jayivan

The awkward stumble

Of humans bumble into

Dawn’s translucent waves

encapsulate eyes

amber lights

wet tarmac

this lust—
a thick yellow yolk—
swells behind a thinning shell

The sea swallows its tongue,
shudders

The ghost of you in me 

Thumps against my chest:

Compressed, I lose breath

Sooted gray brick,

Silver shining rooftops reflect the flat white of humid skies,

Steel wheels squeal against wet black rails,

Eyes stare from clean windows,

Pupils widen,

Vessels stiffen and pulse,

Blood bursts. 

let me feel the heat,

the insistent push and pull

of sun against sweat

Sweet dog days

Of lingering heat

Of languid sweat,
Breath ripe with illusion

The muggy morning whose dawn never breaks

Sun high, sea low

Skin salt-tight

Body born

Hot mornings and long shadows

Beckon September blue

Night trains pass transmission towers, 

Salomé dances in lightning showers, 

Babylon gods and The Children delight in 

Spirits unveiled in the powdery night. 

Thick gray smoke hovers above the river; 

White bursts crack the screen,

The boom lumbers behind. 

Heads up child

The blue sky needs you

Borderline button-up 

Wingtip wanderlust

What

is this shit superglue

?

i keep my head high:

the stench from within

shutters the senses

Slip off my skin, and

let me slip, paper-thin,

between the scrim

self and sidewalk,
as the winds picks up the empty bag, and

abandons it in a newly leafed-out tree.

Sands caught up in the waves’ gentle wind

Spiral into opaque mists before the rocky jetty:

Monster sandstorms ravage the plains : silent mountains turn to ghosts. 

Bright green tips

Shoot from thorny lots,

Shake in the rising winds. 

at the bottom of a well

the noon light shines bright

and anxious shadows fidget 

Your voice,
Humid and salty

Thumps the snare

last fall’s pine needles

blanket the shrine’s cold stone steps,

weeping cherries sway

dogs run through wet muddy fields
a pianos song drifts in cloudy gusts

My hands roam unbound

Before an unnamed expanse

Lost shackles imprisoning the freed eye in the illuminating magic counting sands

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

Boys of basketball
Backlit by fiery dusk.
Dry leaves crackling.

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.

the Red Dragonfly
shudders on yellow deadheads,
bowing to Blue Sky

Shirtless in the sun,
Winds wade through river grasses.

The sun hides, winds rise.

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

I trip on my lip
and gag on the word flung back
into a dry throat

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

This is not about
This thing here. It’s within me.
And I will forget.

haunting, this beauty,
this red desert, this blue sky:
white ghosts whisp the dunes

Din in the Distance
A Collateral Chatter
Burnished by the Breeze

late may light shine but
dark concedes no time

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

i swim between rings
of moon dust. your pulse ripples
their surface. heart beat.

Last man, dance man dance,
it’s just you and me—be free,
naked in the winds.

Who will love Neptune?
Deep-dark drifter, tempting me
beyond the drawn dawn.

Miranda shifts in
her seat, aluminum legs
scar the waxy floor

flutter Jupiter
moons sound the horn exhale
adrift in static

Cold night, cold morning,
The light aslant from cracked blinds,
Dust free and drifting

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

before the rumble
of radiators, the Still
reigns a dimming dawn

the city trees dropped
their leaves the day Lou Reed died

up
pass
dragonflies

a pen for revenge
drains the ink from spent letters,
empty me my words

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