In the canyon, caught by the
heat of a hundred hands,
kicking carcasses
of days when cops
climbed down cables
and this water was
real.

I ate two tacos, and two
assholes pitched
pebbles at a pair of
copulating lizards.

Suddenly saddled to believe better days
existed before me.
The last one there is rotten egg.

Peaking again in
a patch of sand,
packaged for
misuse.

This heart should
hide better.

Bench dream.

Our exit was
a tiny apocalypse.

I'm glad we were
the only survivors.

Hands

Tiny island palms
whose beaches
bear no rings.

Door Tempo

The phrase, in a measure,
of a door's squeak.
Memorized to sneak
in after dark.

This is my house, now.
That was my home, before.

Bury the hearth in snow
or fog; she will remember.

Lodge a heart to the hilt;
it, too, will find a way to
snap the latch, blind,
and put its beat to bed.

Container

Pitch these wooden desks and mugs
sprouting pencils into the sun, set ablaze
tools that clutter distance to ideas, if
at all ideas still seed.

I want to take a gardener's hand to
my life, burgle my own dead buds,
like the last night in a rented room,
cleared of a year's collections, when
I put music to the movement of
shadows and kept time in echo.

That night, a man whom I love,
was there. We harmonized like
cicadas crawling from earthy
incubators. Newborn with an
understanding too big to categorize,
too weighty to shelve, so laden were
we, we could only cry from parts of
our bodies for which we had no
name.

Sabbat

Failed to do the homework. Scratched at
the source of the itch. Broke the skin.

Soggy occasion. Admitting what we mayn't
without whiskey. A coat or cat between us.

These are avoiding days. My nose in a book,
on strike. Wintered cells turn over and yawn.

Rounding out the bases. A little less grief this year.
This coffee cup is not taking this seriously.

March Doesn't Mind Me Staring at Walls

These cherubic hieroglyphs suspended,
no closer to Heaven than to the
continent where their color
was conceived

A hundred times I stuck my pen
in that font, a hundred more
some cloud erased the
inkpot

But, look

The tenants of two new eyes
fall from open windows,
and into mine; knocked
over by a warm breeze

Ash Wednesday in Saint Paul, Before the Snow Falls Again

Below the eaves,
in fossil tones,
limp history performs
her alibi.

I count the
bones of wasted spit;
garnish on an empty plate.

I have greater reasons for
not committing.

Untitled

The remainder of a day's
long division is that some
of us are Disappointed.

I am not unhappy; I am
in the wrong place.