From my coign under the eaves pillars of ice verge on the sky. Sunlight glistens inside the pillars like light through stained glass, bending and warping yellow. Sundrops slide down the icicles and fall into mounds of snow. The sky hangs behind the pillars like an ironed blue cloth.

I float up past the icicles into the sky. Beneath my feet the hill banks to an aquamarine lake; I float to the sun. I float downward, hovering above the snow then water. Lowering I expect the water to soak and freeze me, but the aquamarine closes around my waist coolly. As I sink to my neck I notice others treading. They wear moonglasses over which long unkempt brown hair tangles. Tread.

Above my head clouds drift past. The clouds float as light as feathers, lighter, they go slowly down the wind. The topmost leaves of a tree, drained chlorophyll turning molten, scratch against the blue. Whine and moan of traffic: cars drag sighing: sun smoking off the morning world.

—Where were you last night?
—Hiding.
—Hiding?
—Hiding.
—Where?
—In a lake…
—Where the water was blue green?
—Precisely.
—And you drifted above the water, floating, before gravity slowly eased you down its net?
—I thought it would be cold…
—Not cool?
—I think I tread for hours.

Then I climbed out. I laid myself on a patch of snow at the lake’s edge. On my back it felt like velvet; I closed my eyes and the sun warmed me. I felt such a pureness of heart then. It was as if all worries and flesh had melted. Am I transparent? Light filled me; and as I looked out at the world of snow I felt drops coasting from my neck to arms. No transition and no surprise, I felt the blood turning to glass under my skin, and I knew.

Now I wait on the wheelbarrow sun. Day by day, minute by minute, my particles slough and trickle to the lake, sometimes replenished by the blows of rain, or given reprieve by stars and cloud. Slowly I join the lake, where people tread and will tread ever.

My love.

The afternoon is still young. I have submitted my work to 20 publications today—very industrious. And I have read much new literature. My peers are virtuosos—they write poetry so good no one can understand it. They write at the roots of language; I write of tired themes like love and my sorrow. I think I’ll gaze into the sky and watch the clouds drift.

Blue afternoon detached from the world
Your every surface becomes a mirror of lakes
Wherein I see the cloud and ages float past
I as substantial as clouds in a dream.

The rolling land, the empty sky
Millions of years lain open
In whose bodies our lives briefly spiral
Full of particular dreams.

Dreams that spark from one heart to another
And descend ever but are still contained
Within this this sleeping body:
I live in the ruins of a world.

Passing life, sweet dream
She is with me now,
Our hearts have joined like flowers on an axis
And all everything is sweet.

Stuck, stuck for the first time in weeks
The floating clouds and I don’t know how to get out;
Passing days, sweep of music on my head, older,
The walls building or falling clouds roll on.

Decay. Or elaboration. Each to each
It feels like life has opened;
No right, no left, just open sky and ways
That my eyes then body tread across.

Look at it. The tattered cloudbanks rolling
Through sheets ironed blue,
Not calling nor being but dreamfloating
Over the bloom of layered trees.

The waves thrust on the bay
A cloud slowly drifts on its way
My eye sees open sky
The world below, abuzz with sound.

I look up into the indigo sky
My heart rises to the thought of your smile
As joyous to me as fresh fallen snow
Must be to the needles of pinetrees.

     Induction

The world loses solidity. Crickets, rubbing their legs since August, quiet; the rumbling of airplanes quiets. Now flowers from the hedges stick out. And jelly mushrooms, branched like coral, grow through the moss. The world slips; a dream arrays.

Dream

The camera lowers in the room. It is dim, small, and illuminated by amber candlelight. Against the wall is a graying desk, the items atop covered in shadows. Clocks on the wall tick together, apart, quietly crunching seconds. In the center of the room sits a bed. Its frame is made of iron; at the top are pillows, two, which bear the indents of two heads. The quilt peels backwards like potato skin to the mattress.

A man sits backwards astraddle a woodenchair, his head lowered into the hollow made by his crossed arms. The slick black spikes of his hair reflect the candle’s guttering: white dots flick over the tips. He wears an oilskin jacket of yellow; his collars of white and blue peek out. The man slowly shakes his head back and forth, mumbling words of dejection.

The tattoo on her back scrunches, unscrunches as she crawls on her knees across the bed. Her hands reach the edge, she twirls to face the ceiling, her short black hair flashes. She bends her knees and crosses her right leg over her left. Then she says:

—It’s going to have to wait.

I creak a step left on the solemn floor.

—Ahh, the man sighs, shaking his head like an ox.

In an open pink shirt, khaki pants, he lies next to her. As he mumbles his fingertip traces down her belly. She takes his arm by the wrist and, lifting the tracing hand, lays it across her chest. She brushes her fingernails up and down.

Mars scintillates in the window. They begin to kiss slowly.

—Ohh.

They turn over one another. Her hair falls over his face, her laughter peels to his monotone. The clocks tick heavier. They draw on together coiling and uncoiling, the bedsheets tracing their winding.

