everything and then some

taut
feel the blood of
october, orange veins, trees
shudder and fear and
fearlessness battle like
babies
for air

all this premature preening
like white hearts in snow, invisible avenues the
dead drew with their empty
walking souls

we are masks, skin and bone and muscle
fleeing blue, too much alike in
what’s undernearth, too many old things
in the attic
now there are songs, you stood for
sleepwalking summers

but broke in winter, ruptured your own
vast and frozen fashions, oars and barges
that carried what couldn’t be held
by something as alive as arms

now lives are listened to carefully, circled
by stones, funeral families feed each other
old bread, hiding the crumbs from the
formation-flying crows

closed eyes, we feel with our hands, with
voices that bounce around in the dark
boomerang back to our own undisciplined
ears, every edge amplified

classical music, decisioned destinies blockaded
protested, all glaring examples of colonial
backlash corsets pulled tight enough to teach
ribs to rein in the breath, the breather
the breathing

slowed to a standstill.

unlikely divine
i had a blessing in mind
when i drank the wine, had
a fist full of dollars and
a concept of time made of
daisies and disasters
and old friends of mine

but i slipped, tripped
unzipped, came unglued
dress was ripped, was a new year's
resolution to give up
the gift

no more nightlights or
highlights or films reel
to reel, no more derisions
or fleshdreams or skin
numb to the feel

just a prayer like practice
fingers on keys, voice on a tremble
tree without leaves, in a church yard
with graves grown over with
mist and memories

i had a blessing in mind
when i dialed your line
when i wrote you a letter
and then scratched out each line...

etymology
naked as a needle
need some thunderstorm clothes
sleeping in the needles
tattoo’d like a pose

naked as a robin
redbreasted from the rain
rowdy in the branches
of october’s maple flame

naked as a jaybird
jerked from the ground like the morning’s worm
plastered nests and hollow wings
a cracking open like being born.

mythmaking
there's power in the wanting,
the lust of lying naked waiting
for a breeze

there's the rough and tumble tease
of a tuesday afternoon when sleep
seems a disease we're all running from

washing washing hands, to keep from
catching the stillness, the wetness of a
quiet night alone

there's power in the wanting, in the old
and grayed out haunting, in the long ago
superstitions that stitch themselves to our visions

alcoholic dreams, cancer coming out the seams,
brainwaves measured sure and slow, another test
before you go

the laundry of a legend, the cleanliness like
Godliness without the God to scrub to a
haloed shine, another prayer out of time

there's power in the wanting, in the desirous
den of a Delilah, luxurious and empty like
a vase waiting to break, a flower blooming hard

amoral amorisms, faulty excuses, i told you the
story of Aphrodite without words,
with my skin alone...

recessing
not mentioning the empty pockets
we make extravagant plans
bags under eyes, late night
decisions, scarce sounds

cupboards clanging an echo, the
hours long like a day on fire
the old guard's weapons, jittery
jingles to make you want more

anti-social bosses' wives
red walls, too many shoes
multi-million dollar dinner plate tectonics

in a new phase moon eclipse, arguing
over mexican cities, hypochondriac visions
of children who lose electronic affections

now the noise will be the wedge, the alcohol
will lubricate the lesions, as if amputating the
widening gaps between having and holding

coins without faces, languishing nations of
wet rice in bowls, bombed out walls, dust
and disease photogenically funded

but who likes politics, war, famine? who wants to
hear of the murdered precision, the battered lady
that stands on a lonely island holding a torch

like a beacon, i have witnessed the cracks in her feet
as i floated in water, my own liberty questioned
my own riches drowned.

the danger in the flavor that your mouth knew
before mine, the intoxicating nature of the fruit
fresh from the vine

the wilting of our garden, as we move on
down the block, the music of our muscles as
we sometimes forget to talk

the senses screaming sensual arguments
with skin, the sky falling down around the
stars we thought could spin

the awful anonymity we relished - while we quieted
our nighttime selves, kept our vanishing laughter
in the closet on dusty shelves

the walks i wanted to take in a darkened slumber
scene, through the creeksides to the city, down the hill
of a hazy dream

the hands that didn’t shake, the limbs
that didn’t break, the resolution to revolt
the time it took to make

entwining of our minds, exhalations, divine spines
soaked in comfort and kaleidoscope
bedsheets, as asleep as canaries in mines

weathered wood
i know you have locked doors
but i have keys i have found
in many places
one i dug up from the sand on
a distant beach

one from an old lady
one in the street
one in an old car

one was there in the lock the whole time
at that yellow house lived in
near the levy
flying kites under
the pecan trees
waiting for the power
to go out

you said you wanted to be a sycamore then
and i reminded you of an old oak
spanish moss trailing my twisted arms

and wind like a linament across my bark
i knew what you meant, that they bent
but didn't break, even in a hurricane.

