Lilacs Are Old.

My face has grown, tattered and old-
The skates are inline and washed in the kitchen sink.
My friend, Jasmine,
Sprays herself with perfume and gets ready for a date-

The lilacs curl on the ground.

The ground is white with snow.
The snow has melted in.
The snow is in everything.
My face is old.
My lines are wrinkled.

My grandmother has been withered like
A flower,
She has Alzheimer’s
And cannot get out of bed.

Her charm is simple.
She is simple in her charm.
Her face contorts into a smile.
Her smile is stilled.
She wills herself to sit up and take a drink.

The lake outside is glowing.
The garden is shattered with ice.

The ice moves mountains.
Mountains are exhausted full of sun,
The bark from the wood is torn down.

From the Flesh of Tomorrow.

You told me you would come see me tomorrow.
The shop had to be closed up.
You were a mechanic and had been one for three years,
Your eyes spin like tarnished coins in an antique shop.

Don’t act like you care about me.
You carve your way to grief-
Grief is in the folding of the flower,
The doorway that is always open.

I take shelter in your eyes.
The eyes that glare and glimmer over me,
Your body is transcendent,
Your eyes are pure as bones.

In this house, there are field mice;
My mother is making banana bread
For my father,
My sister is cruel, waiting for the mail-
The old man walks up the stairs with
Bended back,
Eyes glittering steely behind glass bars.
I am not a criminal.
Your hatred is from flesh,
Derived of flesh-
The bones are aching and tainted.

THE DISTANCE IT TAKES TO ZEUS.

THE DISTANCE IT TAKES TO ZEUS

The two moons were strange and distant.
Professor Heglic Mangdogulas studied them through his telescope, and frowned. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. The robot, Radical, spun around and around in circles and went over to him, tugging on the end of his lab coat. “Sir,” he sputtered, shaking his head. “Sir, what are you doing?”
He got up. “Looking,” he replied shortly, shaking his head.
“Looking, for what?”
“Stars,” he said, smiling.
“Stars? What stars?”
He scowled. “Didn’t I teach you this already?” he demanded, shaking his head. “They are big balls of burning gas.”
“How big?”
He spread his hands. “This big,” he answered. He smiled, cocked his head to look at him. “Bigger than the Moon. Bigger than the sun. I think it shines in June.”
“Or smaller than the sun,” the robot said, he shook his head and clicked his tongue.
“The sun is cold,” said the professor.
“The stars are colder,” a familiar voice replied. It was the same “person” as before. The robot.
The professor smiled at the computer on his desk. “Contessa, my love,” he purred, blinking. “How are your lug nuts today?” He patted the computer. It was a large computer. The window of the computer was a black face.
“Fine,” the computer answered. “I’m a little tired, though. I was chatting all night in some stupid chat room, and this man called me a Dreamer.” He chuckled. “It was funny. We had a good laugh about it. He thought I was a woman.” He laughed again.
“You’re weird,” the professor said, ignoring him.
He shut off the computer and lumbered out of the lab.
The computer sighed and shut himself off. He drifted off to sleep.
The next morning, the professor returned to the lab and looked through his telescope again. The stars were bright in the sky; but were brighter during the day. He saw something in the sky. It was coming increasingly closer. Closer, still, until it was right in front of the lens. He thought it was a bug at first, and reached out to swat it, but realized it was a star. He reached for the phone on the desk-the computer giggled-and called NASA. “Shut up, everybody!” he hollered.
The computer quieted.
“Dang,” he said.
“NASA, this is Professor Heglic Mangdogulas,” he reported. “I’m at 54; 51; B12, in the Eastern sky. Time is four-oh-clock. What is it?”
“It’s a new star,” the operator sounded surprised. “Good God, man, it’s a large one, too! Do you want to name it?”
The professor nodded. “Sure,” he said. “I want to call it Zeus.”
He snorted. “That’s a dumb name,” he said.
“Should I pick out another one?” he asked.
“Not really. I just penciled it in.”
“But, you’re using a pencil.” He frowned in confusion.
“I said, not really. Good day, sir.”
He hung up the phone and resumed looking out of the telescope.

i pick myself up

I pick myself up and dust myself off.
The poem is in the oven.
It is about to be taken out.

You tell me the bow looks pretty in
My hair; you tell me you are here for me.

