The cat makes her bed
as constitutions of sleep
overcome her.
The day peels back
in pieces like an orange
revealing the sweet
flesh of sleep.
In the weave of day,
the cat finds a bed
in an old leather chair,
triples of sleep.

I  always want you
to know who I am.
When the driving pink days
collapse into anxiety,
& the restless fountain nights
flood the streets
with gray shadows,
there I am, over the keys,
writing to you.
I'm the one who gives you -
across the sea, star to star -
something that you and
you alone can redeem.

On this red rug
the memories come:
the driving angels of meat,
the ocean yanked
around by the cue-moon,
the antler of sleep
that hummed past,  
the bar-room mystery
that was never solved
on a cold night when I
was about twenty-five.

Someday all of these
memories will fall away
into the crevasse
of my death.

Until then, all I can do
is bring them here
and give them to you -
as an offering,
as a plea.

I know that
you can never love me.

But even so,
the glove of evening
slides off as you approach.

So many have tried
this comb - and now you,
the man on the horse.

My lips starve to feel
more than the air
around the sound of your name.

I'm watching
a day rain
that moves
so immensely -  
heaven's wet
mile, spans
& masses
of gray.

It can be
measured.
Yet there
is no tool,
no machine
to measure
the width of
this love.

Crinkles of steam
unfold from my golden coffee
into pyramids of air.

Just beyond, the television
radiates in rectangles
of submission.

3000 miles away, you sit
in your pajamas, watching
with me, linked.

Everything is sending signals,
if you know how to look.

Watching a **** elm tree
on your birthday,
as it bends and whistles
to inaugurate the afternoon.
The grasses bend south,
& birds make silent shadows
up and down the street.

Restless, I stand up,
roam around the apartment:
your birthday carries the odor
of fig soap, or maybe it's plums -
I can't recall. I pick up books
of poetry, put them down,
pick them up again,
turn on the stove, make coffee,
and wave it at the naked elm
to salute you on this day of yours.

This day - so clear,
so empty: you must fill it.

I say your name
over and over,
spiced petals
of a sea rose.

The moon has already plunged
into the alley by my window,
& the stars are scraping away
with milky fingers.

It's a night for names.
I find them on green walls,
in cups of green wine,
across greenish clouds.

I say your name
over and over,
like collecting sea roses
with both hands.

There are those children
out your window again,
but I'm trapped over the line
in the seething yellow dusk.

I count the gapped lintels
the next building over,
count to ten, twenty,
it doesn't stand.

I take up post
by the oven to hear
your anger at those children,
those ****** children.

There is a line
from me to you.
It straddles
the salt **** of sea,
the starry marrow
of night air,
the pencil shavings
about your ankles.
It threads through
castles of romance
I built in another time,
the courtyard littered
with lost scarves.
The line spans
thousands of girdled
miles without effort,
yet it touches you
questioningly,
and lays down
like a stray cat.
Go ahead,
it's yours,
take it.

I dreamed about
runaway horses
dragging the shadows
of early winter through the field.

I dreamed about first snow
falling today in the wood,
collecting in little pockets,
gathering in the grass.

I dreamed you held my hand
through all of it, breath
hanging in the chill.
The two of us, watching

wild hooves stamp and
kick through new snow -
I dreamed of love,
I dreamed of distance.

Come and cure me,
if you can,
vertical man:

there's ice in the glass,
& rain-blacked grass,
as if by plan,

& a loosened sea
is a sad blue band -
this horizontal man

needs your cure,
Dr. A'Bunadh,
so don't detour.

"To find a kiss of yours,"
Lorca wrote,
"What would I give?"

The sediment of the sun
isn't enough, stumbling
into cobbled alleys,
getting lost in bookstores.

& the wing of moon
just multiplies into the earth
with gutters of shadow,
forging letters to old lovers.

The tides of the air are fading
on this churlish Sunday,
yet still I haven't found
what I would give for your kiss -

A little hand of silver?
Every third breath?
My best and hidden whisky?
My heart's speakeasy password?
My giant white and silver painting?
A green wing of evening?
This poem?

Thinking of you -
the night caress,
the black lip flower,
the water hall.

