pinot grigio

here's the story
of rivers and tendrils of anticipation
the walk of purpose trapped beneath
everything i haven't been able to say.
i can do this now, under the wicked spell
of wine and collapsed thoughts.
there are tremors that shake me awake
in the deepest of nights, the darkest
of dreams and wandering chance.
you know probability like i understand nothing
more than syntax and what rests,
shivers, between the finest of lines. these shakes
and missteps filter through the awkward harmony
and i know everything hovering beneath the trespass,
i see the trials and the fears, the daydreams
mottled with sensibility and over-thinking.
i feel, and reel from, the incessant clunk
of arbitrary routine, responsibility, matter-of-fact
quantifiers but that's not quality: that's misstep.
what i know is rhythm and drive, possibility
interlaced with theory and you can fill in the blank
because i've already said too much.

dissemination

charcoaled fine lines dissolve into the background;
dusk's drop cloth of an orange-rimmed sunset
glistens the tightrope that swings between headway
and steady every day nothing.
gently with the rolls of thunder fracturing in the distance
escaping light breaks over interrupted movements-
the armored trepidation of reality- a tender and tenacious crawl
between yes, no, what you think you know, and what you think
you've been able to say without exactly saying.
this double-edged weapon of verbal explosion
illuminates an obliquely wandering path
far past the horizon, beyond promise and doubt, and it blinks
like headlights or maybe it's blinking like one a.m. in union square-
which, while we're there:

i wish i was still in new york city
where these stomping ruminations get caught, dragged beneath
the break-speed whirl of taxis, the tumultuous ease
of rush hour footsteps. and the lurch of the train
disseminates patterned thoughts, driving conscience
from the unspoken script that multiplied and murmured
endlessly. but here, outside the city limits,

this weighted dance swings heavy and low. wrenched
from the ashen strokes of able distraction, these delicate lines
alight and break from their suffocation, heaving themselves
into the careening traffic of my mind. red lights failed me long ago.
and it rushes me back
to the place where notions
can't break into words thrust from my mouth
and i trip over instead of saunter between the lines,
it's just that, to say, to explain:
when i don't answer i'm always
trying to say yes.