settle in the rose—
a hideaway.
my shoulders turn
the air.
my scapula-
smooth moments—
dead.
living.
intrazombie.
it’s my smoke which
wicks your
love—the foolish
gray, unfree and
blind. I believe
I am half—troubles
far. fingers
burning ginger
freckles through
the white page.
somehow
the rock and flint
set you afire.

I could not accept you—star
incarnate, carved and swollen
in the trunk of a fustic—

*****-yellowed and preened—risen
and alive I strap my
saddle to your back. My heels
dig to the dark side of

a price yet to be paid—an eye
of a coursing, being scrubbed
into the spots of grain—heat
eaten by earth. Star set.
Star rise.
Star be

livid and leaven

whispers the cowboy
sitting in a lawn chair on the
front porch—his hat falling
off from crowning, bald-headed

tilt. space and all its wonders.

you had me when you
skinned my hide—the future
and present of squiggled
intestines tilting with the
rotation of earth.

I am macho—no nighttime.
the summer constellations
throw me a bone and big crunch
as my molars snap with my
jaw.

it takes a year to go around the sun once.
it takes a trawl to fish properly.
it takes a dog to chase the brightest
star.

*Sirius.

bordered void snaps
shadowed woman,
shadowed man—
a multiplication of flowers
hang loose as

our lips transpose the rose,
eat the rock. one

quasar fraying my teeth—soft
as I etch your back, perfect
and slender.

stars and radio master
intercloud motion—1000 light
years in most directions. However,
I am still blind to anything
but you. This

dark matter aloha steps
off my mind’s plane
into the muggy air. A string
of flowers is placed around
my neck, and I look up—
starbursts
spit their rings violent and
central—your body
in music. Now, tropical
space—population

one. A tear rolls down
my face onto the
runway—I can’t remember
the sound of

your voice.

I wish I could be a book
I could send myself to you
in envelops and postcards
over a laconic lifetime
rungs of ladder climbed
waded through like the push
of legs in the water, over sand
chewing on the words you sent.

We, are a family now,
some privileged in the boundaries
of grandiloquent bags and pouches,
some forgotten in the drawers
before relocations,
versions of a person’s state of mind
over time, we make history books
capturing people in the making
of an indistinct next moment

sometimes we carry our own praises
outsourced by the wits of our writers
like love they did find not in the other
but their own selves, blind still.

Does your reader pause too?
basks in the glory of an empty wall
staring at nothing in particular?
I wish we had will and means
to write ourselves on ourselves
so that we could reach other and do that.

Instead like our creators, we are
dilapidated ruins of yellow bodies,
left to live and die on dirt and air
once they are gone, aren’t you scared
of death?

Seeking Reply
Letter A

picture:

we stand in your office
and the *** crack of a homeless man
glints through the window--
a rise in sweat and speeds
so great they leave a
trail of milk to nurse
my wounds.

the eyes of a frilly moon and
your arms wrapped around
my Orion—

******* reach
for each other in the black.*

painted.

blue feet and sophistication.