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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.