why do the leaves fall in fall?

is the air too thin?
is the sun too dull?

I grew under grey skies
embedded in road-side
yellow and red

I swallowed lowly air
I watched trees
bending in the wind
molded by the rain

I threw a black balloon
through the clouds

it floated between
layers of sky

it will pop
eventually;
the sun will melt
its skin

but at least it will
know the sensation
of falling

sink the stone and watch
ripples through solar systems
streaming white reflections

sink the stone and watch
ripples through solar systems
streaming white starlight

I shot a little bird in my backyard

it was lovely
how she fell as
my heart beat

I moved her to the fence
away from my mother’s path

after I dropped her there
with red trails nestled
between winding palm grooves

I heard small chirps overhead
naked and hungry and young

I met her in a line
for expensive coffee
picked by honest hands
she wore a scarf
from morocco where she
had never been or smelled
she says her name as if
her mind were elsewhere
so I smile and nod and turn
and look at the ground
thinking of pink stratus clouds

Polyamorous triangles float
past galaxies,
across time (da da da)
like some untangled thread,
each strand pulled infinitely
thin.
I think someone said:
we are as much as we try to be,
maybe;
but nothing more.

Triangles trying [to be]
squares, but missing the point –
lost associations, lost
between skull curves and
carbon ***** of tongue
spit (dee dee dee)
flipping bubbles through
air;
singing metal ***-lid banter
and clapping pavement with
rubber footprints;
existing in evanescence to the eye,
quicker, quicker, quicker, you see (la la la)
like time here on a ball
with defined surface area
always moving with each
sneeze and wind breeze.

Rock rocking
like nothing at all
while earthly bodies with
destructive ease never pause to ponder
the grandeur of bland neoteric needs;
god-fearing carbon pumping
earth, exploding earth and
******* in the hot air.

Shaped to fear some carbonic idea;
too geometric to care (da dee la).

she knelt, a
mother of none, before
a mother of all,
tired between her
stiff legs, over bent knees
scavenging
with torn fingernails
pouring over the soil and stones
searching for her child
never born, never found
never told of love stories
and wishbone grassy mounds
deep underground in her churning
*****, burning viscera, spewing
laic songs of hope; night-time
lullabies, war chants, waiting
for the birth,
for him to climb with tender arms
from warmth to cold, toward
a searching woman lost
digging for her babe

without the humans
pedaling along like
ants following paths
the redwoods still stand
still and mighty and feeling
the faintest breeze and dampest
touch of the birds nestled between
branches
never moving unprovoked or uncaused
they wait for nothing because there is
nothing to a redwood but the earth and the sun and
the rain and the ants pedaling between grooves in her
hardened flesh, no wringer so efficient and wise *******
fallen water and moist air through the tips of toes and out into
the world above the wood ceiling so green and full and bourgeoning
life into the lungs of the moving types unable to stand still and breathe
and watch their god turn miracles by unspoken stories of growth and sheltering
persistence and resolve to manufacture life and color from dirt and water and air so
quietly respired

without the humans
pedaling along like
ants following paths
the redwoods still stand
still and mighty and feeling
the faintest breeze and dampest
touch of the birds nestled between
branches
never moving unprovoked or uncaused
they wait for nothing because there is
nothing to a redwood but the earth and the sun and
the rain and the ants still pedaling between grooves in her
hardened flesh, no wringer so efficient and wise *******
fallen water and moist air through the tips of toes and out into
the world above the wood ceiling so green and full and bourgeoning
life into the lungs of the moving types unable to stand still and breathe
and watch their god turn miracles by unspoken stories of growth and sheltering
persistence and resolve to manufacture life and color from dirt and water and air so
quietly respired

I tore a page
from here

I wrote a note
time ago

it was short but
important

in a thick notebook
on some page
now forgotten

I will find
it eventually

I don’t know how deep
I am in this idea

the crazy man ***** on the train

I don’t know how deep
this tunnel goes
I don’t know how far back –
he looks past my eyes:
I don’t know how rapt
I am in this maze of strayed greetings;
I am in outer space
I don’t know how deep

the crazy man cracks his crazy back
and spits

I still don’t know –
in this vestibule
where the days go,
how far the days go;
the alphabet starts and ends
I don’t know what darkness tastes like,
feels like:
I don’t know why this train bends –
why that tall woman sits staring,
why he paces,
yelling at dark glass

the crazy man is still crazy
a few rows ahead


but
I am easily asleep;

lost in pink
sunset clouds

the slugs are glowing

thoughts of arranging
their fat lives in a
tube of fluorescent light

keeping me up at night

sunday drives
and write two poems
somewhere cold
spark a cigarette
on the rock by the river
thrown horizon gazes
and unmediated shivers;
call the old friend
and say goodbye too soon
as if these colors are real
as if these colors bend over
time somewhere far off –
spark another cigarette
watching the smoke dwindles
tangle with clouds of breath
kicking lost stones with
curved ridges as if their old
stories could be understood
in ripples pulled downstream;
ice river
swept fractals and
white reflections alone
affront crumbling mirrors
and fragile glass
I’ll take an ice cube over
this diamond any **** time
and live a king in some frozen land
smoking cigarettes watching
colors blend across night sky
between specks and galaxies
and distant life –
some man kicking stones
alone by a flowing mirror
cursing dull embers and
wet feet

wind hums slow
passing over
sitting gently atop
the bent grass
yellow and dead
the wind
acts too late
to conjure ocean and sea
the ground is bare
and dead and
tired

everyday
I find myself
sitting on a floor
with the pen pinched
at each end
between my two thumbs

but,
for whichever reason
it never quite
disappears

I kicked an empty can
walking home

it rattled over
loose gravel

I left it on my lawn
dented and scratched

it just seemed so lonely
in the street

When will they see
the hawkish types are no more
able to fly than they are loving
of the earth and her animals
scampering on two legs,
swimming deep, flying on a flap
of any kin, of any breed
with pulsing blood and thoughts
of open pasture and blue sky and
peace based in love for sisters and brothers
with the same blood; the same mother watching
matricidal fratricide again and again
and again, children flailing without learning the secret
whispered in her wind
moaned in her shifts
echoed by her current
falling in her rain
so politic and briny

When you think of time
as an imagined line
does it move from left to right?

Does it move from right to left?

Or does it extend
from your silly toes?