Apologies

I am so sorry

that I am so much smaller

than most

so much weaker

so much less than

I would be the largest

the all-encompasing 

if I could

but I get tired and I am bored

and boring.

I am sorry for that.

Penumbra

Eccentric orbits
the distance between stars
sing to me
a single tune
to last eternity.

try to hold but lose
the beat

The universe
bursting full
of its own combustions

Oh!
let me dive in
to the burning center

rather than this cooling

some lights are not stars
but reflections
eyes don't create light
but seek it

I am only ice
lights in a mirror
revolving, elliptical

Sol's hot compositions
keep frenetic pace

I am swung further out,
farther out
I swing

my fingers burn and slip
my chest spins
small planetoid
not enough for a name

the galaxy is a gypsy camp
burning its riches
reckless as only the impoverished
know how.

I am worse than that
a lit match may singe
my fingers
but no fires burn here
no sad songs warm the night

Leaving the Bronze Age

My boy tastes like iron,
sweat and sun and gold
coins pressed against teeth and tongue.
Testing the metal
for purity
for resale value.

My boy tastes like iron.
War and pestilence
the horses of the apocalypse
rising out of morning mist
beautiful and desired
as Pegasus from Morgan's
open, bleeding arteries.

My boy tastes like iron.
Steaks and slow food movements.
Bleeding hearts and
sad, slow passions. I
would eat him alive
to cure my languor.

I would fuck him until my
heart starts beating again,
until he fills mercurial and
heavy with leaden
tuning lay
rusted, musical but
lately sunk
in salt and tide
and the last fillings of
teeth disolved.

My boy tastes like iron

My boy tastes like blood

Beau Ideal

Do I trust the pull
the night time tide
and blur and last
drop drained
from each
crevice in
the fish-eyed
wine bottle?

Exhilaration of flight.
Galaxies too much
for my monkey brain
to conceive
so crashing I abort all memory and wake
mind bleached clean
throat all acid
and afterburn
something beautiful creeping
away on the
bright edge of day.

I named it Joy
and Sin
and
The Perfect Glory of Dancing In a Room Full of Stangers and Imagining You Are

Alone.

Poem for Fourth of July Birthdays

1.

Cosmic Pluralism, a theory much favored by men of science in the 18th and 19th centuries, uses inductive reasoning to propose that if Earth is not the center of the universe, and is in fact, one of many spheres circling around a central sphere, and if God does not waste, does not create illogical excess, if we are not whims sent spinning about a mostly empty sky, then we must be living in a universe teeming with life, that each world must be riotous with minds, with men all looking up at the sky at the same time, all looking deep into each other's worlds unknowing and praising God.

2.

As I get older
I find it harder to break habits.
Each morning the same as another.
The same fading in and out
of dreams before the final awakening.
The same stumbling for the coffee pot.
The start up chime on my laptop
creation's only testimony.

3.

After the
smoke clears
the last sparks
sizzle and stop
over the lake

As you shuffle back
with the rest of town
across the wet grass
as the sulphur renders
and the stars return

listen
to your neighbor
tell his son
"this was all for you
these people
standing together by the lake
all love you so much
they lit up the sky"

What if we are snowflakes in sunshine

backlit and radiant as any of
the haloed saints and twice as
ethereal, pyres of
photons

I reflect all (Im rubber)
reverberating witness (you're glue) to
this particular particle moment
fresh as dirt
I teem, I worm
I roil and lye
still as a burn.

I would be a small
strange sun if I could choose
consuming each sugary star

Universes could not satisfy.

Reading as Evening Loosens and Sighs

The effort of day is taking it's toll,
ringing out over the evening coffee
sluicing up the shoulder blades
flooding ever into thoughts.

It's physics an opposite
reverberation
tightening up
a noose of purpose
of work never done.

the unfinished tasks
that waken sleepers

Wake up! The dark
tricks your eyes!
It is not night and the day
is calling on the horizon
bloody and violet
with it burden
dragged toward you
Apollo's horse whipped to froth
and sunrise

Stop this. the stars
make me frantic
with excess.
They are wasteful and
fade before our eyes catch on
to their nonsense.
The sky is not awash with
starlight,
it is not a glittering
champagne glass.
It is a cold grave
with small fires
candles that blow out
with the slightest breath
of visitors.

Each wick a well
that ends in
an absence
of light.