Arachnocampa Luminosa

Third skin shed,
hunger glows. I cast
my sticky thread

and wait. should no prey
mistake bait for star,
I blindly eye a juicy mate.

floorboard lesson

the old and the scarred
respond to kindness.

Glamočko

pebbles and crippled starfish hide
under seaweed and swept glass.
in a tinsel crown and tissue cape
I am dizzy with so much treasure:

curtains and netting,
twigs and stones

my hands, in those days,
were never idle. seamstress
and daughter

stitching shorelines
to ravelled landscapes.

you promised solemn, not once,
but always, the colours in nature
move the brushstrokes of God.

post office exchange

letter clutched, a last resort
fisted against unholy skies

the happiness of dreamy times
picnics before you had to die

dresses in tulle, silk lace
stitched with cunning detail
blossoms tucked inside pockets
as deep as wells.

who could predict; who would dare
to interrupt the sleeping fair?

appendage to mouth and ear

I wanted July
to be black hollyhock,
rosy dahlia and a host
of gunmetal dawns.

Instead
ear and lips embrace
assault on the streets
and sidewalks, uncountable
contrivances that glint
and call for absolute devotion.

When asked to choose
between cave or balcony,
I can only clutch my flapping heart,

relieved she's not a mouth.

chaos and inertia

Lost
inside a vortex
of cleaning products and chaos,
the foreign woman
raises the roof and then collapses

into hysteria  or historia;
we know, false friends,
nothing, not even matter,

matters.

June's Artichoke Heart

a delicacy a shade
rough of tender, June's final
curtain is so soon forgotten

I hide a tattoo of your seaweed tongue
inside my languid grotto.

I yearn to show the audience
a swoon-song that convinces
all the while you snip syllables
into dragon fans and stroke
your softened honour.

sometimes a seated posture

greetings remind me of collisions,
that jolted moment when cheek meets
glass. how to convey the texture
of surgery while standing
above an ampitheatre in a gown of moss?

legs are stems; feet uprooted
from native soil. we just keep
adding syllables to the gauze
we know as life.

there is never a cure
for what we fear most.

Master &

Master,
your lashes exhibit
such lofty restraint,

I am humbled, bunioned
reduced to a fleck
on corporeal chain

Should I kill
you for your kindness
or forgive all those quirks
that transgressed into stains?

religions clot
only to bleed
in their own lonely ways.

undoingness

enough—
backstroke to the empty
vignettes:

snuff the hot coals
slow, the caviar dragons
spotting your delicious loneliness.

artifice and artifact

numbered days. lettered nights
your trajectory waned so complicated

I  dusted off the catacombs
of former lives, my selves
always so much the same,
never at fault yet often to blame.

Exceptional Death Rattle

You may be the exception
to every rule: burning roses
in June, the death rattle
after the cure

your quest for emptiness
trumps nothing, yet you never learned
the intonation of mu

in Old Tokyo
we sojouned.
I was besotted with Osu.
the concept of nothing and kindness.

I take your hand politely
after tending your home site
a grave you share with three greedy wives.

time slips
shoddy and my feet are ruined
but high arched.

No one cares; it matters not—
such a cold and lonely afterthought.

 

flutterby night

tricked by unseemly
light, cave creatures blink
once, then twice.

this is about the book
you have yet to read, pages
flapping—oversized moth wings

the actress invents the curtain
for the stumbling diplomat
who forgets how to lose

between tense chapters,
your future scolds your past
for those sullen little lies you told
when you hoped I would be watching.

I was.

in the corridor of many returns

door after door,
my fingers leave prints,
smudged reminders
of a slipshod quest.

I claim this pause,
an intake of breath
remembering, not remembering
the secrets we spent.

the ballerina and the moth

blindsided by a fate
too pale to protest

ballerina and moth
collide inside
an eaten quest

skin pressed
against wing

modifiers and ribbons
tumble, laundry refuses
to come clean.

the gardener demands
a confession: who has chewed
all of my June-thriving weeds?

Not I!

the chorus complies
with denial; I am weak,
tricked by artificial light,
lunaticking toward
airborne respite.

what says the telltale heart?

no promises, I promise
the telltale heart,
despising it as tattler.

treachery hides in cannisters, in all
charmed containers.

icons pop from mechanical boxes
and endings stalk beginnings
with intent to curl vicious,

dust devils prompted to hitchhike
without any chart.

midnight silver garden

Today I swallow
hailstones to reclaim
an inheritance:
safety box deposited
in a silver midnight garden

I like it when earth
collects under fingernails
and worms roll juicy
in swollen soil

arms will bathe torn
in hundreds of thorns

surreality arrives and departs,
a train halts to admire
a mighty blue heron scanning
its future on a shoreline

 

time (to) change

your women tick in,
click out—not quite adjustable;
you begin to doubt

timeworn intentions
wind in the wrong clock

no moment sweeter
than when outstretch
claims object

on that almost
reachable shelf.

