Not Job's Friends

I will not be like Job's friends
and tell you who is god
I will only rub into your sight
the flicking nightmare streets
and lost worded women drug through
the scratch of bones under clothing
and endangered arms meant to hold
you will see empty wrapper eyes
and you will know.
But as a friend I will not leave you deafened,
but breathe into your fragile ears
and I will do it slow so they can
fill and overflow in whisper want
at the glowing moss living as skin
at the rolled open child with sky wide eyes
at blooded limbs that lift from plaster
at kindred coincidences finding themselves finally
with a hand on the right door
and then you will know,
although you have not seen or heard -
      and the pottery wounds will still scab
      and hell will still stab up into your path
      and the kite of your heart will still lie parceled to scraps -
who God is.

mar 24, 2011

Oh Lover, Stranger

Oh Lord (read: Lover), God (read: Stranger) of
heart and skin
of marrow and sight
of song and dread
of dust and blood
of thaw and threat
of word and gasp
of desire and lack
of howl and sleep
of injury and of earth
of here and never
of water and spite
of wreck and wine
of heist and drown
and way and walls
of face, of rock
Oh Lover, Stranger of
   all
      there is no God
   no one
         no all
like you.

mar 22, 2011

Fireworks On Another Cold Day

I would press my forehead against
the glass of that lowering sky
press my skull's thinness into it
until a bloom, a blossom, a wilt
of blood cracks there
and red and pink and purple
calls the sun god to answer
blood for blood
fill that coward sky


Mar 21, 2011

Day In and Out

In the morning
an early shade
passes through
my half spun dreams
threaded by
the night I passed
watching over
her early sleep


mar 21, 2o11

Enters the Season

We both breathe in
the dog and I
until it aches
and in the reaching
we both fill
with rainwater under cedars
and the stretched out bellies
of resurrection worms
and with that difficult breath
we raise our noses
and the hair on our necks
to the vanishing lightning
to the silent whip of its dress
in the camera stun

mar 21, 2011

Job's Revision

God sheds darkness
sent heavy like a slab of wall
the understructure of light
the real beams of noontime
shine with density only
shine with the chaos of a shut eye
the hunger heaped there
And sloughed from the feet of God.
And to what shall I compare the darkness of God?
it is like his coat no longer warm
it is like his dreams no longer dreams
but nightmares and so the darkness falls
from the very forearms of God
as he wipes them across his face.

Mar 20, 2011

hope keeper

the faith is thin
it breaks in its own steps
it's been long suffered
it's been long held tightly
it's been long draining
from under the skin
a colour gone
a temperature abandoned
hope is all that hangs on shoulders
all that sticks to the roof of a mouth
it is not faith
it does not fill
but keeps the empty halls
clean ready for what must come.

Mar 20, 2011

Left There

Words become secrets
when they're not heard
and there are many
you kick up as dust
lips don't move them
and ears don't enfold them
they rise and settle to rise again.
You haven't seen them
smeared in the sunlit air
or on your resting fingertips?
You haven't discovered
them left behind like accidents
or swept under conversations?
Well they may make fossils there
or rise again.

Mar 1, 2011

What the Son of God Dreamt

The hours at the waterside
at the bottom of mountains
the foot of trees
at the back of crowds
settle into gravity
bodies sinking with the self
they're meant to carry.
Instead of empty silk waiting
for a bloom to flame
our bodies are hoarder's trunks
slowly covered in and becoming
debris from the dreaming tide.

Mar 14, 2011

Smell Empties and Does Not Refill

That room smelled of tatami
and of boiled water.
my body emptied onto
the floor nightly
but hands lost,
their undersides had not flown with me.
and they could have kept me in place
when place was a hollowed landscape.


Mar 13, 2011

Recalling the Dark There

Under trees
along the line of a hill
the shadows of the wood, of me, of God
bleed

Mar 5, 11