watch these stars by which I mean the trees by which bewitch
of course he had to (not the poet, not me) to make the fiction non-
an extra shipment of poors for the sacrifice to the robot mouse
imagine at my age in the dark renting tiny guffaws
(First published in Password 3.3)
in the middle of the day last
night you walked toward me over
freshly mown flowers and said that
after a brief chat your new boat
the Luna Trirota would sail
at midnight. I don’t know where you
got that biker jacket and I’m
sorry your allergies were playing up
but even from the other side I’m pleased
to talk with you for a bit, Harry.
And then I wasn’t sure which realm I
was in but sighed relief when my wife
sighed and the dog rolled on her back
to enjoy the breeze before dawn
in illuminated ghillie suits the
brothers Ween furiously pushing up
some little daisies through masks fluorescing
this was one some time after the other
one of a new germ that perfectly spread
through dirt the sick suddenly lunge and gnaw
the faces of strangers and I confess
a great fear in the recent dark before
the dark before the movie and on the
mountain road I try to turn the lights on
but have only high beams though my
tiny flashlight helps me find a safe place
to pee and I agree with Gene and Dean
it’s too exhausting to go on like this
a couple days past the even night some
warm yawning afternoons we kissed
in molten orange and periwinkle
but then left the fridge cracked too long
and even if the tea is superb the
longing for an empty cup may be
observed why not we have no tribunal
though I long loved the feel of a fine
steel as it slid across the sea with thin
songs and you could grab one at the
department store for laundry if nothing
nicer was near and I moved on to
that fast and far enough and no we’re just
circling the block there’s nothing to see
but not much is known of them. There
were scattered songs and some notes on
wildflowers volumes of complaints
I’m sure you’ve heard and who can say
what about the long struggle with
the dim marketplace but today
we try to decide if any
of these sheets were worth it. I can
hear the hum and gurgle of some
neighbor’s air conditioner as it
slumps through another round and the locust’s
local squirrels scamper as ever so
why should we sweat over some scribbles
when the sea’s just ten minutes away
once deflated they mistook it
for the husk of some malnourished creature
then again through the trees tinny music
softly weaving as crickets try to pull
each step I twice take each breath then
with someone else’s questions and
all the stones those quaint devils buried
beneath the soil then the voice of
a favorite actress in a cartoon
one day I’ll open my mouth and butter
flies catbirds but the sponsors don’t care for
these dark wings and more trouble was
certain which you would have known if
you followed me but never mind
3/25 dreamt Harry was
still alive in a crowd stumbled
on him just as surprised his smiles
sunshine and the same night a young
lady revealed her but demurred at
my palms’ proximity she wanted
to know only why for so long why &
why wake to spin a dark a couple of
sedentary miles coughing still
from a souvenir forced on me
far from where I shuffle some small
points of order under stringy
breath a little ELO to stay a
float & wouldn’t say but you might have hoped
Sometimes you need the force of a
sure voice nudging you with warmth to
just get on with it though
nothing is free but this
though I meant to list the local flowers
as usual though yes we were
talking about you, the search for
a bit better, three dozen more
interviews for the ghost of a
reworking the clay again a
diet of lentils cicada
a coarse bread to wreck your last
molar while we continue to brush
never-satisfied sand to the side
…
memory of honey age of corpse flowers
…
gnarled trees and little flowers the way these hands know each other
…
the moan of the sea of the dog of the thing at the desert desk
…
enough time to describe a circle in water a circle in water
…
between delusion and daffodil the crickets gone
…
(First published on Heliosparrow)
but how so long ago could I have known
just escaped the mountains and
art friends life begins again though the task
not what I thought it might and
a small pond I wished smaller
and drowned and fried the melon
relentlessly skipped behind but wanted
to care to find some fire anywhere
and once out the werk work wurk
but never could care quite enough
and didn’t and wouldn’t all night
got lost losing all touch rusted lingered
whispered under numb stars and still beg
each night just for a second come back
maybe draw a line add some scent try to
rhyme like the olden days please do there aren’t
many jobs for people like you I guess
prison would be a lateral move but
the planning & executing what does
it prove? some aspect of boredom but no
tidbit slumps so far or fast & I’m sure
it behooves me to try again and a
gain until even fewer put up with
my sour pork scratchings & I could fill up
twelve computers a day back in the day
but my memory’s a cracked cup though the
airbags remained hidden after the crash
and so with my hopes went my breath & cash
I dreamt about you again last night
in an ambling mass you’d see at
a Japanese temple, glimpsed your
face so still, phone limp in your hand.
