Lock Jaw

Put a bone cold pink
apple to my lips
behind my back
slip knot my wrists
and while you drag
a stone along a spike
kiss my jaw
say i should bite

nov 20

Your Own Belt

and travel like story
will take you, tie you
with your own belt,
where you do not want,
but where it will.
spit out the word
or be led away.

oct

Rome

She said Rome is
a pilgrim's city
from the light
to the water
you will never rest
along the nights
you will wander
throwing tokens overhead
going circles
through the empire
like the very palace bats
like the lapping surf of stones
like the domes ballooned with mass

oct

Tuscany

ready to receive in wonder
tilled hills
their blood in bark smell
towns crumbled
to a perfect standstill
light slowing
from wave to particle
ready to alight
to take and eat what is given

oct

Venice

We come to feel the moment we are lost
the texture walls take - sponge
and ways - splinters from the water.

We come to remember earth is animal
hungry and dissipated
enough to masticate her own.

We come to survive above the bricks and pilings
strapped to limestone rafts and hearses.

Pushing against the river Styx
we come to sing, to create ceremony for corpses
to gloss eulogy on matricide
not to mention how we die.

oct

Graphite and Gravity

graphite sea
some great liquid gravity
some siren
some magnet
the feathered sky
resigns
filament by filament

oct

Wolves of Siena

Cinder wolves of Siena
and the burned wall
against a sky
like a fist wrapped in sorrow
arms wound in flaw
a sky misktaken for land
clouds mistaken for shelter
you don't know where to look
you don't know where to fall

oct

Likeness

behind your doors
i wash my hands
my face
my mouth
my eyes
out
horrified that i've
washed out your likeness
the bits you or i
licked and layered
over my skin
i feign mystery
and make for the outside
outside your doors
i walk my hands
my face
my mouth
my eyes
out

nov 25, 12

Setting Sirens

a silhouette
smokes
curls her lips
combs her breath
through her teeth
when they taught me about men
they taught me about me
through the cemetery
they come
for my face
my clothes
the body becoming me
setting sirens
a silhouette
curls her lips
i'm glad to stop
looking in their white eyes
i fade
i'm glad
less than matter, darker
grave

11,7,12

Keep Very Still

i heard
i was told
my conscience is a gear
with stakes
and to keep very still
if it bent
it would break
and the blade
would stay
infecting its hold
after that first revolution
i knew
it was more than a stone
like a bomb
i heard
it click into place
a leaf in the spokes
nobody heard
nobody knew
it left off long ago
and i don't know if it gave out
or blew a hole slowly
i bleed to
death or
it just
lies
in
wait

nov 7, 12

Memory Keeping Priests

our feet lapped with midnight tide
fieldgrass stamens and pistils
the priests of this telescope temple
nightly thanking heaven
they were not born with our bloodied vessels
so poor and forgetful
we who trade for nothing,
for sleep,
a dozen shocks of raining light,
falling memory
last recipients of lightyears-lasting
prophecies without eyes to fit the lens
they keep the field
with wonder holy
never rising, kneeling,  praying, pressing
to the curtain the stalk of their bodies
likely and possible
they keep the censer burning, swinging
in case we remember
to come to the temple.

aug 17, 12

Words I Made Up

words i made up
for sound only
against a game my sister played
of words with sounds
that rotted in my throat
(they don't count
she said, unless you can find them
in the dictionary)
pushed through underbrush
untame
until the very wild of sound only
was my kingdom,  a void
that needed no fighting for
that swallowed the world,
meaning on meaning,
whole, or forgot it.

aug 16, 12

hanging scales

how fast it falls
and when you forget
altogether, tells me
slightly more than nothing
tells me you weigh our ends
scales strung up
from floating ribs, those scales
should be weighing
the next, now,
sometimes,
if my ears are
oiled and broken in
i hear -
almost, the key is not looking up
in the slant strain -
just how heavy our ends will be.

aug 20, 12

Your Joy

were you down that road
slipping by before dawn
the clouds
made a perfectly smooth scar
your joy, tether let
all the way out,
snuffling the seam
of road and field?

aug 17, 12

Working With Available Words

this is me speaking chinese
all it is
is three words for "green vegetable"
and only one for "sad"
a consonant sound at
the beginning of "want"
i am told i have never
pronounced intelligibly
and the three specific meanings
for the three words
"need"
are indistinguishable to me
yet
burn as my skin might
these are the only words
available between us
and my blood runs thinner
and hotter with the possibilities.

