each knife gray morning
and slate gray night,
i held vigil on a treetop
bare and swaying.

kept time with its nausea
til it was my nausea too.

i watched the sea horizon
for glints of gun scopes
and unfriendly flags.

hungry others,
who wanted me and mine,
for their cabinets.

they did come,
i think.

i heard them play kings around me,
curing as much as they caused,
humming some friendly ******* patois.

it didn't matter much by then.

i watched the sea horizon,
my newer me and mine.

i mourn the joy you gave away,
though you would never think to.

you belong to the ground you stand on.
it never occurs
that your shedded ghosts
could stand somewhere brighter.

you are the saint of gritty teeth.
martyred over meatloaf,
thought it merely dinner.

you polished our crowns of thorns
while we howled like haughty lions.

and in the face of
nuclear
commercial breaks

you kept to your gardens,
crossed picketlines of suffering,
made happy horrors grow.

i found you in your boots,
making wrecks of all the flower beds,
daggers, darts, and seeing red,
and hell to all the rest.

you found me in my truth,
making reckless proclamations,
spitting spite inside a basement,
and studying for tests.

**

like a former prison colony
i watched you become
a strange place.

digesting tragedies like a peat bog,
preserving them for future
generations.

growing lusher and lusher.

the house i am myself
sweating and spitting
returns my feelings.

we merely found each other,
neither choosing,
in our lazy, natural state.

she is cheap.
i ask for little.
she gives me less.
i give her nothing.

so she bakes me for the rocks i kicked last winter,
and i casually curse her too.

but once or twice a season
her humble hills
align along
my stooped indecision.

we pass each other on the mountain,
surprised we are surprised,
at another kindly solstice.

then we both resign our rage,
to sigh and sleep together,
quietly at home.