There's never been such lovely pain
As her brow braced against the rain
The vaulted thought of finer days
Casts grey her melancholy gaze

Sit and harden
To bitter nothing;
No iterations of mind whirring and clicking
No wealth of intangibles;
Gone all,
All fled to the wind from soft palms,
docile soft assumptions that beauty
needed no steady clasp
No earthly grasp to guide it
To guide you
To strengthen bone to bone and
Sinew to tolls taken,
To hearts weighed and tongues tested

Sat you, boy, with
Circumspect observations
And abstract explanations
For your strength released to the wind
And your beauty to loamy seas

O God,
You are no God,
Just a fool boy
A fossil frozen
A nose turnt up at dry grace

I came home exhausted and road weary and
tried my key in the door but it wouldn’t turn.

The locks had changed.
I noticed then
that the trim around the windows was green instead of yellow.
Through the glass
I saw the rooms scattered with unfamiliar furniture.

I wondered if I was dreaming but I wasn’t.
I had, in fact, just awoken from a sleep of many years.

I knew then that I would never come home again.

So it was with her.

Those three words
of a sudden
pounded in my ears,
and echoed searing through my vessels;
They tumbled all
the way
down,
to find within my breast
a rusted, sleeping drum:
*
My entire body rang
like a pinched nerve
with that familiar crystalline magnetic
that weaves the restless dreams of skyward eyes,
and drags our seizing hearts into the night,
that floods the weary’s lungs with scent of rain,
and ***** the ears of midnight wolves to give them pause.
You woke me, and I kissed you hard and warm;
I thanked you, for I didn’t know
If my eyes would ever see again.

I took some time
alone in line
to color in
the edge of him
your yellow skin
you’d cough and drool
and hang your head
your face was red
my tongue is lead
we’d play in dirt
and make it work
I stained your shirt
you pushed your tongue
around the edge
I stole your sun
you broke my head

when I am barely there,
awake nearly and turn
back in toward sleep
all yellow-black,
and

and when my brain twitches
dogwise
in the yellow-black motes and
it’s Sunday morning
in the place
where my brain is choosing
                                                       sleep

in that place my brain it will
pivot
through the globe and scheme of all things;

wheel and vector the whereabouts
of where about you might be
in its

(little globe
                        and
     little scheme)

and just there below sleep it will

pivot


about your smell,
there where it seeps up--

it will pivot
                  about you,          still
for you are--                  still
the music

and the fulcrum. still

                                  of my sleep

-dc

when I am barely there,
awake nearly and turn
back in toward sleep
all yellow-black
and
and when my brain twitches
dogwise
in the yellow-black motes and
it’s Sunday morning
in the place
where my brain is choosing sleep
in that place my brain it will
pivot
through the globe and scheme of all things
wheel and vector the whereabouts
of where about you might be
in its little globe and little scheme
and just there below sleep it will
pivot
about your smell
there where it seeps up--
it will pivot
about you,
for you are still
the music and fulcrum of my sleep

do you remember

how it feels

to lie with a woman 

and hold her

as close in your heart

as she is in your arms


whose arms were those

whose heart was that

what woman


the things you unraveled from yourself 

without a thought

in club bathrooms and

green fields and

***** carpet floors

you cannot put those back

the way they were

you cannot 

turn the lights back out


no one ever tells you that

no one ever tells you child

be careful
what you pull on 

be careful

where you look