You would think it a dream
to be forever nineteen.
To not age a day
to let youth and strength hold sway.

Still you never count the cost
of all you might have lost:
The sunsets never seen
because you always stayed nineteen.

Just yesterday we got the news;
a positive ID of your remains.
It seems that you died on a foreign shore
when you were just nineteen

Your parents are gone
your siblings dead or dying.
Your nieces and nephews themselves grown old
and yet we all are crying.

My uncle Joe is come home from the war
after Seventy two years gone past
He is forever just nineteen.
That birthday was his last.

in this
pocketful
        of limbo
          the distance rises
               in curls of smoke
        a prairie fire
siphoning into
crisp edge
           of forest
          Inside my
uncloaked ventricle
primeval forces
turn my blood into
dusted gold
as they pump
        sacred texts
into my oxygen
      They roll your quintessence
upon my fingers,
            playing inside
     my psyche's  
wild ache
a spread of orifice
in spellbound mantra,
       as I spit out
          the
            hairy thorns,
a holy purge of
   internal
        engravings
    
Somehow ---
like a miracle,
I grow ripe seedlings
from deep within
            my womb
as I trip into
a universe rising
I take wisps
of your grace
as it brushes
the jut of my
astral collarbone
You are always
         grounding me
                    like this,
               my tongue
              tripping
         over velvet
stance of warrior
        assuaged into silk
    
        Without you,
I might be
whisked off into
the periphery
of chaos
but instead
       I am simply
tied to
      the urgency
of the little novas
about to
        explode

While I wait
            I tend to
              the wildfires.
     to make sure they
                   are still burning
I keep my honey
wet and fresh
upon your
                   lips,
let my pores
drip moonpools
    into your glistening
wet of mouth
and only when
          it is time
I let the whole of
           me burst
into the
      fire -wrapped
tips of
   stars

I used to keep score of every teardrop that would flow
Until like some punch drunk boxer you couldn't give no more
Bells they sounded and to corners we returned
Red to red dirt ground, blues retreat to blossom in bloom
As our hazy Mondays blur through to vague Thursdays
What we had in November was lost come September

A galaxy of oceans separate my disappointment from my disappointment in you
Yet for a chance encounter on a lonely Friday night
Our shadows would dance bathed in the crystal moonlight
For magic it weaves through the diamonds of a roadside bar
Our senses unravelled by some mystical cabalistic charm
So why should we ever try to make sense of it all
Seconds out - round two, don't ever stop, don't ever fall

She left me with nothing but math.

Bedroom walls miscalculated
to the color of a bruised plum.

Moonwhite sheets tangled
into isolated geometries.

Her pillow, the sum
of broken equations.

Moonlight proves
distance by degrees:

light slanting
in the hallway,

the acute angles
of an open door.