Sleep won't come -
only the quiet wait
until the soft white
hoof of morning.

But I'll mail these
little ponds of thought
to your bed, in case
it softens your eye.

The last shadow will close my eyes
     and take the white day from me,
and unbind my soul from lies and flattery
     so that it can find its way;

but my soul won't leave its memory
     of love there on the shore where it burned:
the flame that swims cold waters
     and has no respect for the severest laws.

My soul, that a god made a prison for,
my veins, that have braided fire,
my marrow, which scorched in glory,

will leave this body but not this desire;
they will be ash, but that ash will feel.
They will be dust, but that dust will love.

The falsetto
"no no no"
shot down
the steepled
maple *****
into the walking line
by the metro.

How someone
got up there
we never knew, or
what made them yell.

I remember only
that the sky
was littered
with the wrecks
of clouds, and
it was a Friday
in winter.

We all stopped,
though we
saw nothing,
& then
it was over.

The grass
waved away
the watery
minutes,
& the sun
rolled loose
among the wrecks
in the blue ditch.

So we towered
over red tile
on the metro
platform,
hands heavy
with phones,
until the train
obliterated us
with its urgency.

Drink with me,
at the Mexican restaurant
on the wharf that serves
mezcal with chili salt,
we'll talk about all the things
no one wants to talk about.  
The lost loves, the harsh
self-treatment, the way
you're recovering nicely.
I'll share oysters,
but I'll leave soon,
my mind full of her,
full of her, full of her.

A club of sun
down Upshur St
breaks our talk
of pink noise.

Interrupted quilts
of cloud are shyly
unlaced in the stillness
of the afternoon.

I turn your face
toward the green
tunnel of park,
but you're not looking.

I'm burning beside you,
trying to quiet
my hurt mouth-sounds.

Get up and search for honey
in the back of the cabinet,
cursing all the while.

Is this one of those
moments when someone
is about to leave me,

gathering their things
& inching toward
the proverbial door?

Go outside - count stars -
have a panic attack -
breathe, breathe -

catch fire and burn.
If I make it to bedtime,
it'll be a mercy.

I'm always being born -
even this morning,
when I was thinking
too hard about it,
curing myself at 8:30
with scotch that reeked
of dense iodine
until a bray of laughter
became a choke
as I returned to the scene
of the ******,
pushing a belly of snow
back into the past;

I'm always being born,
blinking in surprise,
drawing this breath,
instinctively turning to you.

Come see the dead clocks,
between the blocks of sickness
& the giant silent ****.
You must remember
what you gave me,
that last coarse night
when we were so hungry -
bring it with you,
even if it's raining.

Oyster shells of light
peer through the Y
in a bare tree.

Night has moved on
to California or somewhere
out on the ocean.

But the new day, it aches,
the grass drowns in dew.
I see my loved one

in a week, and until then
I am getting a little tired
of clouds burning like sugar.

Once, I thought
I had an empire,
full of ecstasies of grass,
temples to an obese sun,
words signed away
into the last corners
of the brickish night.

I had such grand plans,
to put death to death,
but soon all the heavens
of love coagulated.
Ghosts without eyelids
or lips followed me,
registering each sin.
An owl scratched at the moon.

This was the state you found me in -
I staggered around, alone,
scratching out my brutish art.
For you, though, I combed my soul
& yielded to the burning mercies
you offered among the knees of trees.
You cured me with sugar and patience;
I lived in your eyes.

I am your own poet, now,
lacing you into my middle age,
howling at this strange gamble
that closed a distance,
& falling into your arms
as often as possible.

The leaf drifts
to a green grave.

The soft run of sun
spreads red in the hand.

Angles descend
white into bronze.

Where are you?
You break my symmetry.

All these engravings
in a wing-wax afternoon

are hollow
in your persistent absence.

I.

The washing moon
over evergreens
plucks needling rain:
unsleeping, you rise
& flip through a few pages
although your mind
anchors elsewhere.

II.

Driving home,
you see small birds
whipping into the afternoon
on the line to green,
although your mind
has turned inward
like the stone in a cherry.

