With irises black as limousines
you entered the grounds
without pronouncement.
You were like Baba Yaga,
cruel in your accidental truth.
Your achtung heart curled inward,
like a tar block, or amber.
With a pestle of love,
you ground me away.

Plastic sarcophagus aspect
of the breathing machine -
feed it broken foam
to make me free.
Paper sound lung,
a landscape of coral,  
tape the needle down -
we don't get many kids here.
My blood wandered
to another face -
my chest a kennel.
What's yours is
never wholly yours.

Soft as poached yolk,
nightlights dot the Liffey -
you are a snow dream
in a black gallery.

There's a little
boy that hides in
the dark corners of
my soul.
He doesn't want to
be hurt anymore.
I spent eight years
with Beth.
For the most part,
it was hell and
constant pain.
She made nightmares
look good.
I heard the
little boy cry
late into the
silky night,
while snails got
smashed on the streets
of Ventura.

When I drank, which was often,
the little boy seemed
at peace for awhile,
while swans were
murdered in Venice,
and I tasted the ashes
of Neruda.
Years flew by
like seagulls;
up
down
and darting.
The little boy
continued to
hide in the
dark corners of my soul.

He wanted to
come out and be loved.
He was thirsty for it,
but there wasn't
any around.
It was dry, like the
deserts in hell.
It's too late for
sorries, here comes
the plow.

He began to see
the pattern of life.
There are monsters
that walk in the light.
Vulnerability equals pain.
The little boy got mean.
And now he carries
a knife.

The fog loses purchase
on the window
and, dying, wicks
ashy vapor's slick scatter
to gated green-brown.
Morning comes again
in fractioned crooks
of snow declining
into fat eggs of rain.
The fog is a colossus,
ravels with dragging step,
before retiring itself
above oak branchlets.  
The sun wraps away
in gray, as if stolen.  
Nativity of cloud.
I'm telling you this:
everything is possible.

TW - domestic abuse  


If I had discovered you, Silhouette, told the world to you, cast a spell
to flatten the curve of you - could you have stayed?

If I had stopped hateful hands moving from heavy ******* over new
roundness to naive-wet - could I have run with you?

If I had pushed through their countdown, their grip and anesthesia -
clammed up, stood up - would they have let us get away?


I should have kept you - Silhouette - cocooned and safe.


He discovered you in a slow transformation I hadn’t felt - turned me
around to face him, like a naughty child.

I wondered the game we played. He slid hands up my vest, cupped my *******, drew fingers down the symmetry of my belly.

He laughed because I was wet, but I opened to him, I always did. I learned
about you, Silhouette, when he whispered you can’t keep it.

To E--,

Sleep flocks east,
leaving sheets clapped,
& yanking back
my unruly dream.
Frost is handsome
in the starry clover,
& an unsteady sun
seems still drunk,
flushed about the cheek,
after columns of Saturday.
I can feel the chill
across the glass
when holly stripes
with stringent wind -
I miss you.
You trouble my mornings
with your absence.
Sometimes when thoughts
are mottled by drowse,
I surprise myself
making coffee for two.
My walls rhyme
with your drawings.
I must wait until
your half of the bed
aligns heady bells again
on a snow-drum Sunday.
I remain,
your lamp-eyed lover,
Yours,
Evan