond All Recognition=20
----------------------=20

Times when there is nothing left=20
to distinguish the days=20
spread wide open across the center of the calendar.
Nothing inviting,
and nothing there to augment the shape of things to come,
the money having been scalpelled away,
with deft cuts of prevention,
bled away into various rumoured destinations,
stained ends of the line,
up against the wall,
as a kind of fashion statement,
showing tales of rejections and the required rework,
until no longer recognizable.

---------------------------- August 12th, 2002

Stars
-----=20

The garden is full of death at this time of year,
bordered with spindly yellowed stains of softening wilt,
surrounded by unfinished projects,
packages nearly opened up,
and the contents barely visible under a torn corner.=20

It is as if everything dies at one glimpse
 of a flower hanging its forlorn head down shagged and swaying,
among a crowd of strangers,
and then it is all over again,
in knowing nothing more=20
than some of us might make it until spring comes,=20
when the snows melt from beneath one or another solitary=20
Hibernation under the hard cold white of winter stars.

----------------=20

Someone
-------=20

Everywhere I go there is someone to work with,
on something,=20
or other,
and everywhere I go there is no one to know=20
beyond someone to work with.

There is never anyone to be known,
as anything that's wanted as something nearer
than someone to work with.=20

I know,=20
we are growing as thin as the stories repeated in advertising circulars,
and thin as my thinning hair,
thin as dreams,
becoming not much more than our variant commercial messages,
where it is all about making something,
and everywhere we go,=20
making it with someone=20
someone to work with,
someone different,=20
always someone to work with,
but I find it is lonelier everywhere I go=20
no matter how many people are there=20
as someone different to work with.=20

It is lonelier and lonelier,
left to reminiscing about a long time ago=20
of romantic dreaming that got us only that far,
and no further,=20
than a tiny,=20
hardly noticed,=20
public cloudburst,
where one of us was only an appearance=20
Interjected into someone else's writing,
writing off,=20
writing in,=20
or writing onto,
that other chapter,
only to find the story really ended before that.

We never got to write any other lines=20
and it makes me so sad=20
that all I ever got anywhere I went,
in that impersonal world of quietly dreaming=20
those personal dreams,
was somewhere where there was someone,
always someone,=20
someone different,
to work with.

--------------

Broken Glass
------------=20

The mental engines overheated,=20
pulled steamed to the side of the road,
uphill summer flares a blowout,
leaving scorched tempers,
various hot spots,
mucilaginous skin glued to underwear,
the saturated pools of molten breasts=20
poured into her t-shirt.

The coming of evening a stale beer smell sky,
its pale golden brown a horizontal wipe,
and the spilt froth being watched obsessively,
for fresh indications of resurrections,
through the curved glass of the broken bottle.

---------------------=20

Past The Lips
-------------=20

It's all sucked out until the suction is tugging=20
on the marrow cracking ribs of emotion=20
feeling dry as tinder is parched dry,
having already been broken and licked at=20
with little tongues of fevered flames.=20

You know,
the serpent pushes past the lips,
opening and closing with another hiss,
biting down at the core of a word that struggles
to try to get past the raw afterbirth of crushed apple.=20

Accidents happen,
and it was no exception,
to the same patterns sewn together=20
into a quilt of stories.

-----------  August 13th, 2002

Attrition
---------=20

The dark circles form targets around the eyes.
A punch drunk night hitting hard=20
on all the exposed vulnerable spots,
the shadows boxing at the bared surfaces
 of a sleepless unconsciousness.
There are no real answers to any usual questions,
and the only facts remain a kind of attrition,
as to what was loved.

---------------------=20

Blinding
--------=20

The explosion was a slow motion burst into long months of shrapnel,
Similarities,
her likenesses,
broken off,
Disconnected,
from the familiar image,
their differing flung,=20
into the retinas,
blinding as certainly as a red hot iron=20
plunged into the remaining white emptiness
of wishing to see.

------------------=20