Far below the cherished wash
      Of thoughts and broken dreams long gone
      Arose the ruins of a sea forlorn
      Whose empty shell had whispered once
5     Of crystal kings and a foolish dunce
      Who dance upon the antipodes as one:
      Twins intending to divide their terrors
      Between their parents faith and error;
      Faith had blanched their darker bloods
10    And error slowed spurred Pride to good.
      The shore's resources of forgotten flotsam
      Littered glittering shallows with the gems
      Of moments mangled but never lost
      In all our ocean's roaring, cherished wash.

      Crouched in the verging shadow of a wood
      Where night has come in penance to the sky
      (Erasing with majestic wish
      Harsh acts witnessed in its brighter moods),
5     And scarred beyond the recognition of a dream
      I call in confusion for departed faces,
      Lovers and mothers who beneath the grass
      Their unquiet keep. Call among dead spaces
      For whatever whisper may answer me at last.
10    And when I shall to heaven go, will it be
      With warm ghosts to welcome me?

      with this feather i will smite you
      with this lightness bedazzle and fight you
      this inchling thing, this nothing-
      this air-mere air.

      Filtered night, proud black dreams
      In the church of such n' such
      I see the sweet light moonlight
      sparked and scarred beyond my fears
5     no inspiration shatters
      the placid lifeless matter
      of a Zen monk's mad no-brain brain
      a silly thing lacking wings
      "love's a thing that loves to sing"

      Held on a vase for all time
      * lilly imprint of a fossil
      fuel still burning
      Matchstick aria for a fictive instance,
5     heavy metal pubescence and leather innocence
      fermented in the morningafter remains 
      hanging over like a hangover.
      Tipsy tripper riffing finales
      over the molten ocean
10    whose face crawls toward God-
      seaslug sprinkled with the salt of the earth.
      "Wet icicle licks."

      In Washington, our spiked hub of government,
      Blank buildings injure the innocent air
      With lightning needles of white hypocrisy.

      Like a mountain every day my body breaks
      From the sleeping smoke of rhymeless night
      That creeps its umber calumnies round the globe
      To be gilded in a flash...
5     As when a cloud some dream of joy imprints
      On eyes' retaining paper, all one gild
      Of silver, you step to me through the vision of a field
      in a fever of wildflowers hissing secret cures

      Who hears the thrill of tragic bells
      In pilfered light till all rings well
      Which once had wrecked wry Bhudda's pose
      And emptied inspired air of thrills?
5     Who soaks in rancid acid
      the bottom-bones of Hell
      Or scents the hunter's creeping wind with thrills
      As dangerous as a rose?
      Oh Five winds thrill through pilfered Hell
10    And scare up soaked souls to kill
      All the Bhudda's bottled wisdom
      That banged the rosy-rusted bells
      The live-long day, down in a dirty hole.
      The aloud sounding of the sea within me
15    Mouths marvels to the two stars of my eyes
      Rattles the rampart of ribs
      and surrounds the heart
      A molten soapstone of soul
      Shaped by sharp touch, yet enduring
20    A monument unbottled
      whose kitestring reels to earth

      Newborn. Again. 
      Retreat, curled.
      Emerge melted-
      sitting on the waveworn fence
5     between a shaven and shorn shepherd
      and another clipped sheep.
      The mitten-bitten fields
      are iced too harsh this year 
      for the sheep to eat 
10    without slipping like lazy sailors.
      A bewilderment of flying snow
      alarms the innocent skin.
      Sounds cloud this common ground-
      litter of dispersals, sage shipwrecks, 
15    diapason knells gone keening into the miniature distance -oh where?-
      With an icebreaker's brazen lurch
      I cut into the blizzard 
      * is earth or water beneath me?  -
      icicle-burdened bows smash glass around me;
20    my wits are tickled awake by white,
      clear thought, 
      never so precious and precarious before-
      the crystal edge of living.
      What is solid is only a matter of the season.
25    JEFF MOLLER and GREGG GLORY

      Panic with her hair outspread
      Strode among the shocking dead
      All wounds and whispers as she choired
      Souls like mice to a humid, quilted mire
5     That pillows them up in one soft hush;
      In their dead eyes blazes a watery fire.
      This, though living minds and closing hearts deny,
      Is the right image of all our globed estate:
      Calcutta infants crawling gutted to the gate,
10    Upturned hands and open hearts denied.

      Proliferate your haunts til they start
      their own system
      Double the bludgeon of your tom-tom, bi-god!
      Be an Indian that skins 'em
5     or an old maid that shuns'em
      But don't give up your director's chair
      or maybe producing a soap opera
      For whimsey's the thing
      that'll make a creep a king
10    and no one can wear your crown for you
      So be a Thor among whores, if you can
      and minx it with the scruffy ruffians with elan
      and be tough in your thinnest chiffon
      because before you know it you'll be gone
15    just one more clod among "clouds" clods
      earth-clad and crimson
      your death is a cinch son
      so before you go out
      turn gay or devout
20    play both the wolf and the fawn.
      Jeffery Moller and Gregg Glory

      Tensegrity's overrated.
      Stuck in a state of falling-
      that step your mother said 
      you should never take