The archway at Valley Forge.

The archway proposes a tricky relationship.

One sees first the imprisoned sky and

Only then the cause for

Celebration

It is marble, or flesh.

It was Colonial or

Grecian.

Read up.

Its history is a dwindling flintchip to the other's

Sea bellowing against the greatest things.

Of bourbon and new years.

For my parents.

Throw up your hat, dear.

The Earth is still

And all time spins from its spools

With a comic's measure.

Throw it to the drunkards' moon and their chandeliers

Up to that toppling view of Earth

And to what those brilliant Martians must

See, in their moment of recreation

That ours and theirs might coincide,

Give us a laugh.

Reach to the back of you,

Where my smallest hand was in some distant

Month

Acquainted first and now.

I am dizzy with the sweat and rags of words

The jazz and enamel ground, worn.

Reach back and throw your hat high now,

It is the Auld Lang Syne they play

Where winter flowers stand aright.

In the body the soul resides.

No virginity suits us

Any longer.

It is impractical to look for a measure of it.

What remains is a viable choice,

Thrashing against the pittance of what we

Believed in,

Called virginity.

Blossoms.

Everything I did in my baggage

I did twice

Once for you and bruised in contemplation

I also did for

Another.

And nothing is fair.

Do not be distracted, I spoke for and dreamed for

Another. my moongold, profit,

I hope you can forgive me. I hope on the fulcrum

Wall

You can appreciate the sum of this frivolous bearance.

Unacceptable loss.

If each and everyone is gone

Then there is nothing.

Blown-through fortunes

And forgotten cadences know us,

They will not tolerate losing us.

If each and everyone is gone

Then there is nothing,

bruised, guttered, full

Feeling every bit

With not a finger to touch it.

If each and everyone is gone

Then there is nothing.

The natural order.

The world is gently falling into place:

We can thank this plunge

For the capital heat,

The spinning oceans

Busy and volcanic.

I can see the untamed system bursting

Into perfection

Where harbors grow

Where what is bereft of the savage mark

Would have been so even in a state of Peace.

We are bloodstained; we did it right.

Mountains.

With mountains behind me

And a pretty school--

Pretty by today's means,

Ahead

I got my hands on a copy of

The Divine Comedy,

Only to be overwhelmed by the degrees of

Shame

--the degrees of documentation.

Winter rain.

The patient bend

And are the benefactors of Patience.

Love is prehistorical and

All horror is born of impulse.

The patient bend--

Not in error.

This vibrant winter rain--

to get away--

To wait.

On a brim of rain.

One went looking for a marshal

On a brim of rain--

Lost levees

And swingsets below.

No destitution earns its

Destitute,

Though when the waters recede

To the destitute it all lies.

The edges of certain things.

The edges of certain things

Are serrated,

Eager to pull a

Fleeing sleeve,

A blown lock of hair.

The advantage, despite obvious dangers,

Lies in the possibility that

We might use them to finally catch...

The edges of others

Are undisturbed and smooth,

capable of grasping very little--

If anything at all.

But all possibility

By compass

Flees in that swift direction.

Idiom.

The room was boasting its humane noise:

What went said will be familiar

In the morning

If less distinct.

What went unsaid, on the other hand,

Must wait, packed in,

Unmated, unresponded

But prepared.

So then

All determination is born in the one's forgetting,

And all surprise poetic in the other's.

Idiot.

What a troubled mind needs--

Him, take him for example, look,

What he needs--it

Would fulfill him.

And to fulfill him would make him lazy. So

Give only what he chooses--

Give him all the grapes he can swallow,

Keys to a nice house,

And a dog.

Announce him, clear a path,

Bathe him.

When his dream sours take his shoulder

Wake him up.

Do everything

As he needs nothing

And has been sated on something similar to less.

Conjoined stairwells.

For Jina Valentine.

Expect a temperature drop
Before a first step is taken.

Just by hovering
Accepting what you see when
Looking over

Down both--

Have a shovel ready. Scrape. Salt
Rub your extremities, one frost against the other.

In the distant pattern,
Either night or convergence
Has made of a single view
Something physically impossible.

The vestiges of support.

For Jack Rose.

The sisters of mercy and Veedon Fleece
Were imaginary

And I have not flown a kite in years.

Seems impractical to not unite
The vestiges of support
Such as these,
Such as we need,
Suspect,

Such as we act upon--
As if their vigilance
Occurred first in the thrushing heart,
Then a moving hand
An invention hushing and
unmistakable in its home,

Midair

And then--
Only then,
Third,

In the infinite where once the suspicion of creation drew breath,
And we acted upon.

A brief note:

A while ago you may remember a briefly posted item regarding hiatus. I took a few days off and felt oddly compelled to make news of it. If I had to guess I'd say it had more to do with the dip in a seasonal glut of writings as opposed to any functional want for vacation. Anyway it didn't last.

Well today I announce similar news, if for an entirely new reason. In the past month I have resumed activity under the name, To Stink, To Cheat, To Torture, a platform primarily reserved for prose and essayage. While I assure you the notebooks are filling up at blurry-edged speeds my ability to, as the old proverb goes, walk and chew gum at the same time, is remedial at best. Rather than coughing up some formulaic ten line shitters just for the sake of keeping to date I've decided to pace myself a bit.

Do enjoy the distraction.

Carrying.

This is for whatever it grows,
Here in my palm--

For stems, and schwag seeds
Stub-handed cacti--
Their saltwater--
And stubble-skinned canard
Spreaders.

Here in my possession,
Somewhat scarred,
Here.

Is it so strange to want a handful of
Something bruising with generosity--

Something the hand must not have
So much as it must endure?

To the east.

The whistle blows
And the chapped union between hand
And hammer
Parts.

Silence is born with the auspices of a baby,
With as much clubbed blood.