BethlehemLights

Fingernail picking at the closet mine Til' it hits the backroom's filthy swine And finds those old racks filled with leather; It leaves a trail that stinks to high And sticks the throat like hurricane weather— In that sleepy, sweetly sticky land of language crimes Where half-filled glasses bide their time Imprisoned speech dragged to nooses, With words no one uses And the fools that bruise it   can't blanket abuses      with rhyme.

I am dreadfully aware of how long I've been asleep. The back-and-forth motion of this joyride Has jarred my subconscious; And though my pupils remain dilated, so that all is light and all at once, I am desperately aware of how awake I've yet to be.

There was no difficulty in gauging your trails: I stared onto your peak like all Olympus; knew the pitfalls that would snag my heels, the way my chest would beg for mercy. Soaked your chill as I played the markhor, grappling the distance between us with footsteps slow and wrists acquiver, cold for lack of handhold. I saw the way before me clear like a red sea of frost and stone; I unclench my chattering teeth, rub some splint of warmth back to my bones, shake the frostbite, ripping off like petrified bark coming undone. I find it telling, the pattern of swallowmarks across my throat, the way my feet sink into the snow; an

Ockham never fashioned a razor that was a guillotine for gods and faeries: little hopes kept the arrow blunt— and the blades well-greased for a final cut. Such hopes might have once saved us from our apathy such delusions might have saved us from inadequacy; but as far as filthy winds go, you were a breath of fresh air. Now it is clear: reason alone cannot dispel the single-celled labyrinths and the combined weight of a moral nothingness— the holy ghost unsettles my nights like tree branches creeping over windows, like closet monsters stealing across the floor, whose frequent visits I have accepted as pale glances

I walk where the paper skeletons of flowers lay crumpled like corpses—their dying breaths beget splinters at my feet; graphite scars cross-hatch my fingers, black smears mar the empty sheet. Perhaps these lines once spoke with grace in days hidden beneath paper tombs— such squandered words do not forgive: they are phantom letters carved below, hollow corpses that never lived.

Ever since man learned to form his tongue Into the phonemes of his probing mind, He has left silent woodlands Babbling in brooks, Conversing like madmen among the trees: A dialogue of raindrops and rustling branches. Silence betrayed by a creature whose nature Is to depict, describe, assign nomenclature Sings the only hymn it knows how to muster: The subtle explosives of leaves gently dropping, A symphony of raindrops striking the earth, The grappling of talons on moss-covered bark, The shuddering gasps from life newly birthed. Gods write the songs man cannot expound: An absence of words and a fullness of sound— For to spe

Poets are we, and rapists Who drag our souls by the hair Into the limelight of an ink-stained stage Stripped of all meaning By the shears of intellect; A desperate need creates loss of intent, A desperate cry lost among words Feeling devoured by thoughts half-formed Soliloquies bent to conform to a norm That deforms all it transforms. Rapists are we, Who sell our existences, Our loves, our beings, Our passions deprived To that whore of verse Who gags them, drags them, And burns them alive.

What weight moves the earth to breathe so light As though the dismal night Were hung on cords? Any movement would unhinge A billion life forms from the soil; Wrenched from evening's hold, Filled with a billion tiny voids—            but it searches for that lady bold, Who makes bearable this empty soil, Dancing lithe, painting gold With her silver brush of sable fur, She moves like a kinetic sculpture, Evading night with deepest scorn, Fleeting, cheating time, And like the tide, receding; So close she seemed, She was at my door. She moved so like a perfect sculpture; But then she stopped, And only was, and was no mor

In the infinitesimal spaces between moments, I caught, with unsteady fingers, a gap, And tore a doorway as yet unfashioned To that other place of greyness; Clasped my heart and felt it Caught my breath and held it Until I, with pregnant apprehension, Onto that shadowed plain alighted, Drew lines of substance on the sand, And illuminated the galaxy. As I looked around in that enchanted deepness, Pondering the precepts that brought me To this wilderness so far from thought, I fell, lay a while in wonder, And died.

This display has made a caricature of your limbs, Exposed your shell, Split open with a resonant Crack That might have been humorous to watch If it weren't happening to such a weak creature. The sands of longing have driven you to lie in holes Waiting for the tide That will someday wash this beach away And with it, Any evidence that you might have lived a comatose state. If that’s what you want, so be it Wave your claws before my face We both know they're vestigial at best Remnants of when you might have had a reason to use them.

