The smoke is rising from my cold cigar.

I turn my wrist to wipe away the ash,

but specks of once-warmed dust burn small like stars

crossed and crackling right before the crash.


This broken brandy bottle’s from Madrid.

I forgot the corkscrew and the glass

and had to break it open out of need,

since need is most what drives me out of class.


I’ll starve all of my falcons, rust the foils,

take lighter to the bookcase, colored clothes.

Mayhap I’ll chance to move from mortal coils

and mutter to myself before we go.


So nursery-shadows are substantial things

when monsters must remove the crimes of kings.

It seems that mirth is something you can lose,

a costume that can change. The haggard king

exchanges rule for loss, and everything

conspires against. Receive unhappy news


without a tear, unflinching to a fault.

The jokes are coarse, the humor darkens rooms

unlit and silent. Harken to the tomb

of ancestors upright, of pillars’ salt.


There’s nothing not to doubt. There’s nothing left

to hold you here in thrall to royalty

you do not recognize. No fealty

will honor you. A prince can be bereft.


And still be still. And still be yet himself

despite the skull that waits upon the shelf.

Well, shut my mouth and open the goddamn door…

Ass-fuck me and call me Guildenstern!

What the shit in heaven or on land

is monkey-sucking philosophy for

if a holy mother-loving ghost returns

to hopscotch in the hallways, my good man?


Is being born and living and getting smoked

just a sophomoric class prerequisite?

If this isn’t all there is and if there’s more,

which hidden gnomic deity should be invoked

to do this thing pass/fail, or audit it,

or skip it  – hit the tavern, drink and score


I’m tired. I don’t need apokotastasis.

My dude. My dad. Let’s drink and get shit-facedest.

The codices are chained for their protection,

scholars claim. The knowledge needs be saved.

But prison gates can swing both ways, my man:

so call me just a rogue and peasant slave.

There’s poison here, it drips between the pages

and drains to drop on ears left unaware.

A snake is always waiting in the garden.

A woman takes the heat. A man just stares.

I start. I pause. I make of this my art –

the sudden fits and shocks, the long distractions

are most of how I work. It’s called “The Process.”

Or, stripped of artsy bullshit, it’s inaction.

I’m reading words. The words are what I read.

And still somehow the words are reading me.

The mirror’s shut. So I am all that is

or all there is to see or to be seen

as far as I can tell. That’s what I mean

just in a nutshell, bounded, as I live.


I know the moves, but just refuse to dance –

the solemn, grave automata that wrench

and pivot, creak and bid their mouths unclench

to pay their great respects, then smirk askance.


This face stares back as sharp as poniard point,

as full of steel, but half as resolute.

I play my part and pay the piper’s flute

then pose as though this paused, out of joint.


I’m out of luck and out of all my depths,

but I’ll kill the band before I prance those steps.

The hard, objective world of facts dissolves

upon the tongue of language. Like a drug,

a rave, a dream, a fancy of the light,

The-Thing-In-Itself abandons and devolves

before our very mouths. A word like “prince,”

or “mother,” “uncle,” even “nunnery” –

solid and inarguable close at hand,

will turn to phoneme, syllable. Repeat and rinse

ad infinitum, ad astra per aspera,

mea maxima culpa mea domina noctis.

I said a thing in anger I regret,

the anger most regretted. Run, mascara,

and streak the cheeks just as she turns to go:

once IRL now parable. Now GTFO.

That marquee question of which world is better or worse

is just academic to healthy and privileged males

whose station affords them the luxury. Tell me no tales

of soft melancholy: no previews, no time to rehearse.


The pancreatic cancer or chemo or fibromyalgia

will clear this right up. With quick-snap salute and alacrity

pain ushers us into the vestibule and almost tactfully

presents us our seat. A twinge of latent nostalgia


narrows our focus. The corridor echoes some mumblings

as someone is peeking around the velvet curtain.

The gags keep on recurring, lines are tumbling


and run off book. You can't forget the callback,

the trailer’s almost done, the coming attractions

after this short break. The bodkin’s just your fallback.

This small, dark box resembles Elsinore –

haunted by confessions left in wood,

I leave with different sins from when I entered,

my evil blessings worked to cruel good.


Bless’d Vendetta becomes my patron saint

since there’s no priest behind the wicker screen.

And if I can’t confess, I won’t repent –

unless new hesitations intervene.


My dream of heaven is his circled hell;

my hands ache for his neck, or for his eyes

and I’ll invoke sweet incense, sulfur’s smell

to murder, make his teeth my rosary.


Or if holy doctors admit no joy in hate,

to gain his death I only need to wait.

The weave is thick. The fibers part with force

alone at last, give up their brotherhood.

The fabrics can go hang. This is no good –

I thought this night for action, not remorse.


The weavers spun their thread and cut the cord

just right. Would that the same be said of me,

my meetness, fitness, rightness. Let me see

the endings match beginnings. My good lord,


I heartily ask your pardon, beg your grace

forgive the rude intrusion on your person.

You did once flatter betters, felt them worsen,

so I’ll admit to flattening your face.


The picture is better spattered, I do think.

I’d better find your daughter. We’ll grab a drink.

Once through the door you smell the soiled sheets,

a hint of lotion, incense burned away.

As serpents slither mating, then release

in darkened secrecy from light of day


so mysteries entangle, oiled and warm.

