Abduction

Thinking about that time you
stepped off the edge of the earth and
I (so long) waited
for you to
come (back) with a
glass full of wine/guitar/heart words,
or mouth full of hot words like bees or
broken glass
or incidentalsentimental words you plucked from the street like
a prize ticket or trash—

basically,

anything at all, but
you (obviously) were
abducted

by your own extraterrestrial logic and, like,
I want to be sofuckingdisgusted,

but I know you never grabbed a clock or map and grabbed instead
tequila, which I like,
and drank
like gasofuckingline, setting fire
to the whole scene, which we liked, and we should have seen
that nothingnothingnothing was quite the way we thought,
and never had to be,

but here we are (nowhere) and you’re still
in outer space, still like quiet water or
dead fire, deadest anything,
too damn dead and still

like your dark eyes in the redlights, ghost deer in the headlights, and
talking to the point of exhaustion and daylight when birdsongs
and sunlight scorch heathen mind and eyes.

And the scarf is torn from the window now, (and not worn) because
it's time to go, to go, to get up and go.

Take the hose back to the station. Sing songs and sleep.
Sleep long and sweet, sleep
long enough to forget
that you were here or
where you went or
why you came at all.

3.21.22

Delicate/Annihilate

A delicate thing it is
              to annihilate
sometimes.
              Sometimes
it is in the cracks of the
beautiful (delicate) things that we most
can destroy, or do.

Annihilate is a word most delicate,
really,
with cloudy, soft sounds, pushing gently through the mouth,
a whisper.

Delicate is more firm, has structure.
Delicate, like meringue.

How delicate we are when we annihilate sometimes:
How delicate the thought, how soft the annihilation.
How delicate the intrusion, how soft the annihilation.
How delicate the destruction, how soft the annihilation.



11.2.2018

Flame

Call the moths in their brigades 

of dust.

I hear you.

Sirens and flames

call the same and refuse to

stand still. Even so,

you knew

what you were asking for.

Cold

It wasn't the way you shut me out. 

It was the way you let me in.

Like you knew it was closing time. 

Release

Imagine my dismay when

I learned that by

pulling myself back from you

                               

                                 I was only nestling deeper

                                 into the string

                                 of my bow.

12/1/20

Still

Be still this heart, quiet still-
a breath, a ghost. These are
words
only words. Hands
touchhold (still words, still)
lips
teeth
tongue, yes
words only words-
alchemized.
Deep and deeper still. Taste, yes,

feel. Christ.
Christ or god or stars. Come down, come
down
to dirt, to body, feeltaste
touch. Make this
real, surreal.

Transient,
I know.
No one
gives a fuck out here
beneath the sky and leavesandrain.

Just take
thisnow, make
now
me/my
aching reason to be here,
this hungry
bodysoul.


6.23.18

Accountabliity

Imagine that the hands were the smallest and in the digging
found nothing and so much, too much,
like you- the thickest to dig through, the hardest, the thing that
broke
the things too much. Nothing but broken every where
and it was all
torn apart, so
torn apart. Like you- you too, all tornandbroken
apart. And here I stand surrounded by so much nothing, so many
broken everything that was
ours. I am standing here, a numb child who didn’t fucking mean to,
but still, my dumb hands are empty
and they are covered in dirt.

6.29.18

Free Ride

Just because I can doesn’t mean I
should because I can, you know,
and even if I (yes) wanted to I should
n’t and
the moon (again with the moon) does the thing it
always
does but it’s
so bright, and all the things it touches(me) are fuckingstars. Windows

down I am forever always inthisfast
car, feeling I could be someone be someone be some
one
Some
One: whoareyou and whyareyouhere questions
that don’t matter in this night right now you are
notanything
anyone
nowhere

but here in the fastcar (I brought you and bring you
everywhere.)

6.29.18

2208

If I touch it only in the dark of night
maybe I can say (I lie) that it isn’t real,
that you aren’t (neveralways were) there
and your mouth is not a cavern into which I fall

over and over
because your wordskisses are cottonfuckingcandy dissolve, dissolve

not real

not real, not tangible like flesh, your flesh, not real, not the way I like to touch you
yourfaceyourhair.

You are a moon, a shining moon, way away in the night, far away and out of reach.
I look away, you burn bright, too bright then blind.

My feet like the earthsolid in the sunshine, away from the bright of the moon, or
the moon at midday like a phantom, imagined, it is not real, not real.

The darkness on my skin unwinds in me the serpentheatfleshseeking animal, animal that will

devour.

You don’t know the will in me that tiesbindsrestrains and keeps me from

devouring

yourskin and making youyourbody

mine.


6.14.2018

Breakfast

I cracked the eggs and made the griddle hot

I threw the shells on the floor.

They’re fragile, you know. And they break
upon impact with hard surfaces,
              or hands, like my hands,
imaginary on your imaginary throat.

I once dared a man to swallow a boiled egg whole
and it lodged in his throat.

But he always fucked around, so instead of helping him
              I laughed.
              He lived.
But not without knowing I almost let him die.

The broken shells on the floor punctured my foot and drew blood.
About blood: there is always more.

And when the wounds healed and closed, the shells remained embedded in my skin
and pained me when I walked.
I asked myself- who was imprisoning whom?


