jayivan

the heat crept in—
dreamstealing
through windows sealed tight

Point makes a prison
Out of what could be freedom:
The fear is killing.

We crawled inside love,
as if (it wasn’t) a shelter.

I wrote this while holding you in bed, the air conditioner running too cold and your body running hot beneath the comforter. I wanted my arms to wrap around you and hold you from all harm. To protect you and make you feel safe. You sighed heavy and shifted closer to me. And for a moment we were safe. It was not illusion. Instinct more likely. Something inherent. Hereditary. Prehuman. To make us blind to the fact we are never safe. Even in each others arms. Our bodies are our sustenance yet they work against us. Others bodies: interactions and entanglements out of ours, anyone’s control. The earth, sustaining us yet trembling beneath us. And space, cold space, burning hot space: order and chaos into infinity.

So I held you, and felt your warm breath against me, and let my head spin free in thought. With you. Just then. Forever in a moment. Like a flame forgetting it is a flame, a sun forgetting it too is a thing with a lifetime.

I didn’t mean to,
to break your heart, and all that,
with unread poems.

so, this is today,
a hollow in a body
that ever empties—

a pain like white noise
behind my eyes resonates
on low frequencies

can’t stop the snarling,
resentful glares, at passerbies
unaware

you walk at my side
to the station, warming up
cold hearts peering in.

old man near the sea
along the estuary green
shirtless and carefree

i am short-tempered
with poems, hasty to leave,
before they empty

like parks in the rain,
whatever substance was there
scatters for cover

wind-wrapped
sands sting skin

sea-scented
and sun heavy

until waves wash over

a dissolute life:
necessary living since
endless, life dissolves

the gush
such a crush

in the green muck
the luck womb struck

power
a-coward

Falling trees in forests
by hands calloused and sweaty,
full of fury—

No need to stand up
when I’m already standing
on the shifting sands.

the silent witness
among the holy rollers
: godless but good

I am a body,
not a voice. Just one among
a one to become.

Hiding could be art,
but instead, it’s thievery
of intangibles.

The flowers have dropped
and spring rots in the bark mulch
with last month’s rain.

I am not dreamless
even if you can’t see them;
maybe it’s your eyes.

The skin grafts won’t take;
my burned skin keeps pushing up
blisters like daisies.

I sit in gardens
aflower on cloudy days
but it doesn’t help.

Dreams drowned out by noise:
a sine wave reverberates
neurons until collapse.

I died a little
without even noticing
yesterday, again.

Lay beneath the redbuds, overflowered and starting to leaf;
Breathe in the long shadows fingering your feet;
Gaze up high;
Exhale a torquoise sky;
Spirit in me, you are a lie.

be the spring grass, soft,
supple, beneath the body
radiant with faith

be the spring grass, soft,
supple, beneath the body
radiant with faith

mountains spew white—
mornings burst from the night—
eyes launch into flight

it’s just an outline:
a hint beneath thin fabric
of forms to undress

A trace of me—
in all things I come to see
a mirror stream—

this week I grew sick
of bickering, just enough,
to call it a cold

Hollow Man
hollow me out

Adrift, not knowing
I’m still at sea, bobbing,
To defend against sharks let free.

I erode while I:
eyes too close to me
to see sandstorms approaching.

She wore a black fur coat and carried a book titled object lessons in psychoanalytic practice. She shook off her umbrella in the nearly empty train, by the sole man sitting quietly by himself, and sat next to him on the 2-seated plastic bench.

His eyes retreated, heavy, drawn into the moment’s hopelessness—but he lifted his head and those eyes drifted forward to tread the calm waters out-of-focus and distant.

leave us two alone
on our garden throne

it’s not a bird, this
bird, no matter its shape and
concept of flight—

The blue world warms—
Despite the cold lingering
In mens red hearts—

I want to get small
enough to crawl inside an
abstraction and hush.

I may be an oyster, but a handsome oyster am I,
Awash in the salty filth, filtering bliss, egoless.

brooklyn meat beater
bastards baste the bar in beers
slipped out mouths agape

Face forward
Let the world blur past in hues
Through you

a wet bootprint pressed
in a speckled floor fades to
vapour

The death of a day:
I pause as the soil between
my toes heaves a sigh.

So little a thing:
the passing of a day unmarked
by blizzard or flood,

a day unscathed by
social scandal, just simply:
the death of a day.

In the field I stand
looking up, night wind soothing
the hairs on my neck,

Those small, small points telling me out of the great great Vast:
To know that I am here and the day has passed.

I loop my fingers
Through morning-lit curls alight
With your warm breath—

Your look away, drill
Holes into my chest and plow
Out the freezing slush.

I hate this. I hate
This. I hate this—this thing I hate:
when I can’t cant create.

Whittling love away
With long silences and short
Glances long askance.

I stare at angry
Walls—who knew white walls could be
So blood red beneath.

acid frequencies
like sodium embers shine:
a dense pink joy

We are soft, too soft
for today’s pornography:
we shrink when we shine.

