Somewhere beyond collapse
the voices of triumph
and misery run hand
in hand, back and forth
while train smoke whistles
out from both ears.

He quietly coughs up a lung
followed by the wings
of a butterfly in his strain
to brush aside the cannonball
that keeps his chest removed.

If only to crawl another inch forward–
like Pheidippides stretching to rest
just beyond the useless pall of himself.

Bear in mind the hurricane’s
calm blinking eye
barely within earshot

then a strongman with a high-
striker mallet
stepping up to the plate

and with–Houston,
we have lift off!
you might faintly grasp
the nonplus

of being dropped to my knees.
Through a crack in my skull,
the dunt from the the skin-

head’s monkey wrench speaking Japanese

There is no name for this wrinkled moment
beyond time itself
wherein the hours wring
out into years,

only for the years to writhe back
to seconds–
all for which you’ve spent
days on end

in the bends, as if beneath the very tree
of knowledge.
On a wilted pile of bills,
books and (yes) pineapples,

wondering not so much as to if
but exactly when
you bit straight through
the peel of an orange.

Those lovely years like the gin-soaked
floors of our rent-stabilized dream
remain as they fell,
having crushed whatever was made
in between.

I keep a crumpled trace of you sprawled
across the bed, which we kept holding
together with some glue
and nails, etching into a copper plate
the conjoined pain

of Chang and Eng–who, like us, lived life
in a bunker of glass
that, three stories up,
was constantly on display
as if for the world to watch us break.

After the days
of the next
have passed,

after the last
of their colors
have drained

from your ear
and their voices
have broken

like glass
and been swept
into a pile of silence.

After the black clouds
have breathed
their last

and Death’s fly
has sailed back
into the calendar,

only then will you
return to yourself,
solely with your

shadow in hand.

This miracle of the desert–
May it live on forever
In the thousand footpaths
Of a whisper,

The daydream of a stone,
The diary of a hammer.
A door opens somewhere
Along the threshold of evening,

Bringing out the rear
Light of a TV
In which a hundred skies
Pass over the subfusc

Of spring, towards this ocean
In me. Nevermind how long.

It was a season of tribal hatreds, cancelled futures, broken symmetries and, like this one, much more–
a tall white cloud dumped buckets of fire and ice
onto a black umbrella
under which a tired, old man baked in the sun
like a star waiting to explode,

watching as neighbor assaulted neighbor with pitchforks,
pen knives, fire extinguishers,
whatever was at hand to replace
their Second Amendment Right to keep and bear arms.

Forklifts were lifted; dumpsters–burning with clocks, calendars,
and monitors of all the ages–then picked up
to be dumped, some even detonated
in living rooms and swimming pools of the rich.

Governors and Generals, Executives were lined up
in the underwear of their wives
against the walls they stood for
and waited for the same wrecking ball.

One after the other
until nothing was left but a tall white cloud, a black umbrella,
a tired, old man baking...

Nevermind the elephant in the room
How about the giraffe making his charge
For the window or the raven flying circles
Around my neck as I sit in the hearth
Of the fireplace–where my face can’t
Be seen looking up at the stars
Choking on the soot of my thoughts

The hammer beneath your pillow
There to smash the head of your prince
When it turns back into a pumpkin

was born wielding a pocket knife, looking out a train tunnel in search
of a final frontier, plain but sharp enough to connect the sublime
with his own sense of terror. By the second grade, he had pulled
out all of his baby teeth and graduated from any danger
the local playgrounds had to offer. The next year, he began to ditch
soccer practice, preferring to jump from rooftops and, ultimately,
the next town’s lighthouse, which led to the eight-year old shattering
his femur. The next morning a retired Admiral found him with an albatross
tied around his neck, mumbling uncontrollably in iambic pentameter–
something about aiming to vertically up the stakes on *The Rime

of the Ancient Mariner.* Through the halls of his middle school,
he kept the bird close while practicing his knots and proving true
to his word. With a garishly bright French horn, he became disreputable
for...