something borrowed
of mine, of windy days
of november and broken vows
stolen rings, antique and
full of stars

of better or worse to
have and hold, of ancient trees
that watch us pull apart
mysterious skin

of lost cities underwater
rooftop sorrow, cigarettes
one-sided conversations, of
trumpets and cheap restaurants

of televised ventures into quarters
unmentioned, dungeons and dugouts
vast open spaces, broken down
cars and injuries

of yours and hers, worms and
apples, of course and matter too
much, sleeping endless months and
weeds grown taller than windows

of babies and new beginnings, laughing
at things not funny, heat lightning and catfish
and sewing yourself into a sack
fighting your way out

of the ways we asked for signs, directions
and then still got lost in the lines of our
own unread palms, mistakes that didn’t count
things we missed about each other

of circumstance, villainies, forgotten names
of enveloped faces, beautiful chances we took
drunk and young enough to believe our feet
could always keep in step

of the way i feel knowing these years
have erased certain shames and scars, some
hidden in highways, old rain, rescued guitars
mothers, handmade dresses and sons that remember the swamps…

sideways
tell me what it's like
when you're done receiving, the dry
mouth feeling of forgetting importances
days that mattered once, years ago
where you were standing
what you were wearing

who was there beside you?

i have a selective memory
that loses moments like old notes
or car keys, stores things i'd rather
not recall at all
and plays movies while i sleep
long drawn out plotless
clumsy desires i won't admit
when waking

there beside you.

sometimes we just make up things
to tell each other because life
seems to have dulled in summer's scorch
the sand smooths down the edges of
shocking revelations we once shared
like sunny spots on the floor
and i like to collect those
half-truths, just as telling as
scar stories, midnight mumbles

taught tunes in tired tempos
sang inside you.

now i craft the callings into something more
siren than lullaby, cradling my own screeched name
and molding, clay-culling the curving canteen
of my own dried mud bowl, my own empty spaces
upright and rigid, accompanied by numb yet nimble
fingers, orange peels, blue eyes like rain

outside the tent i once slept in with you.

but it can't become a song, can't morph into melody
can't drum the rhythm, dance the moving mystery of cut lines, broken telephones, deep waves, dormant
chest cavity calisthenics
and if it was loud enough to reach
where you hide out becoming a brick house
the breath i'm holding could not
break in

and win the battle that's still being waged
inside you.

In this beginning, she called to the sun
freckled with summer (Blonde
and beguiling) for more,
smothered with wax and feathers

and
a dream of flying.

In this swimming of mixed metaphors
a choice - a door. Galvanized and sore
hands held up in protest, eyes
searching for a symbol
an earth child,
a center

and
a core.

Some songs pour out
fully written
into music, some
nights the moon glows
brighter than before.
Ocean tides and seashells
are the weapons in a war.
Far off acenstor calls you home,
a call you try
to ignore - trading an old life
for...mountain peak
you'll show her travels from shore
to shore, dances
you will teach her,
a sense of adventure

and
the curiosity to explore.

And only a little sad someday
you'll have to watch her
walk away
through the door.

singing down the bones
the elephant knows
the boy in the hospital
spilling out things
only a mother knows
singing like reeds
when the wind blows
the muscle the skin
the mouth sways in the
same slow ways
the music plays
the song fades
the impression stays
for days
in ways
in waves
an underwater scene
a dream
where everything is clean
and the clear jewel tones
are stronger than bones
build homes for hearts
and put back together what's
been torn apart
in each of us
i know the moans of amputees
and the cries of hearts
ravaged with diseas
and the way it feels to feel
completely alone
and the way it feels
to come back home
singing a song
all my own
down to the bones...

beginning
there was dark matter - no matter
genius stored in star parts
loose change
bangs big and small
with no oversize entity to watch over it all
so then where was i
i wonder
what seed am i sprouted from
what satellite galaxy grew me whole
imagined into this thin skin
where i remember
my turn to begin
a long swim
in a her and a him
a yang and a yin spin
towards the light of when
a birth and a cry echoing back through time
to skim the perception
of all the other me’s i’d been
but this new story
bound in infancy for glory
was a chapter being written
as my molecules were splitting
soon i rolled over, then I was sitting,
standing, walking on wobbly legs
talking with words
unshaped
and overstretched…

day 14
Madcap capers
Caped crusaders
All in the alleyways
Looking for saviors

small scalpel sleeps
sleeping like meat
never pretending
to do more than weep

laugh lines
lined like vines
smothering skin shadows
adding up time

coiled carpets
braided in markets
scented with incense
and colors of sherbet

disturbing bourbon
birds through the curtain
flutter and stutter
always uncertain

