Internal Combustion
The flames of earth-open
oil torches hand-shadow cliffs
tankers ablaze punctuating the horizon
on black waters
beneath a basin of black
the fragility of stars
smeared by the pre-image of LA
cities paper valleys with false light
sheets of indecision
which exit to use
neon burning words into the imagination
where they reside, a sight leprosy
with flakes of texaco and taco bell
the strip-malled intellect
impatient
for thirty miles to the next services.

 Lake Baikal
Synapse trickle
His epoch drifting in and out of her love
a parallax error
too many south seas cathode blue
flickers on ceilings
as night steals
(the street reminded, by the creeping,
of clandestine things
robberies, the striations
of light leaking from shutters
as if the lives inside
came intermittently
and in between lay secrets)
too much sand
no matter which color
its analogies with universes and eternity
the gravity of detail
fans she played with as a child
with their sandalwood scent of Chinatown
now echo
her trajectory arcing out of focus
and for him it is when
the oar ellipses into the water
and the rings in the stillness
reach out
touch everything-
with the next stroke
will he pass that place
in the water where the depth
knows it is the deepest in the world?
Will she leave frost traces
etched deeply into winter
faint as a leaf-veined wing
beating too fast to see?
Here in a place whose analogies are
exile and white lies.
How brief
their pale magic wans
looks away from the entices
of trapeze fall
charm nets gauzing tent walls
the first moment of seeing
a valley never visited by strangers
and how they go there together
with mutual eyes
wake knowing
every crevice of the earth is mapped.
Even secret agent satellites
giving away the stretches
of Siberia
where every year the roads rupture
and no one ever goes.
He slips this idea into his briefcase
between a novel-sized computer
and his next appointment.
She grows a callous in the airport
notices the bruises circling
her fingers underneath her rings
erases it in interviews
and later
much later, sings a sour note
by mistake, at the top of her range
standing in a resonant spot of the street
(someone pretending not to watch
propped half-hidden in the next doorway)
a testament to something missed
the lost kisses of all the other
missed events
scraps of paper unhinged
from lampposts
stepped on, illegible
tracing the edges of a breeze which circles
and he doesn't know
why Antarctica
why the North Pole.

 Moments Before
A sweet little plague
the musicians assembling
coffee instead of blood
trembling in my veins
time instead of thoughts
in my head, replacing me.
Sun instead of stars and clouds
the blank spate of sky
opened all the way up.
The arms of the universe erased.

 Elegy for Ginna
I.
Your ashes bewilder the ocean.
It was still dreaming of you
as vapors rose to a thousand clouds
under the idle sun.
It was not ready for me
arms raised/rent hair
lifting your body and letting it go;
lighter than air.

II.
I try to fathom you as ashes
grey or withered.
It is easier to think you are a leaf
brittle on the palette of the autumn ground
something in the sound of you
beneath a stranger's feet
breaking.

III.
Now you founder
at the bottom of my dreams;
you clog channels
race schooners
chase strands of whistling
which linger in the empty places
of the open sea.
In the space left where
your body is no more
is everything.

 Omens

You can burn yourself
[it says] on tap water
not like on the train

Kein Trinkwasser and the faucet
dripping printed plain in three
languages warnings or four

in the morning speeding into
the oncoming engine; plowing shaping fields
five die and the cracked car on the soil

right outside the station causing delays
as far as Dover where you would disembark
the whole island rocking from your lifted weight

as you walk onto the water
guilty now at last
the bottle warm at the end of the bed

[you've filled it from the spigot in the tub]
that even with your Delphic heart
you could not foresee

what kind of lover you are
a secret kept between the sheets of his preconscious
and you've used only hot water

not like on the train
sitting cold and silent
a smolder

in the veins of the house
erupting at the outlet where small raised letters warn
babies not to touch

lovers now afraid
shiver in their shells
the slough of windows, corners, closets, stairs and doors

sliding away
as they scuttle like a flesh thing without shell
always afraid in two languages or more

warnings they've chosen to ignore
even in Arabic's sliding beauty
still means Vorsicht!

but love is blind [it says]
in engraved letters stamped deep and tiny in the fine print
of no foresight, "you can burn yourself."