I light two candles; one purple, one black
Ignite the lavender powder, stick the space between my nostrils
Feel the place between my ears

you have re-emerged from
The center of my brain
This overcast/grey-cloud tattoo of light particles mend the broken, background mandala

I have dreams of saving New Mexico, every shattered kingdom, every splattered heart. I hope you still believe in love too. I hope you don’t comprise oxygen like I do. I hope you still tie carbon into infinity knots.

I promised myself I would only write of god
Of the rose that roots itself in your shoulder in this post-winter aid
But all I want to say is that I hope you’re well

My God is not a genie.
He does not make crosses out of mushrooms
Nor flying angels out of hammerheads
And each night, I lay out a bowl of vinegar
To absorb the rot of my nightmare
And each morning I sit in the cool water to rinse
I wash the windows and their screens
I vacuum the baking soda from the curtains
I place sage leaves behind my back molars
And kiss the earth before my little altar
So said my Lord after the clouds broke
To reveal a hidden blue bond in the sky:

You will not write of pain any longer.
Life will be real.
Love will be the horseshoe that never
Leaves its hoof.

A stranger told me once,
cleanliness is close to godliness.
He told this to me having not bathed for months.
He told me this with two devils behind his pupils
And picked up his 4-stringed guitar with a broken bridge
And sang until the sun-bleached the black of dawn.
That morning the sun rose to scream-o and I left
The stranger in the purity of truth. A miracle happened.
A miracle happened.

to reach the inside the chest
I must pass each echo of your footfall
in sound, a flowering ice
sterling in black cavity

this is not a misguided note,
nothing that was already written and recycled.
I came here on time
tickled by the frost’s silence

as the birds sing
from the right ear to the left: synchronicity/
something stuck in my gills

who is this effigy?
on my knees is how I asked
let me show you what I mean:

I loved how our days thrived
folding the static rain to air
and the giggles of buggied children
nothing in this nocturnal kit
can clothe us from the light—
god always penetrates

my insides house
the four-year-old me
he digs in the backyard
while we both hold him
in day-lit love
in us, in god, he is never lost

[exoskeleton, exhale]

we judge the railway tonight
the taste of our open sores
we tongue in Ever Day
the things without an answer
sleep together with us
their scales, slivered
and silken with our breath

I open your chest
as I take the red sack off my face
I don’t stop the car
as I bend at the neck
and see my own reflection

even in this cold, this sacred pain
love builds the dawn
paints it in goldisect

even when we lose our way
the generous
bind with us
to the depth of this universe until
the smidge is gone

to reach the inside the chest
I take your hand
and pull through the hindering splinters


is anybody there?
is anybody there?

the silence shapes this boy, unheard
in the sanctuary of dead flies
in the clip-side of the brown, microscopic eye
these words ribbled out my chin:

I’m lost, midnightlove.
Now, I’m lost.

I infra-read you again
now that I told the cold to stop
now that I found the breathing tube/
the muck of black lung
and saw the Ferris Wheel tickets inside;
I drank in that night until a glorious emptiness
housed us, until you couldn’t pinpoint my name. somehow
in this veined river, in the lake filled with echoes, you found me
nameless—perfect. and I realized that all my life, I had been sowing my soul
on your tongue.

I get off my feet,
replace the devils that owned me,
find these hexes in rogue. I am detained no more.
the quieted and shielded
boy finds the fence as I fall, empty,
splitting my lip on your knee.

with these shreds, I count
the particles of light in the darkness.
enter the state of dawn.

as hafiz said,
we are two fat men sitting in a boat. when the boat is rocked,
we bump into each other’s bellies and laugh.

this is how I will remember us:
love filling our bellies to laugh
as we sail away in the little boat
to the cottage on the smooth-stone shore

Earlier I saw you untie the Fox
It was in the high branches
But you were fearless/
A reflection in the sky’s acred field
As you set the captive free
To fill his mouth with soil
Now

