sylvain

a forest
sets no boundaries
but embroiders an expanding hem
pattern senses and their silences more
woven than you have ever lived
you will learn by heart

by heart you will be led
venture braided root and rock
fed on river and lichen bark
belong so wholly there
one day you find
no heart but honeycombed shade and light

cat

i saw a cat today
suffer
crushed wet
eyes bled
her teeth, tiny furies opening
again again

sound sound sound

saw her woman lean
collarbones wet
her mouth a quiet wound

i hoped they had traded
dying in one another
what other prayer can hear
that sound

ozymandia

love her for her many
thousands
dogs, roses, daffodils,
ozymandias
chimes, hearses, chestnuts
hardening
guns, ailments, inches
pale and heavy hair

rowland

the man with a last name like another country
a smoking jacket in summer
says things i want to hear
"it's been like that for everyone"
but nothing is clear
he walks out
as stranger as
he walked in.

was sky

was sky
if i can run an arm along it
push a boat across it
to the bank of stars
eat of it
dream then wake to it
light and dark it is, it is

cast

spokes of growing old
grow
a mountain crumble
a still center
cast shadow
cast light
cast of itself in the sky

by spirit, by fire

this fire
so ready to be us
not only licks kindling clean
but sends bouquets to our snouts
across rocks, strokes our faces
lifts our skin, something
to remember me by,
once we've shed this baptism

clocks

supposedly morning by low
angled light
but the bell struck until i
lost
cottonwood spores
swirled into beards
for old webs
brained bouquets
dandelion clocks
beside a field of kin
still lit root to fuse
counting ribs of river current
that bell rung

caught god

wings spread on web
heart fast
a single copper string
struck once for all
reverberate time
through air
through webbed marrow
thousand needles in your eye
just once i would
see you caught
what mouths
would come for your heart
fast

orb spider

how does a spider begin -
i am never up or still enough -
beg in the morning -
tell me -
she does not stand to be watched -
who could watch better -
or begged -
those who have time to beg
should be occupied -
she packs up her mansion of bridges -
covers herself with the invisible strands -
something to munch until dark

maze

it goes okay
i go okay
come loosened
body more like body
than snarled rope
space to hold
weight held
not this line
tracing itself
into maze

bell

mountains go and go and go

present on and on and on

surely one must have

rung the bell of them before

so echo they rhyme

against and against

my open mouth

sleeping brute

in the hallway
outside the dorm of the sleeping brute

my own bright hurt
rises in my ears
and his

blue rainbows

my feet have nightmares
beaten senseless
removed on account of infection
pretended out of existence

would i not
trust waking consequences
if not also their dark left
hands hired in dream

blue rainbows
lean on you
i will even
where you will
and ache i will

stone pockets

paper shirt
limp surrender
the winded river takes
no prisoner

baptize the shirt
from skin
until bright as clay
vermilion clean

screw nothing down
pockets with stone
pulse with throat
fingers with rings

leave nails
for digging

lymph

body fed on fever
bed on body
while thumb sized hearts
spaced through swell
and whiten
seize

without them nothing
reaches
fingers and feet drain
wax without wicks

must we sing

for spring you must

bow and twist

lure salty vesper

with swung hips

but now how long

since snow

locked over days

people explain glaciers

to other, incredulous, people

for winter what

must we sing

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

mulberry

on my way
a black mulberry branch
some too early blossom
pared from late winter

i thumbed its knots for a rosary
until my hands smelled wrist to nail
of that specific chemical consequence

the old turned live again
in hands tender with first calluses

deeper snow

she takes her grey bow of a body
in search of deeper snow
sneezing at the scent
she does not need sight
or much sense
to trail the blank depths
to understand the importance of snow.