Doused with shame I hold up my palms. Midges walk to my fingertips.

While out for a walk this evening
The fall sky turning a deeper violet
A cold gust blew between the streets
I felt a hook of remorse shoot through me.

Even the statues were turning cold
The lighted windows were growing old
From the days of summer which darkness folds
Into its longing dream of winter.

I walked on half sure of my way
Amidst rucks of bodies, decaying day
And gradually looped my way back again
To the block wherefrom I set out younger.

Cold winter days speak in autumn’s decay
Every changing leaf a dire memento
Of a winding down year, coldening streets
Where I will still walk, aimless, weeks and weeks.

Astor Cross

For the moment waylaid, and drawn into a peribolos to gaze. What do you see? A grey pallor that has settled over the city; the green earth which receives it with mercy. And beneath, inside of you? Thrashing and shouting, gnashing. Why? To cast off the slime accrued from days of indolence. Days when I lay flat on my back. And? And stared at the passage of the sun, so lovely burning its arc into the tablet of my eyes. And? And where that burning patterned the sun’s mark forever. Reading? Playing. Notes drawn across a violin in space, an ultraviolet swell of music. That? Bathed the earth, again and again and again.

Shake shake shake shake.

2.

Shake shake shake shake.

Across from William Sherman’s statue, grey evening.

The streets wobble with the last rush of bodies thumping their way home for the evening. She lays her palm flat against his chest and leans in. The high black frozen glass of the buildings puts a rhythm into the canals of the streets.

Shake shake shake shake.

A hot pressing car blocks by, black and turning. The rider and his steed are frozen before their gallop down the avenue. Someone meanly knocks the barrier flat and cuts left, their shoulder flaring down like a spike, down the street.

Waddle.

Shake Shake Shake Shake.

The night’s rhythm slows; the cars accelerate across the streets; the wheels spin faster in their spokes. Silence. A feather uplifts on a current. The rider is frozen in stony paralysis.

Shake shake shake shake.

All the emotions that you call out rock to earth like leaves. A ripple of notes plays off the shell of cars and in my mind. In the breeze and in the streets people mind their steps and flow on.

The dark green hood of the park looms towards the streets. In apathy of the lives that cut a sorrow of trails beneath her she grows up. Tonight the gray sky has faded to blue and, once the blue has melted away, deep indigo with its burst of stars will sing into the night.

Shake shake shake shake.

Grime floats down to the sidewalk.

Movement beneath my feet. Dreamers through tunnels of mycelia, walking dazed and sleeping.

3.

You never came. Remember the nights. You never came. A black light hung on the grass as you dawdled behind and broke off. They tottered out like ducks, pacing to the top of the line. The hill air thinned and their voices circled like inferno. Nights more dead than alive.

A skeleton roasts its ember of smoke.

—Look it’s Moby.

His hand wiggled.

You sat with the sallow room draining from your eyes. They sifted out. Your mouth: welded shut. You broke apart from your soul for—what?—-fear, ignorance, formlessness.

The sky changed from violet to violet. Your life with her began at night. Let us be friends outside of this. What is this would have given out. Question: shovels. You let it swing to rock bottom first.

Dull, nervous, sensitive, sleeping. Neither man nor woman you felt at home with.

—Hey goodbye big dog.

You’re failing. Your life is heading towards poverty, ill mental health and rock bottom. Nightmares shock you awake to ponder more. Your mind grips at the pieces of dark wafting down like snow. Don’t go out. Don’t go out. Don’t go out. Zombie walking back to the kitchen.

You? Walk among charlatans and idiots. You never came. She takes you for a pleasant aside of a man. Every bone in your body decays. Carnations are your eyes. Why do you wait?

—The idea of it, he said, oh it sickens me.

—What was that? mumblespoken

You put your hands on the railing of the balcony and look out. Leaves twist one over the other, curling, twist, flickering. You never came with the joke curling in your blood. Your arteries clog with American food. Your bones will melt off without your having done a thing with your life. Or with.

—One of my favorite stories…

Your controlling reaches forward. To? Say or pad your failures with lesson learned, no mistakes made. The world spins alone.

You never finish. Affection for strangers.

*******

You never came. The crowd of voices around you close in the rooms. You’ve never felt connected to these people. Wearing amity. You could care less about their lives. You’ve always had you and only you in your mind. You enjoyed denigrating others! Is this your apology—to walk around with people you care not about? To make a show of your friendship? Your friendships have all eroded.

All changes; nothing holds. Your body dissolves as you grow up. Your mind wrinkles and bruises. Time passes faster than ever. You’ve started late, very late, and you float around courting pleasure. You never came.

You have no plan, no home, you hide from the world. Today it feels like you are in purgatory: your heart burns up in the cage of your chest. What do you have to be proud of?

You can’t remember. You’ve gone so fast you’ve lost your way. Nothing works. You are coarse, slow, and selfish. You intimidate people.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhjbhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

The scream still boils in your lungs. It bores into your skin. Nothing is working. The cut ties. All falling apart.