aug 17, 12

Axis Mundi

Eternity, a knife stuck
perpendicular in the ground
a blade wide enough
we must squeeze by
flaying our back
or front, which
would you lose
to participate in this prayer
what do you come to sacrifice?
Or on our best mornings we
close our eyes and walk
for hours
with only that shining blade
behind the eyes,
willing it to extend an invitation
an image to intersect
this blind road and spare not
one side of our body
more, but to thickly, as thick
as the million ghosts of stars,
run us through, clean
or not, until our blood coats
both flats of the knife
and we are more eternity
than not, flesh
fallen, shaved from the spine
tender mouthfuls for birds
of death and resurrection.

aug 17, 12

On the Altar, on Moriah

the year's end then
i lost my voice on
the way to you
or it died out
as we climbed mile
for mile into that
wide top
of the world
it was the end
of a year afterall, thinning
to a blade
and our voices
eventually
scrape clean
sacrifice
to the holy nothing
a fleet death shock
a frayed tongue
this is
what you are, afterall.

aug 16, 12

The Colours of Armageddon

This lavender sky
poisons shingles and brick
socks their mortared
millipeded gaps to pulp
dying kidney colour
like every rotten body gored
taking its last eyeful
lungful, hung from its own bones
lustful, it remains
gorgeous, engorged on stranger
and stranger means
of achieving
this last requirement
down to the last handful
the world will throw
gross beauty
in our eyes
and foam sticky holy
glory down our necks.

aug 11, 12

Bricks in the Blood

The walls
we live along fall
determine we will,
must, fight
their clay weight
hefted along in veins
snatching cradles
thought secret ours
in every eddy
exulting to smash
their painted spindles
carved curlicues
innocence we
believed sound
the only way
to find our bodies
bare but for one another
wrapped around
is to love like war
to break our fingers
from their death grip
to outbreathe this blood current
to live until it tires
of killing us

aug 13, 12

His and Hers

All that was left in the morning
was a jam jar
gin-soaked lavender oxidizing
and the last page of a short story
she always wanted to write,
about her secret high school boyfriend,
already done
right there. better really
because it was from his perspective
not hers. and now what
did she sleep after the jar? after the story?
did she need to be sheet swaddled to do so?
did she stay up wondering if she'd always
be a line walker
unbelieving believer while
the opposite too
did she stay up wondering, caring
why she never once cared
if she didn't have teenage sex
why the shape of faces fitting just so
was a sign of everything, enough
and a summoned smell of collarbone
could keep her up for hours
draining slowly from a jar
never thinking of more
not writing down the answers
to any of these questions
not even asking

aug 2, 12

About Morning

Coming out sideways
bringing drywall and frame,
the world down around your feet
shaving what's left of my bones
to double-edged stakes
nailing you to the rubbish heap
and while i've already paid
for your coming nightmares
with my pawned teeth
even monsters regret
so i sing you to sleep
lying about morning.


aug 8, 12

To the Bruises

we made our way
to an outcropping of bruises
in the dark they glowed
glossy black, black and blue
against the flat night
we thought they would shield us
between them hidden
from the endless, endless
web of consequences or worse,
indifference to our ruined lives.
in the dark, in my nerve cuffed joy
i did not count how many,
many selves i'd let loose
i did not count the reflections in the glossy black:
to the cleft she came first, desperate to steal
raised my own gun
steadier than i ever could
and blew a scream through your body
the size i couldn't tell
and through my face
big enough to be unsure it survived at all.
with nothing of me to save
she ran for the cliff side
as if it was not blacker there.
my only living self, finally
awake and all instinct, went after her
falling scent
the ghost of my jaw called her back
among the bruises
among our strewn outcomes
she lifted her throat as long as it would go
and cried into the black and blue
and against any reflection left.

jul 1, 2012

The Color of a Sheet

The sheet pulled over our twin bodies
yours and mine but
also hers and mine,
it's just the color of a sheet
i told myself but
you handed me a treatise
a careful thing
careful not to say
anything but the color of a sheet,
i bore into it, to find you under there
and wasn't allowed,
to find myself under there
but how is it i couldn't,
could only see this other body of mine
leaned against yours
all the faces lost in the color of a sheet.
Now and until we find one another, hand over hand,
we will make the color of this sheet
our tent and not go behind
our elders to see reason
under sturdier eaves.

jul

Between Us, The Holy of Holies

This unfordable vein
might as well be an eternal
motion. if we ever found
the source, the bubbling gush
compact enough to walk
an easy circle. if we ever found
that, we'd have already walked
so far together, this river apart
we'd might as well keep it
so part of us.

and who's to say
it's not the holy of holies.
the hollow heart that keeps
it all from crashing
against it all. keeps
us from crushing one
another's throats in our hunger.

