Words that cannot hold anything.

I write in a little black book.

[duofeng]

swamp; green and blue

the color dripping from a dragonfly's mouth; stars dying by day a pond is too cracked to be just a mirror; looking glass, prism, reflecting pool days without rain; grass encroaching to the water's edge the first storm; a turtle surfaces when the waves calm two foxes are adrift on a log; watching the shore from the shallows boats wander here; midges follow them out and back an owl nests nearby; the evening screeches striders skate on a little bay; someone kisses the finger of a visitor toadstools spoon a tree's roots; white like the blessed footfalls of spirits

[duofeng]

Aphorism of the furtive

Lead like the sun leads through darkness Carry force in your palm but only lightly press it Become the widower shepherd-dog, a habitual herder You dim weak or disloyal:      Everywhere is there a deeper darkness      Anywhere can be found a punier thing      Always will there be more flimsy hearts

Pretend yourself a kind soul Frighten out the little ones Nowhere can they stay; keep them prodded Until you find a truer evil That keeps them still, in place For this you smile, your stewardship done!

[duofeng]

Water

The air, thirsty with dry waves Walking on brown twiggy things Loud with static joints As it drew its gown thither To drink of a bustling pond

Water ascended in spheroidal ships Some staffed by brave tadpoles Steering themselves 'round like dragons Boiling all the while despite their haste The best pilots nary cleared the canopy

Though cracked to its clay underbelly No wellspring scabbed the dry bed But catfish, like desperate worms Floundered in the few patches of mud And dried, died, embalmed like royalty

[duofeng]

a ghost story

like a heartbeat against wood it began at the height of noon when all were deep in their plays too was I sun-touched in the security of half-shade sat in the twilight reaches where light just passes unabated as it tiptoes down the branches like the tree itself had a pulse there is the aged groan old oaks chorus when stretching in the breeze rhythmic though no wind repeats a familiar sound that tells its power forests that coo like fields of babes saplings that snap like a neck in jaw all from a little whistling of the wind like the thrashing of a bound thing just obscured by the trunks testing the bark against its duty as if a hanged man had returned bitter at seeds that free themselves yet did this one hold the rope or was that one long turned into a home with timbers that creak on still nights like the steps of nearing thunder all heard the cloud's bickering little ones grounded their flights unseen ones hid in secret burrows too did I retreat to the manor watching the world toss itself although the storm was not grand far away, a single tree fell

[duofeng]

blue

the molting blue is green inside dripping white into the beach

the molting blue has a human rolling through too dense for the sand to eat

the molting blue wraps its skin all around while the insides get bigger

the molting blue keeps a large wardrobe full of transient hats

the molting blue buys slim clothes in only nude hues

the molting blue throws itself on the rocks throws itself on the rocks

the molting blue leaves everything outside holds itself in spite of all

the molting blue in reverse is the first and second wave

[duofeng]

Woodland Stupor

A morning with no robin-song, Yet the crows whisper in their roosts Just loud enough to stir me.

Through the dew-fog, fresh On my drowsy eyes Comes a keeper of night’s Secrets, a fellow betrayer Of bodies’ simple desires: A mouse with tail Idly flossing my toes As payment for stolen warmth.

When the light touches A bit of leaf litter gawking About the foot of my bed The little anxious heartthrob Sees fit to escape in muted Clamor over wilted spring petals.

Its leaving’s decrescendo carried Under meek beaked canopy, asking My downturned lobes to count the steps Until a crash broke the movement; Something flew off with the patter.

Then the robins began their desirous callings, And a neighborly crow told me the news.

[duofeng]

In respect of their existences

Misdirected, I am here Over the cracked bones of Earth caked with Residue of its dried marrow

A wandering mountain Wedges beneath my feet It holds the crypts of the pious As high as heaven allows

Within an alcove a mortuary Priest hastily prays As I approach he watches Both God and I

He turns from me to Anoint a body with his spit How one can see pulses Quickening even in death

An organ bellows through the Crag, signaling the angels to Descend, but warily they hover Black winged in their gyres

The priest flies to my nape and Tickles with holy, deathly hand He is confused as I consentingly Ripple to his touch

He spirals down my arm, pausing In my palm for his ascension So I raise him to my lips To speak for God, myself,

“Brother of the writhing masses. Seraph knight of ruby eyes. Whose face is most familiar, Mirrored in the divine?”

He went from me, from the cave And sat in the sun, head atilt I took to rest while The heat took to him

When I awakened to his dry mote, A thing too trite for any After, An angel landed, crushing his Corpse and marking my leaving

I have seen him again in hills, Fields, forests, and homes, But never again have I desired To romanticize a fly.

[duofeng]

If I were a son

He tells me her colors

Deep dropped his voice And mother stooped to pet it “Like gravel,” she whispered Along his dull chords

They spoke of blindness Painting each the other's black And spoke of night as one Quiet, the denizens indulged them

Like a bat, mother could sing She charmed his antlions To claim a pit by his heart Where nothing could grow

So could mother but whither Spooning the shy stones Eroding at her touch

[duofeng]

It was a big spider, OK?

