Each thing is different.
Germans are different from rocks and
sunshine is different from New Jersey.
Jehovah is different from bikini waxes and toes
are different from Dante different from taxes
different from tremors beneath the earth. Wings
are similar to eyelashes, but still different.
(Just ask my big brother, he'll agree with me.)
Bedsprings are different from everything
Though they do bear a strong resemblance to Dan
Whitaker who spent the whole year creaking
And groaning he was nothing like anybody
I ever met ok I never met him but I heard
He was different from the rest of us.

She asks me how long
Have I been waiting.
Oval eyes and black freckles.
A face you want to tell the truth to.
Not long I say.
She's worried about the delay
Has to hand in and then buy
Some and later on pick up
Lay down get up cook
Breath sleep walk
Cry eat dream sigh.

Sounds like a busy day,
I say.
There will never be
Anything but busy days
She replies.

If our pursuits weren't the fleeting kind,
traffic would be frozen, drivers exiting cars to
the ice, moving gingerly to the embankments. No
one would ever pay a cover charge or
pull on a pair of lucky boots.

Instead the tribe cycles the seasons tracking
bits of bone in scat and tufts of fur,
packs of moments in years too real to
patch together in a movie clip of meaning: The moon
sitting fat, low, and coral just

above the horizon, the heave of sweating chests
before the bed becomes eerily silent, the
second in the rock club when everything starts to
jump. They are glorious, portentous, and confusing.
They are tender, acrid, and random. And the patterns we

map over their occurrences are taken in one
hot, afternoon gust. Acceptance has never
come easy. No wonder we grasp for
something meatier to feed and watch grow.
A vessel to hold connections we couldn't will

into existence. Another driver for another car.

Through a window
glazed with rain, red buds.
On the corner
an inside-out umbrella unfurls like a sail.
Wind and sand graze the panes.
Somewhere a song.
Somewhere, the sharp scent of pines.
Still, you sleep.

i have a double life the homeless (sha)man said
there are 2 of me
i have 2 selves
i never use them at the same time

i live in double time
i try not to make it a HABIT

N.Y.  is my nightmare my  dream
it is what is beneath the tracks
defiled  virgin whore
maladjusted transsexual goddess
cross-eyed cross dresser
homeless shaman as greasy as the tracks

i am consumed by jealousy  he says
it is my job to carry this burden
so that you do not

N.Y. is skeleton & frame
heaven hell tributes & lies
the facts as he sees them
skyline & light
city of fallen angels
extinguished stars

N.Y. is nature mort
landscape & EATS
jesus  buddha & god

N.Y. lives on borrowed digital time
like shaman
leading a double life
the good    the bad  &
the epi-centre
outside the centre  outside time
a part of & apart from america
what is beneath the tracks
shaman living on outside time

N.Y. is 2 selves
never the same thing twice
never living together
as to not use each other up
body  soul
ripped greasy ugly  love

N.Y. is what is beneath the self    the self  the other  self.....

Last night, in Market Basket's parking lot,
two coddled beagles sniffed the pavement,
looked, sad-eyed, to anyone for nourishment.

Today, two huge brown-mouth buckskin pit-bulls
lie bloated, ant-eaten, fly ridden,
in the trashy ditches by Hildebrandt Bayou.

Soon, the innocent poem sits on the desk,
fetches the momentary glance as a hand
is already teetering God's ship of providence.

Half-dead, half-alive,
lilac on this last day of August,

I thank you for
saving me from abstraction.

Our heart pumps steam
which settles through each vein
like a thin layer of chalk

Shrimp sift
through the bottom third
of our stomach

When we speak tiny hirsute men
with aluminum lunch pails
strut out of our mouth;
begin to construct steel
frames and pour cement
foundations holding us
20 feet above the earth