get well

again i dreamt
i was in your hospital
eventually you had to come -
i was a patient after all
you fell ill upon entering
laid in a bed next to mine
i kissed your eyes and nose and ears
and between told you
i tried i swore
but forgive me
i could not get well

from one invertebrate to another

cicada shake down
sucked from armor
mouthless slept and dreamt

multitudes and states
up scales down hatches
a core with instincts
prey and die
pleasure the perishing

making sugar from velveteen
music from whoring
making want and wishing
to dredge the wanting.

lasso

kingdom of god
where vultures black
circle tighter, answer
knotted light.

comb marrow
survey the kingdom for
strangers ready for
answers.

we wanderers live
lob interruptions
through lowering shadows.

the mad month

February, you come on
in prayers and licks
removing the hinges on locked knees
the spirit falls toward you
but the body pulls back
you grind the sky out
shake your cuffs of the ash.

February, you come on
in sojourns and suns
smacking flat imagined worlds
complete without space and time to cross
smacking mouths dry
you rattle the compass
roll cardinals in your palm like dice.

February, you come on
in sutures and teeth
bind up wounds that need to breathe
and biting out seams
come to count as bones
you measure pulse for temperature
and not for speed.

collateral

i prayed the sky would break apart
you confessed, you prayed the world
hordes of wasps beat inside
only snow can campaign in such numbers
they gather, pressing toward our voices
inward and out
buzzing threat
gusts of nightlong marvel
we prayed gently, but with power: battle

and this morning, i'm not sure what's left
it will take some weeks to know
we sat so still
rigid conductors of defeat and hope
any collateral
will shake loose from us slow
so we prepare to move

finally, you go - seeming whole enough
so i go - whole enough as well
only, here in the path,
a perfect graphite bird
pressed in snow
her open eye reflecting sky white.

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. 

prayer furnace

stacks of hands

dry together 

lichen and termites 

drop from wrists

die together

saps age

mould and tannins

season under fingernails

rest the furies

fade the black effort

down to concentric prints

squint games

better the enemy you know
circle me ankle, waist, neck deep
grey silk water, most familiar fear
resting as one can over the jaw of another
squinting, my only game, playing
this is not this, but that
bones clotting the mud bottom
logs, all logs. washed clean. left after storms
squinting to see it. squinting until shut.

in that new dark dream
light the color of lake
bones aright themselves
assemble seaworthy raft and mast
lift me up like kin. we glow like kin
i offer my skin
sail the lake indifferent
to storm or light

not a believer

not a believer not
a marcher not
onward nor upward nor
further nor
in
no scribe no
orator no
translator no
scholar no
judge nor juror no

but a tea reader but
a star reader but
a palm
a card
a handwriting
reader but
a body
a breath
a vibration
across rooms
and skin
drug bow
on string
reader
but a reader

spilled milk

if you woke from a nap blind,
would you whip your ears to twin peaks
summiting high over your head
and lean against the world's thighs
rubbing your rump against its belly
would you pump the air through longer tunnels
scraping every mite against your handkerchief of cells
test every follicle of stone or wool for flavor

or would you bawl
water those roots
shriveled as spilled milk?

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

Venice 2

if you take for a guide
whatever first found moving
in any direction
in this city
you shall lose your way always
if you lean against the walls
you also carry them away
in your hair and knit

dreaming us

i dream these dreams on purpose
of our street darker
window light deeper
i call them up
exact replicas of here
but for time
folded coordinates
matching degrees
press together
in dreams
we argue the same affection
for many possible eternities

how we talk now

it was like love
first and shy
from your corner to mine
we wished to hold hands
but it seemed an ocean
sunk into that space, our faces
pained with smile
less to say than we had
this reflection between us
this surface
black, whitecapped
took your gaze
sealed and sent it
i could read your lips
but not your eyes
like i said
it was like love
all first and shy

leveler

i was a reveler by the fire
you were a bright bloom wasting
we took turns on names for god
hallelujah, latecome blessing.
down they poured
shaken, seeded
apart we shuddered
fording shallows, swimming secret.
names slick across our skin
dislodging bits for narrative
we recited omega and the end
the river listed reverent, relative
more it asked, more we sang
til tow filled our mouths, drew us under
giving up that bloom, that flame
we sank our names in the dark leveler.

