It's my last hope.
The sun in its afternoon swirl. It's up there. Far,
                 far and I still feel that
There's always hope.
It's fresh fruit meeting the tongue. It's playing
                 King of the Mountain.
It's the budding smell of spring flora.
It grows on trees.*
                 We pluck it, make it purchasable.

When one is forced to stop drinking, the first thing felt is shame. It is recognition that coerced abstinence was inevitable. The court told me No alcohol and I said Okay. An assessor of the state told me If you picture life past 30, you stop now: he might have added For the longevity of both you and your relationship(s), but it might be his own history stopped him. The morning I crashed my car was not cold like today. Suburbs are generally quiet at four-thirty; runaways choke-chain drooping eyes to a bedpost for a few more fickle hours, hoping (praying) body keeps pace with hunger. I was hungry, and we went to get food. My brow beats ripples into the airbag. In county my sheltered white life was a blanket doused in gasoline. The sheltered white mind may scream but the sheltered white body cowers under concrete. In class I was assured Alcoholism runs in the family. The gene plagues Hendrix men as a curse of choice. It's a gun in a knife case. Six months sober; it still itches. I'm still hungry. The state told me I was Lucky [I] didn't **** someone. I was selfish. I was selfish because I thought they meant me.

I don't have anything to do with this

          imperfect receptacle,
light of pre-dawn-breaker-
bringer of boredom.

                    There are systemic means of
                    hurting oneself, the constant

ripping and stitching of that cherry-
          covered cloth

                    it's like drowning in
                    maple syrup, sticky and

sweet. I've been told that dropping
drink was the hardest thing I've

                    never done.

          I found these things,
these iron pores dripping
iron sweat, remarkably

                    easy to ignore.

How to apologize, how to apologize
for so many things at once when,
regardless of my words, the world
will spin at a constant speed.

The bees we chain to their nature
and pull their spoils for ourselves:
they were not the first sign.

The trees that fall without hands,
if only they could catch themselves.

We squabble as the concrete dries.

5 layers of wool
can keep your heat
from fleeing for a
few moments

The branches are
heavy as your feet
with snow

The world is at
your back and
before you and
the white world
unseen will pass
as time takes her

The white world
is at your frigid feet
and steps must be
taken

The cold
it burns

You're burned and
you keep burning

Hard to imagine life by candlelight.

Dinner and reading, days of rain.
Fire and its heat. I am used to candles with scents:
grapefruit and fir; eucalyptus mint; tobacco leaf;
sea salt and chamomile; red hibiscus flower.
Hold your hand inches above the flame, feel its itch.

The wick of a wax bedside candle can burn
unevenly and flake at its edges. The wax will
pool at the base of the wick, a reservoir of scents.

For millennia this wick was rapture, a flame
lighting moonless nights and lightly warming
little spaces. We made fire stay put, gave it a
finite life and watched it burn away from top
to bottom until it was dark once more.

Now we light the world with gaudy neon,
pulsing blisters and hulking electric strobes
that do not change. Cold fire in a glass bottle.

These fitful wicks have been replaced by manlight.

I am plastic, c-through

the gnats in my bedroom know as much
they fly into me as though by accident

an impossibly clean sliding-glass door
that upon approach is nevertheless shut

these small things hit my skin
but leave no physical marks

no gnat guts splattered
on my pocked arms

I am not glass but plastic
I can bend without breaking