Some secret sooner
day,
there's new jokes,
familiar flashes,
and cutting fresh fruit
to share with pretty people.

Here the flags are made of stone.

The mossy British god holds vigil
from a humbled candle spire,
and the old kit bags,
one by one,
are unpacked.

Grass untrammeled
Lines unbroken
Liquid living spouting life,
reflecting something
more gray than red.

We are each our own cenotaphs,
having lost you,
lost us.

How do we give it all back to you,
you castoff children of hell?

We only know to give it
to ourselves,
and to carve you like Pharaohs
for a while
for a while.

When I watched you through the window
dodge rain to get mail,
I was spiked with the need
to shock you
with words.

But David and Solomon,
our mothers and Coke,
those selfish *******
invented every beautiful thing,
repeated them over,
and left no good word
I could say to you first.

My ears pop
as I climb your stairs,
steal breath
with a cat
halfway home,
get dizzy
and skeletal,
queasy hungry,
reminding myself
to not look up
or down,
count the steps,
breathe the breaths,
hypnotic hope,
tendons tending
over thresholds
to temples,
hands to heads,
to take trash
and bills
back down,
heels and rails,
bend my
spine,
stoop
again to earth.

a minute ago,
maybe ten,
maybe twenty,
i remember being
unimpressed
by the star shape
in those bricks.

now,
no matter which leg
i stand on,
the tilt i try,
i can't see it anymore,
wonder where it's gone.

The soft side of starlight
keeps winking
through my blinds,
surprised that I'm awake,
asking why I'm scared.

"Can't you see,
can't you see?
All the breathing,
all the blooming?

A curve or two away,
a month of brave at most,
weaving through the pines,
there's laughter there
that's yours."

Building
marble men
to admire
or hate.

We should
tear them all
down,
and climb up
ourselves.

Wooden,
stone,
or concrete,
now when I
see steps,
I want to
sit on them
with you.

My watermelon thumb
crosses your brown leg,
like a thirsty prince
in a dizzy desert.

I trace bug bites
and stubble,
while you radiate heat.

I feel our whole summer
pouring out of you.

When the sun gets high,
I search for shade.

It's been a minute
since i was
permanent,
was wondering
if you'd
write  a bit on me.

I've been keeping track
of each shudder and smirk,
making field notes
of your apologies
and your
demands for apologies,
quick sketches
of your grace.

One day you won't surprise me.
Then I'll put you in order.

Like a tax return,
once or twice a day,
I wondered
when you'd get here,

thought about ways
of making you
spent.

Between the borders
lie bubbling mires,
thick but porous,
pockmarked and soft.

A chorus of croaking warts,
"Slither through my friend;
take back whatever
is yours,
but please
please
please
add us to your maps."

That thing you said
made home inside me,
sweats through my feet,
seethes my ******* teeth.

I propose a deal.

Where I would
scrape terrace walls,
would break my vows
to god and state,
Would fall in ****
and climb out broke,
Would cheat you blind,
Would feed you grapes,
Would steal ruby rings
from bishops' tombs,
Would bolt my pottage
with a wooden spoon
to get back to leaving
a painting unfinished,
I would be murdered
by your brothers
and ghost you with my head.
I would fire and **** and pray you.
Would believe myself
a ploughhorse.

All of this,
for ten stories,
each night.

They think me sad,
disheveled,
too loud
at times.

"i think i remember
the first time,
i was maybe ten.
in a football stadium,
i remained seated
in a stampede of joy,
felt me sinking lower
lower and lower,
beneath healthier
hooves..."

the hours pass like clouds
on some other higher plane,
far from me
but big enough to see.

and the sunlight performs
its slow surgery
slicing my toes,
before moving upward,
on to more vital, failing
things,
before flashing its badge
and clocking out.

and i start again,
"i think i remember
the first time,
i was maybe ten....."

How do you end the future?

Palimpsests
of first footsteppers.
Old starships
and kidnapped daughters.

For forty years we've watched
the screens of lower stars,
their clean floors
and hateless dilemmas,
taking tours of the best of us.

Our problems,
their past,
left lightyears behind.

And the next generation
is always always next,
like planets first federated,
like first contact at last,
a speech undelivered.

An ending that satisfies
may just well be
where no man has gone before.

These kids can't cope,
don't eat on time.

They stomp craters in sidewalks
on their way to the
culling.

They choke me in comet tails,
blear beauty through brains,
cursing at cops,
stooping to saviors.

They streak their spit like evidence.

These kids get angry,
get plosive,
like it was kissing or grinning.

These kids get angry,
and I've yet to say thanks.

The sweat on Sydney Poitier's brow
might just save us all.

How dare he
sell us our own souls
with so sweet a tenor.

Anne so sleepy
so tired of gritting.
Her lungs pulsing
for a decade or three.
Only she could kind enough,
to grant the night off.

Quincy moans and mourns,
but won't pick a side.