You wanted to say, but something stopped
then we’re in a bright apartment,
stacks of light outside, you want a game
to help explain, I say we go to bed
so early these days, and turn away.
We watched your clockwork tomato crawl
for the benefit of something small
and maybe it’s my age but I could not
locate the old rage. I saw a ghost with
no words trying to speak and could not turn
these shoulders always sore even
in that honey’d light lingering
after most of the big men had
wandered off then the long years of
the same over and again and
remember I saw him from a
long way off with a thing by his
side writhing and weighty little
did I realize the contents
could be the last thing I would ever
though I was ready for these
massive thighs to marbleize to
rest to finally put aside
holding it all so perfectly
I could have
carried it if
I was still an ant
once whispered
the city dispersed
into luminous filaments
a week away somewhere
then
the miracle of the sponge
(First published in World Haiku 2026.)
and then there’s my way 1000 little
bottles about a shot and a half each
—an attempt to inflict my demon with
a mild case of haemolacria (dear
reader forgive me, it means crying
blood) and what was it about knowledge not
being the same as intelligence was
that Wally Stevens or Harry Clitus?
But nothing brings them together like
the wrong guy getting punched but come over
we’ll have a drink then on to the next
inventive absurdity often
through a screen past a perfect mess with dogs
rummaging wait was that Jerry Lewis
in a place mossed over Lilith
Sternin-Crane in a blue teddy
a moment of stillness almonds
the sound of gulls again gone from
my mind the spell broken next door
still watching that show about angry
people I guess the pen rolls I
put it back it rolls away mountains sharp
slippery as serious faces lean
over balconies and argue
about justice drains overflow
we won’t know until the apostrophe
little waves of a gently rough
sea her hands finally on me
It’s too much too little too hard too
soon too crunchy too slimy so again
when can I stop wasting this food if I
thought I could tell you her hair was like no
her smile no the sun gleaming off her dark
and that smile about some silly maybe
part of a part of her could continue
to somehow stay and I’ve forgotten the
perfect second half of the image that
once slotted in would cut this string which
releases this ball, whose action will
precipitate a dozen quick small
reversals plunges and such that you could
hardly have predicted where it would land
of the genus Zenaida (named
after the naturalist’s wife)
macroura (from the Greek for
large and tailed) a member of the
dove family, Columbidae, the
singular member of the order
Columbiformes, which we can trace to
before the meteorite. Mourning dove,
chueybird, turtledove, or rain dove, once
Carolina pigeon slash turtledove.
About a dozen of you little plump
grey-brown folk squatting in the limbs above
old snow the light hadn’t started yet to
dull the little blue that circles your eyes
Instead of a Final Line, a Title
of course I mean no disrespect, sir most
honored if, in my reverie, some mirth
of mine takes the liberty to call you
Wally. I claim but a similar sort
of trajectory. You see, I sprouted
not far from your birthplace, on a cracked bed
of anthracite, and drifted to the land
where you’d seed yourself. But not as far as
you, sir, no, not nearly as far or grand
sir, not nearly half as half as grand and
as I recall you started your great work
somewhat late in the day, as well, no
of course, I also have an appointment
before all the begetting unending
nothing not even dark then through a
gap the fast light she can’t hold back
and soon everything that ever, but
no there never was some big brooding lord
of death quaking across the land
looking for ladies to lift. She
wanted company and the boy seemed
eager enough for her delicacies
and so stayed a spell while Earth was
breaking with cries over her love
lost while the fruits drop dry and brown
so what could our sweet dark sister
do but share a small part of the year
almost everything I ate today was
cold avocado on toast leftover
pasta salad the air so thick you think
there’s something wrong with your lungs the
pooch wanted to go towards the beach
but sidetracked by chipmunks talked to Bill for
a while drank duck shit oolong looked for an
adapter to transfer photos for too
long in spots where something like that could hide
three times and found it in the usual
bag where I started and felt dumb but
happy to stop looking read some
of Olena Kalaytiak Davis
in honor of the upcoming trip
Maybe I don’t have enough to fill these
days, I mean pages, I mean, I do that
bit a bit too much but continue to
hope my pen can cobble some minor
magic as this glamour lately is
sea ice in February as I fail
to get the cheese out cleaning another
dungeon as the prophecies foretold
and then a tune but so softly I
must pay close attention or they
are lost as the kingdom slowly
dissolves in thin smoke debt and need
but the dog seems to like it she
gets to go where she wants and when
It wasn’t great strapped squirming in the dim
room one eye iced and punctured drained by a
third lasered from inside while I tried to
stifle my many moans and failed and told
the next day it didn’t work. So more prods.
