Saturday

Everyone should be happy. I drink bergamot tea
to stay close to him. I microwave water.
I don't own a kettle.
I store maps in boxes and get lost a lot.
I wake up on a Saturday and live
someone else's life.

Poorly catalogued intentions.

Your shoe atop my toe
should have been the signal to stop.
But I've read Greek drama; this is
where it gets good.

The crack in a familiar voice is a cymbal crash
squeezing through the space of a hiccup.
Intermission came too late and we all
wet ourselves.

Letter to an Aging Poet

for Jim








I've turned through your years
as no doubt you book-marked
through those of your own
aging poets.

In fewer than five years, I've read you to bed for forty-five.

Yet for suffering with you, I'm none the wiser.
Doomed, I'll make the same mistakes and
come to classify them otherwise.

Moving Boxes

A spot in some future tense,
I'll fix for you and fill
with art for which we've
not paid enough,
chairs from cold
countries, a loose
board, and a light
that shines on
applauding bones.

abridged suite

laying down my arms
on wax, someone
will find your
fingerprints

saudade: vol. 1

The cherry stand marks one quarter
of the climb; I stopped to watch
Armageddon arrest both land
and sky.

I have lost the ability to measure the distance
between things that are not you and me.

another.

newspaper tent
armed for fantasy
weather

Wrong-done and un-won,
sin engraved in mouth
wide open.

Unlearned step and sandy-sunk,
two roads diverged in
pictures took.

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.