knowledge

Knowledge. I use the word to invert it
knowing now it lost you 
and what good
is between us, 
though nothing, finds me
many quiet deaths

termination

And I can't be with you

even as friends

waiting for you

to release me

Of Arthur Rimbaud

These appetites: Shapes, 
Run fingers 
       through dimension;
And Rimbaud’s regret? 

To sprawl oneself bare 
On dynamic growth, youth did not have 
Depth, 
Age grows too brittle and arthritic

There are worse things than inexperience!

The measure is what one has not –yet what 
Was charming of African earth? 
-Consistency in the predator’s gaze
-A delicate (simple) joy bending to the sun

Libertineflesh sheathed its poet’s death;
With no remorse in the seasons’ passage 
This dead poet’s footnotes trailed 
To find art living as concubine

Clouds over Hanoi

Hanoi, for you, I without family come 8,000 miles
I, the flâneur, walk between your glass gods and carapace-husks
take in electric smoke, petrol fume
welcoming Sodom where I go 

here our dreaming Gautama stuck in never-black night 
the very dead patriarch greeting eternal a fleeting sun
and why shouldn't the world (this flesh monopoly) 
also reel a crusted cheek out of its starry hole? Nonetheless

a woman bentback on stool 
cooks her luncheon patties, smiles to me
waves the broth-drip noodle, mint sprigs, with a tong
I not unwelcoming sit

The Market

the gusts, the pasture quakes 
bovines yelling in the wheatgrass  
the stink of flesh, stink of bile
irises crushed, crackle of tiny bone 
colourful pulp 
flows down the grate drain

the human shapes 
in pockets of dark 
in dust silhouette

clouds hang over the Occident
and a pangolin is roasted

Reconciliation

The hills of Gondwana did not bear your hatred 
and split thereby. Nor did the species spread 
to your design, nor the arc of planets your geometry 
nor does your brain pump its heart for you, nor is a crimson skyline, 
the burning juniper, great canyon
and the depth of wilderness perfect for your poem, your picture 

Those tears can never wet the desert, even the sun 
nukes skin. Even life is a metaphor for death 
and all written words, the colours on blank,
a secret reconciliation with that death 

Yet still

Peregrination

The sun is a bastard 
Whom I love. Moon does not understand 
I am cheating with soil. The mossbeds rise like breath
The crows do not observe, they do not know I cheat
With worms. Locked in leaves, green juice. Find me 
Polaris burning in a hovel

We knew the world was dark and feral
Many heads and fangs, as I, pink tongue
Cup rainwater in my milksoft skull. Assail wheat and tawny oat
The sprucebranch I hold bending forever

There she is

There she is, my love, oh 
So pretty, so worthwhile 
Look at the hours go by
Take a look at how 
She uses compassion 
As 10 sharpened prongs, oh 
My love, 
That voice is a
Sweet prosody, hear
The sizzling of her brand
On my skin, oh 
My empathy, young heart, oh.

sometimes

sometimes i get stuck in my head.

the green of the grass outside sometimes gets stuck in my vision.
the motion blur in the car sometimes is not blurred enough.
the music in the bar gets into my veins and it’s not loud enough, sometimes.

i don’t want to keep sinking into the same old feelings,
i like the new, like changing old clothes,

it takes time for me to realize i’m not my feelings

anyway,

There is a need to make sense of experience through a language that is more authentic.

Language sets a standard to define our non-standard selves.

If you analyze yourself deeper, burrowing down to the centre (whatever that is),
the common words, symbols
become disingenuous means to express what it is found;

Convenient placeholders- ready made constructions for mass use.

Poetry is created from an inward movement
orbited to one mind
playfully engaged
in the struggle of re-definition.