You haven't moved
in several minutes,
a perfect model,
as if it were your goal.
The sun filters through
gauze and lace,
the peculiar mid-morning
light that muscles its way
across the wall
in grasping splashes.
Your tea is steaming
in its high-waisted glass,
& I hear half-sounds
escaping from your room.
I am the reporter
of your brown eye,
writing this moment
to you even though
it's already gone.

It is a night
of champagne and ashes.

Here is a glass
that never stops weeping,

singing your name
with a wheeling hunger.

I sit just nearby,
under yesterday's chandelier,

reaching your sleep
with all ten fingers.

Tonight I'm rioting
with your smile,

and my skin
is insane from wishing.

Tomorrow I will be satisfied
with your wanton eye,

and the clever flood
of your lip.

Green rapture of human life,
crazy hope, golden frenzy,
intricate unsleeping dream,
like dreams of vain treasure.

Soul of the world, demented lushness,
decrepit imaginary greenery,
the today of joyful expectations
and the unfortunate tomorrows.

Follow your shadow in search of your day,
those who with green glasses for cravings
see everything painted to their desire.

More cautious of my fortune,
I have both eyes, both hands,
and only see what I can touch.

I was young, my hair
    covered my forehead.
I picked flowers,
    played by the door.

You were riding
    a bamboo horse,
jousting with plums
    among the benches.

We lived in Changgan,
    without dislike or suspicion.
I became your wife at 14,
    I was shy and unsmiling,

I felt walled-in, and I refused
    every one of your calls.
But at 15, I found myself laughing.
    I even willed our ashes together.

Now I was drowning, even
    as I threw my eyes to you.
By 16, you had traveled
    through gorges filled with rivers.

I heard nothing for five months,
    and monkeys cried from the sky.
Your footsteps by the door
    slowly filled with moss

too thick to sweep, and leaves
    dash away in autumn winds.
In August, yellowed butterflies
    arrive in pairs to the salt grass.

It hurts my heart to watch it.
    I can feel myself aging.
But sooner or later you must descend
    back through the river gorge.

Please write before you do -
    I will come and meet you
all the way by
    Long Wind Beach.

You're sitting in profile
in your favorite red jacket.
Your one eye focuses
on maple pages,
a sweep of hair
recklessly dashes
across the water
of your brow.

When the connection drops,
you are frozen like that,
scalloped by shadow,
sleeveless purple shirt
drifting an eclipse
up your arm.

For a profile like that,
I would sell all of this...

Brandy in my blood,
thoughts riding across
the pink plain of my hand.
M Street confessions
come cheap this time
of year, when
cherry flowers tint
the air with their
exploding heads.

Her version of me
seems better than mine -
I'm always out in the distance
selling rain back to the clouds.
Spring's coarse branch
clubs the brownness
of my unspooling eye.

Is she second-guessing?
Who can blame her?
I have burned all
my wild dreams
into flakes and cinders.
My art is hungry,
a nest of grinding teeth.

Lancing sun
in a wilderness of
roiled stratus -
a day begins
under threat of rain.

A stalking heart
crawling the high grass
searches for you.

I've made hundreds of
searches for you,
crawling in the high grass,
a stalking heart
under threat of rain.

A day begins:
Roiled stratus
in a wilderness of
lancing sun.