bodies by mine

since bitten tongue
struck foot on stair
pressed hand to wall
or face to prayer
numb turns noun
state of weight
come skin to bone
take on nerve
only sensed when severed
by bodies by mine

the prisoners

marble wrest,
swim, love,
surface
from scoria
gnawed block
womb gnashed
only ligament and animus
barer than the newest born
cleaving light
your only carapace

To the Executions

we go to the executions
you watch
to burn off the blood
i, to burn off the love.
from our tame trained bodies
sweat breaks
from our indoor skin
fumes lift, mix, ignite.
in the aftermath
we half hallucinate manners
you offer the skull of a helmet
i hold the muzzle of your gun while you collect.

dec, 2012

Breathwork For Two

at the last moment
broken by the straw of that
least breath, mine,
your own lungs brimmed,
flooded,
and though you may have clamped
your teeth
your surprise
curse hissed there
swirling - through the conch shaped clouds
swirling - pressure in my ears
swirling - brine and tang
frozen crystal on crystal
until
your breath fell back to me
slivered and shaved
with just a hint of all the sweat
put into that prayer
 dec 18, 12

Tattoo of Honey and Soot

tattoo of honey and soot
the bees did not swarm
the woods did not burn
every blessed sear and sting
tendered for warmth
pain blots into a body
a hand traces it into form
working with available light
blood born into ink and reborn

dec, 12

Robes for Beggars

these walls collapsible,
night of tissue dyed,
these lungs canteens
of blood and ether
hold us over
the slow forever crashing,
so little for gravity
we'll catch the heavier teeth as they loosen,
fraying weft to wreck,
gathered for our necks,
the thin world -
robes for beggars

dec 18, 12

First Communion

silent morning, holy morning
city so drunk dreamt
even apnea cannot startle
jolt
bother
catch
a swarming light
hoarse crackles over
stay stay stay

jan 1

Cello Craft

to bend the bones
to place
to shave the swollen
jumping organ
to a shapelier
instrument
something deep that takes
the whole body's worth
to drag one note
breaks blood vessels
and nerve columns
and bread of a whole life
to draw one note
to the next.

jan 2

Necklace

slip stone
to slip
the cross braided with
turquoise and choice
chain rising as you rise
dropping as you fall
until its rhythm is your heart
and your heart is lost
you may spend the current
tight panic and scramble
sunk in silt
to the wrists for the symbol
go on
the chain glints at the bank
in the sundown
in the exhaust
you spread
your limbs
your head
your belly and back
upon that last
unabridged gap
that last
effort you cast.

jan 2

Upholstery

when you touch
that upholstered brick
that bribe
unholy bible
of mine
lacking latch or lock
lying in trust within your reach
as you talk and in between
trace its raised upholstery.

and i might try
not to see
not to breathe
its flipped cover
space fanned through the seams
i'm blown like love
lost leaves.

settling your hand -
lest it rest -
let it read
it is a press
for tensed membranes
too laden
to cling.

dreamt mythology

draft the horse and the unicorn
life size monsters merry
through the morning
loam and lee
you'd mouth
the magic road you'd lap
the blue dress
the flood
the goat's eyes
hyphenate
the waking hives
from dreams
the faces met
through wither steam
the cut hair
the myth the history

Numb Tongue

the dog's warning and farewell
antlers and hooves
hummingbird water doused
your dislocated hip
the nameless numberries
oozing houseplant stalk
through the column of you
sleeping sleeping
talking in your sleeping
and forgetting just as
just as then
just as soon
just as well
as waking.

nov

Prescription

the old,
young woman
medicine bottle
rusted tight
faded vague
in case you cannot
remember
what in the end was
me or you to poison
the symptom, written
in red, mildewed
and bled
"you"

dec somthing

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