Your problem is not that you can't see where your writing is weak. Your problem is just that you're going about revision the wrong way. You're not supposed to look for weak phrases and re-word them so they look as pretty as the rest. The object of revision is to re-affirm your thesis, make sure it's being echoed in every part of the poem, and whittle down the excess. Let me elaborate. As for thesis, you have a point that you want to communicate with the poem, yes? Every single part of the poem is supposed to work to build up to this thesis. And as Eliot has written, it should not end "with a bang but a whimper." Quite the contrary. It's a hu

Breathe, breathe. Keep those eyes dry and, Gun through whatever must be done. Whatever you do, remember that it all; ...equals only you. Dim and faded, weak and waded, Don't live your life, Bleak and shaded. I have found a center of peace, To appease my worried mind. Sporadically attempt, to seek, To warm and to decide. Nerveless and dumb as so, I can still feel, Nerveless and dumb as so, I can still feel it. I have found a center of enragement, To appease the vicious cycle of deteriorating. Destructively attempt, to seek, To finally gain a sense, a sense of something. Keep those eyes dry and, Rifle through whatever must

When I lived under the Golden Water    In Hawaii Before I was myself Before I was tall Before I was long Before I was yellow    And green        And    All types of things There were men Old broken ancients of the concrete    Ocean Off the tributaries Away from the hotels and the cameras Inside the black glass and the tanned hides of glamour They lived in the weather We called them bums Where we would once call them heroes We called them bums Surfboard sidewalk And they killed themselves over and over The whores of New    Mecca We were And still we shunned them I was a boy And they were the living dead of  

The iris flicks high-right then mid-left. A crack disengages a silverfish--overt as a melanoma crawling over bare skin. And on, too, Jaun disengages, pesticide- ward. The sink cabinet handle adheres to fingertip as its cultured worms multiply into visibility. The hyperventilation returns. The inhalations suction dust and floor- spores. Breath extrudes from the lungs, 'n' red-spray traces saturate upon a fore- facing surface. His shoulders calcify stiff. Itches, too, multiply, sporadically throughout his anatomy with insufficient sharp nails to go 'round. Abrasions begin. Jaun fails to near a disinfectant. Bacteria imbeds itself

It wasn't always like this under the red moon. Beneath the light we were afraid to touch that suspended moment. Dreaming in an eternal loop of delirium, it is a long way, when the tears are not enough. Sudden harmony strikes and our lungs respire for no one. We weep beneath the moonlight for that fallen angel. Gabriel, the trumpeter, lay dead in the Garden of Eden. The last things we see are fragments of loneliness. Mementos of a recovered soul lost in the subtle art of love.

all the wrong heads make me up because summer is coming— what i ought to do is curry favor with the dangling brides, the ones not flickering like fireflies. i thought you were tolerating less these days, counting aloud the ticks from the time bomb— what you ought to do is play favorites with the fleas, the ones afraid of leaping, the ones like me. no more sleeping. whisper murder when what you mean is love. found in the poet’s frown is my death like your head on the table and men can’t motivate these bones into the ground. walking as god walks, leaden feet on soft sand, a giant’s hands on small shoulders

(1) hurt is merciful, contradictory. heartbreak and running into the trees, toward the drums, loose teeth and bleeding gums. the air is slithering and maybe what i’m seeing is me, planted up to my knees, black as sleep in the hot sun. i see how you’ve been dragged along, expected to trade your questions for calm. hurt is merciful. hurt is believing that love isn’t arbitrary, that heartbreak isn’t necessary. you are running after me, toward the guns, torn open for no one in the hot sun. (2) pressure and choking and cinnamon sticks in her hand, we cannot bring ourselves to shaky tables if this is allowed to stan

she lays in waiting the twilight in her hair a symphony of starlight above her land as barren and cold as stone below her raven hair wrapped about her, a shroud to hide her shame a mist arises from the shadows a chill to steal the life from flesh she welcomes it with open arms tears streaming down her angel face made innocent again with a child-like hope of dreams to come true it creeps toward her slowly enveloping her in its agonizing peace; her sweet head droops like a lily in the winter and her forgotten smile unfolds before the world one last time as she lets go.

I think I always knew how my lungs gave way under the weight of the sun--- and how the dreams I kept under my skin escaped through my goosebumps I couldn't raise my neck from its grassy landing, I couldn't even inhale the musty noonday air: not as long as it reminded me of cloudless skies and weeping willows, shedding tears so sparingly ...my muscles were too soothed by cross-breezes to bear the flights of sparrows and blue jays: and my outstretched wingspan, earthbound could no more grasp talons than the ends of my hair And as I lay there, I wondered how long it would take for those purple blotches to disappear from my sight--

She liked to watch him play the violin. She wasn't sure why - but she could not truthfully imagine anything more pleasurable than crouching down near to where he stood in all his rag-festooned glory, the ground at his feet littered with old newspaper and discarded plastic cups - and just listening , her bright eyes fixed on the long, crooked nose bent toward his instrument and the lengthy shadow he cast, set to trembling by the flickering light of passing subway cars. It gave her a curious sense of ownership, and of pride, to know that she alone, out of all the people who had ever heard this music, understood the melodies that this man wove