The ghost snakes around closed doors and
Old windows,
The flower blooms bright on the windowsill.
The silence is in it all.
The way you walk. Your heart moves in

And out, painstakingly slow;
I look at you and time slows to a
Screeching halt,
I look at you and I can’t speak any words.
The words are not my words.
They are the words of the wind;
The light and the dark,
The sunrise and sunset;
The last man did not appreciate me,
Would not tell me I was beautiful;
I don’t like to speak in past tense.

I didn’t want to speak to him at all.
The worlds in old houses say goodbye

And transcend upon, up on slow mountains.
The hills and goldenrods are made pretty.
The doorway to heaven reaches up the stairs.

The beat of my heart heats up the
Night,
Achingly slow and the moon shines down.
His face is smiling like a penny;
His heart swells like a balloon.
I don’t want to make you breakfast.

THE ROBED ONE.

THE ROBED ONE

The man was not a machine.
He started out as a machine, a long time ago before the Robed One came and freed the Freeman from the destruction of themselves; he remembered being a machine, heard the grinding of his gears while he pondered and stared out the classroom window at the flowers and the flowers sang their song, their mouths tipping open, their white faces nodding and scowling. He did not find out he was a machine until his 117th year being Awake, searching through the trash near an abandoned hospital, tirelessly searching for something he couldn’t even remember thinking about in the first place, when an old man approached him, mumbling something under his breath.
The man who was a Machine, wanted to be a Rogue Warrior. The Rogue Warriors were the ones who stole in the depth of the night and fought the werewolves, the gnomes, the globetrotters, the men who bashed bones and came straight from Africa. His thoughts were muddled. He ate a breakfast of orange juice and scrambled eggs; his chompers grinding them. His teeth were his best feature; the white bone glistened in the moonlight. Did he tell people this? He liked the night best. The stars shone bright, and the wild wind cried out at the injustices of the world.
“What are you going on and on about, old man?” he demanded.
“Things,” he muttered. “Things.”
He eyed him critically. “You Freeborn, or Freeman?”
He raised an eyebrow at him. “Is there a difference?” he asked harshly.
The man shrugged. “Yes, and no. A Freeman was born in a Test Tube, a lab; a Freeman is a human who was once Machine. I am Freeman. What are you?”
“Democrat,” he muttered. “Democrat.” His eyes whirred rapidly.
“Dumbass,” he said, scowling. His name was…well, he forgot his real name, and adopted the name of Eric Freeman. He didn’t know why he chose that as a last name. Most people didn’t have last names, not anymore. A long time ago, they did, before the Apocolyptic War broke out in ’75, and nearly one half of the world was destroyed or lost, depending on your perspective.
“Dumbass,” he repeated, scowling. “I call myself Dumbass, now.” He grinned crookedly, his eyes sparkling.
He shuffled off, his right leg limping. Most people were genetic mutations of some sort; the sun had become enormously close to the planet, and everything became increasingly hotter. Antarctica was now another ocean.
The world Eric lived on was called Earth.
Some of the Freeborn went out into the universe to explore other worlds; some of them stayed in their own solar system, the solar system they were born in. Most humans were born on Earth, their names were stamped in their genetic code at the hospital, left in the blood sample they left behind for others to use in case it was needed. Most government laws were based on ancient Laws of Physics, before Galileo Galilei, before Newton’s Law or Some Such Nonsense.
The Freeborn were an interesting breed of humans.
They were going to go to the Moon for the Ten Thousandth Time.
Eric was not going to go to the Moon. Freeman were given free passes to get from Earth to the Moon on a star shuttle; the star shuttles were enormously large, and had windows like wide, staring eyes.
They were blank faces. Eric returned to his apartment and grasped the knob and turned it and stood in the doorway of his kitchen, looking thoughtful and quite put-out. He went to his refrigerator and opened the door, and it was stuffed full of food. Shadows climbed up and down the walls and everything moved painstakingly slow, and his back and knees creaked and he heard the sound of the clock ticking in the kitchen. He was not thinking about anything other than having lunch or dinner, maybe a little of both; it was only four-oh-clock in the afternoon. He got a can of spaghettios out of the cupboard and poured them in a saucepan and let it heat to boil; then he carried the food into the living room and watched his big, flatscreen television he purchased three months ago from Costco. Stores were all computerized now; run by Machines. Machines ran everything, it seemed.
Eric could not find the remote.
He picked up the cushion on the couch and went through the whole thing and put the cushions down and shook his head. He crossed the room and placed himself in front of the television and turned on the television set…with the television knob! No remote, can you imagine! His mind must be going crazy. He watched tv for a half an hour and climbed up the long stairwell to bed. He was very sleepy. Morning opened, he lumbered down the stairs to the kitchen and sat at the table and ate a breakfast of cereal and cold toast; it was hard getting food now, most of the third world countries were angry with the United States of America, and refused to barter with them. Instead, they got most of their food from Mars or the Moon, because they claimed territory there first. Claiming territory was the most important thing to Freeborn, now, at least it made them think about other things besides wars and killing people and drowning machines in oil and lug nuts and rudeness. Truth be told, the end of the world was not imminent; although many prophets talked about it years and years ago. Some new prophets, idiots, talked about them still and it irritated him. Most people were stupid. Eric didn’t want to talk to most people. They were idiots.
The next day he found the remote in the flower pot.
He picked it up and changed the channel and the pot holders disappeared.
Eric stared at it, a shocked expression on his face.

