do you ever get the feeling that all is lost, that we're back pedaling
trying to reclaim it?

yesterday
we had an art life.
today we don’t want to own it.
we don’t want to own up to the fact that
we live to die,
die to live
each and every endangered moment.

ex-pats of indentured servitude
living life on the margins
undamaged,
wildly imaginative
desperate,
unconditionally free.

we, my love, are the
oxymorons
all that is you
and me.

down the road of wreckless dreams
running in place
after me, after you
running so hard i cannot see
the blinding light
brilliant
blameless
blazing like flames
burn in hell with me

the pounding, angry hell of wretched passion
a hell called love
a hell we cannot harness

surrender, i hear you think
surrender, i repeat
and in the repetition
i release the fear, the threat.

i look into those hazel eyes
the light ablaze
blameless
when you dynamite my hardened exterior
exposing all of me.

i want not
do not want what you give me
to think about
there are no consequences
no conclusions
the white, the black, the pattern
of love, the colors...
the longing
why do we forget?

the soprano down on 12th street unleashed the firestorm.

she sucked all the oxygen from the room

filled with despondent artists seeking redemption

from self denigration, despair, uncertainty and chaos.

you must look into her eyes, hold that gaze

and do not waver.

the turbulence unbearable,

the intensity, the burn

of years confessing all but love

that sat in an unopened box

waiting to be claimed.

we were fearless companions in the name of art,

excess and social justice.

oh but for the night of splendor when we touched

the hunger fathoms deep as if we would die of starvation

when our plates were full

the curtain of torrential rain

as the wind shear strengthened

fire whirls exploding, darting about

aimlessly.

compensation for obliteration

of all things known and unknown.

do not look back, do not turn around to see the carnage.

that is what we told ourselves

because it seemed we could not bear

the loss as we watched the dissolution,

as if we would lose everything,

lose it all.

our lives, our loves, our freedom, our history

as confidantes in a reckless and morally incomprehensible world.

we watched as it all burned up

and found

among the charred remains

the box.

Tracing the lines to Orly Airport
baggage gone missing
$200 in my pocket,
two months across the lonely continent.
So tell me, where does the time go?

Thirty years, another opus
stripped bare of non-essentials.
There are no fictions
only roads that lead to impasse.
Or the rotary so notorious
it circles endlessly,
the mind unyielding.

I am the architect of my dreams
I am floating, iridescent on the necklace
of the sea, the horizon
wavers in the distance
unconditional
without intention.
I am fearless
at the center
of truth.

They never tunnel to the surface

and if they do, you don’t hear them grunt

and slither back through the soil drum 

heavy mounding

nomadic

obsessive-compulsive ravenous

bio-mass eaters,

pheromonal.

Can’t get rid of the bloody things

wrecking fantasies about art and risk,

about timelessness

and real intention.

There's nowhere to go

when you realize you've already been there before.

happiness is superlative
an exaggeration of a far superior state of mind
presence among the timeless
spontaneous remission of future past
in the now that is always preferential
if not presidential
with or without the paper money

I stand before you defenseless

in an empty room some place I’ve never been

before. Your lips are moving but I hear

the rush of sang chaud.

Hidden thoughts ricochet, the ones you had

yesterday in the narcotic haze of twilight. There

is no tomorrow tomorrow but the moment

is slipping away. That is all we’ve got, you remind me,

all we ever had. You disarm the silence.

short was the distance between bedroom and bath

long the hand that struck me

confined to porcelain

the water lukewarm turning rose

a razor of light cutting a swath

through the wavy glass pane

cracked from another episode of rage and redemption

i did not beg for release

ass out, all attitude, a tongue of shank

my fortress, relentless the syllabic barrage

i would have asked for more but  

the click of heels on the black and white tiles

retreated