When I was younger
I slept in the top bunk
over my older brother

- Pretty soon we’re all going to die -
he was fond of saying
while we listened to Credence
Clearwater Revival on an old turntable
with a penny he taped to the arm
to make it sound like a $100

Pretty soon he got me saying the same
words, like moon, mosquitos and darkness
were in his ear, he’d have dreams of
naked women washing his feet
and sparrows looking out of his eyes

He hollered at old man death
when he was wanting some shuteye

- Nobody on earth is like me -
he’d wake up shouting not meaning
to disturb my sleep

He said - I am the white piano
they threw off the bridge -
- the snake bed and the shade tree -
- I am something, yes-sir-eee -

- I’m something not everybody wants
to believe - he’d say sipping on whiskey
bought from a woman up the holler

He told death to - kiss his white *** -
then holler at me to get out of bed
and go trim the grass around the stone
angels planted up in the high pasture.

Near morning
by the sea
where I tangle
with the shadows
like a cage of sad tigers
by a grave I find a rope ladder
left by a thief
as the tide steals my eyes,
prisoners of time
without a hammer
trying to drive a stake
in the ground
and this is my crime
living and dreaming.

I left you suspended in the air
as a single thought expelled
from a Southwest flight back from Oregon

Everything is suspended in the air –
the New York woman rushing through her beef sandwich to my left
the woman at the window seat writing
love letters to the woman who will pick her up at the airport

and the way I imagined landing on the same runway as you
back home, realizing sometimes
turbulence remains even after landing

realizing there is a reason we had the same destination
but flew at different times. So much so that
the New York woman next to me could be you
and I her beef sandwich – chewed quietly, regrettably