More piercings. The remaining jelly
sucked out. But the drugs were quite good and
could have made much more much more pleasant
and once through rain finally home for
a selfie I try to mold a
miniature Mr. Joyce, with
an eye shield taped to this wan cheek
before the chemicals snuck off to leave
me stuck on this cheap chair with months of night
I’d forgotten how much I felt
for him pushed from bad to bad snagged
by drama he can’t comprehend
attacks he won’t defend against
running to the old house the first
time he escapes, the garland for
his dusty fur from the gentle
girl of sorrows also to be
crushed beneath the wheels of children
tossed away and won’t live with the
wound and a clear night a forced march
and fireworks and more and finally all
alone, sniff the open air, bright
sun, new friends, and no more burdens
The great detective takes up too much space
unlike unlucky Henry’s lucky sin
-gle foot but these things won’t give up
the chase so let’s get on with the
investigation. Let me say
I never wanted to come over and
join the group. I said I’m perfectly fine
over here and said it again
and began to construct a series of
sagas to enshrine the first faults
and that may be fine old stuff, but
does not an alibi make so
again into the cupboard to
see how well this fine steel can bleed
Though the days of its power were brief and
the needful noise that kept the continents
distracted did not pause but grew and crept
into the vintage pens and bowls, the
monkey-picked tea, and while we found
that flavor had abandoned most
local precincts, and yes, there were
those expeditions that were quickly though
poorly equipped and we’re still waiting on
the report with what is reported as
hope though through the long years we have
practiced most of the permitted
poses quite diligently, and mean
no offense with these little shows
With a sad smirk I count these thin
threads and scattered leaves. Can a
pale thing still be stitched. The fan says
tick tick at its apogee and
the mass wearies. I try and I tell
but there’s just a little breeze so
easily turned off I don’t want
to confuse or obscure, much, but
each character wants their own half-baked say
oh it's OK we know what we are
so why not own the joke and pity
the poor scholar with her rough lamp of
vegetable grease as she sorts lies from
poetry, black beans from bits of clay,
how much is willing clay how much
is smoke that will fade away and
I see her laugh and stroke the dog
and wish I had an eighth of that
and that I could see more clearly
but I don’t feel lonely at the
mall and love the wildflowers but
don’t know much about them and love
my wife but don’t know much about
her either I’m not even sure
where she lives these days and I guess
I must have had some at some point
but searching there’s just this television
and cardboard cutouts in the windows
Upon revival the room should
have traces of the scents and sounds
detailed on the intake forms. There
are only so many times we
wake to this world and the first step will set
the pace of our recovery.
The chemicals used for the long
nap should quickly wear off and your
vision should gradually de-mystify
then there are those few vital things that
have shifted or been seconded to
departments other than what you
may or may not remember and
far too much that has stayed the same
vaguely at two the old argument
corners me when I’m most unconstructed.