You make

Me say I killed a

Dog; fur and muscle

Stucco on cracked plaster

Hung on mandible nail

Yet I am framed in the

Guilty hairs sprouting

From my nailbeds,

Orphans of the arbor

Felled off your flayed back

When I tell

It foams, wrestling

As we dance Colorado

Into the walls, a

Splintering meteorite of

Limbs leaking your

Miasmatic oil, garnish,

Struggle’s bitter hue

Pallet of the bastard’s guts

Now about my home

[duofeng]

Smog

Loose scales of a vultures wing; Matchmaking wind and its foul lungs; The dry skin of a wall’s veins; Greyness persisting after a rain.

Snake that rings an asphalt hill; Blood that catches in pedestrian eyes; Dust in the steps of a circuit home; Weight dragging on a metronome.

Voice of the anticoagulated earth; Tripwire webs of iron beasts; The apparition sealed outside; A modern city and its sky.

[duofeng]

The devil’s hand is soft

Still wind, who bends the grass Like a congregation in twilight praise The Holy haze kisses their blooming loins Snoozing children sit in pews unborn Oblivious. Would-be parents care not To touch in a divine fog

These bowing weeds bashfully Grow shyly blushing in pollen kept In the slight folds of circumcised Buds. Angelic breath such light Dampness discretely cleaning them Slighting heaven in your absence

Sun-caped witches humming A fertile march empty wombed For the chaste the lame the low Impish masses of the maternity ward Watching. The babes go untamed while They polish their virgin pitchforks

[duofeng]

paths to drunkenness

the grapes swollen in youth

one tart, one sweet

full of the vineyard's breaths

curses from a day laborer

bead and drip from a brow

mingle with the daily waterings

from the hill's cool stream

they are tastes pungent, true

to a collective, immortal self

actualize our memories grown

of earth, inert, for us,

our fates not so different

let my wine be sour

how the dours have it

[duofeng]

V: Excerpt from a penultimatum

Love, I am skeptical

You are an impossible ensemble

A uniform swarm, conscious chaos

My buzzing constituents hardly assemble

Forgoing fealty for muted feelings

Congressing as a field of chirps

Hushing down as you pass by

In an illusion of deliberation

Unanimity is a democratic dream

Realized in autocratic nightmares

What dictator rules your heart

As slave drivers spur your touches

Should I plan your coup

Arm the rebellious eye rolls

Tariff the half-baked exports

And send back the ambassador

[duofeng]

VIII: Excerpt from a day’s end

Mug with half of something

A little leftover, russet in afternoon rays

Jungle lake with silt after a rain

Divers twisting in the buoyant humidity

A fisherman rows in circles

Like me, he’s without a net

Corralling the days potential catches

As they swim leagues away

The drink covers a bald spot

A thinly veiled, tabled insecurity

Consequence of coaster crutches

Age is uncompromising

Accrues negative interest annually

Likes things as ancient as itself

Makes do with morning bags and stubble

Seen through a spilled coffee puddle

[duofeng]

ii: The Collector

Returning, he surmises

On the uselessness of knowledge

Of saying the nature of rather than just saying

On the meaninglessness of codices

When words assigned to Roman bones

Are not the theses engraved on his prints

Nor are the garden webs and their scribes

Allowed to converse and publish works

There is no love in collecting

Owning a warehouse of not-enoughs

Works of no great impersonators

But those that crafted for themselves

Caring not for the come-afters,

Repossessors of yesterday, historians

Puzzles are not puzzles

If made today, they would be framed

Yet he is loved by strangers

His home a port for folded planes

The estranged thoughts of daydreamers

Like gnats in need of foster case

Hounding him like midges in heat

They are skimmed, put down

Bound, wings indexed and filed

[duofeng]

Black Matrimony

We, the criers, the town bachelors Well-wishers for traditional men We, the mourners of uneventful deaths Tragedians for vased bouquets Vegan vultures who perch on chapel steps Accosting the complicit cannibals: Cohorts of wedding bell ringing widows Brooding over bustling bellies Their love, autumn’s deciduous verdure Gifts a corsage of brittle colors, Then slips out of gossamer hose Like a wizened gnat skirting traps They, the consentors, the Salem citizens One-night diners for traditional men They, the bearers of stopped clocks Blood mothers for time travelers

[duofeng]

My Folks

They are poverty-stricken eagles

Grounded with leadened wings

You might think them rats

As they pray beneath the trees

They sing on hushed chords

Mute as professional ventriloquists

Living as part-time ghosts,

Those attic voices that doubt themselves

They feign lives as actors

Stop to admire diurnal moths

Nicknaming glazed portraits mirrors

To externalize lost red balloons