DRAGONBANE, beginning.

Alchemy’s Encyclopedia:
Dark Knight (n)-one of four branches of government that exists in the world of Merlin; the Gray Branch; the Blue Branch; the Red Branch; the Orange Branch. Three branches consist of humans; the fourth branch, the Orange Branch, consists of magical creatures and the like. The Dark Knight is a human turned mutant with the abilities of sleight-of-hand; dark foresight; and a flair for adventure. Most humans never go back. Most aren’t able to return to their normal life, whether they drop the knight title or not.
* * *

CHAPTER ONE.

Alchemy’s Encyclopedia:
Dark Knight (n)-one of four branches of government that exists in the world of Merlin; the Gray Branch; the Blue Branch; the Red Branch; the Orange Branch. Three branches consist of humans; the fourth branch, the Orange Branch, consists of magical creatures and the like. The Dark Knight is a human turned mutant with the abilities of sleight-of-hand; dark foresight; and a flair for adventure. Most humans never go back. Most aren’t able to return to their normal life, whether they drop the knight title or not.
* * *

CHAPTER ONE.
The White Raven clan moved through the inner part of the kingdom of Hanover. The white robed men shuffled through dirt and mud and snow; the snow fell from the sky in sheets and everything sparkled and was white, whiter than anything, and the ground was white and they shuffled in the cold and the ground was cold, too. The night was cold. They huddled inside their fur coats and stared up at the dark sky, a strange, benevolent expression on their faces.
“Food,” Patric Conner grunted.
The woman, Wilma Rogers, smiled and offered him grapes and he popped three into his mouth. The White Raven clan were an interesting breed. They did not have homes to live in; they shunned money of all kinds; they were not brave in battle and ran away, screaming, afraid of trauma to the head-they were very particular about the head injuries, especially, and didn’t like not knowing what was going on. They lived in caves and huts, mostly, sometimes on the beach. They were mostly cold-blooded creatures, and Merlin didn’t take kindly on humans who were cold-blooded. The night glared over them. Everything was stark and white and naked to the bone. The whiteness was seen all around them and the cold snaked through them and everything was discolored and strange. The universe was a strange place and they often talked about getting on a spaceship and returning to Earth, but they did not know how and scientists were not brilliant in that regards; they did not know how to build a spaceship.
The sky was an endless blackness.
Endless and ash gray.
Everything was ash gray.
They felt very sorry for themselves. They wanted to live in a home and could not. They wanted to breed and were afraid of contracting diseases. They were afraid; wary; helpless; their conversation was hushed and muted.
One day, they came upon a small hut.
The hut was made from mud.
The mud was caked into hardpacked soil and it could house the entire clan, of which there were ten people. The ten clan members could all fit inside the hut and they built a fire in the firepit and warmed their hands. It was warm. The clan found a corn field behind the hut and made corn mush and the wind cried and moaned and the house was built from mud; and the cold was inside of it. The wind was sad and lonely and the clan ate their corn mush and talked amongst themselves. The leader was Don Whittley. He was thirty-nine and used to be a contractor in Na until he was tried as a witch and sent away. He was very deep; his words were deep and still and he couldn’t find himself thinking about anything other than rest. He used to stay up all night long, back when he was a young troll and lived with his parents. Now, his parents lived in the kingdom of Storm, and he visited them very rarely. He had been stuck in the attic for awhile, but he was too bored to leave it himself. Apparently, Andrea was amused by the whole thing. He was, too, kinda. Not really, he guessed she lived in the Tower along with the other Elders. Some of them went stag, and had their own place. Some of them were virtually homeless, and went from one country to another. He looked out of the Watch Tower. One small yellow light blinked on the roof and everything blinked and flickered and moved; it was stiller than the quietest night, and the wind cried and was sad and lonely. The troll hummed a tune under his breath. He liked to make up songs while he was waiting in the attic. He liked to make up songs; they were good enough for his own ears.
The silence of the night was all around.
Even in the silence, the night was all around.
Everything was still. Shadows were everywhere. Shadows fell over everything and the night was still. It was cold. He pulled his jacket tighter around himself; and he went into the kitchen and made himself a hamburger. The refrigerator was stuffed with food. Magic refilled it. There were only two refrigerators in all of Merlin that could do that; the one at the Tower of Light (aka the Tower of High Sorcery), and the one at the Watch Tower. It was midnight. After midnight. He heard whispers in the dark; whispers from the ghosts who dwelled in the Tower, the ghosts that cried and spoke about nothing. The language of the dead. He was not fluent in the language of the dead, but it was much like the Harhishians. It started to snow. The troll went out of the front door and into the yard. The yard was so bright it was spotless and the night was calm and cold and everything was calm; colder than cold. The coldness was everywhere.

