Rumi
told me
to talk less,
and now,
I can't stop
telling
everyone
about it.

You cannot help but cannonball,
you thick-thumbed thing of trying,
mauling all their myth.

You wear down the wicker
they hoped would hold weight.

You say,
"I'm sorry I said them.
I thought they were jokes,
I thought they were poems."

But it's always honest razors
you haul in your hair.

While I while hours
and wonder where to be,
by the time the *** is empty,
I like the view from here.

Coffee is for
mild apologies
and introductions,
sometimes to
yourself.

Someone built this thing I ache in,
someone got paid
long ago.

Cautious on a couch
we made mild plans
to go to the store
just to come back to bed.

Thunder, it soothes me,
and quiet disrupts.

Must I always argue with everything?

Wrapped for warmth,
my neighbor plans ahead,
glances around.

She sees in future weeks
and ensures
she'll love well there.

She counts all her kids
again and again.

She paints flowers
on their faces
and sings to them
in Spanish.

It must be frightening for her
to see so many colors,
to hear wolves so far away.

A splotch on a map,

spilled ink

that spreads and microbizes

past false edges,

infects other blots,

until we're all stained

with each other

and ourselves,

surprised

horrified

delighted

that we can grow

even inkier.

Writing poems
about writing poems
about telephones
about missing home.

If you struggle
to make
your eyes
meet others,
such magic
can be
learned.

Operas
mount racehorses.
Idiom rubs elbows
with Billboard charts.
World capitols bow
to puns
and seabirds,
and long-dead winners
waltz,
cheek to cheek,
with subject-verb
agreement.

The things we love most
are the least important,
but how nice to find
them meeting
each other.

Angry sparks
get lost
in light pollution
until they spiral
to the bottom
of this season's funnel.

Brilliant blazing warmth
for the night,
then a burned-out
barrel,
next to the others,
a museum of flaking moments
in the cold morning air.

Death is too big
for ten words
or less,
and these bobbing signs
and chanting rhymes
make myths of our meaning.

Or at least
so I sneer at my screens.

I have no right
to ask you,
to stir my stuttered spirit,
to rouse me from my
contemptible
somnolent
overfed
indifference.

Nonetheless,
I have to say,
for better or worse,
this just doesn't do it.

In the church of strong spirits,
we carry our own crosses,
slouching towards morning,
for some sour barley god.

Darts in all directions
draw lines directly
back.

The space we make for hate
is space
that we make.

Sunlight may
disinfect,
but it's only just after
the night is over,
that the air
feels truly
clean.

The Greek, the cowboy,
and the soldier know,
that what we do next
began long ago.

you send me sheet music,
i juggle jargon back.
i parse you all wrong,
while you squint
and rub your temples
at all the dead languages
falling out of me.

Dying artists nurse
on youth, beauty,
and foreign cities.

They think that
making marble
is their gift,
and not simply
the belch
of their overfed
souls.

Why is Death always scowling?
Does he hate the life he takes,
or the death he gives?

Love turns tragic in Persia,
in Venice,
in China,
in graveyards,
in movies,
in poems.

Love gets deadly
in candles tall as men.

Only after we fail
to bring it back
from where it's gone,
do we ever think
to join it
where it's at.

I spent a penny
on another,
and now it's
raining dimes.

A stranger knocked
on the wrong door,
so I showed him
where to go.

I like
to pretend,
the dirt
I track inside,
followed me
on purpose.

That maybe,
I'm somewhere,
earth
would like to be.

Plummet heavy
through the clouds
or spread a little,
float around.
Pose or timbre,
chosen vow,
home or god
is always down.

The clatter of dog paws
on a wrought iron gate
thunders a newness,
that something is coming.

I think that it's friendly.
I think it's been paid for.
A storming of something
that's coming for me.

Some souls ferment,
become bearded and bent,
don't miss their legs,
have something quiet to say.

clementines
scatter the counter,
bruised and browning,
a seedless deadline,
a citric clock,
some recent kid's
acid ambitions.

