jayivan

the unhuddled mass awaits

the lurch

still and erect,

the last columns of a sunken city

Pencil fallsWood
splintersGraphite cracks

The political spray,

The righteous sway.

the final rest

toward fearsome ends

bloomed breath

Reddening buds

Breach the March dry bark

Slumbered branches stir

Stretch away from the shadow’s
Mute indifference

Lean into the sun

The black ice glimmers:
winter sun, a gem within

within my veins:
shooting flames
in flickring frames

moonlight moans
as morning masks
dark-hearted night’s retreat

each step slips,
breathe whisps,
give lip

The sun bright
The trees white
Blue sky light

nothing falls apart
yet there I am, in pieces,
collecting dust balls

Aqueous diamond—
Shapeshifter shining—

Glasslands devoure glassed
lands, for a night, just a night,
siren song beams of light

A whisper into howling winds,
Less than whisp, wise but witless:

So I sharpen my teeth,
Guttural my growl,
I howl! I howl! I howl
Into the growling winds
That can’t dismiss me longer,
Louder, braver, stronger
Me, me, me!
Howl! I growl! Howl! Growl
Into the howling winds!

The crowd deafens, so
I crouch low, cupping my ears,
empty eyes open

The tree bends on the grassy plain,

Bowed by the wind, branches twisted down like an old woman on a knotty cane,

Sculpted by a care-less hand, like a miniature tree plucked from a private menagerie and abandoned to the ceaseless wind for comfort.

The tree bends, the tree sings to the accompaniment of crickets in autumn, long grasses heavy with seed.

The stubborn leaves may
cling to trees, their wind song lost
in fallen brothers

I’m not hiding from you, my sweet sun,
The wind is just too cold today.

The dismantling of dominoes
And the rise of towers
Cakes my secret gardens in construction debris.

The drumbeat of war sounds into night
The reading of names brings in the light

Stretched thin
t o m o r r o w
becomes meaningless islands,
unmoored rocks adrift
in a vast salt stream

the chile pepper
whistles and heaves,
a house on fire

Gate-crashers run wild
through the love-strewn streets
pepper-eyed and salt-tongued.

The doubting wise fail
As the certain fanatic
Fumbles history

your insistent grip
fastens hand to hip,
i graze your earlobe
with my lip—-—

Easy days of light,
biking, breathing, making right.

knowing stares
for all their cares
miss the plain truth

urged forward by necklines
draped in muscled veins
clothed in lust-softened skin

the fireflies are first to go:
to flee the summers dimming light
and ride the updraft’s cooling flight

my motivations are twin:
thick parallel brush strokes
upon a tall white canvas,
the ink—
murky and thick—
stirred by the coarse black hairs
bundled tight,
seeks to seep
atop your canvas skin
into the threadbare hollows within

direct your gaze below
the nose

Club the night
Dub this flight
Syncopate your makeshift plight

I want to pry but
I want to spy inside but
I want to lie but

One night, I crawl into That Thing:
The Growth Machine, its oiled springs
a spastic being brings.

they bulldozed your hobo poems
as they bulldozed your victorian home

the wraparound porch, long-delayed,
thrust by indifferent day labor
into your fast-decayed living room,

peeled paint layered between unpaid bills graffitied with verse:
this surface they send,
this surface you fill,
a check for the future,
an unsent verse
from the bank of forever forever.

d. dances into the room,
shawl-wrapped and singing
“i am not the dee you know,
no no i am not the dee to thee”

you send her back to the kitchen
with cold lips and warm eyes.
shawless she returns
with milky water in spotted glasses.

you search again for
stacked within,
the lost picasso,
sketched by the artist for you,
a sketch for a sketch,
in a city by the sea
where all men were artists
pride-free and giving.

Platform form
Patiently worn

the shine of skin shaved
begs my eye to follow lines
enshrined and contrived

A mosquito spinning mid air,
one leg snared by an absent spider’s absent thought.

I watch its struggle.

The swelling cherries on the boughs,
The dark’ning clouds, the sweaty brow,
The swarming gnats congratulate
The coming storm: this is Spring’s wake.

Honeysuckle, burnt marshmallow.
Oil stains on the weed-cracked sidewalk.

Scratch the needle across my skin,
Cut the ink into my softness
These misty mornings are too bright.

Lean against the shaking door,
Close-eyed and listening,
Cup-eared against phone,

A lost voice captured
In a message on repeat—
A figment stretched thin.

Sun-showers and word-flowers

late may light shine but
dark concedes no time

planet of priests pray:
for the great nothing that churns
red within our core

I walk
with the sun in my eyes
snow melt
drips from awnings
passerbys pass by
hunched against the cold
I hear it will warm
as soon as today

Collisions with Planet Melancholia
Return and retourne and return
The white flash
Ushers in death and dusted rebirth.

I blink. An illusion.
Time to consume. Things to buy. Things to fix.

Time goes nowhere, hastily,
Chucking its waxed-paper dolls from windows rolled down just enough to press the detritus into the expanse of gravel and dried weed, where prairie dogs howl silent in snow dappled fields.

The white flash.

Ice on the windshield
Frost wrapping the steering wheel
Sad songs on cold days

Leave it be
This body, your body.
A matchbox flipping round the edge of a subway drain.

