Pilgrimage

see it     wells hidden
parking lot is now a small childhood
no other place looked so strangely funny
rebuilt way to touchpad with reality
	i walked down
	all my current turmoil
		going through offended that it’s
		so high up in an office building
			the comforting child’s hands
			dreary drapes closed in a front window

kids grew up coffee in their energy hours
caught the bus to now until i
made it back alive     but still
	bought a shrine
	memory parked inside a gas station
		forced myself inside
		the glass of a window pane
		bone inside a reliquary
		in a shaky chapel for unbelievers

kids grew up coffee in a vacant lot
outside the cardboard fence surrounding the brides of a spanish mansion
hope landing live as a subway ride
inside the clouds that sway under the sea
	the past is a shell
	through sharp mouths
	of dog teeth
	you can never get used to

from Yew Nork (2014)

Train Station

the whole night in a circle of starlight
passports weren’t even checked
	three centuries turned into a railroad car
	that runs the black expanse
	of five hours’ choreographed sleep
	as the dead awoke and a fight began
	between two facing seats in the dining car
i boarded the train to the end of the station
	i kissed the doors of a stradivarius violin
	i talked with two drunken cigars
	i spent hours discussing plane geometry
	with the contours of fellow passengers’ brains
	watching the ice-capped peaks
	of the sailing ships as they drifted by
even though i’m not in love with melancholy anymore
	they’d named it the street of the train station
	even though its course bordered the lake
	that swallowed the sun     by night
	and spent the morning trying to find its reflection
	the castles     the theaters
	the entire opera i’d made up for both of us
	shimmered upside down in the wisdom of
	the lake’s apparent emptiness
	i kissed the doors of la scala for you
	and tasted     sweet     lake water
    
    
    

from Yew Nork (2014)

Architectural

earlier     other lifetime
the tour of the old house headache
the apotheosis of heartburn
to where the soul meets the ceiling

which faced the lacy windows at the edge of
a dome like no other rising straight out of the floor
two aspects of a wall calling back
you breathe the air you have aspirations

	saw a young heavyset blue guitar
	behind a young brunette to be a genius
	we were all nineteen then
	its imagination of little streets
	quietly singing and then asking for money

	oh which path on the wall did we follow?

from Yew Nork (2014)

That There Were Other Cities

full orchards are usually useless as motel rooms
seem buried as electricity gods     the station wagons
who usually stayed put      formed downtown witnesses
sue the bastards     see what happens
two hundred seventy-five of them masquerading as easy chairs
knew that the fish came close to serving as a luggage rack
i was there with you father in the old palace
high as the revolutionaries’ neon in the town square under our names
   1) emulating fast food was treated with a slow burn
   2) a conflict between earlier years meekly followed
   3) at night use fried chickens as public relations men
   4) serve our customers progress throughout the film
   5) no signs have been destroyed but most people do anyway
   6) every place you go someone’s footprints follow you

from Yew Nork (2014)