A living skin, a skein of green briars
where a half-hinged door is wagged by the wind

Good-natured god, decay’s stigmata-stained spires
nettles paint the stairs splotch patterned, olive skinned

Glass window shards grab a slip of silk curtain
pick-pocket beetles engrave brute luck broadside

Chimney thrushes cabined in ash are certain
cynicism’s growing sums are rectified

Blue jays opine time’s cuckoo clock mocking
worms ply enormous copses, scrawl casts of clay

Autumn gusts and rains whirl detritus stocking
flung colors Pollocked, clutter’s chaos array

Hours dissolve the acorns and soft seeds scatter
as grasses grown tall have turned light yellow

architecture’s flourishes are picked off
crumbled valuables filched and turned to dirt

tumult’s passages dug the driveway’s trough
carrion feeders pull black quills from their shirt

slugs smear a rainbow trail and mice scurry
collapsed walls fall to the slush of leaf slurry

you can only
imagine my kiss,

i am a mirage,
the glossy night
blown into
stars,

i am a phantasm
in the autumn frost,

layered like
the night’s soft
cloud,
a stream of
golden leaves
crisp in the quiet
air,

i drown in the
water of the stars

i faint, a ghostly
apparition
you can
hardly
sense in
the dream-like
surrender of
our love,
arousing our
limbs,
kisses like
the flowers of time.

it is morning and
love hides in the bed
linen where
still-sleepy arms
and legs start to awake.

the scent of rose
on the pillow,
the scent of love
blossoming with
a kiss beneath the sheets,
honey limbs
roused in the sunshine.

late november and
the leaves fall,
spiralling to the
floor, browns and
golds, sinking,
earth bound
in the crisp morning
air.


sunshine
pouring through
the window,
a thin sun
stretches out,
the grey-eyed winter
waits like our
kisses, sweet as
cherry, sweet as our
yearning lips.

One of those north face nights
cloudless, dreamless
thousands of feet up and clinging
Wedged
between cold and moonlit— still

Red digits cannot contain
the 3:15 that they proclaim

Breathing sideways
to get enough!

The air is paper thin

Idle snow—
loitering….