*

Jenny Biggins was nine-years-old. She had red hair and blue eyes. She was three foot one and very skinny for her age and she loved to read books, especially the big, thick ones she could get lost in. She had knobby knees. She hated gym class and liked her teacher, Mr. Babbage. He had wavy brown hair and brown eyes and a wife named Laura. Laura had white hair. Jenny hated gym class. She always sucked at gym class and was always picked last for volleyball. Her best friend, Clark Jesken, was always picked first. He was good at games and had a basketball court in his backyard. He said it was a present from his father for his ninth birthday. His father was always excited about the sports Clark played. He was going to be a basketball player when he grew up. It was his dream. Clark knocked on the door of her house. He had his backpack slung over his arm, and a sandwich in the other, and was eating the sandwich. “Come on,” he told her. “Let’s go.”
She laughed. “What are you eating the sandwich for?” she asked him. “You know it's breakfast!”
Clark shrugged. “I’m hungry,” he said, frowning at her. “Besides, Mom gave me a dollar. I can buy a hot lunch today.” He grinned. He had been wanting to get his mother to buy him a hot lunch for awhile now. She finally caved in. It was one small victory, he said.
“You’re going to have to bring a sandwich tomorrow,” she informed him.
He made a face. “I know. I hope it’s tuna fish.” He shook his head and they walked down the sidewalk to the street. It was a warm day outside. The sun was in the sky. It was very hot. They walked down the street and to the elementary school at the end of the street. Clark and Jenny pushed open the big double doors and went inside together. Their class room was on the first floor. Jenny put her lunch in the cubby hole and sat down in her chair and folded her hands in her lap. Mr. Babbage had not come in yet. Yettle Ewelender, the new kid, showed everyone his pet frog. He brought it for Show-and-Tell. Clark said Show-and-Tell was for babies and said Mr. Babbage was having a marital crisis at home. Whatever that meant. But Jenny agreed with him, anyway. He was a little weird. He always wore brown pants and a white shirt and his hair slicked back until it shone. He wore glasses. Jenny thought he was kind of cute except for the glasses. She thought Clark was cute but not in a boyfriend way. Her other friend, Martha Rhodes, had a boyfriend. His name was Cliff Trend. He was in the fourth grade. Jenny met Cliff during lunch once. He was a very bubbly sort of person.
“What are you doing today?” Jenny asked Tyrone Wells. He was a blonde-haired boy and had glasses and dark eyes. Jenny heard he was part Elven, that his parents were part of the Council of Elders that worked at the Tower of High Sorcery in Bromwell.
“I don’t really know,” Tyrone replied, shaking his head. “I was going to go to the river and hunt for tadpoles. I like to watch them grow into frogs.”
“You can’t cage tadpoles!” she protested.
Tyrone scowled. “They won’t be caged,” he replied. “They’ll find a nice home.”
Jenny shrugged. “Whatever,” she replied. She sat down.
The classroom door opened and Mr. Babbage entered and sat down at his desk. His desk was very neat. A notebook was placed on it; along with a coffee cup; a calculator; and two planners, a school planner and his own planner. Mr. Babbage was fond of planners. Jenny didn’t use them. Her parents were poor, and besides, she didn’t have time to use a planner.
“Today,” he said. “Today we’re going to learn about the history of Orkshire.”
Jenny made a face. She didn’t want to learn about the city she lived in. It was stupid. “I want to learn about Earth,” she informed him.
Mr. Babbage looked surprised. “Who told you about such things?” he demanded, making a face at her. Mr. Babbage started making a bunch of goofy faces and she glared back at him.
“You’re such a weirdo,” she snorted.
“You’re a weirdo!” he replied. “You’re not to learn about Earth until the Council wishes you to.” With that, he started telling a story about how an Elf came into Orkshire one day and stole a bag of apples. She dropped her pencil and bent over to pick it up to tie her shoes. She glanced around. No one had noticed she dropped it. She put her head on her desk and noticed a piece of thread rested on the edge of the desk and she glared at the piece of thread, too. She reached out to pick it up and throw it on the floor. Suddenly, a burst of lightning tore through her fingers and streaked across the desk and the piece of cloth turned to metal. She yelped, “Ow!” and sucked on her finger.
Everyone laughed. “Jenny’s sucking her thumb!” Matthew Winters cried, pointing at her.
Mr. Babbage looked annoyed. “All of you, shut up!” he scowled. “Sucking your thumb is not a terrible problem. I do it on occasion.” He glared at everyone and told them to be quiet and concentrate on learning about Elves. Elves was a prime topic nowadays because of the Great Elf War in Bromwell, at the Tower, and other places around the world of Merlin. War was a terrible, terrible thing. War was never-ending.

