wb :

Russet leaves and sunset eaves
Calm the heart and quake the knees
Like some melodious disease.

Always the first iniquities
Are the sovereign bonds and the equities
That titillate the intellect
With just enough of fict and fact,
A mediocre tease.

And then, with promises of ease,
The deeds and debts to properties
That one half-willingly contracts
And half as willingly forgets
Upon the payment of the broker's fees,

And the termination of the lease.

---

The spilling amber paints its ease
Upon the cracked mahoganies.
First your hands, and then your eyes,
And then your mind will tell you lies,
Even your gilded vanities.

And with their careless vagaries,
Years on years in every crease.
Clouded eyes and candleglare
Trace each callus, trace each care
Measuring your disabilities.

When did you turn your faculties
To petty things as these?

---

Beside the bottles and the lawyer's sheaves,
Familiar faces, faded memories:
The hanged man, Justice, Temperance,
The hierophant, the empress,
And the lovers- now the divorcees.

Tender laughter, ever may it tease
Your pains away.
Let it linger, let it stay
With the comfort that it guarantees.

Still- wherefore, whence, and whither these
Pangs and pains, o these regrets,
With your philosopher's degrees?

---

Rugged hands that wait on ragged knees
Warm themselves upon the sunset leaves.
Moving with their careless vagaries,
Years on years in every wrinkled crease
As they trace the cracked mahoganies.

Beside the bottles and the lawyer's sheaves,
All I have left are faded memories
And half-forgot philosopher's degrees,
The measure of my disabilities.

Just ask the lovers, now the divorcees-
Only comfort has its guarantees,
And those are merely gilded vanities.

Always like some melodious disease,
Tender laughter- ever may it tease.

Tears drop in the rain
I want to lose again,
see what things are really there.

fold
the stars into consciousness
and the sand into the sky
and see what things are really there.

Tomorrow
is another screen
for the projection of today
Go into that sweet sleep,
remember,
remember,
I will carry your wave into the future.

two signals
converging on NOW
now bright,
now then,
soon we will remember
to see again.

Salt.
Inside of me
dead like the sea,
better than aphrodisiac or pain
shrivel in sun
water gets between my toes,
salt, in the core of me and surrounding me.

I let salt go into the cycle that gives my molecules momentum
Let go:
the rivers flow to the sea
and remember salt, the basis of body
and its temporal inheritance.

Soon,
when we're sitting by the TV,
stars explode,
burning solar systems
streaming neutrinos through our skulls
while we, unbeknownst, munch on
peas

Cosmic wind, give the sight
that remembers how to pass
untrammeled through the universe,
stopping only to be born
and to die.

Someone asked if there was a teapot
floating around Mars - well, orbiting,
which is like falling on nothing.

Mr. Teapot:
I am sorry we left you there.
There are comforts in the dim sky
the red glow is a friend,
there will be a beginning,
a return to peace,
an end.

If ever you have paused your step
Upon the shadow of a sheltered light
And gazed upon the neon-neutered night
Then, mayhap

If you have also heard the voices
Calling, that never listen,
Purring, with every piston
Of a billion vices

If you have heard the cries at night
Of those that wander, those that drink,
Those that halfway peer across the brink
And shudder too with fright,

Then, perhappenstance, you know
That virile madness that is darkness
Must share its terror with its tenderness
And has to go.

And eyes that stare into oblivion
Shall find respite in stuttered lamps,
In limp caress of lukewarm damps
And blind delirium.

The old bells of the city
Are the ones that ring the softest,
Yet the clearest through the air,
The autumn air.

 Their sighing comes to me across the branches,
Echoes off the ivy-scattered bricks,
And wakes me from the beating of my feet upon the road,
The stony road.

O Titan bells of muted bronze,
Release me, if you would, from out your gentle grip,
For vespers leaves us with the shivers of the air,
The autumn air.

You're leaving with the calling bell,
You'll never see how Mother weeps-
Oh, may you see a blessed spell,
And may the heavens weather well.

But come ye back when Summer sleeps,
And Autumn nestles in the well;
And oh! The stories we shall tell!
And, oh!- the stories we shall tell.

I left the city in a daze;
I remember the snow pooling at street corners.
Night constructed blue and clinging haze
to threaten the mourners

with the possibility of a new morning
(how they scrambled, and talked,
and violently ignored each other on the train,)
while the bright edges of clouds were forming
over the hudson river and the drain.

such sights passed behind me, though
I went northward on a steel chain
and thought 'No more of this gyrating flow
and no more sleepless pain.'

so escaped I; there were lawns now,
and wood. The fireflies danced the evening
as I lay, hearing my nieces shriek and play,
holding my fingers against the leavening
stars stretched across the branches like fabric,
waiting for the coming of the day.

and I imagined they imagined I was
a mote on a strange feverish planet filled
with prime numbers and like selves
and pi and beethoven and cups of water on dirty shelves

and I thought if they could do it,
they might very well imagine a dusty me
dreaming of snow on street corners
riding south into a constellation of wonder and spit.