The gist is blame myself and save the world
or the other way around, but
I'm not sure of the next step and
can’t easily stop the limping
way I’ve been with crooked circles
beat to either more or less and
ever hoping for a chance to walk a
thin wire high in clean air—but this
private war—is there a place past
fidgeting through the fog of flies
and the oily birds that feast on them
and make a chore of every banquet
The thing is to sculpt warm solitude from
isolation and help it gleam. Don’t reach
out for the wrong things too often though you
will certainly itch and curse and doubt and
doubtless quit a few times a day and why
not—cf Nietzsche on suicide*—
remember that nothing can stop
all our secret legislators,
the sly taste makers and king breakers
who surely one day will squint forth
from their caverns to share the most
incorruptible—oh yes, yes
I also felt that went too far, but
buckle up, we’re leaning into the fall.
*[BGE, 4.157]
which was mostly able to limp
past the so-called wild-west phase but
never could embrace what one would
term civilization before
receding from the record, though
I am but a gala priest junior class
entrusted with certain songs who
with the ensi of this small state
have tried to add aspects of fig
and poppy to the flowering
of new tongues in the time of our
collapse as the wind chooses which
syllables will supply the feast and what
may one day pass to other voices
and maybe it was all in my head which
may be a seventeenth-dimensional
projection or inscrutable code for
pixels and such, or so they say, either
way for a while I didn’t have much
fun at all then got a taste and
got real sore waking up like that
and who knows what other stumbles
Sometimes a light nothing fills me
and I want to burn the forest
but my sweet nib smooth paper it’s
something for the mumbling ghosts to
gnaw on while I cross-hatch for an
hour gumming those juicy mistakes
those over-loved darlings I failed
to kill before too late. Too bad
I’m sentimental and lonely
and find my vices won’t keep me warm
anymore, but sometimes laughing, as
ink creeps out so confident from
a rust red pen that’s sharp as an old love,
turned, and will return the favor if
I stumble in the middle of these feet
but mostly it seems to demand
storms and mountains crumbling and
it’s hard to make due with so few
and abandon them hopeless of revision
for sixty trillion springs or more
why would I be punctured by that smug smirk
if some place wasn’t already filled with
puss and no it doesn’t want to be
or be poked and it’s because of how
I always wore it now it leaves
a mess wherever I go and
yes you guessed it the right answer is
nowhere which is fine but I don’t want
to end up a hermit though like most
I’ve been ogling the local caves
but no I ran away years ago
and never stopped despite what you might
see this could be pixels hologram
or something worse we’ve yet to glean
how much are any of us here
really here no I don’t want to
complain much less advise with all
the heat water and chemicals
seeping out only to be replaced for
what seven years at best and each
smudged in its own special way
and the usual team less and less
able to do the job until we’re all
out on the street packaged in little
bags to be dumped in a special spot
where we loved to play and why not
we must found a shining brand for our
flank or wear the mark of some stranger
as I was destroying the pickup
of the punk who offended me
there was a surge of strange energy
and I started to grow and soon found
I could crush cars in a couple
of swats and then the big box stores
were in peril and whole cities
grew craters and ranges were crumbled
to adorn the lonely plains. It was
exhausting but necessary work
and when I was grand enough to grasp
the blue green grape between my digits
one more overly adoring pinch and
it’s lost in this black sparkling soup
the weight of those great decisions and
the trick of how to know how to thrive
—maybe add a photo to the post—
bubbling black bile and moldering plans
of, yes, I suppose I’ve lost you now
so let’s check in on the detective
and those spotty hands maundering
among our dark drawers and under things
—thump—a quick novel sensation—a dense
syrup in the major muscles—
half a conversation running along
without us then gone, back to slow
daylight grumbling nasty thoughts what can I
exploit from that dismal green land
I was a bad king. I wrote some bad
apologies. Too many games, not
enough work. My people drained wasted
but it began to shift when, from the
vast grassland she led him, or was it
that winter I spent as an ass because
of the mishap with the lady
from Salem—blessed be her name
Maybe change of form is not enough
It’s hard to say right now what the project
is and what is not the project
but I hope that at some time in some time
I will have been sufficient monarch of
this wildflower-resplendent surplus
though in this case the ratio was
