recount

this is
the story of my skin.
its underpinning,
nerve and furnace iron,
cannot be told,
given, received.
a sheathed world
only shared
in those dreams
without skin

to the river

to assume and assign
the names of every rill
would drain the senses
supporting the liquid world

me with it
leaving a column
ancient salt
licked clean of savor

i won't gather words
translating dream
as if you
had turned concrete
pillar yourself

we
skeletons of the universe
its ribs and vertebrae
our bodies dreams
not broken by names.

derring do

let's do some deep dreaming
let's do those flying kind
those jumping from heights
no landing kind

that time you shook
until all the sand of your mind
settled in your legs
and you felt more solid
than ever
that kind

the one where
you breathed water
for miles
and saw water
and spoke and were water
for miles

let's dream again that time
i recognized you by your dress
of severed feathers
you recognized the mud
in my fur
added together and good
even before the sum

let's do that kind of dreaming
the ages of midnight
worlds on worlds

and not these scoops
of flaking despair
too thin to grow
and too shallow to bury anything

honest

i have been
white on white
cloud shadow
over snow
breathing through the gap
as a drowned body
is taught to breathe again

the crew

squirrels unfurl,
tendons
hitching heaven
to earth,
maintaining
trunks of deadwood rope,
drop
from balloon
to basket
around our flat,
unsteady feet.

fact.

and i followed her
from train car to car because
it was love
that improbable
everyday
fact.

horse hair

handfuls of her hair
coarse and exactly elastic
as the hours
long but not forever
and the ends are finest
as they ruin
your knuckles

there will never be much to say
about her

breakfast fire

one scent, specific

as the crease in a palm,

pressed under cloudcover

brought here, or sent

folded in atmosphere:

sachet of salt

sleepworn skin

tea behind teeth

and tongue

swelling over coal

fire breakfast

bowl, thicker

than the belly it fills

and

the room sucked

of air but our breath

traded

atom for atom

and 

the pulse left blue

but boiled 

for fuel.