my gods are innumerable stars in a black sky
too close and low and static and issuing no light
above the silent dunes of ash, born of no tides, no winds
under leagues of soot forever undisturbed
one burnt and buried flake am i

the far-flung
wren learns
a hard-won lesson:
become well-rounded by staying grounded,
be fueled by panic while aerodynamic,
or get there fast by shattering glass

wish

a body that cannot be erased and cannot be carried across
the coiling finish line of mortality but can be carried
outward, to the sprawling cosmos meeting then surpassing the speeding boundary of this universe we have bodies in
emptying out and filling in the end of the expanse
is what you wish for 

from your sunken down beaten still beating heart upon waking in exhaustion
a heart that can't be moved, a body that can't be erased and speeds toward light-surpassing darkness,
and the humanity without the human wreckage and fatal remainder of living

whether you are written like a poem by the domineering hand of man or executed script by indifferent physics compiled as divinity,
the output is the same common pattern measured and measurable
a predicted pre-rejected wish for more

only water 2

Even when when I’m only water
even then and only when
the wind is eager endless empty
ever is the river winnowing
eased or never easing, ending but never ended
within the wind I’m winding east
then west, then east

awake and wild

only water

even when i'm only water all the friends
i loved are not friends and are unknown by whoever i am now
every memory of joy is rotted and to recollect one is to think of a corpse on a pile
when i smiled it's because you smiled and not because i want to smile because i cannot
want to
a machine that detects and records deviations in pain and

rests among nonsignificant events to conserve energy until there is no more

i'm taken aback by my own revolted love for death and bored by those same old revulsions

the reliable floods

the dreams of the aftermath
when the tempest hits i am not struck
but folded at rest into a sheet of undulating chaos

even then i'm only water

being nothing having nothing in the warm yellow light of passivity
makes you a meadow and a mark of grace
summer's gonna cum
he's gonna plant a seed of winter blossom in the belly of fall
dispel your nausea with a sip from the goblet of crystalline emptiness
and you shall quench your excess
you're a good motherfather you're a seeking morning glory in the night
meditating on their birthing pains with
a philsophy of prosperity in mind
a blind inward eye
ever gazing at nothing

there comes a time when

'n it's come faster than i thought

everything that pins you here

is drifting, dust, or done. 

the painting above the bed

the seashell on the shelf

what does what did they mean

what cost what benefit to self

when even sen tenc es erode

does writing read un hear d

what am or was   or was  n't i 

if not  a man  of my  word