Disgusted fascination draws you in

and makes you stretch your hand out to the swarm

before the strike. It tastes of that first sin.


The venom courses through. You suck it out

and spit it back into the viper’s face,

then grab her by the neck and feel no doubt

that this will be the time, will be the place.


So snakes (despite their cunning) can be caught

and charmed to simulate; but won’t be taught.

The past is not completely safe, benign.

If ends must match beginnings, then beware

your birthplace, and your childhood’s tangled vines

which hold you still (if plants can hold you here).


Your mother is your killer, if you live,

and if she dies, your is like hers is was.

And fathers break the faith you both would give,

though neither ever knew the root’s dark cause.


Mind all the familiar cracks and turns –

the banister’s soft groove, the third worn stair

which will remain when lined and curling worms

become familiar with your tongue and hair.


If man’s a palace, ribs and arching vaults,

let later tenants settle older faults.

The waves are knives. The sails move like a curtain

hiding something shapeless. Wait and see

if you can hear the tides turn with a creak

of main mast timbers. Nothing here is certain.


Just north-northwest, a speck on the horizon

moves around like floaters in the eye,

inconstant. Crow’s-nest lookouts raise a cry

and some young maiden’s eyes lift in orisons.


The sun descends in speed, how like a blade,

how utterly it carves the sky a path.

The inattentive clouds just out of grasp

strike up a march, and strut in their parade.


The stench of powder mixes with the salt;

the action’s rising. Fault will meet its fault.

The blue and black, the ripples like a quilt,

the endless depth of dark and jagged glass

call to mind the bed in which I filled

many a dying hour, dead sleep at last.


Thus rocked and lulled, my exiled mind should pass

from discontent to nothing. Yet the steep

abyss into forgetting is overcast

with pale and sickly shadows that I keep.


The coast is clear, the shoreline undisturbed.

My keepers keep on keeping me in sight,

as mariners observe how flocks of birds

presage the journey’s end, how fails the flight.


The dusk of dreams is come, the howling gale

and all my sleep is filled with blackened sails.

This jackass pile of bones, this cynic grin,

this meaty sweat of peat and under-arm,

this earthen fortress safe from every harm,

this tourist trap that beckons bystanders in,

this unmarked plot, this index of the lost

encyclopedic knowledge, this parade

and bacchanal, this wild ecstatic rave,

this king-size dirt nap blanket gray-green moss,

will wait and cry and strain and sit and call

and reach its strangled fingers to the lights

it knows that it can't touch, can never quite

extend to grasp but tries to hold them all.

When I have fears that I might drain the cup…

that's what I want to be when I grow up.

The readiness is all, so I’m prepared

or ready to be ready at the least.

It is what it is – we all know that’s the deal.

I’m full of portents; that's not the same as scared

and mystic vision doesn’t make a priest.

I’m sparring just for show. Then shit gets real.


It’s not to come. I care too much to care,

dear lady in the garden by the beasts.

To bend, to flex is harder than this steel

and twice as sharp. Turn the winding stair

to find the slaughter, leopards at their feast.

Say the words to bless the final meal.


The spirit broods, the note is unresolved.

Silence roosts and settles in the hall.

Shuffled feet. A clash and then a tear.

The muscle memory the flesh forgets

calling back to mind. Dynamic balance.

Keep up. Adjust the tempo you must set.


The scattered image flickers. Rasp of blade.

Flex from front to back, from back to front

and back again. Be in continual practice.

Forget the nunnery. Forget the nun.


If anything, you’re at the very center.

If nothing, you’ve reached the tilting edge.

Maintain. Retain advantage; find surprises

not least within yourself. A murmured pledge


to see the action through, to pass beyond

opponents. Fully here – then wholly gone.

He weighs just next to nothing – this dumb fuck

would starve a hunger out. He won at loss,

beggared the wealthy man’s imagination. (Luck

of the draw, I guess.) That dude could run across

a peerage, wealth, a fancy education,

a tenure or a sinecure from God

herself and still keep moaning at his station.

The phony fakey fucker missed the fraud

we all get suckered into. We find the lady

on the last damn turn, the princess in another castle

but we pays our money. And if the game is shady

we takes our chances dealing with this asshole.

So dump him in the ground with all of us

regretting we were ever more than dust.

We ain’t never knew where Sad Boy could show up –

the ballroom, chapel, parapet. Sickly-face

and double cross-eye, hangdog royal pup

might stray all over. Poor kid. Whats-His-Face,


the hanger-on, would meet him out sometime

and croak a crooked laugh and squeak some shit

and stuff his dome with rubbish dirty rhymes.

He weren’t half-bad. Not like them ruffled gits


who’d snuff a double snuff to mist the eye

and sniff a balmy sniff with their respects,

then palm a little charm to bye the bye.

It’s all a dreadful mess now, one expects.


He never came down here, no, that I doubt.

Down here is where we wash the poison out.

Another heir apparent gone like wind,

another great dictator under glass,

another nepo baby come to naught.


To germ and die, to wither, grow like grass

and fall like leaves or crumble in the pot,

a cliffside reed to flap and snap or bend.


Enclosed below please find a question mark,

a riddle’s poor construction never solved,

a knot that halts the shuttle on the loom.


Here lies a planet refusing to revolve,

a curtain blowing in an empty room,

a seat that’s set to ruin in the dark.


Must give us pause, perhaps pay our respect

to dirt turned man. To end of intellect.