on either side of this
river, this chamber
veil rent and bled
we make out one
another's silhouette
through smoke.

aug 7, 12

Ouija

if you repeat (if)
the lines (you)
stroke for stroke (repeat)
the internal structure (the lines)
will organize itself (under your hand)
like a message (from the dead) on a board
of random letters
like a picture in the dregs (it's there)
you gather its pulse
under the wrist (then gone)
behind this knee, then not
testing every weakness to get out
(repeat the lines)
blind if it helps
trace them (senseless)
until your fingers find that knotted muscle
catching all the rest (in) its (terror)
strangle it
that (cold) ghost meaning
will arrange the lines evenly.

jul 27, 12

The Month

he said this one's good for a month
and i felt the space of a month
balloon around me. full of my
own hair touching my shoulders,
my own hands touching my hair
outside the houses supposedly full
i only hear buzzing
houses full of bees
beating to get around the windows
and surround me
if i forget them
they won't come any sooner
forgetting the houses won't make them fall
forgetting the pressure mechanically,
without a will, laying siege
to the walls of my month
won't reverse gravity
whether i keep them warm
in my mind or not
i do not sustain these things
they wait any way
and come for me after all.

july 14, 2012

The Professional Sick

no sum of parts
shaped only by
the limbs torn from traps
and the limbs
offered as peace
or bait.
like the professional sick
hire an alms giver
he will carry me to the nearest pool
into which lately pissed a prophet
or son of god.
because i never believed
any great physician
wearing just a face
i didn't recognize him
even as i paid
with my story
and took his back.
because i never believed
in one pool
more than the last
i didn't recognize
even as he passed them all
and hauled me to his own womb
a churn of blood and tissue.
the tide there stirred in fits
pulled time out in salt
compressed it down
stealing only to toss
my shrunken remains
over its shoulder
until holding my breath
felt as right as breathing
and all in one gulp i drowned.
the prophet disguised in piggyback
scraped me to land
by dislocated parts
there arranged them
pressed them into stone
left me there to learn

jul, 2012

Sleeptalk on the Moon

night on the moon

craters reflected in tea

the horizon bowed

room hums into room

read my dreams to me

swept of sound or cloud

i knock through

babel narrating

only sleeptalk aloud

june 6, 12

Head Dreaming of a Bird (or Bird Dreaming of a Head)

waking up to the birds
the infant season
cries earlier and earlier
need,
the dog paws up a pallet of thatch
satisfied to hear me say here
go or lie down from time to time,
and inside i'm also satisfied
with the feeling of a new bird
falling from trying
drawing the failure out in euphoric swoops,
so far up, if anyone cared to watch the sky,
the empty skull would stir with only me
the only shadow in that whitewashed bone
the only wet and beating thing in that years dry head,
anyone could watch it happen
until i fell out of view
the end of their story of me
ricocheting without grace
through brittle capillaries
bent invisible
and flicked to the earth,
the morning won't register
anything amiss

june 5, 12

Such Fires

We are not for these fires
love them as we do to a crumble
and our limbs and fisted organs
are still what we're left with

In the whole earth we tie ourselves up here
and cry martyr burned in them
but such fires are to be warmed by
not staked to

Such fires are to come back to
to signal marco on our polo ways
not to lean into while the world
drains from our eyes forever
a black char
we no longer turn to for life

We love them but these fires
they are not our bodies

june 5, 12

Check the Sheets For Spiders

In the mother's house
built around our heads like a garland
across our arms like the satin
edging of wide-woven blanket
the girls whip the sheets to wake spiders
beat the pillows against the walls
and promise to wake while the windows are still blue
the father roams and stacks his boots
steel worn as dull as leather
and leather worn as thin as words that count
he stacks pale dishes above their rims with food
passes it around, settles, then dusted
away again by words, like gnats from the garden
the mother, the mother
checks our crowns for thistles
and beetles, repeating the lists
of things that chew shotgun holes
in the night, things that hide
she traces careful incisions with her beak
on the napes of our necks
remember, remember
to check the sheets for spiders

may 24, 12

While She Sleeps

I listen to your whole body
every part is part of you
used from fuse to spark
lit at every end
from the fresh ember of breath
nothing cools in the whir of the world
you newly spin on
i blow in your hair
and draw in the momentary incense
rising, smelling like everything
i no longer believe in
so just for you i close my eyes
just to light as you light
just to pretend what you know
eyes only good for distances
the nose can bring in through the body
retracting close enough to thread
through that cavity
expanding back out just
in front of your face
This is how you believe
eyes closed

may 24, 12

For Show

Moth shadows tilt as big as bats
and merge with sculpted black leaves
the sky draws a close curtain
and narrows a melted light across the audience
changing tiny into monstrous
and for show, the shadows of their bobbing heads
resembling everything else
tangled in a rising midnight wind.