According To us.

According to us, the sun was destroyed
In a ball of fire.
A ring around Saturn.
The planets are all aflame.
I am not the one to blame.
The river is a torrent of voices.
It spins to us in many different choices.
You are the river.
The void of night.
You are the dying of the light.
I seek but do not find.
I fight but do not climb.
I hear but do not see.
It is just me.
I find rivers.
I find cold forests;
Beer is in the cold forest.
I seek to blame.
I am one without a name.
I am not forgiven.
My light is not a flame.
I care to stay alive.
My heart is not of floods and waters.
We are tired.
We bury bones.
We are tired of stillness,
The water is cold.
The wind is timeless.
We are the river.
We are tired.
I find rivers.
According to us, the moon was in motion-
The water was fluid in movement.
The memory is still inside of me.
Still. I can’t see.
Boxes are in cornflowers.
I write a riddle down on a piece of paper.
The riddle is myself.

MISTER GREY

MISTER GREY

Xi Krode-captain
Ryan Grey-secretary aboard the lightship (unnamed)
Gloria Chance (blonde)
Chann C. Erik
Joe Dude
Anna San (Elf)

The strange man stood in the doorway of the lightship, looking out at the vastness of space. Space was everywhere, of course; space was in everything, and it looked massive and dark against the sky filled with stars. The strange man was human. The others on the ship were not human; they were Ulranian, Uversian, and Kerian, from worlds far beyond what the Earthman had ever known himself. He had been aboardship for several months, filing paperwork, doing other odds and ends. He was not the captain. The captain was an Xi Krode, an invisible being who had crossed dimensions to the other side and reported for duty, due to a glitch in the Universe Patch on Stellar 5-8. That was the crossing point from this world to the Other Side, the place where beings were without bodies. He glanced down at the starboard, and moved several knobs with his mind. The ship shuddered; an image of Earth appeared above the computer-the computer was white, and it ticked and tocked and shuddered, heaved, as if it were tectonic plates moving in the center of a planet. The man missed home. He missed home and everywhere else. Mister Grey’s first name was Ryan. He supposed it was an Earth name. Ryan reminded him of better days, playing in the yard with his sister, Gretchen, now long dead because she was Earthwoman; Ryan had been going from planet to planet, stocking up his ship, talking to the locals and asking about the weather, asking about things he absent-mindedly forgot about later. There were no days and nights in space. Only the blackness. The veil of space that was cold; bitterly lonely. He wanted to go into space if not to avoid humankind, the people that had twice decided to shun him for his malpractice; for the nights that were graceful and dark and they blamed him for the bad weather; the darkness; the viruses that spread like flies. Everything was spread; everything was absent from his mind, everything was voidless, everything was depthness, the everything was within and the night was veiled.
His name was Ryan.
He was an Earthman.
On a lightship.
He did not remember day from night. He did not remember everything. He did not remember the seasons of Earth; he did not remember those sleepless night, lying naked and alone, and cold; or how he felt when he looked at a woman. The captain walked towards him. Ryan could see him shimmering against the veiled night. “Sir,” the captain said (he called everyone “Sir,” even the women-it was a joke among the crewmembers, now.) “What is the time?” His voice was gruff. Like the wind. Ryan missed the wind. He could experience it in the virtual tank. It wasn’t the same thing. He missed the wind. The wind missed him. That was all.
“Fifteen hundred,” he replied, his smile quickening. “Why do you ask?”
“Ah,” he replied. “It is time for my morning run.” He smiled at Ryan and jogged away, his legs shimmering just a little bit more than usual. He turned to the viewscreen. The stars shone brightly.