Talk to you
soon, by the river;
forgive me.

Or don't -
either way the children
will carry cheap burning sticks
around the August night.

My eye's choir
garbles the sway
swung from your sun's
dying orange angle.

Yes, Saturn's higher
on the belted tray
of stars, softly done:
we're entangled,

you and I.
If I'm a bird,
you're the wings,

though your thighs
eat all my words,
in their long dark strings.

The green night
draws a little farther in.

I'm feeling it -
Your face in the black glass,
your face over the wine pool,
your face that drifts away
from my reach
in buttons of smoke...

I'm feeling it -
The wallpaper crawls away,
the red chair moves its tongue,
the green night closes.
It's a bad intuition,
a javelin of thought,
that maybe it's less than OK.

Your face shrugs the black glass,
your face escapes the wine pool,
your face keeps drifting away
in glencairns of Longrow,
in pyramids of regret.

I close the windows
against the electric moon
as language pries me open,
as the wallpaper crawls,
& your face won't stop
drifting away.

The lowest pine branch
bows its head just above  
where we buried our names
on that day in May.

The air was sweet
with anise, and the wind
through the pine boughs
sounded like the sea.

I want to dig up our names,
I want to push aside
the needled thigh of pine
& bite ***** into mulch.

I want to remember
that day in May
when we buried our histories
in a drum of gelato.

I had a father
bandaged with
quiet. And so
I also tasted
that silent
gauze.

I had a mother
drunk with
self-regard,
stumbling feeling
to feeling.
& so I felt
everything
enormously.

It took so long
to find balance.
I carved a voice
from white marble.
I opened my hands
and let things
escape.

It's not about
the damage,
it's the long
walk back.

A scent like a sword forged with the acid
of plums found by a road,
the sugary kisses that linger in the teeth,
the drops of life sprinkling on the fingertips,
the sweet ****** heart,
the yards, the haystacks, the inviting
secret rooms in the vast houses,
mattresses sleeping in the past, the raging green valley
seen from above, from a hidden window:
adolescence all flickering and burning
like a lamp knocked over in the rain.

The wound only shows
when the body is sleeping,
in the mind, in the nightmare
where ink drops from the desk
& splashes across the floor
in the shape of his face
though he's been dead
for years. It's a blow,
a reminder of the grave
in the air: this wound
never closes, there is no scar,
& sometimes no memory
when the nightmare closes
itself as a raven's wing,
more black ink folding in.

The wound only shows
when the body is sleeping,
so coffee is the sword
& the shield.
Keep sleep short,
don't dream,
& don't think about it,
just sit still, read
the newspaper you stole
from the building's front step.
The Dow is down,
but tech stocks are climbing.

I agree to reveal a secret
in a sonnet, Inez, my beautiful enemy;
but no matter how well I set it up,
it cannot be in the first quatrain.

Here, come to the second: I promise you
that the secret won't slip without my telling you;
but I'll be ******, Inez,
if eight lines of this sonnet haven't already gone.

See, Inez, how hard life is!
With the sonnet already in my mouth
and every last detail planned,

I counted each line and have found
that according to the rules by which a sonnet plays,
this sonnet, Inez, is already finished.

Alone in a folding
wing of sun again,
where Scotch passes lips
straight to an idling blood.
If you worried, don't -
I ate another day without you.

I was born
in the hammer-house,
where the nurse
pulled me blue
into the panic.

In hospital halls
the needle crawls
all the way to maternity.
I laid alone in the crib
like a wet seed.

I was born
in the hammer-house,
where my name
was a black impression,
like a coffee-ring on a table.

Wide dollars of summer thunder
brush the early night.
I've messaged you: no reply yet.

The cloud-curtain births
small violent flags of rain
that waver and fall limp
into the hot gray of the street.  

I'll have no part of it -
instead I'll work on my map
of your thoughts that I started
years ago, even before you knew.

Drag black stroke
all the way down
in the early hour.

Winter sun rises
late: I'm awake
in this crackling dark,

out on a walk
& starting my day
with the incandescence

of Xmas trees spied
in the windows
of strangers.

God begins to sleep,
even before the sun
pulls its skirts back
behind the tall buildings.