may 24, 12

Dancing Bear

Ever the monster, dancing bear, tame
with a limp now, heel of a boot
finally crushed. What bear
could dance without shoes
the limp, without the heel
rejoins paw to field
so can't there be one day
not for dancing, Sunday,
can it be that day
one day for loping
away, and not only away,
please, that's still a chain,
but towards the world out of time
in more than two steps, all four
lope to sky, to roots,
tree line,
through brush, lope to
what is good,
to learn again
what is a bear

may 6, 12

No Time, Jericho

i did not have the constancy to
rub you thin
or the strength to fold you in my hands
or the adoration to pick at your glaze
so i tested your ceramic curve
between gravity and granite

i did not have the invisibility to
stake out your hiding place
or the practice to stalk you there
or the silence to hear what brought you there
i did not have the right

i did not have the tenacity to
march your perimeter methodically
or the breath to fill a trumpet's coil
or my other hand the strength, as said,
to smash a jar of fire on command
so i ran your walls of Jericho
gasping fall, fall, fall

apr 27, 12

Waking Dreams of Carrying Blood

Waking from dreams
everyone's wounds
were layered and beautiful
but bleeding
shining dark on pale
drained in the sun
dust rising to drink from these fountains
and i wasn't sure i could carry them all
back to the shade, damp, uphill, in turn
they each woke from their falls
talking nonsense
and making circles in their sentences
to convince me it was not a sign
when i begged them not to talk
as if their brains had come loose
they each sat up smiling, prophesying
only asking me,
where did I fall from,
how to climb back to the shade
or some, where to go on from now
not one needed carrying,
only, go behind me in case my blood
drips too much.


april 13, 12

Weather Report

the park today rather than breakfast
and sleep
for it is not really sleep
and tomorrow will rain
tomorrow a walk
for the next day will be sun again
and the shoes will dry

april 2012

Walking Calves, Train Car Calves

The girls on their walking calves
their train car balance
come here to make a life
but walk into this half light
through this haze and shine
checker their skin
it's theirs and a stranger's
gain their bodies for their minds
some coming kind
some going kind
of sight
on their walking calves
and latest train car balance
they ride.

jan 29, 12

Listening Thru a Glass, Darkly

My hearing has not been good lately
the kettle world turned up too long
i watch the reflection of my hand
in its streaked silver
i watch your reflection in the gathered condensation
when you tell me what you see
i make a noise that means, i'm listening
it's not a lie, but it is a dream.

jan23, 2012

Wind and Rain Letter

What have you done wind and rain?
What have you scattered into rivulets, into rivers
What have you sent through the clouds, blue as blood
What have you strummed and rung
What have you sung through to a cry
What have you flayed and staked
What have you turned out and smashed
and dragged, tooth and nail
What have you thrown, doors and windows
and bets and matches
What have you blown out?

mar 2012

Winter Pieta

Fastened and bound
in denim and wool

days on days in succession

almost procession

almost ceremony

mutual aggression

Ribs clenched against cold

and the earth's own body

packed tighter and tighter

against ours

We tensile march through one another

steadily toward denser degrees

limestone into marble

veined with crushed sediment

At last a winter Pieta

one as crucified as the other.

dec 2011

Dragon Guts

Track brindles our bodies

Physically they flicker

under

now not now
until
the shadow of a train belly blots them
What once was sound
swallows whole
flocks of thought
and walk and word
And down that throat
for the known now
stretched to a shout
we are dragon guts
dragon tongue
dragon song

april 2012

Any Other Word

i forget my name
comes the end of the page
and a pause, too long
love comma
a blank margin, generous
as a dry mouth
rough tongue
it slides around
gelatinous ink
waiting to be wrung
nothing rings
love comma
nothing
love comma
hole
love comma
margin
love comma
i hope you know.
if it were any other word
i could skip it.

mar 7, 12

Grass Eaters

To our lips
we sucked
at one another's hands
inside caves light stained
ingrown wire and corrugated beams
little boy memories
layered like worlds
shifting plate and sinew
among us stone
and marbled selves
eyes wide color squeezed
language stretched to fray
composed in jerks
crumbled of sudden
fallen through mirrors
in betweens multiplying
like sobs
To our lips
we pulled
at one another's grapnel cables.

