differences in landscape

friction in the hiss
raises forests
and lays flat the field

to the ear’s extent –

            •

a puddle in the dark
impossible to miss
because of pissing rain

            •

a sound like
white noise rustle

or friction in the snow screen

drapes over the poem
almost in its form

            •

that pop song with
the submarine ping:

bar dudes sound
the dance floor

with eyes for
and for not

            •

just as a chandelier’s scatter
of twinkling in cathedral acoustics
echoes the higher dimensions

a Homeric simile conforms
to a mind’s raised contours

            •

from the stadium’s roar
thru the third base gate

emerges the sense
the other side will clearly win

            •

where the field ends
the chatter of crickets

peepers mark the water line

            •

let cicadas rattle
the mind cherry
trees harbor winter

in August boughs
a screen of natural static

            •

As snow puts to bed
differences in the landscape
what she says quiets

whatever you’d say
makes us unique

These things descend
from the static
in audible chariots

much as wine does
after the cheers
when no one looks

what’s left when
no witness
asks the question

besides the sensation
of being beside
your own shoulder

listening to the static turn
into falling confetti






            :






There was a fissure
in the static
canopy above us
                                                                The voice that comes between things
Others had cigarette
faces, but you
spoke to me in radios

when affection is
a ratio
of the capacity to break






            :






As something distant approaching
sensed on borders

Ears turned sideways,
the universe is strung
in the key of Eros






            :






The infinite distance between us
measured in words collapses

an event horizon such as
spoken words are






            :






A disruption in the static
like a woman

emerging from sea foam
each time you speak

I am undone
as though from a distance






            :






Let us say she has overheard
the Dark Lady at the corner

of the poem, the things said,
her capacity for the negative

: not you but the you :
all these words just to reach

just to reach you, all these words
to become you, to become yours

in your mouth, where I belong
like sea foam, where I belong:

neither you nor I
but the you and I

emerge in this hearing
level with the sea

crackling across a wide surface and still
immersed in this hearing

not one not the one
but the one no one

her voice pushes
static aside as
oil pushes water

the cold economy
of report
even comes to me

as quote muse
unquote music






            :






The radio has no memory
but we do

that’s the problem
with the club these days:

who’s the message for?
The eyes have it

but the eyes are everywhere:
you, not you, you not you






            :






music of you
so simple
it devastates

lyrics — the line
between you and me






            :






A man becomes musical static
clears interference discerns
the evidence of you

: three different expressions same change:

What is not musical becomes
musical a man clears
interference you discern
the evidence of static

: three changing expressions same difference:

A not musical man becomes
musical static interference
clear evidence of you






            :






A woman becomes
muse static you make
me such things

to say as I will
go out with
looking for you tonight

under napkins in jazz
bars and boom
clubs asking the moonless

invariable sidewalks
to be luminous
auras of the lady

who makes feet
sure thru darkness till
auras become moss






            :






I am standing in my lawn again
let us not fear to say such
such things as we know not

to be true a hunter in the arch
of trees above the path his bow
a bunch of dots connected by

a thin high branch across the sky
I returned to open lawn again
by way of bioluminescence only

a lady is waiting at the edge I
stand in the offering again you
made me to walk to swamp

to speak the words you want to
speak to make me want to

tense with each
step we step

around each
other ears

burning, burning
thoughts at each

sound the mind
turns back to






            :






We quiet the living
sounds to make them

acute and stand
on edge






            :






That thought is deaf
in the speech vacuum
or else glass exposed to breath

it is a mistake to think
the world can fall
so many million times

toward the sun
and not fall mute
re-entry sounds

not unlike speech
part the air with a puff
after silence

hateful silence ends
what talk could not






            :






The mind turns back to
that point, owned
by it and wound

as it is
wounded, it listens
sideways for

what it wants
and what it wants
to hear turns back

to that point, the power
of it, winding






            :






Not wanting mind

chatter the things
said there still

is no escaping

the mind or why
you’d say
these things now

it doesn’t matter
the mind turns back






            :






The language breaks
before it says

anything, before it
can

The mind is no spider
inching to become you






            :






Silence is the hardest
thing to break
having the strength

of zero, the power
of infinity

There are answers in
affection, simple affection,
simple answers






            :






How little the words
become not having
been used much






            :






The mind spider
inches to become you

We grow tired of reading
each other as signs,

for signs. The arguments
will develop their emissions

as many opportunities
to signal, as many ways

to step up threat
a mostly empty one

tenfold in its usable
enrichments, the range

of possible at bottom
barely noticeable as though

burnt into a hillside.
Whatever answers are






            :






in affection no
matter how simple

no grand gesture
wakes me to you

as invoking you
does, something

that incapacitates silence
should not be so simple

as addressing a word
to make our void aware

                the hairs in the basin
                my sex in the drain




                                •




                Let the men say it
                this time with feeling.
                Now just the ladies.




                                •




                Time enough and taboo
                words shade from lewd
                to ludicrous to quaint

                Peccadillo sounds dirty
                cuz it resembles foreskin
                of armadillos

                Let the poem do
                its mojo






                            :






                A koi pond opens
                a thousand mouths




                                •




For Nin

                All pouch
                No paunch

                A Calvin Klein Haiku




                                •




                I will shave for you
                when you want me
                to. And not shave.




                                •




                The key holes we
                peered thru were found

                obstructed once
                we had the key