Shots in the Dark

__________I
It was not the wind
but the heartbeat within

that caused the cradle to rock
__________and drop.

No sin was committed
__________yet innocence!

How cruel!  How frightening!
To send a boy scout on a snipe hunt.

He saw them on every rooftop:
Irma Vep_____smiled down at the runt.


__________II
Brown world
__________of the hyena

filtered green
__________nightscope.

To commit to sin wholeheartedly
is so seldom punished.

Abominable cinema by Bigelow
__________tortore on the screen!

Morality is a convenience
and a luxury.

__________End scene.

Nephalist

Slick slap
card flips
_____on speckled pearwood.

Nails click.
Fresh scent
_____ozone -- blue chlorine glow

beyond
glass doors.

_______________refait
she__________hesitates
_____then reclines.

Go_____nowhere_____tonight:

an inauspicious time
__________to drive home.

Incipient__________migraine.

_____perfume and wine

make her ill.

The chandelier
__________(silver wire,
__________mirror-clad bone)
gleams_____too_____bright.

Elegy

Amber_____backlit
_____booze
bottles
_____through_____thick
_______________tongue
__________news was not
passed by
_____thirty-second spot
_____following
an upbeat cat bit:
no one knows_____why
how__________blood
trickled, liquid thread
down the rain
__________gutter.

A perp runs,
returns fire.

_____"Never wore a wire."
_____His proudest line.

Covers doffed.
__________Pour
a round of shots.

Blue Collar Genius

Galactic_____fuzz
incandescent lint
spot_____fixed:
Andromeda.

From here, spit.
Then_____say
"Excuse me."

No one wanted
your opinion
except you.

Hominy, grits;
White Shoulders, black skin
Thank your lucky stars
Your mama ain't here.

slide_____rule
five_____shots
__________school
parking lot

_____fingers
rattle_____fence

singularity
__________drops.

Kraken

Jade green
_____adamantine
__________miles-high
_____curve
from shore
_____shot to the sky
__________it slips
_____back
through swells
_____hill-sized, steel-gray
__________capped white.
_____Storm
burgeons
_____from horizon
__________clouds fly
_____our

direction_____wet
wind looms cold
___________bloat

daughter_____meet_____son

_____from above
falls his hideous, cauliflower divine face
_____to hers, beaten bronze

overcast__________obligated.

Mother

Fern frond
_____curls under.
Wood louse
_____inches down.
Droplets
_____stop -- splash

granite-flecked cement
framing shadows

_____firmament's
reflection:

North side of the house.

Nigliktok

_____Floes grow out
crooked
__________chrome-blue

_____skeins of hair
crone
__________color of ash

_____prone at
world's end.
__________To pretend

_____heaven shall be
more of the same
__________is our faith.

_____The snow this night
is underscored
__________bright, razor-shadowed.

_____It falls in soft
white swirls.
__________Feeble

_____hurricane
of midges
__________circles the Coleman light.

He's All Mouth and Cock

Wielding his tongue, a poison blade
He threw his eyes at them
grenades, flayed them with his soul.

_____Not the best way to fight --

Trunks support canopy:
such is the natural
order of things.

______Whence now this monstrous

fog, gray-white, cold?
Its wisps curl everywhere.

______It hangs on shaded air.

Lights hover among leaves,
dip and rise as though

_____to evade the eye.

There is that smell
the wet stench of rot.

A heavy chain grinds
across the parking lot.
Who drags it?

_____Someone
__________breathes.

Launch

Summer sky,
__________nighttime
_____glow green

from without.
__________Stars shine
_____five points

on each, like those
__________teacher
_____glued to

papers you wrote.
__________Cursive
_____still new

to you.  Remember that she
__________forbade
_____ink pens.

The air's close warmth
__________shriven,
_____naked.

Outer space stripped our souls
__________too small
_____to know.

To pierce the veil, sail
__________up -- smoke
_____broken

and nothing's
__________ever
_____the same.

Playground

_____I walk Folsom Street
just because it's there.

Start down Sixth
_____mural all norteño, slick

with reds, greens
whites from Blick.

_____My eyes lick color
like lovers -- her legs

flanked either side by two pair hairier
_____wound 'round.

Turn the corner, sounds
cars make -- squeak.

_____Through the gate
bisect the wet grass.

Marshy underfoot.
_____I am alone, my

kingdom is silence.
I arrive at a yellow broom

_____citrus scent.
Then beyond, past

the bookstore:
_____old men stick it in

each other -- very chic.
Run with the sun.

