I am darkness.
I wear the mask of sunny mornings
But dark shadows seep around the edges.

I am storm clouds.
I masquerade as blue sky days
But the cows out in the fields lay down.

I am a somber dirge
Though my speakers play a happy song
It’s always in a minor key.

I am tomorrow.
While I can’t untangle from today
I waft the scent of yesterday.
                     ljm

Dead men are heavier than broken hearts. -Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep


Birds in flock are tilting
in the pink gloam,

a black convex wine stain
pouring from the last orange faces

of exhausted trees, flayed
by the new freeze.

My oldest friend smokes menthols
in the driveway, discussing

the crushing vicissitudes
of the women we have loved,

until voices thicken
into mint-smoke plumes.

Night is a coarse dough
come November:

knotted, knitted, clay-skinned.
These gaps between us all

are so lonesome. You expect
the silence to eventually contract,

but it doesn't; it won't.
Birds are slanting so heavily,

as if they are drunk.
"Dead men are heavier

than broken hearts."
They slip away, so that

the only sound is wind,
crawling up the hillside.

Intent is always blotted
by leaking speech:

words stray from their purpose
like star-bellied clouds

that stumble and fall
into a coffee cup,

burning with morning:
a wet mirror face.

The gutters murmur
with yellow leaf heads,

a branch escapes
from the wood (unwillingly?)

& the morning vaults
over the white creek.

I'm here, I'm here,
the rain is saying -

it stalks me home
after the concert.

Dad died not far from here.
Now the evening lays a red carpet

of old leaves for me, a wet welcome,
stamped all down the walk.

I think about Dad, and also Her,
the one who slipped her thin words

into the spaces I was saving
for children, or something.

Those words erased me.
Dad's death erased me.

I was rebuilt in a new image,
scrubbed out with the side of Her hand.

So now what? I grew my hair out,
trying for a new look. I am running,

reshaping the whisky fat.
I am a scream. I am a scream,

piercing the black hood of night,
washed away by this new one.

The new one is no answer,
she's been burned the same way.

I visit my oldest friends, boys I knew
in the lunch line, the school yard:

they are full of ancient pain,
cooked into them, no escape.

I'm near the hospital where Dad passed
into the air. Who knows where we go?

The forest closes in. The sky dies.
Houses collapse into bone and mortar.

I am alone tonight, can't you tell?
Where are they all? Where are they all?

Wild and kind, sweet-eyed,
you opened the drawer

& chose the long knife,
the anesthetic. Your hand,

it's so steady in the slicing,
unbothered by the steaming rib

or the hot pulp heart.
You've done this before,

you don't even leave a scar:
so careful, so careful.

Though you could if you wanted.
Yes, that's an invitation,

if you weren't sure:
cut this deep milk skin

& find my ruinous ache,
exchange it for your name.

Your smile is sharp enough,
your fingers are experienced.

You in that paper dress...
Ah - it's too late -

the theater is going dark.
The elms are sick with shadow.

The thigh of sleep
is whispering to you:

Go now, little surgeon:
you're done this delving.