It was time to work on the map.
They were supposed to locate Sector V-4; Ryan’s eyes were purple-they had changed color after he decided to Orbit; after he decided to stop being a human being and start being a Universalian, or whatever they called People of the Stars now. Being in space was different from being on Earth. It was much deeper. Much colder. Everything was something new. Everything was something else, the stars were deep; space was deep. Ryan was afraid of space when he first started out in the world. When he first rose from the depths of his Trenton, New Jersey home; the hurt was deep in his heart, of having to leave home and no one being the least bit worried or fearful of his safety; it was all like, “Goodbye, good luck, see you soon.” Ryan dimly remembered Earth. He did not miss it so much. He did not mind the aloneness. Every day was the same. Every day was exactly like the other. The days were not days. The nights were not nights. The cold was very cold. Everything around him was cold. His mind grasped the dimness of space. The everything that was around him, solid and real and the everything inside of him.
The captain returned.
Ryan was working on his log. “Yes?” he queried, looking up from it.
“What,” he heaved.
“Yes?” The repeat.
“Jogging. Hungry. Food.” He puffed his chest with pride. His pride was in the way he walked; the way he spoke; the captain was the captain and nothing else was what it appeared, moving and unmovement, the movement of himself. The shift in the dark. What was the shift in the dark? The strangeness of it. His mind grasped at straws. His mind saw things…the how; where he lived; the dimness of his mind was sacred; dwindling; he was fearful in his reverie. The strangeness of the nothing. He had been on the lightship for several months, and it felt like years. Light years were different in space. Actually, they were the same in space or somewhere else. He couldn’t feel it. His vision was different from Ryan’s. In all his years as captain, he had never met a being quite like that of Ryan.
Something dinged far above him, in the walls-it was like a doorbell. Ryan remembered doorbells. They were supposed to be for houses.
“We’re docking,” he told Ryan.
Ryan was surprised. “So soon?” he said. “Where are we docking?”
“I thought Anna told you. We’re on Flin 7.”
“That’s a dumb name,” he remarked, shaking his head. “Whoever came up with that…”
The captain smiled. His head shimmered. “The computers came up with the name,” he replied. “Did I ever tell you the story about how the computers came up with all the names of the worlds that were discovered?”
Ryan rolled his eyes. “Yes,” he snapped. He thought about it for a minute. “Oh, wait. No.” He shook his head. “What computer came up with it? When?”

The Cancer is the Moonlight.

Moonlight

I walked in moonlight,
Holding the check tightly in the palm of my
Hand.
Holding the check in front of me like a shield.

His best friend has cancer.
The doctor says it is a disease.
The words aren’t the ones people want
To hear.

He was not depressed,
He told himself.
He was not depressed.

He played checkers
In
His den,
Then moved to the attic.

Light spilled in through the window onto the
Floor.
The floor was polished.
Glittered until it shone.

He was not depressed about anything.
He was not depressed about the way the
Light shone, stiller than the moon at night,
Stiller than the cold and the dark and
The attics waking in walls.

The cold is in his bones.
The cold drifts through him.
He is shadowed at the heart of it all,
Shadowed at the heart that drifts and
Fades and the feathers come falling

Down, down-
Down into the nothingness that
Is everything.
Into the nothingness that is new.
Newer than what we believe is to be seen.

In the dusk of anything,
We strive for Alaskan wilderness-
We strive for the wind that moans,
And hearts beat at glass doors.
We open them and shut them,
Again and again,
Whispering words your mother can’t
Understand.
We speak languages.

