The Crow lives alone.

Craning its neck, looming over
passengers, commited, stopped at lights.
Ha, I am the Green Man,
to hell with your plans.
How does the crow appear to you,
after it licks the salt gone
its body charred from the inside,
its oily black feathers
exposing in patches its cinder innards?
Man's heart is revealed that way.
Blood spilling onto the street,
Regarding his intention,
runs for isolation,
collecting the red liquid as it falls, spatters.

five business plans for the disillusioned fatalist:

1. invent a human teleport device. beam up Scotties delegate jobs to migrant workers. Live in Upper Peninsula, MI with mosquitoes pontoon boat whiskey 400 miles.

2. test biological resistance in scientific experiment sleeping with Welsh. live double life as money jar for worlds best ____?

3. gossamer takes flight, never returns another spring. Birds overused, trade aspirations for new metaphors.

4. open and name restaurant “All the Caveat You can Keep Down” and admit guests after reciting human extinction probability.

5. confound the most brilliant minds with invention that never fills up, never holds life, cries only when smashed and the broken and scattered glass reads: “are you? will you ever be?”

I stared down at Map
watching the maritime blues,
yellows, beiges
seep between places where
houses would be.
Then I was above L.A.
watched San Gabriel range
bound into transparency.
the dusty grid below
the vast sheen of sea
and then it was gone.

A silence gripped me,
I saw the scene progress
quickly, endlessly onward.
The crumbling of soil,
the fading hues
The only constant,
(I traced it with my finger)
was the hard line,
where the sea
meets the edge of land.

Dreamt that I found a cat that had been written on in ball-point pen, which was clearly visible on its fluffy white shoulder. I was enraged that someone would do this and someone how knew that it was a group of mexican mechanics who work at a shop up the street. So I marched up there and inturrupted their lunch. They were all sitting around happily eating.
“Excuse me.”
They all look up.
“Hola, Senor.”
“I found a cat, it had been written on with pen.”
They all gape at me.
“I found...un gato...con boligrafo.” I made a motion of frantic scribbling, violent gestures in the air.
They all sat for a moment, looking at each other, concerned. Then burst into laughter.
“Did you do this?!” I yelled, enraged.
They kept laughing.
“NO BOLIGRAFO EN LA GATO!!!”
They were in tears.
They all must have realized I was serious as I stormed away, fuming, for they yelled, “Losiendo, senor! Losiendo!”

Also dreamt that I was playing a game in a room with old friends, the board for the game was the size of the entire floor. Two people lock arms, and spin singing, “Swing your partner round and round, ect., ect. They all fall down!” At which point the two people break apart, and where they land determines how personal of a confession they have to make. There were also rocks strewn about the playing field, which one was supposed to collect somehow.

I make no effort
to match the word
or place something
within the free
space
of your absence.
Your likeness fades
from our memories
always proclaiming

all your history’s women
the assault,
Missouri now.
Whether this way or
that.
i don’t know. never will.
you, all around
you, the ghost in the hall.
you, laughter in a room.

hellbent on ending up
always elsewhere
looking toward the window
like a stained glass mobile
-not to break,
but to flourish
when the sun catches you right.

I’m on an island
and glad
that tide works
the way it does.
For surely,
I would be submerged
had the earth’s spin
wound up a different rate.
Glad for that.
Glad vegetables grow
as easily as they do.
Glad this is not
the Middle Ages.
Glad for frost
receding to spring.
Glad you sing
in the kitchen with cats.
Glad we’re still children
in many ways.
Who can proclaim the nature of man?
Glad I have no clue.