mar 7, 2012

Our Bruise

The bruise you put under my lip
tucked up in the thin shade
did not clot
but burrowed deeper through
made a swell against
my hidden teeth
ached pressed into them
seared when i washed my mouth
hot with mouthful
after mouthful
dragged itself along the side of my tongue
back further than i can examine
arced into the smooth cavity over my throat
and fell or rolled down to all my weaknesses
pooling into the spaces where i am missing
spaces i coil around, tightly, pinching them numb
until even the arches i rely on
sing in tremble
from the joint of my toes to the heel
anchored and dense
your bruise rings even there.

mar 7, 2012

Signified

Look for secrets
the leaves caught in the amber,
age-old eyes
the tongue weighed
on your back teeth
how close the bones huddle for warmth
and the space the skin leaves to fill in
it makes sense
in how many times the shadows
of your statue multiply
the sentences you string
still lie along a plane
but one i didn't see before
the measured, poured sheet of  their silences

A Room Not My Own

I've chosen a room not my own
other voices flicker along its walls
and crack like static across the ceiling
hot with their requests
cold with their forgetfulness
but it is my room
i lick the seals of the doors
i pad the mattress with more sleep
watch the cracks grow umbrage
awe the native shadows
I've chosen this room

1, 5, 12

Along the Spokes

no resolve
i've worn out my body
i've worn out my heart
pink with old blood
i've worn out time
hung on lines
washed, wrung, stiff
dislocated by the limbs
pushed apart and soldered
to the empty hole in a hub
no resolve
i fall along the spokes to this space

Winter Fly

the winter fly
on a lamp shade
it lived this long
for this
to be seen
to die against light
its wings a new shade
to read by

The Day After Day

Like smoke attracted to bodies
it unmans us
unsalts us
only pale food between us
your mint tongue
my ash throat
my favorite feast
the flame leans toward glass.
I am a rich man
sucking Lazarus' finger
in what must be
the day after day.

1, 5, 2012

All the Ancient of Days

the small of my back is made of wrenches
i imagine yours of wrens
my wrists and elbows clock hands
and yours cracked marble
my neck of broken limbs
and yours of barnacles
my face is of dust
yours must be of spit
my insides made of time
and yours of all the days

1, 5, 12

In the Small and Still

i'm quieter
did you wait for this
i'm back inside
you're so polite
after all the notes
and lists
and orders
i've taken
i've taken refuge now
you can pass
i won't ask
more than your palm
more than your back

jan 5, 2012

So Help You God

Go on unfold
a waxed map in your hands
you pen its insides
you spell its name
you fear what you've made
as if it's empty, it stays
mountain on mountain
wood stuck into wood
wildgrass against wildgrass
ingrown in creases.
Your hand on its cover
a vow a curse of truth
you swear to tell
and nothing but.

jan 5, 2012

Sway

The wind is patient in the dark
giving in to trees
holding them
rocking them
darkly
as their own shadows would
singing nothing
as it is all to say
aspirating
into their coming sobs
rocking their limbs in hers
the little ones
thought themselves big this year
sway all the way
to where their trunks spread
over the ground
and probably on
the wind
gives up to the trees
to rock them, darkly.

jan 5, 2012

Another Breath Poem

Breath
sickled scythed
and bound
to be baled
tindered
and whetted
turned into basins
to hold new breath
tall and swaying
from bare slain
bodies asleep

1, 4, 12

The Rounds

Her face is a clock
as is his
overlayed on one another
the clicks they make
the twisting gears
all seen
in sync and out
pale and dark and audible
as they make the rounds.

jan 4, 12

Odyssian

the sins i'll sing
to my children
will be odyssian
and plenty.
their ears will fill
with marvels
and revel
enough to send their dreams ashambling.
my days will march
loose hems they'll catch
and when they stop for breath
my children will still be itching.

jan4, 12

Bunsen

the way
to cool a heated iron
is to hold it to your chest
by both hands
your body needing
always lapping heat
will take the burn in
pore by pore
until the material
is innocuous to your grip
what is not tinder is flint.

jan 4, 12

Levitation

leaves, piles, burn high
if it can be called fire
rather smoke twine, ghost thread
spindle rise
mortar, pestle
crush steeped
shadows of trees
against our bodies lying by.

dec 22, 11

Christmas Night

The house behind me
behind a door shut just nearly
whirs - deaf and deafening.
here
i hear geese
coyotes
street lamps sentient
have i moved outside of this
or has it moved from outside of me?

dec 25, 11

Chaser

what you've said
is what you would
but what you will
will be what i taste
without these words
to wash them down

dec 23, 2011

One Million

you have one million shadows
slightly resembling you
your lines
and planes
your neck
and collarbones
when you build your fire
when you lean your face to it
when you blow evenly under its ribs
and sit at its feet
in this light
you are a million
and one

Sept 10, 2011