*****

Nothing comes out of nothing. You clip your wings. You drove out to realign your thoughts. Bluepoint, rune.

She left you. You live in this shell of a life. You’ll be reviled by all. You still ——— it doesn’t work. You ruin your life willingly. Your pappi will drop to cement.

What are you? What do you do and whom are you doing it for? Ask yourself these questions. How do you live in peace and happiness? You are dissolving into a sea. You are rocking and melting away.

It goes.

Your mind runs off.

She left home with you.

You walked with her. You stayed all night in her home. Rainbows decayed as you drove.

The slide decays as you drift together. Yes it is the rising in you. It is rising.

She kisses your lips. Do you remember the rushing torrent of love that poured over you like a cascade when you saw her again?

Ahhhhhhhhh.

It comes apart now. It’s all come apart. You’ve spoken your last words together. Do you remember when she used to walk by your side in fall? You two alone together like eggs?

The smell of pale vinegar floated over the area. Yellow, indigo, pale green. He used to hide them for you and you found.

You never came man. You never came. It was true for her.

You believed in each other’s hearts. It comes out in torrents every now and again.

-Room!

-What? How do you say it?

-Room! Don’t make me self conscious about it!

You were first to kiss her lips. You loved her. It grew and distended. You dissolved together.

Are you ever going to achieve your dreams?

Yes.

I walk through a life of disintegrating dreams. She’s coming home and you’re faltering. It all goes so slowly. It all goes so slowly and you’ll never leave, go, come, arrive return. It’s all slipping away. Life and its cold blue currents slip away.

Bluepoint.

The doors shut slowly behind them and their eyes turned towards one another. She wore red and blue, flannel, he a button up under a black blazer. Their eyes burned down on one another and he cast up his voice in haste, the words pale and awry. They walked side by side, into the library.

At five in the morning his phone began to ring on the floor. Tapping the light beneath the glass he silenced it. Outside a shade of dark blue hunkered down on the city. But a light slow ball on the horizon began to fill the blue with gray.

He showered. His stomach hurt. He wanted to see her again, to leave a kiss on her lips.

They walked down the street, hand in hand; in the movie theater hand in hand. He stroked from her palm along her wrist to the bend in her arm.

She looked beautiful with her hair down. Long, dark, and voluminous, it looked raven-shiny in the fading light of evening.

A blue jacket and a green shirt, green studded with rhinestones and the blue circled by a thin blue girdle. She had opened her coat to show him.

He wrote to her late at night. The stain of coyness. Agh. His heart thumped once and subsided lest he had slashed his chances.

They watched boats go by with one another. On the bench she pointed out the ferries. Cyclones of water spilled around the bridge’s foundations.

His heart first soared on the walk which followed their meeting. His heart surpassed the building tops over which they flew. His doubt faded away. The lamp filled the curving walkways with a pale silver glow.

They each waited for the other to write. They wanted advance but their doubts clung until the dissolve of reunion.

She read the book he gave her.

He read the emails she sent him, carefully sampling her words.

Their lights turned off past midnight, eagerly they thought of tomorrow. To sleep their bodies rocked down like leaves. Their hearts pulsing blood where grace abides asleep. Tomorrow?

They thump up the wooden benches.

Thunk clunk clunk.

Exercisers with their backs to the blue-green plains.

Jonathan Sky stood, looking out. In the distance Denver opened up on the high blue and green scar of rock.

—What’re ya thinking about?
—The world, said Jonathan Sky pensively.
—What about?
—The way in which the land seems to stretch not just to the horizon but to the very limits of one’s imagination. … The horizon is contiguous with the borders of the imagination. What is beyond it is beyond me; what I cannot think while contemplating it I not yet am.
—Makes sense, said Harold Sky.

The climbers paced up the red stones.

Jonathan Sky’s uncle pointed a finger at one, a rock wall.

—That one’s called Steamboat.
—It does look like it’s on its way down, said Jonathan Sky.
—Yea, precisely.
—Does anyone ever try to climb the rocks… Free seating?
—No, no, way too sheer. As a matter of fact every Phish concert someone tries to climb and they all get arrested.

Harold Sky scoffed.

—Phish fans. They think every show is an excuse to smoke a lot of pot and act like morons.

Jonathan and Harold walked a few more steps up. The music of a bongo drum sounded from below on stage, reverberating off of the rock walls.

Dong da dong doa doong da doong.

—I like the way the notes fall like prehistoric dinosaur bones, said Jonathan Sky.

Doong da doong da doong.

—Makes one feel as if one lives in a spirit world, he said.

They began to exit the ampitheatre. A child, pointing a camera at his brother scrambling atop a rock, caught Jonathan’s eye passing.

—Phish fans, said Jonathan Sky suddenly laughing, fucking scumbags.

He winced when the word was out of him. Somehow it had slipped out of his mouth into the world. The rocks of the archway seemed to loath him. Jonathan Sky kept his mouth shut the rest of the way down. At the base of the rock a road went further into the canyon…

Why did I say that?