This is not present:
routing bike trips to beaches
as the blizzard blows.

The last scratch behind
Her ear, to the place a lame
Leg can reach no more.

Furious I scratch
To give some peace where lame legs
Try, in hope, to reach,

Twitching in old age
Like in her puppy dreamtime
When her sleeping legs

Would chase the rabbits
Hungry in the desert hills
For prickly pear seeds:

But now she rolls on her side releasing a sigh
Faint, resigned, perhaps ready for goodbye.

A three line poem
needs no title any more
than the sky needs blue.

All work and no play
makes Jack a dull boy. All work
and no play makes Jack.

Computers don’t work.
Trains run late. This is not mal-
function but nature.

The Passing Moment
is all we have, not the sound
of frogs crying kwah!

Forehead pressed against
the glass of a bay window,
his drooling lips stare.

I align my pen
on the sheet’s thin rules, queued up
for the next letter.

My arms flex tight
To impress this strength, this bulk
Against
Into
Your body.
I hold my chest wide and loose
To encompass your exhausted and wet frame
Within
Without
My body,
Wet and exhausted
Dissipating
Into the lonesome misty skies
Gathering storm clouds in the mountains high.

His face, a hastily
built treehouse in a woody suburb,
beckons me up

the rickety ladder,
toward his plywood smile
And rusty fingers.

All you want for me:
Just to be happy, simply,
Like a morning smile.

Choose to see with eyes
Lensless, just gelatinous:
White orbs blind-aware.

Jazz tunes from Jersey
Silouettes the skyline cool
Winter rain blue.

A bath in early
winter: sweating brow, racing
winds, quiet alley.

Two planes in tandem:
Tailspinning double helix
Dis-integrating

This world would shadows
Be without the cast of you
And me, certainly.

Love hollows out my
trunk to store a winter’s worth
of dry sustenance.

Not what you had in
Mind, this thing, you find in days
Unstrung

I do more than sleep:
I wake up, work, vote, desire,
Eyes open, eyes closed, I.

I dropped my poem
While walking, not even rush
ing– careless me.

I’ve driven this road
Staring at the mountain crest
In which I see his

Ghost chasing wild dogs
Farther than my eyes can see
Along the twisted ridge

Beneath the cedar
Trees and radio towers
Beams, gunned-down ghost

Still there, still still there:
The red seeping knotted roots;
The smoking limbs; me

Driving in a car and standing on that cliff,
He’s watching me in death complicit.

Outside the temple
This body craving, inside
Bodies craving This.

The fast is a death,
A walk into the desert
In the morning light.

I break these lines as
I break hearts, giving half,
Keeping whole.

Birch leaves above the canopy
Flutter in sunlight abluster–
Black, light and newly green, I
Warm dreams cold-stored in memory–
No, not I, not this thing called me:
It is the green, the light, the black,
It is the newly BE, no, no, not ME
That burns this dead world FREE!
The outside force, the godhead farce
Dance, dance, dance in wind and leaves and me
I’ll let you in
We can be one
Together
Undone.

From open skies and
Open days, today I crawl up
Slow underground stairs.

Go to that dark place
And linger.

Lying stone naked
On a boulder by the sea:
Sweat distorted clouds roam free.

Thought carves my body
Into unknowable forms
Hemmed by skin and breath.

Treacherous night
Betrays the day with leering eyes
Unhidden by shade.

Dream-less nights and
dream-filled days fray the seams
which bind our way.

The line in the sand
Waits, uncrossed, pent-up and
Dangerous as thought.

The owl’s hoo-hoo flails
Into a continuous
Wail while night stays bright.

Generalities
Support my poems because
Concrete things lack weight.

A shy sun inches
Behind the church steeple like
A slow motion thief

Irradiating
Holiness while gathering
Souls for midnight snacks.

You smile while the streets
Riot hurling pavement toward
Glass cased highrises.

The ego frets and squirms
While the lungs of time breathe stars
out in dusty sighs.

Killed at noon to-day
I could not cry, or wring my
Hands, I should but watch.

Being born, and urged
Full of notions, this zest-filled
Insufficient breast.

We lay in the park
shade, shirtless, optimistic
and hungry in May.

We lay in the park
shade shirtless, eyes skyward,

We lay in the park
shade shirtless, fingers tucked loose
Into buttoned jeans.

We lay in the park
shade shirtless, plotting

devolutions

See for what a slight

Thing you are betrayed, this door

You might not open.

We wiped the headstone
Clean of green moss clung tight to
Granite cavities.

We wiped the headstone
Clean, my brother and me

When I touch your skin
The world becomes good again
And it is enough.

My dog died today
And I need to feel something
Better or much worse.

Something must die in
a story: but this story is
different: see.

I seek solace in spring
But April’s hungry for souls
Including my own.

Dance man, unaware
You are about to be snuffed
Out.

Celebrating no-
thing, I shiver in the a/c
Chilling a cold March.

Left alone to drink
My beer and write lines of three:
You call this free? Please.

I whispered into
The vacuum, forgetting that
You hear, even there.