Switchboards tie us to each other,
like saxophones,
eventually.

This movie's about suicide.
Telly Savalas stood stone in the wings.

And I guess,
if we're going to just quit,
it's right that
Kojak should be there,

scowling on a sucker,
to call the time of death.

Should we see
at the speed of grass,
find it stretching
good morning
at the growing heat,
we would notice it pulsing
and step more softly.

Whenever
I'm around you,
I get greedy,
start planning
three-day weekends.

i let three prophets
peek through my window,
and now i glow,
tremble as they chant,
'more, more, more.....'

Cats could walk tightropes,
but they'd never think
to brag.
They rather hunger.

We may blood better
but pretend we don't.

Instead
we love cats
and people keeping balance,
love purring over pork
and going 'ooohh.'

I shove the noon backward
and never choose to sleep.

I slink heel to toe
on each terracotta day.

All the best minutes
are lost to hours,
while many
moments
marry us
for years.

sleep
comedy
love,
is mostly
timing.

too early
or late,
you're tired
alone
unfunny.

sometimes in the shower
i heat the water
until it scalds and suffocates.

a few minutes later
i acclimate,
and do it again

and again

until the whole house
is hazy
with steam,
until you screech
like a teakettle.

then pink and raw,
more sweat than soap,
i grow dizzy and breathless

turn you off

let the recycled air
cool me like mint.

i walk around the rest of the day
with new skin,
glutted and brave,
radiating heat and blood.

*

so, i guess,

my darling,

for me,

eating you out,

is something like that.

i make a list of things to do,
then go back to sleep.

i wander my porch to pieces,
counting all my coffees
until my teeth go tight.

i cover my ears with the altos of experts,
then argue with myself
for a while.

i write a poem.
i take a shower.
i eat a food.
i kiss a cat.

about then, i feel content
and start to wonder
whatever happened
to that list.

At any given time,
I wish I didn't have
about ten percent
of my too many books.

Feel free
my friend
to let your eyes sparkle
upon the one
you love.

But keep in mind
there is such a thing
as too many orchids.

I could move
so much faster
if I knew
it was toward
and from
only paint.

All these trees
reach up for warmth
as I cool my boiling
blood beneath them.

A friend recalled
some minor news,
that last decade's
daring
moved back into town.

I remembered her height
for most of an hour,
and now,
my skin's a compass.

No matter where I turn,
there's a
buzzing buzzing buzzing,
somewhere straight East.

The hearts
we lick
and bite
and savor
sometimes
disagree
with us.

I was just about to admit
that nothing ever changes.
Then, you had to go and get beautiful.

all this gravity
inside me,
dragging like bricks,
melting like suns,
where where
what's under there?

I don't think I've
ever been in love
with someone
who wasn't a
friend.

I don't think I've
ever had a friend
who I wasn't
a bit
in love with.

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.

Every few hours
I convince myself
all the edges are
sinking
and the air's gone
rotten.

Until the next corner
where some crooked smile
stabs me sober.

I've grown less fond
of grubby dreaming,
have had enough of hope.

I distrust bright colors
and new mirrors.

I need layers of dust
to recognize
my lived-in eyes.

Every time I boil water
my mind bubbles elsewhere
hotter hating those long
dead half men
who braided you
painful patterns
caulked you into their
weedy concrete
buried you in their cheeks
to hide their untimely clenching
and us younger uncles
pure and weak
left with nothing else
but to sigh
and scorch pots.

Sometimes it's nice
to flick a finger
and make
pretty heroes
happen.

i lost my mind
and hit the walls,
found vines inside
and
very old friends.

it was a wood-paneled hell
with two doomed friends,
nicotine-stained,
beginning the end,
the dust of our daring,
the carpet's latest layer.

the shards of glass
we stomped on
were duller than the stones.
we'd crawl out at dusk,
and pace over
and over
our inside jokes,
in that motel cul-de-sac,
circling like trash.

"someone should tear this place down."

*

now the streets seem shorter
and the root beer parking lot
where i read youth to sleep
snuck up on me.

a quick dangerous flick
of eyes over shoulders,
a last-minute dare
for a chain-link slice
of where the ending
all began,

but the ******* tore it down.

I took a week off
to draw maps
on your legs,
so that whenever
I felt like leaving,
I'd remember
why to stay.

Growing braver,
I take big bites,
clean and cool,
with waking-up
dripping down
my arm,
spit out poems
like watermelon seeds.

it's been so long
i know the way now,
folded pavement
seamless merging.
hopeful headlights
piercing windows,
i cross the border
cannonballing.

then one wrong left,
and hell again.

I came to
in a cobblestone temple,
ten-foot square,
but full of things.

I found there lightbulbs,
and gnawing,
and came across
cooking,
everything but windows.

i sharp my teeth at angles,
i throw my hair at people,
i grape the day electric,
and bite my thumb at evil.