The Sound of No Hands Clapping: Haiku

Come closer to the night
my wonderful sun,
it's time you met the moon.

The dog's tail thumps
against his cage as
two travelers pull luggage
up the steps of a brownstone.

The treetops reach
for their lost leaves
and grasp the cold wind.

In Chinatown,
A dying shrimp leaps
from a pile of ice
into the snow.

Time casts the shadows.
Time moves the day.
The rain falls in moments
across the night.

The moon and clouds collaborate
on a graceful rain.

The brave tree clenches it's leaves
past the December winds
into January.

Central Park.
The carriage horses nod
to the ducks flying south.

We have come a thousand years
to this night of rain.
Another happy gift!

On my window
a bit of star
caught in a raindrop.

A cricket chirps
stowed away for winter
in the pot of my palm tree

Somewhere in the city
two lovers are not sleeping
to the song of the rain.

All over New York City,
hives of sleeping children
flying through their dreams.

All over New York City,
walls full of cockroaches
dreaming of the moon.

A man pushes a loaded cart
up the dark mountain
of the Manhattan Bridge.

A hunched woman pulls
from the garbage
one silver can.

The hermit finds his forest
in the happy city
of the graves.

The insomniac wind
walks like a widow
through every January night.

The rain sings across the windows
asking the flowers
to come back once more.

Moon, the soft light
of the bodega
will stay on all night.

I wonder how the sun
will fall tomorrow
on the black squirrels
of Washington Square Park.

A stars glows at the end
of your cigarette.
That last hour with you
was not even a moment.

Application For Poseur's Certificate

1.
There's no roses to turn to today.
The clouds tuck the earth into genocidal winter,
spilling the bloody debris of the petals.

The sky donates oceans.
The Earth chases Mars and Venus
in a steeplechase around the Heavens,

trying to spin home to Summer.
Back come the things you'd like to forget,
The only things you can remember;

The stillborn ideas and phantom emotions.
You have to make it up as you go.
It flashes. It's gone.

Every book becomes a self-help book called
How to Correctly Think About Yourself
and Others: A Self-Help Anthology.

Shorthand essays and assays indicting
and implicating the Universe in various
crimes against Humanity. Also, Humanity's crimes

against the Universe, namely, The Jonas Brothers,
high on purity. It's not CO2,
it's Rush Limbaugh's flatulent mouth.

The pen IS the sword.
Ask all the members of the Pen 15 club
currently occupying Capitol Hill.


2.
She sits on the trapeze eating lunch
above the Williamsburg Bridge
in a clever marketing scheme tangling love

in the suspension cables.
She inspires me to find skies in your eyes.
Give me binoculars.

Give me the right eyes to dig
into your landfill heart. Kindle me.
Kindle my candle, you little candy cane.

Morose prose poseurs pose
on tiptoes in the primrose promise
of prose repose among the roses.

Not far away, she inspires private Halifax
consulting firms to stimulate and develop
new technologies in beardmaking.

Uninspired, the soggy, soaked Hollywood poet
listens to another blabbermouth talking
faster than the speed of shit,

whose aspiration is to think
himself into new products, and to breath
the fresh air of the megabyte pixels.

His stanza lands nowhere near the solar plexus
as Hulksmash tomorrow into leaves.
Blabbermouth says everybody who ever tried to be

Milton Berle has failed, especially Rupert Pupkin
telling jokes to a basement full of
cardboard heads, but the Gingerbread people

with whipped cream lips and ovenbaked skin,
lying flat as cardboard on the tin-sheet,
are rising.


3.
The Walden Wren
at Thwaldinwen
asks, The Wuhl dinned when?
to the walled-in wind
but the wall didn't win.

It takes a lot of work
to be this boring.


4.
Jane, I still think about you.

Burn me gently, little one,
Burn me gently, like the sun.
Look on me softly, like the stars.

You've wished for me, admit it.
You've wished for me
like I've wished for you.

Untitled

He is almost no one when he climbs
the bridge in the fog. Alone,
he has created a great despair
to keep him company.

Ten thousand empty buildings.
Above the black, silent river
that almost doesn't seem to be there,
the fog swallows the nauseous light.

A light wind caresses
his hair. A tiny affection
going wild. It
pushes him off.

Song of Nothing

The vivid imagination of the trains
bringing us away from home
at the end of a hard night.
It is early in the morning,

before the commonly held day, at the end of mine
and your scarf hides the lower half
of your face as you sleep.
Nothing's changed. It never has yet.

My life is devoted to living itself.
The rain falls down the stairs.
The stairs eventually lead to the stars
if you build them long enough.

There goes the R-train.
The great generals did not write
songs. They spooned the weather
of fire down upon young men.

The doors breath open. The yawning,
the hunched, the pungent and the homeless
travel onward beside us. Our weekend
is over, now it's back to Hell,

which we love so much. What makes her think
her life is worth televising?
The bluebells chiming from the top
of her hat? Her night in the sky?

We came out from under the subway
and the rain was there, though
the train had been a submarine for
30 minutes. We are immediately us.

Another night under the sea of
the East River. Day comes up,
ruining the X-mas lights
of the stars.

The Stars, All Night

The Famous American Quarterback
with four golden rings
is not sure how to clap
in the mass of dancing women
wearing just enough stars
on their breasts.

She Walks

She's walking to him
past why those two people see into each other
past the anchored rock of the monocular eye
past the cactus burning through 7th avenue
along the freshly made donuts and wonderful new breads
along the European dimes and crystal margaritas
along the proven road her imagination thrills itself to
among the masturbation fantasies of a nation's elderly
among loose-stringed father figures still moaning saxophones
among civil war reenactments of Wynton Marsalis' affair with geodesic asses
stepping over crumpled paper 6th grade binders stuffed with adulthood
stepping around crayon fantasias of employment in the stars
stepping into long nights about systematic anaesthesia of throats
towards Arabian leather wallets full of hearts
towards bouquets of fire so everybody can see
towards the road leading to or away from home depending how old you are
away from brief seconds of knowing who you were among drag race tarantulas
away from sweet love grandfathers driving boats
away from 10,000 ancestors dictating what you'd be from a thousand centuries back
down the paths of steeds carrying swords capable of parting the lost continents of Europe
down the Oletangy River shying away from toilets
down the worn empires of envy subsiding back into the mud and aspiring to be worse and less
The rails are hot with speed
The iron is rumbling to her stomach
Ten thousand butterflies explode into a new generation of fine art
The wheels slice them into powder and dust
The wheels pound them into glitter
The wheels crush them into subatomic non-existence
The wheels are cruel
but the wheels must
keep moving.