The Greeks made flaws fatal,
but now they merely
tire us,
until we slowly resign
ourselves
to our organs.

We'd be better
to be worse.

When I saw her again,
I learned she named
all her pets
after exotic spices,
like cardamon
and sweet flag,
flavor she found,
life she had earned.

Wrote a million words,
deleted all but these.

I think I can
admit
that all I want
to write
is poems.

But for
so many
ugly days
at a time,
I am empty
of even
the fewest
words.

I love the way you bubble,
but never overflow,
thunder like a fountain
aiming only at yourself.

But I want to break your balance.
I need to make you splash.

fingerprints
on glasses
on water rings
on tables.

i think you
make messes
so i know
that you were
here.

I got dusky dizzy
piano drunk
in the early evening's cooling,
in nina's sweaty cooing,
went giddy, mad, and growing.

I rolled around my porch awhile,
counting bricks and licking paint.

Over and over,
I kept thanking all the bugs.

Found a fence,
climbed a fence,
wildflowers
ever since.

*

It should be
right around here.
Yep,
see there,
through those trees,
with the gothic points,
that's it,
the one
that I told you about...

You projected your voice
to the backs
of ninety theaters,
even whispered asides
to ballrooms and arcades.

It would take generations
to see your domes tower,
to call you to curtain,
our line of sight
at last
unobstructed:

You crafting your
cantilevers,
you setting the stage.

The heights
and plummets,
the Saturday
rocketeering,
all look like
gentle slopes
from space.

I know
you have
so much to do,
pretty power things
too big for me to see,
but
please please please,
sometime soon,
breathe a little slower,
and play some games with me.

There is
a crooked path
of wine bottles
from me
back to Adam.

"It finally got to her that Buenos Aires
was her own private prison.
That's when she decided to run away.
She went to Montevideo
and got a job singing in a nightclub,
started divorce proceedings,
and met a man.

Amado Mio."

If I insist on writing poems about movies,
I'm gonna have to find some
with worse scripts.

Some seam has burst in me,
and now I duel with the universe.

It keeps telling me it's big,
I keep doubting it's enough.

This space in me
eats galaxies,
so I dodge things
of value,
squirrels and news
and nurses,
anything that blinks.

But who ever heard
of a hurricane
that chooses?

She's gold
with a heart of a ******,
laughing off-key
at you laughing on-key.

Future temples
will make her prettier
in their statues,
will stain the wrong glass
in all the wrong ways,

and it is just then
when the truth that she brought us
will begin to be forgotten.

They will tell you that they're happier
than you.
This will be true.

They'll confuse your courage
and limp all your lyrics.

They'll beg you to borrow,
curse the curbs,
gently grief you
to suit yourself,
to buy better guts.

They'll set you up
with the shiny sons
of their duller deeds.

When they ask you
your curfew,
promise you peace,
they will make many
many good points,
and they may very well
be very right.

Don't ******* do it.

I wrote poems
for half an hour,
so I guess
I still do that.

My shuffles echo
in half-built homes,
I vault muddy wadis
and stomp in circles
like a baby elephant
throwing a fit,
until the too-slept dawn
makes me see me
too much,
so I
track dirt back
to my
safer nest.

You always think
some physical
thing
will change
the
*******
air.

Each morning
brightens
visibly
at my approach,
busking birds
and snoring
garbage trucks.

The mailman
refuses
to let me carry
my boxes,
and the bills pay
themselves.

Hands on hips,
popped akimbo,
I just want to hold something
that's angry at me.

two floors below me
someone's turning seven

to the sounds of beanbag slaps,
updates on cousins,
spanish singalongs,
and a dog stealing cake.

i freeze myself in flyby squealing.

i cough into my elbow.
my coffee grows cold,
afraid that if i'm here too much
it may just float away.