_____Review the list:
the few things you left yourself.

Old dogs bark;
_____they nip our feet.

Retirement

It won't rain
rest
_____of the day
a break.
_____Maybe night.

That smell is malign.

_____No opiates?
They make you sick?
Perhaps cannabis -- it's nice.

_____We're all
hopheads in the end.

_____Adrienne Rich
down the hall.

Past the old man
_____who falls
down.

Apollo

He steps
_____off
Helios's bright yellow cab
_____up
a curb, lightly burned.

A tan
_____scarred
only inside
_____heart
or as the Chinese say

liver.

Hera and Ares

__________Echoes of faces lost in time

baffled and kind
attenuated, spread
atom-thin across

__________years.

Have you met the young sergeant?
Detective before long.
Mark my word.

__________Tears

he cried as a red-haired child
at the side of a dirt-brown
wound shame him yet:

__________men's

frailties women
know to shelter, whereas I
have been Loki, better

__________than

most at tending the fuchsia
the maidenhair fern
but am merciless

__________when

_____thorns draw blood, black-red.

Self-Conscious Smoker ISO Medical Doctor

Vast plain of dark jade, flaked and ground:
the undulating bay.
Whales quit this place.
Sounds made by seals
drowned out: clatter of flatware.

As insular as Manhattan,
these iron-jawed amazons who lunch.
How I love them, and hope
their sexy, sketchy boyfriends
don't tell on us.

Conscience as a burlesque girl,
her stage name something cruel,
like Charity, or worse.  Curse
her lazy routine,
the misandrist, tit-grabbing scene.

Old men in the audience zip
their flies.  Enough of her lies, her lip.

The Manzanita

Rippling at his feet, running due West,
it ends at sky's edge: a road of molten gold.

Violet-gowned Dusk drags her hem
over coals glowing wordless.  Old

vellum and blackberry ink.  Horse trail stink.
Piss in the sand.  Rocks are the gods

El Vaquero now propitiates.  To wind, linked
by chapped lips -- dry kisses deserts broad

and crawling with fresh pagan souls for Christ.
They climb mounds and trees like fire ants.

Their women are too free.  The Padre might
pray, invoke the rod, or forbid dance.

Little red-skinned apple, sweet girl, twists
her wood-hard wrist.  White bells sway in mist.

Kaji Meiko

Broken open, the song
draws sparrows to ground.

Her voice waltzes among
whispers: grass gossips 'round

fine, white ankles.  Temple
gate, a frame, sets off

laughing eyebrows.  Dimpled
smile -- the music stops.

Seventeen

Butter-yellow stucco
glows gold.  Sunlight shatters

over the western wall.
There the eucalyptus,

eighty feet tall, drops seeds
fragrant as rainforests

in Australia.  Shocked, she
conceived of life as a

sexually transmitted
disease ending in death.

Carve a heart:  the cement
is still wet.  Initials

inscribed therein remind
us of a school long closed.

Twenty-six

Every happy hour, she pulls a sour
face.  She's stoned, procrastinates.
Dad wants grandbabies.  When

will you slow down, fondle
the brown-edged scentless roses
you found in our box of wedding things?

What happened to that boy, the shy one
who worked in accounting?  Still in
that converted Victorian parlor,

all of your dresses on the floor?
Dental insurance and you don't
hate us anymore, I think.

Maybe you should drink
to the lucky ones who've come home
draped in flags, bagged and tagged?

Thirty-five

Prohibitive as the concrete meridian
where the onramp meets

the buckled, sagging freeway.
The thought of sex is as distant

as the Honda Civic, tan, up ahead;
it weaves from lane to lane.

You should have a little house in Amador
by now -- such as the one to which

your friends invite you sometimes:
microbrews in the hot tub,

off-color jokes under sugar pines.
Stars wheel above, but you

have kind of fallen out of love
with astrology.  A little girl

stares from a passing truck.
A baby, not an upbraiding.

A New Nature

Lined blood-red, fanged
Relentless

Angling inward --
ever in

The questing maw
Hot, clean breath

More horrible
than the smell

of dead things.  Freeze,
flee or front:

nothing taught us
on new moons

at cave thresholds
prepared us

for predators
who feed us

Edda Doggerel

A Copenhagen night, drunk.
Reeling under sodium lights.
Tame shadows stain the hand -brushed lawn.

