I anticipate that on some distant roof
there must be a man waving two distinct flags,

so as to direct the flock of birds flying above me.  Crossing
his arms, the fabric folding and slipping against itself

in the wind, making a noise of snaps
and swooshes and billowing.

This thought suddenly makes my jacket
seem oversized; the sleeves feel lengthened,

drooping over my hands, as though
I were still a child at play,

putting on father's army jacket on Sunday morning
before church; him in a dress shirt

and black suspenders, shaving in front of the steamy
bathroom mirror.

And I notice that I can see my breath
as it escapes the sauna of my insides.

It disperses into the February air—
no man waving flags on a distant roof somewhere

to keep its molecules from scattering
in every direction.

I reckon that
if'n you can't see beauty

in things abnormal,
I should slap ye for

seein' otherwise.  Like if
all of the different

tongues of the world
were up'n snatched and

tied together and
then everybody with their tongues all twisted

would try and pull back
at the same time.  And finally

we'd all be speaking the same language:
Pain.

But the knot would tighten.

That morning,
I smelled something cooking
so I stumbled down the stairs.

My mother
stood in the kitchen, apron adorned,
frosting a chocolate cake in the sunlight.

Her hands
were stained with dyes,
the frosting was yellow.

Her daughter
loved yellow.  My mother had decided
to plant marigolds by her grave.

She looked
over in my direction.
"I figured we could still celebrate this year."

My head
shook without me thinking about it.
It took a second, but soon she was bawling.

The counter
only supported her grief
for so long.

Soon enough,
she was on the floor,
her unanswered questions

had spilled
all over the kitchen.
I did my best to clean them up.

We sat
at the table, the third chair empty,
my mother's mistake in front of us.

It said,
"Happy Birthday, Love Always,"
she took out two plates,

and my mother and I sat there,
silent in the yellow sunlight.

I live
long, awkward silences in the moonlight
on the surface of another planet.

History is our theme song.

You live
with demons in your brain, in the country home
that is the back of your mind.

It lives
like a dog without hind legs
pulling itself along in its own chariot car.

We live
five miles from the waterfall
at the edge of the Mercator Projection.

They live
as a herd of emotions
stampeding out of control.

History is our theme song.

as you turn away
your face wanes
like the face of the moon

hair, billowing black
and white shades
enlace from east to west

love tastes like
the vastness of the
starred space above

and below
it is sound ceaselessly echoing
off the walls of a canyon

the galaxies careen
outward in the endless dark
like spores, searching

We smear red clay on our faces,
under our eyes and along our cheekbones,

across the forehead and down the nose.
It is something like war paint.

The noon sun watches intently
as we sharpen our spearheads.

Our naked backs begin to sweat
and glisten in the light:  hunched,

preparing.

To craft a poem
is to carve a small wooden figurine
of an Arabian horse
out of a redwood tree—
a trinket
whose sole purpose is to gather dust.

And when comes
the boa constrictor of slow sleep,
you, young author, will have this poem
as the great pharaohs of ancient Egypt
had their treasures—
beads, idols, canopic jars—
accompanying them in their tombs
like a crowd of onlookers
surrounding the silent scene of a car crash.

Novelty items, family members, memories—
words to be whittled down
into useless artifacts.