little fires

when you die
people fold bits of paper into birds,
boats, for-your-eyes-only letters, lanterns,
set little fires
and tell what you would have liked
and how much
it is not a lot
but it takes up an evening, some evenings
of their living lives
they snub little fragrant bits
of their own lives
in with the ashes of yours

stop-motion tide

there is a bay
filled with the lights of his whole life
it is night
while he moves and shakes here
and day late into his night
promises make him live this way

when his imagination clouds with memory
he watches the ellipse from a tourist camera
twenty-four hour post
while it is still light here
even, he looks,
recognizes the lights

but mostly, in deep early mornings
when sleep is of less worth
than watching a lone swimmer
arrive, strip, and disappear


porto germeno

box

i cannot hurry
every fever i
remember
every layer
wrapped around a finger

stare at me and marvel
my wild concentration
reverent wander

i remember every breach
so as to shut you
again behind me

jan, 09

the one with broken hips

loose from the joint but faking it
believing in but all the while
mourning the miles the extra miles
she swore silently to see through

flying kazoos

geese come this morning, bellow expletive
joy noosed at the neck
regardless how linear they strain
geese, for the thrill of pain, force
learned praise
through their bodies like kazoos

for scattering our nights

the birds do not wake
but keep me up
harassing: you are not sleeping
be honest

late for the dawn
my lasting winter friend, the willow
captures the moon for a heart
i can hardly walk
knowing her fate within the hour

past the hundred rowed eclipses
sowed orchard
between me and the liquid horizon

if every one has been lifted to purgatory
and i reserved for some colder wake
reserved to remember how hands smell up close,
i accept the empty robes to pray

nothing to say i repeat
your name, not the one, but them all
a prophet once showed me this use for names

under the high beamed morning the dog and i sit
my eyes sore as a rainbow slick
she blinks slow: like this

be filled with light through warehouse panes
smeared, broad, warming pianos
where they wait

a vision come of honeycomb
quiet as it yawned awake
stocked with swarm, not from fear
but a population kept warm in dream

ceremony over i touch the willow's breastbone on my way
resting her wings, empty
but she does not weep

save our ship

breaker dawn.

wrecked ashore.

salvaged bow.

stern.

every splinter.

darned the rest with drift.

history of january

the history of january
myself unfamiliar
not someone i could easily
talk to
inhabit
slunk off to strange hemispheres
more home when away
every january
i find myself
lost

behalf

truth is a secret kept for someone else

less raised and unnatural, duller

than the nightmare of truth

because the blade had been sharp - a mercy - 

the cut dazzled without pressure

until the inside made out

truth and all

secret and all 

wetter, darker, it looked deep

giddy, all senses nurse the gash

how to understand

a wound in the back

near the spine

blade between blades

the position of 

the past caught up

sliding its edge in long enough

to tell the truth. 

car sick in snow

snow scabs black flank and face
wise men tip from rock slick
with flare light
over baby jesus braided in a basket fastened
to a hole black river
blueing key
in a stuck lock

make sense

one breath takes in another
the hungriest sense
taste intentions, states

one ear put to another
the starving sense
hear an ocean overhead

but eyes crushed closed
the nauseating sense
until time to focus, to keep late watch
over one still center

come she will

on easter
frets mangled in song
ribs reshaped
tenderized, boiled
bent around this new thing

seeing ducks

in the excess
rainbow river
fractal flash
and shimmer strata
they were common
only alive

now all that world
threshed to stalk
they are anything but common
the only alive

impossible necks sluice dried blood water
come up shining
more marvelous for the shadows
rolling off beak and eye

mothfox

crepe and ashes
salt stung lashes
gnawed from matchsticks
sung low for latches
left open
counted upon
to rust eventually
in kissing humidity

feb, 2014

last chocolate

very last mound of christmas fudge

last flush, 

sugar, chili, warm

mumble in the ears

up under wound neck 

cold packed

mouth shut at the lips

opened at the teeth

opened at the tongue

cupping air

to that last cinder

kept from turning stone

in the throat. 

feb, 2014