When the feral white sun
first strikes the chilly, brooding walls
of Vestre Prison, at dawn

We will set sail for an abbey
out West.  We'll raid the monastic
boys, the ones in glasses.

We'll have dope and cash in our vests,
lure them with booze and sex, then
leave them alone to regret having met:

Two Vikings on a Quest.

North

Petals wet and dark
frame distant thunder

Shiver with stark awe.
Waving:  shaded ferns

Theirs is the terror
of the childless, spurned

by a sun hidden
in ice-cold wells, where

weeping amnesia,
leaves open blank mouths.

Hoarse

Gray morning
diamond-starred
shadows warn

Corners edged
with dead brick
loom ahead

Pluto's hulk
overhangs
mourners led

by ravens.
Lullaby
black, sodden

petitions
to Hell file
singly by

No pity,
merely shifts
in the air.

51/50

Did I rock the box,
most racuous coffin in Colma?

Kicking it haute,
or were the planks

Haste slapped to
trendy and green?

Assistance is awkward
whether persisting or in

Le petit morte, squeezed
with a blink,

A hair-trigger smirk,
a wallet no one wanted fat.

Beat it, cat!  The death coach
is here to snatch

Victory from defeat --
Hail Mary!

Afterglow

Eyes narrowed
satisfaction
feline

Or reptilian --
an asp.  Florid
carmine

Tongue tip to upper
lip.  Leg curled,
folded

in and over, post-coital.
The glow, roseate, wanes,
lingers.

Auspicious

Fat baby naked on a slab.
Blue-veined marble

From Rome's fabled suburbs --
from there, or the Lincoln linoleum store.

Lil fits the bill, stubs
fag after fag out in the bronzed

shoes.  Stillborn siblings
barefoot in the hedge.

Whispers constantly plucked
off the barbs edging a holly leaf.

Friends known only to you,
a king, a warrior, and a Jew.

Hercules

Actinic spark
blue from under
the vast glass pane

Microscope slide
seen obliquely.
Mirror I might

Spy him, a Greek
by way of France --
physicist, my

Lover one night.
Twice a year, scenes
from that salt-skinned

Tryst, nuclear
force, my lips, his --
neutrino laugh.

Unfurled

Scroll marked on light hide
one thousand feet wide
spreads south
from the cliff base (a lover's fall
just past my toes.)

The scroll is time's map
always rewriting itself
as far as the borders and roads
finally clot up to a line,
a dried blood-brown line

Bed for a heavy-breasted sky
overarching with jet planes and stars:
tattoos plastered on the left side,
a limber Egyptian goddess,
her face bent down to treetops.

Exhale green salt, living gales,
and vast, metallic thoughts
into outstretched gray-white arms.
Those arms beckon the setting sun
to stop for a moment, to sing.

Give or Take

Cordite smoke, gun oil
inchoate howl,
intramuscular

throbbing outward
from bruised
femur -- radiate.

Touch is blessed and damned.
Asked point blank
if I'd like another

I must remind myself
it is a question
of Western etiquette.

The Buried Return

Strange shapes
solidify at sight's end.

Pain is a promise,
the starlit desert song

of despair.  There is a plan,
choreographed cruel blue

behind that vast red
rage, empty and unanchored.

My pride before me, a tin shield.
The mind shredding vacuum

dismantles me
unanesthetized.

Distrans

Sweltering, we melt
in a huge box
lousy with clockwork.

Interminable cacaphony
of cogs and wheels --
futile machine.

Slightly above the din of it,
distant voices dance
closer and closer to birth.

Office

Homicide: a cardboard box
brims with yellow crime scene notes.

The box is marked with a Sharpie
and mumbles when alone.

Perp scrubbed the blood
away in '82, the subsequent

shrine of flowers, teddy bears
and snapshots now unremembered.

Golden shield on the desk nearby,
Black Label in the bottom drawer.

The skyline seen out this window
is a shadowed casket of souls like jewels.

Tenderloin to Mission

Stern pavement, the hard
flat slap, footstep of a Converse high top.

Smattering of voices,
ghetto plainsong.  Old men

sit on milk crates and play
chess.  They gossip, a feminine edge.

A pigeon scurries to the curb,
pecks at crumbs

spread by a 'do rag-sporting mama-san.
She trucks her bottles and cans

through this town scoured of ghosts,
where history holds its breath in unseen rooms

or sometimes waves from rooftops
to an unfortunate few.