A candle and a table spoon
delores in the living room
she's forgetting all the fables soon

always imagined that time
would freeze for me
like a pet refrigerator
at my beck and call
i thought i
had control of the electricity
supply



the future seemed like a
pale macaron
details unseen but correct
it would be cherry-pie perfect
the chocolate pianos
in the shop window
but



i hadn't counted on
the salt and pepper shaker
storms. or the
wasabi
or the food poisoning
the salt statues
may include me



but you are off
somewhere else
eating eclairs

Softly, sun is rising
I'm gonna begin my day
if I can leave my numb feet at the door,
sleep no more, baby,
it's time to get on your way

used up all my lives
i'm turning the knife in the tale
Let me dream, it's all that's keeping me awake
for your sake,
my body will be a jail

cauliflower fist of gold
combusting in the rain
steam is hot skin when it's rising up
to cup the drops of sky-
after, only tears remain

let me go to there
I wanna dry my hands
and say fuckyou, man to the ceiling
we're stealing the show
and sloping to the badlands

There once was a logician called Steve
Who fucked a mathematician, believe
She waited a week
then peed on a stick
And told him, "dear, I'm contrapositive".

start like this:
fascicle
now forward,
to moscow!
the fads of moustachioed
bound like pages in
a big brown book, berets and black coats
in imitation.

poor brown Stanislaw!
now,
in a ditch in a
                      mug

spit
then,
rot,
mouth of steel, mouth of fog

-- I came to this mud town ere before long
and the harmony of thought,
is equal to the harmony of song)) --

**

but glorious Stanislaw,
we knew him well,
a lass. now gone,
now black like the mud of some last Russian song!
but I came to this town ere before long,

so let me go,
spit!
fog
horse thrust,
i whipped him (he cried, Oh m)
and soon stopped moving and he had stopped moving

pot


fist

left him,

left him there, my raven my lehre
left him for the butterflies and the humming birds
wearing Marx and muddy coats,
he had the body of a clown
so go, fashion figures,
go to! earth now deep,
now shallow, (he is underneath,)
face down

we are all ships passing in the night
sometimes it is smooth sailing and
sometimes it is all for nought.
there are those cruising through life
like a great white and others
going down with amigo icebergs in glory.

and you, my knight, my amore, my
lighthouse, my porthole to the world -
today we slip off the ropes and draw
up the anchors. we return every last
lifeboat, lifejacket and storm provision
we borrowed. the sea-legs return,

the seasickness comes on board.
as you dissappear off the horizon
with your nets and fish caught hook line
and sinker, my rock-climbing facilities,
champagne, hors d'oeveres, chandeliers
vanish as i shrink to

an invisible fishing vessel struggling
with the boom that would keep on hitting
my head. like the story of pi, except the
happy ending; i live off the shark fins
jamming my rudder and the salty sea;
i am no longer in osmotic balance

i'm lucky that i know
how to walk on water

Fire, fire, mark my pyre
Deep and brilliant as sapphire
At the edges of the evening
Clad in thorn and wrapped in briar

When the naked night is brooding
A cocoon of cold desire
Out a fire-moth is breaking
Taking wing, the morning's crier

And the serpent sings a beat
In the darkness of the heat
Shadow dance, the soul is shier
Moonlight-shod and starlight-cleat

Rising in the smoke-shot ember
Tell me, are you friend or liar?
Every word that I remember
Followed me from old December

Naked on November's feet
Nursed the wolfess at the teat
Laid in fur, the toil and tire
Thawing on the snowy sheet

Who the slave, and who the sire?
Fang to neck and claw to loin
Sweating, swirling, vies the vier
As the tongues of flame enjoin

Silhouette, the moon's defeat
Wax and wane, the weeks repeat
On the silence of the shire,
Bold as pewter, black as peat

Stands the bear, his stillness sober
In the distance of October
Whereto does your roar aspire?
When you face the white disrober

Snake who whispers, tongue a-quiver
Wolfess howling at the fire
Bear who wades the dreaming river
Bring me from this mortal mire

As the phoenix from the silk
Drank his fill of midnight's milk
Dreaming, dead, the dawning dire
Fire, fire, mark my pyre.

In my dreams

people die
when the fires fly
and when the morning arches overhead
we count the dead

they walk to my table and point at me
accusingly
they stand behind the piles of paper
that the people who walk and waver
leave before me as an offering
"hear me," as though the people say,
"and take the entrails of the world,
and scry into their black lines, curled
into a thousand troubles furled
and stapled;"
"and tell us, oracle, what you forsee,
what omens in the bleached sheets
what omens in the printed sheets
and guide us, sage, the blind, we;"
and still the dead point at me.

In my nightmares I am one of them

looking onwards at eventuality
sighing as a million choices
flows into the echoes
of a million voices
pointing not at he who grasps the print
but behind him, for he is blind

so my end is wrapped in those same sheets
noted, briefly
perhaps griefedly
and when the papers have conferred
then interred

no more to worry of those others
that have passed by
of those that hurt and hounded
and growled and pounded
no more to worry of those that cared
of those with their souls bared
no more to worry

So when I wake, I
am glad that I am only
a butterfly

found this on sixtimesnine today. I'm pretty impressed with Drunk Adam.