 

the bone arranger

bleached pieces
of jigsaw, bones

to be interlocked.

I arranged her this way and that

wondering why
she had to die


my collection is now perfect;
nothing was precisely
my fault.

breathing debris (femme caméléon)

words fall and fail
flatten under heels of tap

a sidelong swipe notes
hands press against glass

and into the fist
soft lips may crash

skin does not break;
it slips and forgives

at times so humbled,
you could say it lives.

secrets and lies

berries stain and so do lies
flying like foreign kites
coloured enamel bright

all acts we perform
to vivisect and charm

so many broken beaks and twigs
scattered on the floor

these nests
take devotion to build
deceit to destroy

felicitations to the predators who always require

more

I loved you; I love you

nothing changes
when the heart is a pretty creature
encaged in an existential universe.

fuck physics.

I am a sweet, law-abiding serpent
willing to swim in scum or excellence;

it is all the same.
My wildfire eyes, my twitching tail
are drenched in regret.

Home is where the false head
when there is no skin left to shed.

Back on Track with Jack

this is being
as it should: a traintrack, a blackjack,
a dancer and aristocrat

on an island surrounded
by honey and absinthe.

I bloom sticky green
sick, in a long-stemmed cocoon
on the edge of a death and a dream.

derailed

my sweet fixer
stops by, his eyes
washed with Marseillais set and rise,
his smile coaxes
my lips to keep time

a fiddle, a swig, a traintrack
a bin filled
with crisp linens and a tumbleweed
_____ with a twitch.

He can talk until the moon
milks the sun, and I will listen
until kingdom come.

manga assassin

outsourced to spy
upon Theroux, Naipaul and Murakami,
I double-crossed my eyes and tango ankles:

tired of being an exception,
so much sweeter to follow than to rule,

I kowtowed to these esteemed sir-men:
the writers and the ghoul.

cast (into oblivion)

certain rides
prove so cruel, rough and fast
that passengers crouch voiceless—
at a loss for loss.

marriage in kukës

the bride lost
her veil; the seamstress
stitched a gown
of palaver, tulle and silk

in colours wildly mismatched.

groomsmen clapped and stomped,
the feast not so bad
for matrimony in a refugee camp.

I recall it all
as though it really happened.

the ballad of the triple-crossed

a ballad to be altered:

just

because my eyes have gone hard-boiled,
does not mean that I do not see

from my river-rock distance.

He holds the lighthouse keeper's daughter
hostage

her father is obsolete

he never mentioned that brunettes
are not what he requires

and she pleads
from her tumbleweed path

I am seasick, heaving overboard
a lifetime of regret and familiarity
with warlords or their occidental equivalents

Today, tonight,
I swim unshoed, confident in my outcast status.

How many men promised to be kokua?
How many men lasted?

Imagine me
in irreverence.

I raise my arms; I stretch my neck.

Show mercy to these misguided girls.
All they ask for is a cobbler and the
holes between your dreams.

Banished

broken
artifacts and tightropes,
father's legacy:

sweet aromas, pipe racks,
22 carat cufflinks, lists that tilt

to the left. Right is dangerous.

Sit me down under Tiffany lamps,
explaining the delight of the altruist.

his

thick hands, handsome fingers
firm chin, such an imposing position

for a diplomat. Enough!

Training hardens, weakens,
overtakes, underscores

too much input,
sensory overload

not lost, merely triple-crossed:

we know who we are;
I know who who you were

before you vanished

Somewhere In Absurdistan

You may journey to Absurdistan
where all icons are veiled
beyond the curtain

and meet polyglot strangers
who will bind and blindside you

no matter.

the outcome is firmly decided
once you mask your lies in silence.

an orchid for marie line

we docked in Alaska
for a sea urchin lifespan:

glorious, in excelis.

just you, me and us.

In glaciers we trust.

so many ballads have passed,
usurping the best and worst,
the true, tried and fast.

my love—

a silence settles
like a parlour trick
and I am betwixt our negligence.

how clever are the cruel

why do you mistake
cruelty for cleverness?
surely you are
better than that

questionable question mark.

