darling, life is not in my hands

outside the bittersweet turns orange
in the tide, birches like zebra fish

the woods are underwater
bewitched, bitter pulse counting your blood

I cannot promise very much
I cannot promise

but lie still with me and watch

the wind’s not off the ocean
-sleeping, grunting, sighing

and sometimes, sometimes
in the room crying like a wolf
a long time, time

what can I give you
but an ark between the eyes
for when the world goes wild

as pheasants, pulled through the mulch
and foaming, flood of scrub pines
in pink dread strands

I will press my finger here
to the temple of time

where we pool
innocuous in the secret dye

in the cohort of her hands, a disorder

lost dignity wrapped in the red of need
reckless and arrogant as lilies

an abundance of periphery
wavers at the sea-black hand

of hands of time of hands

rune stones
black granite spattered in stars

a slutter of language
of words of wombs

necrotic we burst
a pause of however

a narcosis of want

meander of limbs
siphoning brine-white tide

colorless-the disorder
marquis of white shadow
on seal slick waves

and the lilies,
petal outward

and in the silence
there were unknown weeks
where the flowers foundered
other bodies

there is a form in the garden
still as clay

we reddened our mouths
and still like clay

slant of a neck untattered
partitioning cerebral sea
arcing back on itself

there was a benign negligence
in the want-of flowers of lilies

vague signs of amplitude
pachyderm and small
in the grooves of lack

malnourished, contrite hands
flushed blooms of pink paper along
pink walls-flush seas of lack

vague symbols of wood and
purulent understanding a

nest of roots
dipping towards the alkaline sea

we didn’t even begin to understand
the range of mourning
becoming us

smooth white shells of elegant
weakened at the hock
distempered by the recent winters
foundering in the vacant space
between us

I mule you
through the tapestries of my desert
and am still, here
where I don’t belong

here I am spread as an excess
as an unfortunate truth
glossed by negligent hands

anxious, with the possible morning
indistinct dwindling winter
curling pink paper
along the walls of black sea
earth-tide

small weakened arrangement of groundcover
jostling in the ferns of truth

we measured the years in numerals
as with skin, ardent and ruddy

palpable lost youth

the rare wood of mistake
loosened from sleep

in the morning we resemble damaged objects
prized for obedience
at odd angles of deformation to time

in the body, a funeral
still warm

skin and stone a slender neck of atonement
for the absence of home

here in the husk of noon
now bleached, now yellow
oracle of time.

we have made a place, neither inside
nor outside.

behind the city
and under, nightfall.

she planes the land, herself
slaked as butter
to grease the worm pits.

we languish as cohorts to the deepening exile
vexing from us, as flapping bats
nocturnal, pardoning the night its bounty

to the shame of diurnal reap.

there is an uncertainty now
bosomed in the fog of twilight.

behind us,
the interest in truth.

but we never came for pleasantry. we came for nothing.

absolute; the daughter of another time

swathed  in the naivete of childhood.

in the darkness of our feet
lavernum dreams
pale laudanum lips
lavender flowers

world stretched out as gossamer
too tensile, unraveling

there is another language here: you
pale and glowing
volume of phantoms pressed as books
against the history of our backs

now here, now stretched too thin
for wanting, for wanton
for the drain of love, or leaving

unmistakable grift, small as peonies
partitioned as ash, well-wish
silver ripple, or nickel of time

in the water a reflection: un-you
always losing shape amongst shapeless arms

there is an alm:
forgetting

There would always be a she. She was irrevocable. It was no more plausible to remove or separate one’s self with all certitude from her than the notion of removing one’s organs was plausible. The possibility in theory, existed, as with the removal of an eye or a kidney. However, it was impossible to sever these aspects from one’s self without crippling self-injury and irreparable damage. No, she existed, or must exist in an auxiliary sense. She must be muted, though not wholly removable.  She would always exist, but most bearably so, on the outside, that hint, that shadow of something that exists at the corner of the eye, one that exists at the periphery, ever present and always fleeting. She was best glimpsed intermittently and with doubt. There in that place between places she could remain an ideal, a fantasy, an illusion rather than a thing ever to be experienced. But as usual, we are such weak creatures, and as irrevocable as she is, so inevitably we languish in her. Too often I have abandoned my autonomy for the illusion of her favor, only to be burned again, and again and again. Too often I have seen her face change in too many eyes. To succumb to her was futile. She had no favor to pander to, however ardent the will. But then…nonetheless.

absurd violet mouth

I must raise a house
bewildered and lucrid

just in case it’s true,
as in the middle of the street
steeping into puddles of rainwater-lampham
black bantam wings acruciate
I am thinking on love,
erasing as statues
a vellum scrawling red rhone rocks
here, and nowhere

inevitably, that month will swallow her whole
it was last summer, months run raw
how can yellow be so brown?
distinct home of snakes

there is a certain sadness in her want this she
shoulder of form too accustomed to this mis-peace

a war had occurred without notice, without years
time pulls scars nightly

how can we ignore it?
put your clothes back on.