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millions of faces are blurred
the very lips obscured
as these years they have wandered
scarred without reprieve,
a doleful and lackluster story to tell
the foregone minds, gone to hell,
embraces that seem so blind
the sightless sleight as we pretend,
and yesterday's full of bells
because their movement really never ends ...
around the courtyard square,
not something so easily lost
beneath the edgy eyes and the birds,
no music to create a rhythm first,
and so: ten thousand maniacs go
flailing about the windowed wall,
go careening upward, not just
for the very and sheer dare of their fall
but the surety they could ever gamble
sitting in this position I manifested
and the dangers that are my lessons
while the splitting atom forms a question,
quasar shell and photon beams go orbital.
it leads me into a quite shallow place,
where I've only the back of my face
and an infinity of this distance
stacked up, piling in some basements.
the dodgy old reasons beget the tides:
and swamps that never let up will rise
next to the swan with the moon
still so happy in its swallowing jaws
forget target, and sing an ugly song
yet happily and so lonesome.
the black reflections menace a spot,
and yesterday's destitute numbers
don't mean a thing, for this meat will rot.
and I'll leave you alone
about the presents or our parents,
I won't go entirely insane
in front of the guests -- if kids
suddenly unbar themselves from
those deep blue star strewn beds,
and they wake up from life and death?--
tell them a story, I said,
indian style without any lightswitch to touch.
and then find them with your fingertips
the edge of the mask worn and obvious;
settle your nails into its edges, let it give
its wrinkles a chance, the broken mirror
leaves: then there are your pores
hiding all those buried tears in your skin,
in your eyes the dust of it trying to get in.
everybody watching you get older,
we thought that the staring was sacrilege
(you thought silence like that
made for bad poetry, there wasn't a poet
in the walls of these halls walking easily.
dragging a pencil up and down the doors.)
you got lost talking to me, and what died
for years looked like so much
dross: between each page I fell apart,
something eventually lost
and something like forever, gone,
as if it would take an entire stupid poem
to get across to the girl that 'I love,'
or should I skate around the thin air
in broken tangents of icy torrents,
breath on my breath, immunity from a needle?
I taste the cigarettes
nights I was trying to forget,
and the litany of myself rather than God
trying to make it, lie like I've lied
before. but underneath the star
twinkling sometimes I can find it's so near,
and I can feel the way that it's there
however far and still connected to my heart
to the clear scintillations
and mercury vibrations as they dawn
and prattle each other along
so that the voice of the reaper
as soundless as the shutting of eyelids,
bracing down and bearing upon
this form that lived and lived so long
my own smile is set into its bones
and I throw myself -- my stark contrast
past tomorrow's deadline crash:
past the mark where stars vanish.
knowing only that you're next to me,
it's okay to remember
bad things happen, even with
all of these safety and cautionary things,
with our spirits
which could be flames, could be little
burning replicas of the love we all end,
just for the art of excuses
for the afternoons that used us
for something permanent
the very lips obscured
as these years they have wandered
scarred without reprieve,
a doleful and lackluster story to tell
the foregone minds, gone to hell,
embraces that seem so blind
the sightless sleight as we pretend,
and yesterday's full of bells
because their movement really never ends ...
around the courtyard square,
not something so easily lost
beneath the edgy eyes and the birds,
no music to create a rhythm first,
and so: ten thousand maniacs go
flailing about the windowed wall,
go careening upward, not just
for the very and sheer dare of their fall
but the surety they could ever gamble
sitting in this position I manifested
and the dangers that are my lessons
while the splitting atom forms a question,
quasar shell and photon beams go orbital.
it leads me into a quite shallow place,
where I've only the back of my face
and an infinity of this distance
stacked up, piling in some basements.
the dodgy old reasons beget the tides:
and swamps that never let up will rise
next to the swan with the moon
still so happy in its swallowing jaws
forget target, and sing an ugly song
yet happily and so lonesome.
the black reflections menace a spot,
and yesterday's destitute numbers
don't mean a thing, for this meat will rot.
and I'll leave you alone
about the presents or our parents,
I won't go entirely insane
in front of the guests -- if kids
suddenly unbar themselves from
those deep blue star strewn beds,
and they wake up from life and death?--
tell them a story, I said,
indian style without any lightswitch to touch.
and then find them with your fingertips
the edge of the mask worn and obvious;
settle your nails into its edges, let it give
its wrinkles a chance, the broken mirror
leaves: then there are your pores
hiding all those buried tears in your skin,
in your eyes the dust of it trying to get in.
everybody watching you get older,
we thought that the staring was sacrilege
(you thought silence like that
made for bad poetry, there wasn't a poet
in the walls of these halls walking easily.
dragging a pencil up and down the doors.)
you got lost talking to me, and what died
for years looked like so much
dross: between each page I fell apart,
something eventually lost
and something like forever, gone,
as if it would take an entire stupid poem
to get across to the girl that 'I love,'
or should I skate around the thin air
in broken tangents of icy torrents,
breath on my breath, immunity from a needle?
I taste the cigarettes
nights I was trying to forget,
and the litany of myself rather than God
trying to make it, lie like I've lied
before. but underneath the star
twinkling sometimes I can find it's so near,
and I can feel the way that it's there
however far and still connected to my heart
to the clear scintillations
and mercury vibrations as they dawn
and prattle each other along
so that the voice of the reaper
as soundless as the shutting of eyelids,
bracing down and bearing upon
this form that lived and lived so long
my own smile is set into its bones
and I throw myself -- my stark contrast
past tomorrow's deadline crash:
past the mark where stars vanish.
knowing only that you're next to me,
it's okay to remember
bad things happen, even with
all of these safety and cautionary things,
with our spirits
which could be flames, could be little
burning replicas of the love we all end,
just for the art of excuses
for the afternoons that used us
for something permanent