breviary

all day
we grow older
and take things in
our arms to hold us aright
then there are six hours
after the sky tips
over soiling the colours
the part where the music turns
last ditch giddy
and we grow young
somehow it's enough
or it never is, but we accept
the compromise and go home
propped up all the way
with the things we never let go
even as we flung
the rest of the night
we grow back old
older again
the things we took in
to hold
end up soft swirled
piled on top
keeping us warm
pinned to the night

smokefall

the wind
blows his smoke down white to me
and mine up to him
spent and spending
i imagine and he
is not as i imagine
the stars
blow down on - we -
(he is gone
a curse sloughs
free
falls)
smoke and five point leaves
riding histories
up
and down

kite after noon

a long broad kite at the end of the bed
tossing sunlight at me for conversation
flick a silken angle
breathe open a crease
relax eventually
bored of it the game of catch
loosen as for sleep
without thinking
crawl up my side
eyes in the shade of my head
feet warm in the last of it
bend your angles broken thread

the butterfly orgy

in a room pink and dusty
from all the heave and ho
almost a hundred bare bodies
coiled into still bunsens
boiling desire as clear as cold water
from one apparatus to another
under several layers of skin
and under several layers of sewn feather
and when as an orchestra the temperature was reached
almost a hundred timpani blew the layers to the beams
i saw so many powdered wings tagged with postage stamps
and legs without feet stamping
stamping despair desperate come clean
cold water drown down us drain us
drive us into the -
but here i joined the stamp
and remember nothing else.

request

you would like the breath taken from you
and put you care not where
it is a hard request
most thieves
do not know how to steal
or what they have
or how to hide in plain sight
and no one else
dares