flipped, two parts animal and one part
divine so the light was filtered through
moist hairy clay though there were those times
before it got much worse
the henbit ground ivy toadflax
and other remembered saturations
scarlet pimpernel deptford pink scat
-tered at every turn thyme leaf speedwell
bird’s eye speedwell the constant buzzing
in my ear and nights of less and
much less what could our hero do
with fangs and fury just like the creature
though now that you say it like that
When I'm feeling lyrical enough when
the lawnmowers have sloughed off when I can
loaf through what remains of my Latin the
sine qua non of my vade mecum, sed,
noli me tangere, for a wheezer I am
while more dead tongues loll and tell of
loss and I never did find a
comfortable spot there and heard Hamlet
was really Grendel which was a
mistranslation of Enkidu
but I turned away. I heard an old voice
that never was and never will leave me
alone. What can a mug like me do with
new eternal forms gushing everywhere
but bear with me for a few more moments
and I’ll hand out the gift vouchers as
Mr. uh Shakespeare I think said but
the blue green green blue colony on
the bright carapace of this orange
a thin layer of dust visible
from roughly 2 to 4:30 and we
arrive a little later than
fashionably and at this hour
I have some small hope that, but yes,
we must soon part and wend our own as we
may with no need to decorate this night
with Venus Mars and the moon as
though the curtain had just parted and
on the clay we noted more than half of
the grain had spoiled, and the copper
was of quite poor quality but
we were then too many miles from
the great cities and their gods so
we crossed three more mountains dug six
more wells made our offerings with
fresh water and old song and waited so
tired but so hopeful it might work
this time then rain the earth slides and
the flies and filth the sores boils and
strange diseases but we walked and
found a green land one cool spring and
never heard the horses approach
as I play in the guise of the
old trick cup that stays dry and
overflows at the same time and
is soon set on a high shelf once
the nostalgia has outgassed but
no maybe that’s too far so what
else an unmolested wooden block
a townhouse for parasite birds
but no this palimpsest is badly smudged
and besotted with globs where light
is most needed and it takes time
to unwind even a few sounds
to spool into a small sequence
then we need to buy all that salt
Early this morning there was a
dream of our little girl dog so
recently gone and I was about to
cover her with a blanket as she snoozed on
the bed then saw it was really
me in a tiny dog costume so I
walked on after the briefest cuddle and
in the morning proper started
to wash last night’s leftovers and
with one sponge swipe the wineglass is
reduced by a third with no blood—
Thank you great goddess of the wide
earth thank you goddess of recycling thank
you goddess who loves laughter thank you
I was on edge I’ll say because
of too much sun why not and it
didn’t matter where we stopped for the night
I just didn’t want to go back
and trap myself. Again. You have to move
carefully when you find you’re a
head in a jar. But I’m so tired. My
words wade the short cold waves and end
where they began in a still mumbling mouth
forever filled with acrid liquids
wolfed by the woof and warp of unwashed
waters all the days of this half life
for half a dozen or so bubbles that
break with awful scents and few clear notes
before the stone had splintered the
skull, I knew I’d gone too far. I
adore these tiny flowers, but
no one owns them, and then the great
detective, all those fine speeches,
reversals, triple meanings. No
wonder most only stand and wait
by the fire gulping down amber
Then in a moment it’s resolved
and all that tension as the speech
slowly built its trap and found its
treasure as it ever did and
then tea and cakes and time and in
some time, time, flowers, a stone, and
and some days, Pentheus, like the
rest of us, is torn to souvenirs
by his mother and her maenads
as just a few words will poison
park and pond so you forgo the
many strings that tie you to the
rest and restless and still tug in
the struggle against the sun, and
no I can’t really see either but
a few more steps and we’ll rest for today
you see sometimes we have to go
on like this and suffer another prelude
one day molten gold or the certainty
of a chrysalis under a leaf
but something already gone glitters
so this soft pen now tries to lift
from the dream of a fish who is
determined to explore the dry
and those waves now gentle reach and
just here set a small movement in
motion that may more or less
resolve into something like melody
though even today as the winds
wild what survives seems sufficient
miracle to keep these sails tight
for a moment while I try to
gather a few parcels of silence
they say it’s worth more than gold