I saw you
I know you didn’t feel it
but I did
I saw you
just a glimpse
of you
it was late
I could be wrong
but honestly
I saw you
for the first time
in such a long time
I think I saw you
but it was late

My face, knotted in the shopfront glass,
then smeared smooth, unfolding

in strangest waves and furls
until it's me again, the mask restored.

I do this several times. Step left,
I'm a minotaur, a funhouse scream,

a maze-horror, a twist and blink.
Step right, the pane straightens me

into a mid-life crisis.
But I can't help but wonder

if it's like a coat hanger:
once bent, never really true again;

the mirror regurgitates destinies
as casually as How Do You Do.

I wander down the walk and wonder
if my eye is still slivered and daubed

into a blanched, branched pool
of wild milk spoiling in the open air.

a wild god is sleeping in your bones
it is too early to tell the direction
of that thought, you know
it has a dark end
no need for an algorithm
for wonder

wild images colonize my brain
they throw me here and there
it's not too late under the roof of the world
not for a bleaching heart

something is growing like a wave
that forgot its end

"What's your greatest ambition?"
"To become immortal, and then die."
-Jean-Luc Godard in Truffaut's Breathless


O immortal reader:
join me now (in a pine grove)

where in last night's dream
I attended my own funeral.

Oh no, it's not so morbid
(think of Tom Sawyer).

Besides, at 4:30 (not even dawn),
cats woke me in the half light

before the thing in the grave pit
began stirring and branching

(upwards? downwards?).
Instead I heard the speeches,

(tremulous and sentimental).
I saw the old pictures pinned

to the poster (I looked decent).
No one would talk about how,

how it happened,
but everyone said "I never

thought it would be like this."
(What does that mean?)

And, most mysterious of all,
"At least he achieved his ambition."

When I woke (born to shadow),
I had no idea what that might be,

but pennants of dawn are flying
over a moon drowning in a coffee cup.

The bartender says my moon's in Pisces,
Leo ascendent, sun in Aries.

The room loses its light, turns
the blued complexion of an oven

cooling off as the meat rests.
Elbows like tent poles

sunk into pocked bar top.
Thinking about all the Pisces

I have known, so many.
Maybe there's something in this?

Then I think about K----,
who went Chicago to Berlin.

When was her birthday again?
A dalliance in slips and slices,

two marriages on the skids,
hearts pushed through a sieve

across 700 miles. Was she a Pisces?
I remember she didn't want more kids,

& my world hardened.
I guess I'm to blame there.

When she evaporated, post-Berlin,
where did she end up?

Moon in Pisces, moon in Pisces...
lonely in my cylinders of beer,

the memory pares me down
until I'm just nerves fanning out

like the naked head of the tree
brushing up into brown eaves.

Bills  Bills  Bills  Bills
Never a Sam or Clyde
I simply can’t get out of debt
No matter how I’ve tried.

Bills  Bill  Bills  Bills
They come in twos and threes.
I wish that I could get a loan
To help me pay for these.

My credit score is way too low;
It’s only six-o-five.
I know they’ll never loan the dough
That I need to survive.

I didn’t know which way to turn
Until I spoke to Frank
He kindly said he’d lend a hand -
And help me rob a bank.

We put disguises on my face
And he pulled out a gun
We got some money in our bag
And took off on the run.

But we didn’t get too far
The coppers had us nailed.
They hauled us up before a judge
And both of us were jailed.

The problem now has gone away
My room and board is free
I have no monthly bills to pay
So I’m the winner, don’t you see.
ljm

for Lori


Foaming Pacific ovals
sweep cold over nephew's knees -

his laughter breaches sandy mount,
from flashing white crescent

of pepperminted mouth.
Palms above the char pit

chaperone my brother-in-law
as he hisses open enameled cans

of sweet seltzer. My sister
trades antique desert stories

with my aunt. Someone slings
Monopoly hotels back into the box.

August is climbing eastwards,
bringing a fog bank

that won't stop arriving,
arriving, always arriving.