the last quarter

the last quarter
feels soft
it fades
on one side of the face

there is a gradually increasing
voidness
the light is stretching
and slimming down

any meeting now
could be the last

how will she articulate her death
to posterity?

like the clapping waves
subsuming each other
we dissolve into our children

the work is to reduce
all meaning to an instant
of gasping foam

the memory of the ancestors
is a film of brine

riding the swell
of endless generations
in the tide

the card trick

I wonder
  how is it?
  when tricks unfold

in the green room
   of your Manichee
please please implicate me

I imagine a faraway land
 a dead hand
      tending the pleasure garden

the Achaeans advance -
 quick leave a Linear B tablet
hidden there for me

Golden child
    of the teasing curls
    sing quickfast your song
         of growing old

the well worn blue shoe
      is a measure
        of  something -
      your tempest is famous

the poet's hand
       unfolds on the card table
      with elegant typography

and in some later eon
     they discovered a message
  ensconced in its dna

the perfumed remark
     of bad gods and good gods

your gated sanctuary
is better with no mention of me

so lets go over this once again
 from the top

the attic poetess

the poem entered sharply
knifing around the
testicles

then slowly
groaning like a ship
moved up through all the organs
of the body

the letting off of flairs
and degassing of magma
continued all night

until morning bright
a calculus
arrived in the skull
as a cold ball of phlegm

O muse -
this withered body
cannot make love with you
like it used to

inanimated

the long gush
of appointments
bleed from my diary

i hunt to locate
one free day

and there i am
sitting alone
in a forest
on a seat
of pine needles

snow petals
perambulating down

in a camphor bowl
two gingko seeds
remind me
of extinct
friends

i roll them back and forth
to enjoy
the soft rumbling caress
of wood on wood

three silver eyes
dance
on a limb
their mossy feathers
tick, tick, tick

lowering the bowl
i try not
to move

it is excellent to notice
the moments
of elation
between
animation

apology of sorts

4K

a cat paws
slowly removing
its cape

there is a chance
they will meet again
out of doors

but only
if the cat doesn't let
the velvet lizard

escape

plosm

the pine splits and
termites tumble fast from
the fat faultlines

i wish i could fix
the sawdust railings
with my fastigata

but hovering between
devas and devils
like an aquarian
crafty and sublime

i remain subdued
and sing instead
to an ember
in a sodden heart

later in the halflight
i am caught
re-ordering the library

only lies sustain the task
like this book, this boat i launch

a career in the services
would inure me
for the uneven ritual of the sea

taking up my things
a ballpoint pen
tumbles childishly
into the waste basket