War-torn waves
waving like slaves
sunburnt and salt-stained
with crime that pays

day 13
in your child
bed, were easy fables
fabricated and unraveled?

someday they sang, a fifty
gallon bucket outside the window
to catch the rain, to heat
on the fire and then
you were washed with

with voice hollow and scratched
like stones on riverbed, bright
missives collected in crevasses
canyons of canons delivered
like a shot of daylight

straight to the vein, like a
road through the desert, waiting
and look now, you might see
broken guitars and wet honey
spilled on the floor

in that home you smothered
your best glances in, way before
the vultures stole the best pieces
of a history buried shallow
in a land
full of dust.

day 12
salivate for some old bush
bearing blueberries, the
fresh cream butter and smell of
lanolin, i slept in my own bed
birds broke the silence in
my head in the mornings
when the plate glass picture
window glistened like
new
dew
and i grabbed overalls, ran through
the dutch doors, down clover patched
pretend dead-ends
to find you
so we could steal cars and
stash diamonds
in small pockets, careening
over cliff-sides, coffee-can
conversations became our
twin-salvation, until you
got a machete and a fishing pole
and i learned how to discuss
dinosaurs with the sunday
school teachers, my dad lived with
18 different kind of gold-jeweled
commune preachers
and i fed baby lambs bottles of milk
tied my hands to broken stilts
like a fisherman ties on bait
and then
all you can do
is wait...

day 11
copy the cats
with the big black hats
down on decatur avenue.

it’s not that scary
until
they’re coming after you.

commit the crime,
do the time,
turn into someone new.

this is why
we speak the lines,
rehearse for act one and act two.

tapdance,
romance, splitting atoms
as easily as tying your shoe.

dancing down the daylight,
ships sailing off
into the wild blue.

if you speak it slowly
backwards in riddles
i’ll call it a haiku.

just don’t say
i pulled you under the crashing waves that time,
it’s not something i would ever do.

emerging
Jeruselum bells, artichokes, circles

encircled, a nautilus shell keeping

secrets, honest words, fabricated

Russian Dolls, hiding ourselves

inside ourselves

.

Kings and candles, lighting up

nights and windows from far off

towns, flying over mountains

glistening white in a dark sky

from an airplane window I

searched and saw

not one light

.

A missionary of thresholds, caught

in a spider’s web, whole bodies birthed

whole hearts healed by a forgiving wind

slivers of existence calling us home

to the doorway we first walked

.

so we are called to defend

that which we love, flowers in gardens we

left behind, forbidden for being too

lush to touch with bare fingers

scent lingers, we remember

.

an ocean of hurt happens and

awakens the fingers of forgiveness

ignites a small flicker to argue

with the darkness as if to

revive all that was broken

.

Jeruselum bells, unfurled ferns, circles

encircled, a seed spilling

secrets, hard deeds expand to

encompass these

Russian Dolls, hiding ourselves

inside ourselves

and only now

emerging…

Day 10
if there were a month
for speaking fresh
for cats to rise up on two legs
and moaning through clenched teeth
for mothers to glimpse their own
childhood gathering
like a tornado whipping
and chipping away at their
soft skin
it might be called March

day 9
Now we’re
crossing train tracks
two at a time, hoping not
to run out of gas,
flabbergasted
at those reckless souls
that attempt to outrun
the coming train, swerving
around the closing barricades,
ignoring the flashing lights.

Everyone is a target
when the hunters stay hidden.
Now we wonder
where the tracks lead, how long
it would take to get there
walking. We lay
our pennies
on the tracks
for someone else to find.

Some universal desire
to follow a straight line
to its curving
conclusion.
To the complexity
of a trestle
over the widening
below.

Day 8
so much more and less
in nothingness
so much mess in ugliness
and jest and rising and falling
of your weakened chest
this week could be
our last, this beach
could be our past
washing out to sea
this could be the only
picture ever taken
of you and me
so much falling
so little care taken
so many wires cross in
the calling
so many beds i've slept in
in these thirty-five years
and so many unshed tears
so much to be amused by, so
many songs i'd love to sing
so much losing brings new peace
so much sorrow brings bridges
to their knees
so much damsel distress in
cleanliness
so much strength put to the test
i'm tasting the wasted breath
and learning to like
what's left.

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