i see true beauty
when articles
become empty

of ideas, of metaphor
and anything but
sound. when i

read each iamb
and its sound pulses
through my temples

is not unlike how
i forget all ideas
when we walk along

and my mind rests in the
moment, as each step
surely presses ground

and blood pulses
through our hands,
becoming felt song

when sky is empty
above us, only air
and we are with nowhere

and the bareness of
meaning, pure lore
is breathing in beauty, truly.

in the golden light of ponds
glide a pair of teethed swans
terrible in graceful white
gods above a liquid aether
slicing through reflected light

water lilies' roots hang down
like an unseen fibrous crown
grasping what is real beneath, their
hands of beauty and of sleight
steady as a mystic tether

i cannot deny two worlds;
surface ripples are a dirge
for a mayfly meeting night
or a tadpole in rebirth, her
forming eyes sense golden light

andy said her fingers knitted
flower coronation
for her hair
at the park as his song
pulled at the hudson's water

like the fingers pulling thread
for clothing her grandchildren
in a quilt, patterned after
a midwestern love
the earth raked and laden.

both are strong and bittersweet,
the violence of a howitzer
in the distance now
rattling windows in their frame
deeper than foundations.

while brooklyn falls for easy girls
flood gentrification
the moma yearns for
the upper room of kansas,
grain silos with her kernel

truthful wheat, unadorned
like strong hands plucking strings
spaced like the rows
and wrought bones of the house
where she sleeps on the plain.

eyelid

me
ta
mor
pho
sis
is
com
pres
sion
of
sec
onds
in
to

marble

be
neath
the
eg
o
lay
er
words
weigh
down
on
i
deal

days

my indecision is rooted in
a dusty window in the basement of
the house on richard's lake road

where dust made the pane
each side a separate cosmos
and in between, incarnation

the residue of life clinging to lucidity
letting light pass through
its fossil poetry

making true discarded pots
and a leather bag
as the greens and flowers outside

beneath the sun sill factual concrete
framing the common descent
of each speck into thoughts

truth of beauty in the unknown
grows in me like  an orchid
inside the goldenrod light

finding transcendence
in a '95 ford taurus
is the best i could do

the humble babylon
columbia is no valencia
we're not shakespearean

unfolding maps and
self, i've never cried
so much, either

putting my things back
on a shelf, each like
store-brand soup

after the weekend
sucked our blood, and
buried color from our faces

i feel subterranean.
please leave my
sacred grounds,

it's no cahokia either.
i'm tired of trans
cendence and

road trips. plastic bags
are the most
beautiful thing emptied

of groceries, pneumatic
angels ascending
, logos aside. still,

it's no aether,
but nothing is,
today. i'm in a loop

a clover north of
denver, but it's night
so that doesn't matter.

water trapped
between
chipping paint and
the brick that sides
my apartment building
are those
fingernails scraping
sky blue sky
sky blue sky
sky blue sky sky
for years
for life
while thinking white is beautiful
or something
. downtown,
residual identities
in your eyelids
pollen finding
a lash
invasion of love
into a crown
of blue logic
let's let
let's let
let's let let
lay in grass and
plant dandelions.
and a tear in this case
is just a symptom,
efflorescence seeps
from the thoughts
of cold
and let's and
and let's and
and let's and and
and go on forever like
every blade of
grass, amen