10.2017

The Tourists

Write down the name of the first thing you see.

an acorn;
an egg;
a bus full of tourists hanging from a cliff

Think next of why you went on vacation in the first place.

you keep breaking doors when you can’t break through

When you’re dangling from a long yellow jalopy
over the edge of a cliff
I guess it makes sense to run-

to bust through the nearest emergency exit.


10.2017

Permafrost

Drowned in warm water
plump flesh, and supple

Did you know it would be this way?
That we just wouldn’t die?

This is me, shoving tectonic plates in places they don’t belong:
              I make the earth quake
              I throw mountains out of nothing.

This is the way I justify my geological mayhem.
Art is always illusion.

It snows all spring.

What, then, is satisfy?

Your dialogue gets me dizzy.
You can’t move away from the cold once it curls inside you.
You freeze- bones first, flesh later.
You grope toward heat.

What, then, is satisfy to the mouth of a corpse?
We choke on dirt.

We tell lies. We need heat.
We draw water to the bath.

11.2.17

The Voodoo Lady

So I went to the voodoo lady and she
gave to me orris root for love eternal that
would not die and now this love that
will not die is a rope at our throats from
which we hang and sway, necks intact, we
cannot die and I didn’t eat no orris root.

So I went back to the voodoo lady and said
what now?                    Spit it out
                                      she said.



2016

So What Now?

There is something about happiness that arouses my suspicions;
that relinquishing my skepticism offers open invitation to be suckered in
and prodded alongside the grinning masses toward some sort of pseudo-Nirvana.

Alone on the stoop out back, my fingers grow icy from the bottle in my hand, and the wind claws at me, harsh, but reliable. The darkness strides by like a rude stranger who doesn’t look up when I say hello; lowers its head further instead, pretending to inspect the dirty concrete. The oblivion is validating and I feel the power of my own volition rising from my legs, through my chest, to the bullseye in my brain.

It wasn’t long ago that he convinced me to marry. I didn’t see the point in doing so, and so he made the point that there was an equal non-point in not doing so, and so I did. The baby was next and we birthed it together in a tub on the living room floor. Because this—this was something I was going to get right.

Then my father died without a will, and my brother said that it was only right that we bury him, even though I thought the idea of decomposing against the process of preservation was obscene. It was important, he said, because when the Lord comes to save us, we need to be there waiting.

That night I had a dream—the kind of dream that you hope is a dream before you even remember you’re still asleep. A giant meteor blew through the ozone and crashed in the backyard of the house across the street. Then, as I watched through the window, there came a second, only this time the impact made a great cracking sound, like overhead thunder that wants to snap your bones, and I watched, frozen, as the smoke rolled in and the earth began to crumble.

In the startled sweat of night, I reached over to seek warm skin. I swallowed hard, and realized that swallowing is an action performed only by the living. Then I swallowed again, just to be certain.

2009

Hush

Angels hover, lantern-strung
above the stillness of our bed.
Their whispers echo in the dark
and weave our dreams with cryptic threads.
Your eyes in silence lie awake,
they reach out and amuse me,
haunt me and disown me
a thousand times
a thousand times
you've heard it all before.
Midnight has grown tedious
but shadows make good reasons
to linger in monotony.
Don't forget to dance.
Daylight is a wicked season.
Morning threatens
scorching fragile lenses
burning iris wide awake.
Your slumber, dear, so soft,
your numbered days ticking off
one by one
one by one
your footprint (static) on the moon.

2006

Nineteen

We’re on the train and she tells me her

heart is in my hands and mine

is beating because

her heart doesn’t look a damn thing like

a valentine. Instead it is this

horrible thing and purple and it

bleeds.  I know already that my hands are

not the right size for this fist apple (not

love) or if it were a bird it would be the

broken kind.

She doesn’t know that whatever it is she

wishes I would do I just can’t and what I

can (want to) do is climb inside of her

and lay my head down in the sticky dark.

I hate her eyes and love them, so ready

and she doesn’t know

that her face breaks my heart just a little bit

because I know that

my heart is beating, too,

because this is (not beautiful) one hell of a

misunderstanding.

10.10.11

The Confession

What you don’t know is this:

Your name rests in the bowl of my tongue, smooth

and perfect, a salty round pebble. It melts: a lozenge.

Tiny molecules that won’t hold still.

What I want to do is chew it up. I want thick beef fibers

surrendering to the power of my hungry jaw. I want your

cool gelato sweetness to make puddles in my mouth, and

the piney gin sting of you to render me dense and numb.

The word of your name has become

the invisible nucleus of a small world

of slow madness.

And I am the black space between white galaxies.

9.18.11

the animals in winter

I would taste your mouth with the

     fury    of frozen wind

and push my fingers     hard

against the bone of your skull to

     pull               you in.

In the iciest of Januaries I would      pull

you over the wooden hull

     of my ship.    I will be so small, too small

to bear your weight;      I will be nothing but

this force of pulling.      With everything     and so small

                                             I will pull you in.

I want to fall beneath it, the weight of you     and

     find my way out with the heat of my tongue.

          I will learn the terrain, map it with my

                teeth.  Like a bear, like a bird

                                I will know.



9.19.11