Falls In Snow.

The trust falls in the snow.
The trust is not in anything.
The trust is in him-he sees, but does not
See. Do not try to climb your way out of
Trust. Do not block yourself from the stairs.

The stars are bright tonight.
Above us, the stars shine, sparkle,
Twinkle-
Night becomes nothing. Night is not
Anything.

Fierce realization. Fierce persistence.
Nothing to do. Nothing that can be done.
Homeward bound, I am caught in
The rhythm of the different shades-
The shades of sunglasses.
The words are spread on tarp paper.
I am glass wrapped in glass.
I am shaken and stirred.

Something happened that was outside of
Us.
Broken and marred, the mirrors are
Thrown over us.
Shake the pillow, the feathers fall
To the ground.

You talk about ghosts.
You talk about ghosts and smoky mirrors,
Glasses dropped from the sky.
The trust is broken in two.
The windows fall out of buildings,
And onto the sand-
We aren’t home yet.

My Uncle Stan.

My Uncle Stan

My Uncle Stan-
Paints the room upstairs blue.
His hands are torn like wildflowers;
He calmly paints and it is storming outside.
My Uncle Stan-
Has a blue truck. It sits in the driveway,
Humming quietly.

The neighbors wonder what my uncle is
Doing.
I tell them proudly,
Gesturing with my hands-
Using wide arcs, using dance methods
I was taught at dance class.

My Uncle Stan-
He was a new man after he got
Married.
He is not depressed.
He enjoys smoking cigarettes and
Long walks on the beach,
And baking cookies for his grandchildren.
He is eating lunch on the porch,
Thinking about the woman he met
At the grocery store.

He thinks she is poetry.
She would not come back.
He wishes his wife would not come back.
She was stubborn as a mule and
Ugly; a large mole on her chin.
Sometimes, he told himself she had a double
Chin to make himself feel better after
They fought, after they made love and fought
Again, trying to fix their broken…thingy.
The thingy wasn’t broken.
They were broken.

The Rocking Chair Was Sold.

It was sold.

The rocking chair was sold to a poor Vietnam veteran.
He clashed. His eyes were brown. He was born of something
Better than anything. His mind was shallow. He was shallow.
The wind is cold.

I was not happy about the color of the clouds-
The ash color of the sky.
We fought tighter temptation,
The land mines were broken on broken soil.

My mother’s old cow lifted his ears and mooed
And chewed the grass around his feet.
He was not an it. He was my mother’s favorite,
He liked him better than anyone else,
Better, even, than the doorframe.

The books taught me better than the professors
At Brooklyn College or Mott,
Where famous professors haunt piles of old
Rocks.

Rock sold. Rocking chair.
You took your rest for too long, and now your ears are dumb-
They wove in and out of highways,
Anything within reach.
Oh rocking chair, I fear you-
You are farther away than anyone.

My mother climbs over walls to reach new heights.
I was bored, I carved my name in old cellos.
I was burdened by the flowers in the vase.
I was burdened by my flyaway hair.
I didn’t understand the English language.
I didn’t understand the words that crawled outside of
Tiger’s mouth.

Adore.

The noise of the motor is running.
My car sits in the driveway, humming.
I don’t fear what isn’t there.

When things get in the way of-
Shattered stained glass windows.
Flowers stain the glass walls.
My eyes stare up at cornflower skies.

I look up at you.
I adore you.
Your face is marred with stars.
Time is etched in your memories.
Whispers speak to me from dusk-
Your words are peeled back on old clocks.
The clock looks at me, you protest laughingly.

You stare at me from across the room.
Your heart is beating against the floorboards.

You are my poetry.
The water is fluid in motion.
Water is motion.
Water is fluid.
Scientists sit in old chairs in ancient
Buildings called buildings or maybe they’re
Called something else,
Like decimal points or campuses.
I took an Essay writing class at the local
Community college.

I don’t talk about anything.
I write things and shadows open their mouths
Wide, wider-the words are not mine. They are
Someone else’s.
You are kind. Your hurt is showing.
I am sorry, sorry-
Words cannot express how the church bell
Chimes,
In the midnight of the dark and you look back at me
And we’re here, here-
Tomorrow is clear. Rings clearer than any doorbell.
The ringing is ancient.
Ancient as anything.