He contemplated the viability
of an extended relationship
She, content with ambiguous design
knitted him a sweater

He wrote sappy love poems for her
about the swell of her *******, the curve of her thighs
She took on two other lovers
to fill the time they had to be apart

He came to her house, scribbled
obscenities on her bathroom walls
She copied them in an elegant calligraphy
illuminated with gold leaf on fine vellum parchment

She adjusted his carburetor
when the Toyota wouldn't start
He read out loud to her
from the Time's Sunday Supplement

She got drunk at his party,
puked in the kitchen sink
He put her to bed
then quietly cleaned up after her

The moon never
scrawled their names
across the sky

I loved you but  all of a sudden
you left me all alone
I gave you the best of my life
and you left me all alone
Those years were the best
until you left me

You left me all your technology
so I clipped all your cables
I turned off all the connections and
deleted your files

You left me your car
It was time for the annual servicing
You left me your house
you left me your money
your stocks and your bonds
The wolf's not at the door
it's eating at my heart

You left me all alone

When I was a child I filled the vacuum of ignorance
with philosophies founded on a pebble
or a dandelion seed
In that time cats communed in slant-eyed syllables
savored gossip of ghosts and goblins
Outside time and space unborn souls lingered
waiting for the call of conception to take them
suddenly to a moment of birth
When I leaned against a telephone pole
I could feel tiny voices running inside the lines
The earth rolled on. I knew
I could feel it move when I lay in bed
before sleep tumbling eastward
spinning within the great circle of the year
I knew the plane in which the sun moved
I felt the spin of the Milky Way
Only passenger on the  Cosmic Carnival Ride
I worried at infinity or pondered the history of  rocks
"You see, I see this thing here
and I say it's green.
You say it's green too, but how
do we know it's the same color. I mean
if I looked through your eyes
would I call this thing red? How do
we know? Maybe it's just
a long time ago we decided grass is green and the sky is blue and because
we all call this color green
we think we all see it the same."

Infinity will always remain. Half of forever is still forever
I prefer to sit facing the east
looking to see what is to come.

I am full up to here
inhabited, possessed
a vessel for imaginary beings
and things that never happened
silent voices whisper in my ear
my eyes dwell on imaginary landscapes
and I cannot rest

All the god-concatenated words
rattle and clatter inside me
they are not mine to control
I can only release them

Nouns skitter across my mind
verbs hunker down
in the shadows in the corners
A strong gerund is prying
open the locked door
My mouth
my fingers move

Spill out that which is inside
being emptied, I am refilled
Honey bees could distill the essence
into neatly stacked pages
I am not so accomplished

Mother
sits in splendid silence
her deadfox collar
pulled tight around her throat
Dear Mother
Isolation mother

my face is bloodied with
her carmine lips

I cannot remember or recall
when she tightened my skates
or bandaged my wounds

shut the door
you *****

Fetch you candy
or my love

Because time was so heavy
her fragile lace was crushed.
Because the world held still too long
each moment twisted like a corkscrew,
bored into her heartword like worms.
It just made more sense to dress in heavy denims
and leather.
Smoke or warm wine could grease the seconds
make them slip over each other
in a fervent tumble--wine too bitter
smoke too easy.
Nonetheless, without them minutes lingered
like bad company, crowded the hours and days
with shrill laughter.
Only small deaths could evict them.
Hers or theirs--no choice was easy.
Because now was forever
her days melted into small puddles,
soaked into the earth and she clothed herself
in the granite of young mountains.
Diamonds grew in her ears,
bats nested in the crook of her arms, had babies
and the dark flocks shaded her eyes from the moon.
Now when she sleeps, she dreams, and she dreams
the dreams are real.
The dreams are hard as the rocks
and her lace is the dust of her dreams.

Hurting for the
cold dawn, pink ripples
cold fingers wet with
lake sheared from his thin line
Big Fish
Big Fish
following his daredevil retrieve
the nagging whine the singing
of his reel
figure eight at the side of the boat
a flash, a glimmer
he dreams he would
stand up in the boat
dive into the cold water
and become a fish