Then you said
you said
you said

I don’t know myself no more

The struggle angers.
We rise spent and hoarse
From well-meant well-meanings

southern sun, warm me:
winter’s waiting in the winds
to frost the house white

I prefer to date friends.
Don’t schedule me in between 7 and 8:45,
Don’t leave time to make your next a p p t.
Don’t leave me. Whatever you do.
Let’s do one thing fulfilling,
And then another imprisoning.
Let’s scale walls and dance down hall-
Ways to be and not be undoing our days.
We stay up late and wait and wait and wait
For a moment of insight after midnight
Limbs adrift
Hearts enriched

Sitting at center,
the long table emptied of
blank conversation

let down your fly,
tuck my hand inside,
and then—
skin on skin,
we binge

Stoned on 19th
Taxi to 34th
Makers rocks row F
Diiv in
My Birthday Valentine

the city trees dropped
their leaves the day Lou Reed died

up
pass
dragonflies

a phoenix whispers
the still extends
its feathers thin
with fire bends

a phoenix glimmers
beams luminate
its eye awaits
the no-thing fate

The book creaks, its wood
Floors bend beneath the late sun’s
tiptoe toward dusk.

This storm is not like the others:
a gale crush of screaming cars
cracked homes

the road to freedom
a powdered trap

peak into the box
and see what’s made it under
the lid loosely shut

if anything

scream:night
punch:flight
acid:insight
numb:blight

put it together,
just to tear it down again?
I get it, I do.

80 degrees, 8am April 8,
Steam rises from the cusp
of disappearing dew

The black room,
a place as pure space,
a thing within-without itself,
surface and substance,
word and thing,
where sex is sex and nothing else,
where cocks are out, in hands or mouths
or any limb from human sprouts
there gripped and turned unquestioned out,
eyes-wide sweat streams pulsing down
gurning cheeks, jizzle-crowned,
hopes abandoned,
all ye fears,
turned
to salt,
a stain,
a mark,
a line,
a dot,
a joy that found its missing core,
outbursts from hadron’s godly swirl.

The sun burns my face
tender on midwinter morn
a finger through a flame

this prick I pricked you
with, it sticks

the burning jewel
glows beneath the icy lake

the space within the space
I need that break
air without oxygen
place without grace

The skin rent,
dried lace
wet pink

The fear, my dear,
is real.

shifting soft-focused self
unbordered-dimming
dithered-dreaming

The trees still, silent
above muted cars speeding
cold-dumb, winter-numb

a face of smoke with powdered lips
wafts through the lights,
a sight abliss

the storm returns thirst:
for the hip-swayed and pill-popped,
for sex with strangers,

for the pleasure domes:
swollen cocks pressed tight in jeans,
gray matter synapse,

each seeking relief

from urban dunes breeched.

Pass me secret notes
unrecorded in ones and ohs

a breath upon a chest
a chance glance
a bump before a hump

a blind orchestra
paints black noise on black canvas

the islands are all sunk now

this you know—

hardly a thing worth saying
(so obvious)

barely a thing worth knowing
(as a thing impossible to not-know)

still i miss the shores
where the big blue turned a quieter hue

The bright spring
Of fallen green
On wet-black steps

the too-soon spring sun
rides the morning train to work,
missing the green fields.

the pale city men
cower from the burning bright
clutching coffee tight.

Too much to hope for
a smile after a long day,
apparently so.

Form is not the thing,
Nor the substance really —
Any word should do —

Chemical salts cackling beneath my boots,
Abandoned among the streets’ many truths

Hangman, take care!—you
misplace the letters on which
your hollow life stands

I conflate the giver and the given:
the death bed beneath your head,
bound up within the surface of sleep,
the brain aweep

the ties that bind, them-
selves, things untethered, silted
ribbons, tied in bows.

Loosen that gripped fist!
The diamond is safe. But oh,
your sweet coal is gone!

Do not speak of love—
anything but that distant
moon, faceless, weightless,

Wasted and pox marred.
Do not speak at all, the words
empty themselves fast.

a deaf orchestra
paints white noise on white canvas

To pick a flower—
pinch the the stalk
between thumbnail and fingertip,
catch the freed bud in palm,
and place in glass vase,
on dinner table
or den table
or bed stand—
a piece of beauty all your own
an innocent thievery.

But you are not innocent,
and I cannot forgive you.

You do not pick flowers.
You rip the garden by its root
and salt the earth with your evil eye;
you dispose of flowers in trash cans
and toss rendered grease on top,
and return to your underground lair
to sweep and clean and scour the filth from the outside world seeped in,

never clean since it was never dirty.

I would have compassion for you,
but it is my passion you have gutted:
sweep all you will—

the stains of innards splain
are all you left me as remains.

Fit to flip these lips

cross hips that grip

I tell myself:
it is the dark
it is the cold

But I know:
it is the heaviness
of eyelids closed

December, you thief!
Give me back the things that cling.

scrapple thoughts
melted-fat-splatter

The bitter taste of orange rind
Sunshine for a brickle mind

River, bright and high,
rise against pale sky,
cast your waves upon my shore—
currents pulling more and more—
until an unmoored me rips free
into the sundrenched narrow sea

on my back : take flight
to the skies : I write

Purple and blue striped sea
Weaving sun unto the islands seams