i’m telling you this because
i’ve seen the pavement
i’ve tasted its richness
i’ve cracked its hidden mystery
i’ve dined on its misanthropic demise
i’ve cured it’s sickness with mine
and i came crawling back
(2009)
and death is water
if i get too drunk
please pour salt
on my head
(2009)
half part lull – more part soul
a little part of me
wants revenge
petitions
on a soap box
just to say so
(2009)
pointer fingers that
draw clouds
the color the sky makes
when you’re gone
(2009)
glasses that don’t
represent the blue
in the you
you are
(2009)
molting
the leaves
i let leave
bony ribs
malnourished
like some kind of
unoriginal sin
my throat is as lump
as cats sleep
i crawl to the mirror
my long stares
offer
no new apologies
i am defeatist at best
and she points to where
i’m bleeding
how
my coat pockets
stain fingers
while i’m
a’ searching for pennies
in dark dark ink
and my ancient
clown mask sweating off
how soup lids
drip steam
(2009)
pillowed eyelids
retina fluff
your gaze and mine
averting the blinding
blue
how
what’s hidden in the way
your eyes
match the color
how
your dress brings the sky
down
to earth’s eye level
mine
(2009)
over a bitter’d (and sweet)
photoshop’d memory
of our love
and i’ve stopped everyone on the street
and it’s unanimous
the clouds do look heavy
and pregnant
II.
and i’m trying to reverse the way i painted your eyes
and i’m tossing arrows into black waters
and i’m singing to our love that dark matter
isn’t as dark as we’d imagined it
III.
as if my homeward bound stow-away anthems
could be the tin-pan army
my fingertips
were once famous for
my silent facade
would sings sheets and sheets and sheets and sheets
to the wind
IV.
and they’d ask
to please not howl
to please not
read aloud
V.
we’ve anticipated
your every move
(2009)
in my daydreams
standing on a balloon
a red balloon
in the theatre
in my seat
(2009)
i could wave my open heart in
mid-air above my hang’d head
i found a map i made from apples
the how-to-manifesto described
a secret box of postcards
i collected enough stardust to
whisper your name
i raced your camouflage melodies skyward
on full moons i’d
gather less magnetism
but i taught daffodils to bloom
and dried leaves in honor
of your passing ghost
(2009)
and the alarm clock is
a panic’d robot
and the cats are out of food
and the walls are starting to
wear away where
i’ve been worrying:
blank stares
sun and paper
(2009)
my horseshoes went untied
so
i studied like rain
how
the sadness and the city
galloped me home
faster
than i could run
(2009)
and not
the other way around
i will
with might
make an oar
out of the way
we swam
(2009)
that your dreams imagine you
imagine those dreams see clouds
imagine those clouds have dreams
imagine you are not
a choose-your-own-adventure
only better
moral
gifted
waiting
distinctions like distractions
only you are at ease
imagine the vibrato of love
like cake how it melts
like the icing on the cake
how it will never melt
how good songs really are
as a’ boiled like a pot can
how hot-water-mist
is but what was intended
how the windows stay clear
how everything
becomes liquid
(2009)
save me from this cold
lets dissipate
only we’re older than that
this
II.
i stored my cold war anthems
in cold war journals by the fireside
so’s you couldn’t tell
day from night
light from life
got caught up in the super world frenzy
that becomes the moment that passes
like a balloon
i will wait
like a lover
i will wait longer
(2009)
i’m caught
somewhere between the heartiest parts of rothko
and not
my ribbon theory these days
sounds like belles and seagulls
it’ll take me dog years
to get
this ringing
out of my ears
(2009)
we scripted our nonchalance with axes and wands
like a black swan orchestra
like an ugly duckling seminar
we amplified it
we let the curse become the course
laughed in tandem to scars we used to hide
drew cactus circles around our sunken eyes
we matched our thirst in spades
and we tried on glasses
and we made messes
and we drank blind to scratched records
and in the morning
my friends and i
made the sun sing opposite
only we sang it desperate
and sexy
we penned our harmonies against night’s inferno
we sang oblongs to pastures that need not
for we sang in private
we sang it loud
and in unison
we leaned in
on the walls of the church we were building
and beamed
with cryptic halogen smiles
(2009)
laughs their paper-mache nonchalance
like blowing out birthday candles
in my face
she’s documented her
polaroid imagination in
sheets and sheets
upon sheaths of
unmanned notebook paper
like red-brick-silence
or
like lavender and lemon
her stories become
recipes
and her stillness
the way it all
piles and stacks and multiplies in
accidental butterfly movement
is but old lace and cinnamon
II.
like a great wall
teemed with light and air
and as far and as high
as the heart
can suggest
she mirrors my galaxy with hers
and i begin to feel
a hidden science
in the silence
of love
(2009)
