The cost of debate

i.
The cost of debate is a spat; core of
the argument is

To rave in the face of steel, as water,
As the kill of an

Antelope driven to the stream of
Counter-argument;

Thirst of cage and closure visits
The rag that is

A final yes, a defeated maybe.

ii.
The treble falls out as the
Note of rigor

Stalls; it’s the rhyme of a
Torn gash of

Rain that patters on an echo
Of private

Yesterdays and a manifesto
Of historicals.

iii.
The rigor syncs in with the fallowed
Small; the administered,

Untaverned solid mass of lovers
Out of bulb with the

Cold syrup of a ravenous torn, a
Vat of turmeric salted

On reams of arid paper, typed up
Fragments of recyclables.

the poem as body

the poem as body of
the homosapien, the act
                    of verse as the bond
                    that melds the distant
    adjective and the reticent
    noun, rhythm that floods
your eyes with mime.

where do the parchments fly off

where do the parchments fly
off and

coalesce, or wish to? Come
by this

house, a small fire burns
that will

warm the ink of your untouched
palms.

every nook every inch of my
armspan has

whiff of the arboreal air,
the grunt

and moan of the sun’s lapse
and its

tailspin; why does the moon
smell so?

the poetics of justice

the poetics of justice are languid,
true, but to a point – at which it must

fail to act as intermediary, as mirror
to fact preceding and after; it’s an

outliered form of harmony where all
that matters is not necessarily rhythm

but a certain terseness of bell, a
balled out veracity come out to play.

Proof of rum

An antiseptic thumb is proof of
Rum; the

Thin of your eye’s lacquer is
Terrifically

Strung to the river’s thrum,
The sliver

Of riven decibels that decimate.

The grazed arms of battle

The grazed arms of battle
Shine where

You dare not whisper
Noon; where

Your cyst and cymbal are
Dead; where

The eyes of discernment
Meet: there.

The doomsday of the brush

The doomsday of the brush of
My calf is Tuesday, why not

September? The carriage of bloom
That sits on your neighbor’s lawn

Is retired from courage, will you
Grant it redemption from cloth?

five soft tangents


I.
when dream of craft catches
breath of

river, strum of the fire’s
longing for

sun, and the soft purr of the
whispery

snow, the beak of the pen is
spoken for.

II.
the denouement of hope is a cat skill
played out in solemn

tones of a lurid yellow, thrust in
the tomes of a

fairy tale ending, the crumbs of word
skills that speak

life, speak air, speak soil; the rift
softens the glare.

III.
Reason in dissolution goes
East.

East howls silence if it
Is to

Be heard; the lords often
Look

Scared, and as well they
Should.

IV.
the folk swoon catches the
hard edge of

reason, its not so tender
ramifications

and contours that outline
death’s vane

and vine; the softness of
song-whistle

V.
the alphabet soup of soft
ness is

warm; curdle the rein of
direness

while milking the flower
of pain;

no point in silting blood
when the

gods of winning are crying
lovetears.

If only the young were trees

“When a tree becomes a boat it learns to swim. When it becomes a door it continues to keep secrets. When it becomes a chair it does not forget the sky that was once above it. When it becomes a table it teaches the poet not to be a woodcutter.”
Mahmoud Darwish, “If only the young were trees” from “A river dies of thirst”.

The poet teaches the sky not to fall,
the ink not to dry at 
                    each drip of the woe-man's
                    sorrow; and it teaches
rain
    not to withdraw 
                    its love for want of a tiny
                    thunder waiting on the other side.

feel-thinking

I grapple with the word-form, the
verb-act, the similitude and the
norm; word opposes word in stream;
the begetting of meaning and its
arousal – beset by cloud, cut off from
the arm that inks each word, where
will the sigh announce its opposition?

“Reality is very, very contradictory, and so I try to write just perfecting what I see, what I read, what I feel, in a feel-thinking way. Not only giving ideas, or receiving ideas, or trying to explain something, but mainly feel-thinking, a feel-thinking language able to tie the heart and the mind, which have been divorced.” Eduardo Galeano