Lyrics & Poetry
Iris
Everyone knows
That the light in your windows
Is only a form of
Ephemeral repose
From a darkness so bottomless,
Velvety wide,
It could eat you alive,
And each night that it don’t,
What a miracle!
Then the dawn’s paintbox blush
Brushes glorious things!
Is it any surprise
How the light-mongers cling
To the bright cream of life,
Simulacra of winning,
And sweet Soma pretense
What happens come dusk
Is not happening?
All we spy open-eyed
On this side of our dreams
Gets reversed on the retina—
Not not what it seems.
Double negatives dance
Through the optics of mind.
In the cloth of perception,
Weave warp and weft true,
But the twist’s a lie.
Ooo the way you reverse
Through my eyes, then my mind—
You’re the kind of light-liar
That I like to like.
Might I twist the illusion of you
For a spell?
Might I make like the light,
Take a dive down the well
Of those seraphinite irises?
-2020
What Happens Come Dusk EP
Four Bottles, Out to Sea
We are not a river bed.
Droplike & stretched, we shed porcelain,
Pleasing as the mirrors who would lay on the sea,
Fealty pre-sworn to the softness of anarchy—
Ancient thing, ambivalent at gunpoint
And blackening to birds.
If we’re here to fall apart,
Let’s fall apart exquisitely,
Regardless of enkindled, delusive degree,
And the muck & a gleam
Devour one another and waste.
Never let’s spill us like jelly to waves!
My heart was mollusks, transparent like they
Were poppets I parted, all staggering true,
But human & scorpion vain.
(Black bottle, blue bottle,
Green bottle, gold bottle.)
I would turn my face
Inside out for my love—
Tooth and nerve bared
For who knows who
Would find them enough.
(But I would turn my face
Inside out if enough.
Run, void-milk blood,
Void milk run!)
I would shake these bones out
To better know my love—
Know the nature of my love.
(Pretty charcoal traces
On the vellum of a drum.)
Bind this bone raft
Float us out to the sea—
Ribs over ribs under ribs
‘Neath the bowing gate of baleen.
(Black bottle, blue bottle,
Green bottle, gold bottle.)
You be the egret-bitten
River of the estuary.
I’ll be the bell(e) in the whale
On the wine-darkened sea.
-2020
What Happens Come Dusk EP
Auguries
I’ve seen your art.
Mine flows the same.
It courses through these crooked veins.
Make blue my skin,
Make warm extremities.
What can we make
Of vague malaise
In strained, untempered, threatened days?
We saw those engines built on steam
And raised them ages
Fueled by blunt fatigue.
Fire on the heart-line
Cracks along the life-line
Hunger in the bloodline
Echoes through the hive mind
What have you done
To last the day?
What wicked prices did you pay?
What breadcrumb fragments of yourself
Got dropped along the way?
I’ve done as much
If not the same—
No dignity to grace my name.
Nobody makes it out alive
Or as the self-same self
From whence they came.
Lightning on the power line
Fractals in the design
Secrets in the sub-mind
Reverb on the timeline
Lightning on the power line
Cracks along the life-line
Fire on the heart-line
Reverb on the timeline
One last chance
To fall to bottom please—
Spare us of these rotten auguries!
Let the Void devour back the disease.
-2018
What Happens Come Dusk EP
An Unquiet Grave (2020 Edition)
after traditional
Cold blows the wind where Hope has flown
And gently falls the rain
To cleanse pale sheets and coax moss grown
Where tears would fall to stain,
Where I count the horrors of the hours
As a waking person may,
Bound to weep and furrow deep my brow
'Til all sorrow fades away.
When the bell tolls last every hour has passed,
Fallen Hope floats up to speak,
“Why consign me down to the frostbit ground
Then refuse to let me sleep?”
Though my wanting tangles into knots
Far beyond my skill to name,
Would you kiss my eyes so that I might Sight
When all good revives again?
“How my husk has hardened as the clay
And my breath is earthly strong
Any kiss from my translucent lips
And your eyes won’t light up long.”
“Wander backward to that dappled grove
That enclosed our carefree walks.
Find the ghost flower sprung where the summer’s blooms
Have withered all to stalks.”
“Fetch a milky rose from a desert dry,
Juice the blood out from a stone,
Win a promise quicker than dead things die
From the flickering Unknown.”
“Go dig a grave both deep and wide
On the wave-line of the sea
That I might dissolve there to ride the tides
If you would not let me sleep.”
When will we meet again, sweet Hope?
When will we again?
“When the autumn leaves that fall from trees
Are green and spring up again.”
-2020
Illusion, With Birds
One sheet of glass makes possible
Two overlapping fogs:
One county-deep, one membrane-thin,
As pixels on the pane.
One mirror tipped at angle shows
This blossoming of birds
Implausible—from crow-less gray,
Five crows burst close by face.
-2020
Fables and Warnings
The spruce trees beneath whom we lie
Stretch as high as the moon floats low,
And sleeping bats rise in time
To the Northern Lights' unfurling descent.
We drink fables and warnings for nightcaps:
Don't carve yourself guides out of trickstery clay.
Don't listen to glow-worms who’d cut at your cords,
'Til you wander you marrow-less, thirsty, and blind
While they wind their way after your gold.
-circa 2015
Stars & Dirt Zine Vol.1 (out of print)
Dawning
Let’s strap one another to the Wheel
of Forgiveness and Unforgiveness,
that we might turn and in our turning see
how to summarize and judge.
We’ll examine ourselves from all angles
but inside out.
We tried once to seek
the inside of man
on the inside of man.
In the hollow-grave night of the Renaissance,
we rifled and searched for the soul,
peeling back strata of flesh from the bone,
but always the spirit eluded us.
We thought perhaps there wasn’t one at all.
It was the dawn of the Age of Reason.
-circa 2015
Stars & Dirt Zine Vol.1 (out of print)
Past Normal
Any fool knows
any theatre worth
price of admission is
haunted
and this one’s haunted
way past normal and
by whom?
Every time we think
we’ve solved it the
suspect turns up
alive
and ghosts are awfully
tough to book for
interviews.
-circa 2013
Ballad To The Backs of Your Eyelids
Maybe some rose-colored yesterday
Our sorrows will rise
From their own ashes
To make us marionettes of our fears.
See them clack and gleam
Through their snakeskin smiles!
Someone left precious oils on their cheeks for tears.
They’ve got lacquer for sweat.
Each pearl of a tooth names its price.
They say,
“Listen to us well:
You can’t tell if we are laughing or crying–
We did that on purpose.
This is a lesson in ambiguity,
And if you have to ask us what that means,
Then the answer is ‘no.’”
They say,
“Listen to us well:
This is an historical reenactment.
It is accurate.
It is brief.”
-2011-2013
The images here include favorites from my painting reference catalog, taken on walks over the years. Painters and illustrators should always be taking pictures! The nautilus shell is on display in the natural history wing of the Science Museum in Boston. Alas, it is not my nautilus. The wild things stayed where found and aren't mine either. The cat is a genuine roommate, though!