I.

Tim collapsed in the bathroom
of the cheap-grease pizza place
where he slogged away idles,

hole in arm. When he came back
from the hospital, I asked why
& he had nothing. A few years

went by and I saw him at a bonfire
& he said, hey, do you remember
that old knife game, mumbletypeg?

Well, it's not the knife flying,
not the blade sinking and shaking,
not the thrill of almost-pain,

it's getting low to the ground
hearing the world get quiet
as you grab the sharpness,

visiting a hungry paradise,
tasting the watery loam in teeth.
"I want to feel the most."

II.

Tim got sober and died
to a wrong way drunk driver.
By then we all knew life

wasn't fair, but this was unnecessary
cruelty by the gods or not-gods
or whoever is cutting threads.

At the next bonfire after that
we remembered him in slices,
how he always wanted to feel

"the most" - how he'd sit
at glazed parties with guitar in lap,
toying with that Metallica solo

to One with his tarnished silver
spider's hands, his eyes covered
in shine as he played softly

an easy laugh readied,
mind full to bursting,
maybe with mumbletypeg.

Glass-faced men preen
in high-polished chestnut,

affixed to a serene Medusa
with green-sunned fingers

that erupt from hive-eye blonde,
biting hearts down to their pits.

Green shirts drift up and down
the steep stair as razors of beer

shave us one and all, lathered
in tight heads of Guinness.

"All men **** the thing they love,"
shouts Medusa, reading aloud

from the depths of her purse
to her ****** and adoring date,

"give me your kiss, your sword,"
her words like ivy on old bells.

Not to be outdone, Brian turns,
looking like he's been here since

last night at least, and cries
"A drunkard is a dead man!

& all dead men are drunk."
Medusa is too busy kissing,

but we raise our glass hands,
exiled from heaven and hell,

slouching toward Tuesday,
& toast him from our graves.

Dear H-----,

We were such a scandal -
in their schooling mouths

our names were broiled to ash
by raw rumor and we reveled in it.

We blitzed your blonde bedroom
naked and sugared with sweet steam

& reciprocal obsession.
Each night was a fresh first date,

we measured each other with miles,
with syrup sorceries, with dizzy eyes,

until we crashed under beetle-brow
linen piles, romance shooting inside us

as the rain pooled in drum slopes
on the clay court outside the window.  

But it couldn't last. You were sailing
into harbors of high privilege,

a world of guest rooms where
I had no station. When your sister

played the green glass game with me
in your mom's kitchen she hinted

at clouded designs of friction.
She was right - when Oma died

you retreated into verdigris,
atoms decayed into smaller atoms,

& we slowed and watched in wonder
at ghost-flurries of new spring between us.

It was done, but I miss you nonetheless,
& send my best; yours, Evan.

I cast a spell in the afternoon:
a wand flicks and a cat vanishes

only to reappear chewing on a feather
with a small plastic baseball attached,

both strung on elastic cord that runs
to the black stick in my hand.

She gnaws the baseball bird,
conqueror, dominant victor

in her bedspread domain.
The other cat sullenly spies

with side eye, eager to join
but loathe to wrestle the calico.

With another spell, the feather is freed
to flight across couch, across chair,

bouncing with fat temptation
until it returns to the patchwork lair

of the huntress, who snakes a paw
to stop all renegade motions.

These are the death throes
of the baseball bird, whose final arc

ends in fang and claw on a quilt square
that purrs darkly with city sunset.

Beneath the arch,
        among the branches,
      the maunder of her eyes
           finds noir in an afterimage,
every reflection is unique,
    explicit and indivisible,
        every reflection is her,
      there she looks close
       for gracefulness,
            in the essays of her skin
               and their brazen transparencies,
         she enters into her body fable,
      the shape of her resembles
           the tenor viol: where it widens,
                  where it narrows,
                where it digresses
              and monochromes,
           she reflects a fragile geography,
             a soft cargo, but
               an inkling of hurricane,
             rendering the fault lines
          beautiful and strong,
       in supplication tomorrow's explorer
will disturb the patterns
   until she's become her own lullaby