Perhaps you have never been to Port Au Prince
or Sarejevo. Maybe you have never seen.

I thought, I dreamed
otherwise, but I was already
in line, bleating for the slaughterhouse.

end-track

a mother is supposed
to know, visceral privilege

my daughter, my son,
I stick nose to glass
in this exhibitionistic booth:

I love Nippon
and deep-sea lure.

The lore churns to myth
and my sentence fragments.

permanently uninked

like the wanderer at carnival
who walks on fair ground

or wistfully lists toward carousel,

I remain unlinked and pale—

a cave-dweller
deprived of predator and prey.

your lies (cyclic)

your lies multiply;
they are insistent and perfect.

they burst out of the earth,
newborn—not shy

they never apologise,

yet in my insect lifespan,
there is no emptiness, no proof

only allegory
which uplifts your lies to truth.

what happened to your passport? pichku materinu

Preamble: Switzerland has an army; I am reminded of that every time I use my cunning little knife.

Your Tibetan thesaurus
cannot render the texture of emptiness.

Flirting with you, however,
under a Turtle-Foot rain

reminds me of Yugoslavia
and its hearty boatloads
of mismatched fishermen.

Is homeland lost without its name?

believe me not

suddenly in the land
of make me leave
things turned very strange:

the evil queen
became handmaiden, and her athletic
daughters  went lame.

the terrorist and the barbarian

all things must end,
laments the shy barbarian

but the terrorist has no interest
in extraneous cunt or hostage

He is enthralled with fisherman
who catches, keeps or releases

again and again. such perfection.

In the room beyond the room,
the post-chamber to hell,
truth and secrets are tangled
in a tulle and palaver ball

and I am chastely reminded:

the only difference between true
and false lies is the attention to detail.

the laundress and the ballerina (an allegory of sorts)

to escape  jet radiation,
the laundress leapt into a distressed basket,
raised her soapy arms

and did what she did best—flounder.

her sister failed to blunder.
Upon a reddened piroutte,
she burst a throbbing bunion.

And now they fumble
side by side
pressing, folding, en pointe exquise
to bleach charred guillotines.

Lake Slaughter And The Guest House

lakehouse, in this case,
is a misnomer, a bedraggled
canoe dragged from shore

or

a defunct hotel
where ghosts mimic guests,
anaemic, thin as flute

glasses. chandeliers threaten
to loosen; crystal garters
topple  but it is

the swan song
in the slaughterhouse
that apricots your ears and roses your lips

white flushed with a perfect
floral blemish.

I set sail, past tense, on the wing-span
of a continent, and I repeat the same act
day in, night out:

look back, execute, look back, sit tight

1001 decapitated birds

"squalor," crows crack
accusation as though it were bubble gum.

Dollybirds fly south
in the cold, hard shuck of November,
grim until they remember

their limbs are not programmed
for relocation.

It's all about
the quality of interrogation
and those subtle, fatal instruments.

Boston Proper

Anne, my Brahmin,
I hope you don't
run marathons.

The Secret Life of Lake Champlain

each childhood
ensnares former tenants
in a landscape so foreign
and dangerous

there is no plan
to forsake.

contrivance

wrenched
this way and that
technology is never
an acrobat

false longing
strung high
on improvised wires

allows luxurious failure
to follow

Fox Song In April

and so this fourth month
trots along, fine
auburn fox
silver lined

dragged by its neck
skinned merciless

lean and whipped April song.

City Lights

 

the lookout sparkles,

gemstones strung on a spider web

and tossed delicate

toward our harbour.

 

memory blinks

like electricity

in a Montreal stone house

 

whilst power lines

collapse under frost.

 

it happens

again and again. no number

of edits can reclaim

 

that first moment

of fascination when you hold

the final mirror the only other way.

Letter From Palinurus

like a Sōseki path
the letter from Palinurus arrives.

my toe-hold
upon ice-floe
celebrates en pointe

marrow throbs and thaws

transplanted blossoms
from Tokyo
giggle in a schoolgirl row

there is a way
to lead or to follow
there is a way
at last.

no concept of concept

it's just what
the other keeper said:

you have no concept
of concept, and that holds
you adrift.

an owner cannot give
what is repossessed.

I want only your golden vision;
you may discard the rest.

 

Snow Crash and Ruby Passion

this day
shadows away from itself

on a path beaten with bleeding
feet silent

screams and a Declaration of Interdependence

my addiction
lists and sways,

greens under palms
and soft, tender ashes.

Your Passion
has always been too much,

even in binary code
or under moons falsely held

arguably bought
by bidders in disarray.