You can tell because
the crumbs of evening
start piling up in the garden
where the pine tree
meets the piano.

Everyone is out
in that final gray hour
that sinks knee by knee.
The door is open,
my nose is sailing
in a sea of sweet basil.

This slavish night,
outlined with anxiety,
running a fever,
claims me again.

My pen's in my hand
and the nib is the child
of heartbreak and distress.

Laces of rain
sleep in the air
as our speech
erodes into slopes
of silence.
My phone
doesn't ring.
Your ghost
walks the wood
floors tonight.
I watch from
the frost light
of the fridge
as you vanish.
Nothing's left now
but to close the door,
sew the dark in
around me,
& listen to the
last movements
of the rain.

You are
so far:
if I tell you
that small green
throbs of ice have
formed night
colonies in the
fir needles,

& that horns
wail car to car,
crying out
for you,
"Where did you go?"

you'll just have
to believe
my reports.

But when
I turn off
this lamp,
and the shadow
snaps from
my hand,
up across
the wall
into the dark -

love,
when you rise
this morning,
that sweet shadow
that slips through
your teeth
was mine.

Alex with the "ox-head"
& his dad's old magazine
by the Haitian's house,
stroking our eye
with fields of skin.

Alex, killed at the bus stop
by a drunk driver,
chewing an apricot
as the automatic neon
stuttered to life.

Green bottle,
can you swallow
a whole childhood,
leave only a few drops
on this evening apron?

O sherry-strained Scotch,
blur the lines
of guilt and weight.
After that, what is left
to care about?

Just say it -
you know you should.
Say it quickly, while the night
scrapes an onyx crutch
toward still another oblivion.

She was throwing wax
at the sun all Saturday,
ruining all her mother's
best tapers.

But try and tell her
that piercing the
hard blue afternoon
as it moves inevitably
to an obscene yellow
isn't some kind
of worthwhile task,

try and tell her
that the wax arrows
that chagrine
back to the yard
aren't some kind of protest
against a foot's limit
when else she would fly,
try and tell her.

Walking down 12th
past old Providence Hospital
where years ago
my second wife

recovered from a seizure
she had while drinking beer
with the Peace Corp neighbors
on the fourth floor

past the Catholic group home
where Shannon lived
in a room that tasted
like old books, before

she showed me how
the energy was working
in the empty moments
that arched between us

past the bridge on Taylor
now covered in anemochory
at the foot of the
high rabbit hill

where Hilary pulled off
a grand seduction like
something from an opera
even the couch was guilty

past the old gym
near the law school
I biked there
at six in the morning

to throw water on sauna rocks,
eating the steam;
I swam away,
never to be seen again.

Bad luck
to dream
of the living.

Air is gaunt
with memory -
& what might be
across the line?

Moon has died,
stuck there like
a split opal
or cream iris.

Mind is filled
with omens
& char marks
of worry.

To dream
of the living -
night-killer.

There won't be children,
     let's be honest -
after all,
     you're not coming back.
  
You and I've become
     ninety degree angles
& the months
     go crawling.

I'll mail it all
     to Dublin.
No reason to scream -
     leave it in your cup.

It was a fair shot
     for a while,
but sometimes grass
     just dies in the yard.

Thorning sun
over all of this
sweet yolk
& rain: the impression
of you mixes
with the violent
bouquets of etched air
that rise past
my velvet knee.

Buying wine,
one hand holds
ten dollars
while the other
clasps the glass letter
you floated to me.
I leave the moon
alone. The memories
are fencing sabers
anyway.

Valentine's:
a cup of wine
I raise in toast
to your bobbed hair.

Blue sword of night,
red sword of morning,
yellow sword of afternoon.

The depressed machine
is full of sharp parts.
Who turned it on?
It's a trick question:
it was always on.

But it never rains
on the whole country
at once. Some glade
somewhere is shining -
beats of grass under
knots of sun.

My crest is laden
with mournful anchors:
each high is waited on,
politely, by a low.
Can you free me?
That, too, is a trick question.

Blue sword of night,
red sword of morning,
yellow sword of afternoon.