I had dreams of Utah or Minnesota, though
I've never been anywhere close to either.

I dreamt of the endless fields and their
waving grains and the tendrils of tree limbs
aching outward, towards the sun, when it
bothers slipping by.

I dreamt of women
in black shirts tending bars, and escaping
from the seventy-dollar buses hiding
behind green blocks all corrugated and spry,
when she'd take strangers to bed in
abhorrence of the quiet of sleeping to the
sound of no other's breath. For all
her strength she still lay meekly, wondering
when completion would creep by and slip
between the bedsheets with her; he did,
and she smiled.

Her own heart, swollen,
still questions, however, if she should have
taken the lover who'd found light the
first second he met her. But she's no
clue of the words in his head, 'cept
hazy glimmers in late-night rendezvous when
they once were lonely, out on the driveway where
life stirs once per millenium, where love
lies sleeping under the clarity of stars
some nights when I wish I'd not gone
and left your island, your
pocket of silent faith
waiting to happen,
but I held the seeds under ground
within the winter of my heart.

My toepads glide along crushed glass
in mysteries as the dawn breaks upon
the horizonline, the twisting of orange-lit
pale gold salmonflesh torn cirrus,
sprayed across the sky and
over the sea's edge
I yearn for
so late in the distance.

And it all just keeps coming back to
this:

When we lay in breath harmonics as
humanforged dust found its way through
your eyelids, I was screaming of words, never
even muttered, in mine; the straight gaze and
your slipping eyelashes made morse signals that
I would never decode. Downstairs in the kitchen
in a haze
you said tiny words;
the ones I could never champion,
and for once I believed it
and so left
for your sweet smile's sake.

I'm sorry.

I hope I am right not
to allow my body to drag it's lifeless parts back to you
to bathe in your distorted clarity

I wake in the dark parts of the night
when beings battle their ghosts
and sleep dances with death and
I find my right arm attempting to escape my 12x12 coffin
fingernails clawing the wood floors
escaping down the hall
to get out the door
to get down the street
to get to your bed
to touch your nectarous skin

And I would eagerly follow
in pursuit of my runaway arm
but gladly finding coherence in your kiss
your kiss of such insane sanity
that my tastebuds long to make sense of

But I've learned to lock my doors
less to keep predators out and
more to keep my wondering parts in
because heaven knows
they'll find the cracks under the door
and pick at the window's fraying screens
and in the morning I'll find them scattered about the house
and pull them back to my chest to put me
back together
again