Is not catalogued or structured,
lanced through like exotic birds and butterflies.
All here can be touched: snuff boxes, skeleton keys,
glazed porcelain dolls, hands of playing cards
decrepit with dealing. Preceding Death,
nightmare figures of a burgeoning Tarot.

Who carved such centaurs dancing
behind sheer curtains of miniature playhouses?
Stringed-up minstrels with fire for hair
and dirty threads, drowsy in slow limelight.
Something in the eye crawls.
The stage skies are dawn or dusk.

They collected him, the cabinets of doll’s houses,

Frost melt into words Flowers bloom into poems But when I'm before you My script vaporises

He starts work at 2am 7 days a week for the love of 3 children who share a room
but see their father everyday since he gets off at 1pm and picks them up from school
I know this because I finished eating 4 spring rolls and my dad had drank 5 beers
when we left Pho Bang and ran into him pushing his UPS trolley back to the truck
and my dad has no friends throws around the nobody understands him line
finds a conversation where he can so it starts like Sorry man
Don’t be sorry you’re the one working I just finished lunch and that’s all I’ve done today

Can you separate
the omelet and the orchid?

The eggs from the open flower?

Did the sudden sharp yap of the dog
send a white light up your spine?

If you don't know if you're up or down,
bottom or top –

I am charmed and strange.

To process such perceptions,
negotiate these pexa et hirsuta,

would you barter Shereshevsky's
haywired brain?

You could recall your life –
more than yesterday –

and integers make interesting friends.

Or would you rather recognize a face,
comprehend a metaphor,

back from war
the soldier cleans
his room

(DailyHaiku, June 2009)

My favorite summer
is not the same as hers,
still, I roll my papers
the way she prefers them — thin.

I remember our first hits of cannabis,
lit by the heat of our perfect kiss,
smoke escaped while windows rolled,
seats reclined as feelings shaped.

My eyes sagged,
still I could not take them off of her.
Her face a blur behind white
clouds and infinite dimensions
of moving crowds.

Breakfast bowls
no longer needed milk or Frosted Flakes.
Weekend after weekend
of special cookies, brownies, and cakes.

I found your first book today in a second hand store at the Harrisburg Station. Dingy and age-tanned, it retained its dustcover, with a photo of you at 22, wearing a threadbare corduroy coat I'm sure is still in your closet, and what might pass for a smile. It's a rare first print from '69. My war. Your deferment. You kept to your poetry like you kept to the old neighborhood, both mired in bottomless poverty— an endless scraping by. Yet, just last year, The Times called you the Bashful Bard of Brooklyn. We will lay you out tomorrow in a sandy plot in one of those many cemeteries that dot the

Lacrimosa! Lacrimosa! Lacrimosa!
Das mille lacrimosa et centum triplex
Non amoenitate diruat illas cruces!
Lacrimosa mi palpebras base
Ac tu ex me ocululis vade!

Es lacrifer sum lacrimare
Tange amici argentate!
Lacrimosa! Lacrimosa!
Peri mordax lacrimose!


Translation:

Tears! Tears! Tears!
I give a thousand tears
And a hundred three times over
Nothing good could break these crosses!
Tears, give my eyelids kisses
And you, flee now from my eyes and me!

You’re the one who bears the tears
I’m the one who cries

the sheets you live in are haunted
they make a ghost out of fatigue
a blanket has fallen to the cold
floor the lightbulbs have long

since burned out
again and again you shake
yourself awake in this
haze after darkness

Doom waits outside
he has the place surrounded
the man and his goons imbued
the atmosphere with repellence

you stall with smoke
and anonymous motion
singing songs to make
amends with pre-occupation

it’s sure, there’s nothing worse
than to choke on impatience
scorn is the common armor

The glorious glimmer of twilight
Peeks and casts reddish ghostly shadows
Apparitions of my childhood playmates
My tiny hands manipulating puppets
In my theater – King, Queen, pawns and crocodile

Can’t you see, feel the evening twilight at day’s end
Bursting yellow-red paint on the horizon
Fierce light blind shadows follow
From sundown’s blistering, flashing rays
Harkening the coming quiet darkness, stifling mysteriously
Sleepy, I am hibernating, half alive, inactive

We marvel, as visitors to mother earth