Rags and Boxes

The sky these days seems small,
a coffin lid from the inside --

washed blue muslin lining.  This town,
a scrimshaw drawn on ivory

the hue of stale dishwater.  Men,
beautiful men, once thronged these streets.

I had been one of them.  Sudden,
the way today occurred, when

I realized I know what's under
every stone -- stones whose creases echo

the lines framing my eyes.  Lily Marlene
on my headphones.  An old dog sighs.

Suburbia 2

Iridescent oil slick
prism shatters bright
pink from one
facet on the drive
dandelions lie
among clumps
of crab grass
spider bites
toddlers' knees
rope on the swing
frayed, may break
when the sun dies
eaten by the moon
lunch time barbeque
June, with whom
you slept (your wife
still pretends not to know)
adjusts her mirrored specs
anticipating a stellar show

Shadows

Who are they,
the brittle shells

peeping from under cars?
They play

like children.  They leap
from tree to tree

and dance acrobatically just past
the ivy-clad meridian.  May

they ever draw near
enough for me

to see friends
among their masks,

the eyes that glow
with too-quick life?

Polemic

Mammon smells green:
perfume of cash

on the air.  Retail
or mausoleum?

The white, mostly marble
stretch of Grant Street

thronged with sleek
livestock, prize

heifers hauling bags
from Armani, Joe's

Jeans.  I bite the hand
of a big one.

She lows and kicks me off,
then with her phone sells

her stock in British Petroleum
at a loss.

Lizard

Flicker, dart
red stripe, brown
scale and claw.

From shade to sun
then return.
The eye, stern

and glossy black.
Lipless head, turn
this way and that.

A spider dies
snatched off a star thistle
whose spines tell no lies.

Telegraph Hill

A banana tree, odd to see
in this clammy town.

It overhangs the rickety
Filbert steps:

wet wood rambling down
towards Julius Castle --

closed for now -- recently
bought, I think

by some old coot; he must have wooed
his prom date there.

Her shoulders glowed white
in a mink stole.

A drink and a dance.  The lily corsage
wilted decades ago.

Misspent Youth

Eight full hours I worked that day
before slouching towards the gray

line of ocean stretched pole to pole.
Whitecaps and a tanker's scarred hull

slid towards the hidden Golden Gate.
I had a fifth of vodka with me.  Great

plumes of sand, tan and claw-shaped
leapt up off the dunes.  Succulents draped

over the hills hid a place where I
could sleep in my vast German army coat lined

with fake green fur.  Warmed by the lonely horn
heralding fog, I donned headphones.  Blondie.  Born

of a beast of a man, I could lay my head
anywhere away from the lights, the club kids' tread.

Civic Center 11 am

Stainless steel, brushed,
the ring stamped with a crown.

It glows gold in the hushed
sun-flooded bazaar down

from City Hall's verdegris dome.
Among pollarded trees stands a lone

vendor selling pretzels and Coke.
He seemed the king of the world

that moment he tipped his hat and spoke.

Marisol

She was smacked on the face only once as a child, for calling her brother a name.  "You little shit!" she cried when Ruben during one of his games smeared mud on the pink moire silk of which her quinciñera dress was made.  Her mother knew enough English to get dark in the face and bent out of shape.  Tears of anger cascaded down Marisol's face.  She ran away that night, but by the next day graced the backseat of a cruiser that had been on the make for truants.  What could he say, her father who worked til sundown for so little pay?  He was meek in the police station, his gray boots streaked with dirt, his shirt flecked with hay.  "Your mother forgives you and loves you, and God will never let you stray."  What a jolt into womanhood, that sixteenth birthday.

Arrow

Snap, thrum.
Numb forearm, wrist's throat.

Flash of white
on tan.  Start.
Hightail
stag-fast
bounce down, then up
a chaparral-choked
arroyo.  Clatter of stone
and dust.

From here his
four-point rack appears

a prayer
held aloft,
velvet fingers splayed,
crooked, askew
under an electric-red
sun-shocked sky
wider, more vast
than any a hunter

has ever seen.
Black-green sanctuary, nightfall:

impossible.  Animal
brother mammal

scream a terrible scream
a wounded child sings.

Gambler

Nickel gleam
his single eye
opens.  How rightly

he flicks a switch.
He doesn't try.
Animal timing:

a pure sweep,
smooth, of his rough
arm.  A tightness

in the groin.
Several coins
ago he could have severed

ties and walked off,
unashamed.  But the same
bells ring him sleepless

those nights
he's not there.
Why do they run away,

all those days,
April through May?
Hours spent under lights blinking

through smoke,
the haze, the somnambulent line
for the buffet.

