On a crisp fall morning
I try to lobotomize myself
with knitting needles, supine, wide
eyes staring past their protrusion
to the skylight but find in the
prodding and sweeping, the severing
of softest membrane, cleansing
of memory, experience--
that one can begin but
cannot finish a lobotomy
on oneself.

So I sit Slack-jawed and still
with needles hanging
from my eyes, singing some
fragment of lost song as the
leaves fall; I remember
nothing and no
one seems to notice.

The dishwasher hums; I play piano
and get a little drunk.
The oven is on but I forgot
to start dinner and her shoes
are scattered across the floor, their
shadows changing softly as afternoon
gives way to evening.

This moment is a dream, a muddled perception of what
seems Real. The context no longer matters, I know

so time passes slowly
like a songless spirit shuffling
across vastness
into vastness.

and my hands, not knowing
what to do, keep the time--
a funeral march, while the light
changes and the smell of food
does not emerge from
the kitchen

The season gives up
its last gifts under hushed moon
light and sworn in whispers,
sealed with stars, new
alliances are made. The moon aches
for earth and orbits
her curves, disturbing her
waters from afar from under
a shadow veil.

You are here with me, a silent
presence hangs between us while
the fields give forth final grain
and gourd

to lay down in waiting for the death
of winter's hard hand to brush
their eyelids closed and turn their bounty
back into earth.

And moon, a dark stone
whose borrowed splendor hides
a hollow song, glides
over, never closer,
his eternal dance of solitude
illuminating some night threshing

and our still hands never touching

It's a Motherfucker.

Memory Man you make yourself
comfortable in the darkness beside me
your weight and scent unwelcome
and you reach--

stretch to my side while I read, slithering
your greedy arms around me searching
and defiling my respite,

your creeping fingers play
upon my neck as I pull the bow searching for song,
I find only hollowness and wanting
as they slip
softly around and constrict.

I curse you and excise your spirit
but you return in the dead quiet
with gin on your breath and sigh
into my ear, silencing my call

Running a rake through sand--

swirling furrows and circles the point

is not to revelate but to be found

In getting lost. The movement, a repetition

Impresses memory on the sinews,

a comfort new and old like first and last

breath and the wind of living

Sun bleaches the grain, leaves

pollute the media.  I stoop to finger each,

And fold into pockets filled with debris.

40dysnthdsrt
wllmkychs
mrages&ls
yrwy