You put your sister in his place
Her hands bound to the trunk as
Cars yank the highway closer
To the park of ratway silence
You

Pick up the pen for her
Write how it is easiest
To crawl when you are
Tied and drooling
When you take the place of
A martyr and expect nothing
Except something
Blue and brindle-striped and barking
Perfect

Day: you and I take a little white dog
Tie her to the tree and call her our own
Tell her to come and sit and eat
With us around the tree while
We tie each other’s teeth to the roots
With fraying wire
Why

Are we so tired? We ask.
Two too many separations.
Two too many rescue missions
And forgetting how to keep things close
Don’t

Tie the cross-stitched sister to your liking—
Maybe a bow tie or braid but
Imagination only binds itself when
It is allowed to be bound
Phil

Osophy: yet you still danced
To what is
What is
What is
What should be leaves falling now
Is the sky
What should be leaves falling
What should be
What should

clouds are knotted over—
soft q-tip plunge
into your mopped halo.
time dilates
itself into big rain, big thunder—
a concentration of stringed lights
hanging on a rusted picture wire

I’ve written this before but
we are nothing but bones underneath—
mortal refuse cooling in the shade
until our joints are locked
and we toboggan down
with tight jaws

seeing the physical doesn’t mean
you can see—
the tendency to blindfold oneself
snuggles inside judgment,
moves inside the tracks like a swallowed pearl
until you dig through
and find the bruised dream

I let the lightning roll off of the
table, spill on the wood floor.
I don’t mop it up;
I no longer buy the delusion
of messes made. I **** the
electric lemon. feel my face go
cold and numb. succumb to
the dominant, coronal moonshine.

here we are—heaps in the corners
of a corner-less world. we hook things
like fish. we perform fire drills. we love
the act of escaping.
here we are—piles of human, our knees
in our hands.

the next strike comes. ommmmmms into omen.

in this cardboard kingdom, our houses sag
when it rains and we crouch down to survive.
but I will always remember the clouds,
driving knots into your cells as the roof
fell in. and we were both soaked. both sacks
of pearled bones.

In the place of bright dust
We ransack the sun
Back from her bed
We stretch high/baseball bat/wood
Crack in earthen shower
You are there behind the fence
Holding the baby
On easter sunday
We walk in wedding circles
Discuss the tropics, somewhere
On your back I write
Sixteen dances/crickets in tall grass/waves melting shore rocks
I pour you coffee as you squeeze the yolk in deviled eggs
And I fumble with the crepes
Halfmoon/full/french peninsula/the photograph of your riding a merry-go-round
Full, wordless smile
I search for the soothing leak that
Sleeps with frankincense
First, nameless day/nameless, silent bowl
You place the fruit in stained glass
Watch the skins reflect blurred jet-plane/kind sky
What’s left is my burning muscles
Aching for you in tiny flint
Your lips
Your thing that bleeps with breath
With the empty canteen
I leave it in the car
Reset
Cigarette kiss to your bird,
My best friend
Cuddled in croissant
You  make rain a baker’s dozen
Awake
The body inhales

I write you to sleep
in the other room
the leaves and fire of
your dream wisdom,
a dosha to create
each particular function
wrought in sweet, bitter, uncanny can-can
last night I saw you
in the rain with my
jean jacket
you asked about your face
and read me
catholic gospel/the body’s innate wisdom
free of threadworms, windup toys,
each nasty gut of wind
when I love you
I always see you in white
(this is all the time)
and you clear the toxins
from my accounts,
hold up my husband by
his flags,
tell him to
woosh
woosh
woosh
there is a pearl at
the bottom of us
and we touch it with
un-bitten fingers
this essential does not
go unnoticed in
our hearts but
ties our mouths so
we cannot speak—
a grammar lesson on love
and checkmate of birdwings
you awaken
come out for your phone
tell you to go back to sleep
you smile

I have so much to love god for