Mental Patient

Rose gold fire illuminated
the nimbus of strands --
radiating corkscrew --
haloed toilet brush
with gesticulating hands.
Hilarious tramp,
eyes glacier blue.
Wild.  Damp
spots where the mildew
can't be scrubbed,
where spiders talk to you.
They divulge scraps of truth
their liars' webs have trapped.
Fuck the minotaur who occupies
your leather and tin steamer trunk.
The Virgin Mary's face
melts from the wall.
To this party all
are invited.  Even me
with my threadbare dignity --
even I am allowed to call.
Do pardon me, how rude:
I crane my neck
to scry a sign
in your furrowed brow.
I spoke with the cow
upstairs.  What a hoot.
She adores your laconic lines.

Tower of Silence

Level with the palm leaves,
green circle around us.
Birds pick our bones clean.
Sun-bleached, leaning
against each other,
rib to hip, beneath a wheeling sky.
Only the sound of water as it drips
onto lime -- the echo marks holy time.
The road back to the village
is red, dusty and dry.

Jones at Market

Gasoline and, inexplicably, cut grass waft in
on the mid-July breeze...

"Y'all got some grapes up in here?" asks
a brother on the make for some shake.

He's tall, big-boned and dark-skinned,
bearing a sheen of sweat under this sun,

which promises to bake us all to a crisp.
Footfall on light gray pavement and the sound

of an ambulance siren winds around
his much-abused inner ear.

Where once there was fear, now
there is hope.  A crease smooths from his brow.

How to Pray

Fervently I desire to be
some other's fixed
star, a true north
a fellow animal can't lose.

May I be
Ariadne's thread
wound through twists
and turns.  Ahead,

See a stone
corner.  Black streaks --
old water leaks --
mark it.  Dust

Is the only friend
expected.  Find me
just one more step
beyond.  The light

I seek to shine
will seem like the sun
glowing through alabaster.  White
is my quiet cloth.

Suburbia

Molten tears Pluto cried
at Orpheus's sad tale

fed the black stream
which runs down a hill

children sometimes climb
after school, knee-high

in dark green grass.
Their mothers call and call

them back to fatherless homes
filled with metal, with glass.

Starlight falls through roofs.
Dinners are silent, short.

The window sills bear
stones and twigs found while out

walking along that black
trickle.  It springs from a place

older than human love.
A face marks it.  None know its name.

The Interview Room

Do these white walls close in?

How many angels on the head of a pin?

When doctors pieced you back together again

Like biddies sewing a quilt so thin

Did you question then the army who killed

You night and day, broke against you, waves on a rock?

Who would have thought a myriad kalpas was so long?

A band of lost men played you for a song,

Helped you disintegrate until you were gone.

Sierra Nevada

Elevation seven thousand
incestuous aspens thick
as women standing near
a door -- woven together at
the feet.  Their meeting


is subterranean.  Speak
black bird who sits
among their green hair
brute against blue
firmament.  Shooting


West from Nevada, wind
scours the granite waste
and meets the Ocean's breath.
Shot rock to nude pines.
White flowers bloom, shocking.

Drive

Overarching cirrus clouds:

batting yanked from a quilt,

stretched over Arizona and dyed

red.  A speck, now, against them:

a soaring vulture fled dusk

for cover among the buttes:

fluted column stumps

dumped off Olympus, left

to erode.  Lines melt

into black, bold shadow.  A cold

titanic mouth, mute, swallows stars

over the horizon.  Farewell, bye,

lurid purple sunset met an hour prior...

Hello, frozen highway...The great

Forget.  A child sleeps:

back seat of a speeding car.

Cruise

"Panoramic," was what she said

about the coastline from on deck --

tepidly, as though three Manhattans and

the oblivious buffet line went

through her thoughts with equal weight.

There was a moment, though, yes

in conversation with the slim mate

of the doctor, over dessert, less

than filler, really, but during which

she casually touched on ancient Ur,

something about water and defenses.  Mitch,

the doctor, looked at her as though he were

you and she herself, both 19 -- the only one you wanted to sleep with

from that off-campus party years ago.  Then, she wore rabbit fur,

brushed aside her bangs using her left

index finger:  girlish, alluring, deft.