Borrowed End

tell me when i’m fog     and
almost established as a physical logger-shirted grandfather
walking the whole street’s ethereal liquids
on a leash down telegraph avenue
	into the mirror brushed up against itself
	over and over into what you’d guess to be infinity
	one image for each year     all the years you’ve wandered
	the park still asleep in its delusion and the only light
	a candle settled on a borrowed end table
	that’s been in this house since the 1890’s

be a long night     duffle bag over his shoulder
and you can decant a noir movie or a nineteenth century
and its lethal fogs     hey sailor     long decade this night
with the killer lawn gnome on this northbound bus
the hippie sidewalks     punk traffic lanes
center line in the night’s invisibility of blacktop
my fingers still walk warhol’s new york city
as the bus goes further into temporal inscrutability
and cars blur around memory a familiar fog
	in the mirror there you can see the legends
	getting smaller no matter how well you
	remember them in the candle light
		is that a tie dye or a toga
		a periwig or do they know
		how to cure and dye animal skins yet
			this new borrowed time’s in his duffle too
			as the warm light flows his course
			across the range of the mirror
            
            
            
            

from Yew Nork (2014)

The Wind Seemed to Room (for my mother)

there was remember:
haunt gossip     up-thought
not a she wanted
she behaved enterprise
found his crib shaking babies
time babies
these last few moments she’s mummy’s boy
there had been no celebrated
	she pulled the soon
	she peered down into his doctor
	she knew what the house assured him
	she really put the wind     really seemed to room
	time ceased the moment she was certain
	you’ll just have to be faces

from Yew Nork (2014)

Telegraph Avenue Relic

i’ve walked down this street so many times
that they’ve set sidewalks over my footprints

even the pavement
is more transient than i am

i remember languages these buildings used to speak
in the stone ages before this century
hello black cat on the psychedelic poster
your green eyes are still following me in their madness
as old buildings resurrect across your path
and i continue my conversations with you

ohlone earth     vaquero earth
student earth for over a century
all these earths would touch the soles of my shoes
if i could step through
the layers of footprints people have put down
beyond the fewer than seventy years
of my own

from Yew Nork (2014)

Subway Ride to the Village

so we took that     a train back
the window glass to remember explanations
so the subway     the way up from down
the din and the clash of streets defined by love

car seat of dream     the ocean its own beach
lest i knew the twentieth century
large romantic man in his forties singing love songs from car to car
best museum in new york

	god and his characters
	let’s try that one again now
	a subway ride where they’d never considered it
	remove the tape from the package
	i’ll have sparrows in my ears
	and a new pastrami sandwich and egg cream for you

from Yew Nork (2014)

The Brilliant Delusion

next morning    the only hint of the flight face cards
the friend down the hall flew open for breakfast
an impulse that descended into the eternal fire
on the other side of the door     furnace of anyone
each car that goes by adds smoke to it

i used to like driving those things
well over one hand long
heat like weather     ace break
the face above the fireplace its smoke-heightened smile
mouth open the heat of his words the cool never betraying him

purely this one he’d pulled from mid-deck
it’s less bad being young than not being yet
slack     furnace-jawed in adolescent memory
its shadow forming a coat of mink of the ash around him
	all now it’s like a free fall from heaven
inhale their fumes wonder if his breath’s been excluded
the adolescent lung pressure     middle-aged jailsuit breakdown
as each ash presses another hot year into fur
furnace door toothed and open
	i wonder what fire
	flames from the card
	he thinks he’s drawn
this time

from Yew Nork (2014)

This Town That Glows

this town i see in my dreams
is a town of penthouses and subway stations
steel and glass houses glowing by night
lightning you can sense with your eyes closed

the women i dreamed of sleeping with in college
are all gathered in the college library
all in their teens and twenties     reading to each other
from the books that will be written by their grandchildren

	dreams in this town are things of fever
	demon lovers     their backs turned to the banality
	of the stolid background of the merely physical

	if they’d reappear as trains in the subway of my gut
	or confess to having loved me or even someone like me
	i could levitate in the night     through the unsighted emptiness

from Yew Nork (2014)

Mem Mo

o mento
o month a short time
rue teen o aft or
that fifty years have passed
that light     o     fair
by flash     once
springs     a time when
o mento gone
	whee o mento gone
	age whuh so mo
	mento gone old so
	no so old o go
	ne synapse o
	na     so old     gone

from Yew Nork (2014)

Window Street

if i open
window:
street

i     there
a frantic
they

a red car running
carrying
groceries

then who
then no one

lonely window

then i
lifted i
one by one

then 
city
i
the city

from Yew Nork (2014)

For Judy

sitting propped up     against a tooth
in a forest of deciduous rainstorms
i hold your moon in my hands
	like an archaeopteryx
	like a model of the town of ur
	like a blue mushroom’s urgent dreams of sunrise
sweat drops     from leaves
footprints erase themselves around me
a lake     far away
takes its place among the clouds
	and your moon glows like a heart
	and i try to find songs for it
	and the tooth is so smooth
	the ground below it so warm
	that it sighs in the moonlight

from Yew Nork (2014)

Beach

you should be careful around
the oceans inside your shoes

they can drown you

there is nothing to absorb them
even socks     even artificial sponge

they fill your shoes every time you walk
then     after you’re used to that
they fill them every time you think
then your thoughts walk
carry you to the edge of an ocean
you couldn’t have imagined otherwise

it’s the loneliness there
the loneliness there that can drown you

from Yew Nork (2014)

Stopping for a Look Inside

once a year the year rolls around again
its little prickly stabs of
but down the street the salvage place has plenty of bathtubs
its eighteenth century clockface     all the odd palaces
there are thorns on most of the limbs
every time the pendulum swings the crowd gasps in admiration
our old neighborhood is looking a little grungy these days
or at least wear thick gloves and a jacket with heavy sleeves
	the old hollywood club is stripped to its beams
	the bus goes past me as i look through its planked-over windows
	time is slowing down     i remember the
	times i walked past this place on my way to the burger joint
	nothing there i ever noticed except for music sometimes
	now it’s empty     soundless like the inside of time

from Yew Nork (2014)

Railroad Dawn

they’ve been gathering at the train station four weeks running now
police     carnival barkers     sleep doctors
lawyers with morse code keys attached to their fingers
they’re waiting for the large blue egg on the third platform to hatch

every morning just before i wake up it wobbles
there are scratching sounds inside it and all the trains
suddenly get quiet and that’s the signal
for the people who have come here to quiet down too

	no one passes judgment on the value of a dawn
	it’s new despite itself     it resembles
	itself as it’s been over and over again since before the dinosaurs
	but no one arrests its motion     holds it to law
	after all it’s only earth turning over in its sleep
	after all when it’s done it can’t go back to slumber

from Yew Nork (2014)

One Word

as the daylight comes back again
the table left on the sidewalk folds
itself into a small metallic square
then expands suddenly
off over trees    hedges    parked cars
all this so fast it seems to disappear
but it hasn’t vanished at all
just gone unhindered into the vast universe
that you thought you knew
leaving just the small paper sign
that had been taped to its top:
            free

Dominant Species

man
on the street
feeding treats
to his dog
on their walk

the moment canines
took over the world