We pass this age, in pipes,
pass hazed bathrooms
on river outlooks, fleshy and brown.
The walk up walk down,
they stain us in tattoo colors,
us in memoriam, us in spite of them.

The roots of our habits lie,
lie, and are laid in secret,
above our flat hats smart pants;
we tire from a fight, a pose,
from watching flies drop around us.
We end in smoke, us in ozone.

Through the trials our tongues are tied
to trying times; so many unsaid lines
underneath the rising tides, so many unsaid lies.

No pit burrows behind my grin,
no unlocked chains to rid this graveled ditch.

A picture of a boy, bloodied tree exclamation mark on his chest,
plants the seed for an aesthetic axe.

A glass windowed silhouette,
the infinite effect from eye to window cuts
to millions of pieces of mirrored selves.
The water drains from the watering hole,
A clay bed reflection.
The banks crack, crumble, coalesce into a bed
where two faces meet,
one lacking eyebrows: exasperated, emptied.

Our lives started with the first note ever played,
in the couch cushions where the second **** is displayed.

And our vision for this world,
it will not die when we are dead.
Death brings moments:
trees split by lightning,
grown men struck by screams
growing from a seed
planted in a field of dusty branches.
To plant a seed is to say we’re dead.
And when we are dead,
a weeping willow will grow from the ashes.

Let’s suspend a butterfly as we would
a person,
clasp his hands and legs to a rack
as we would an angel.

Stay still for a moment,
our grass it grows.

His butterfly eyes, those owl-less eyes
hover and dart in suspension,
but not enough to spot a hooooo...
or a hawk.

Moments are moments still
in a time lapse.

That bed was made for us both.
That brown-angeled stretch,
stretches for us.
No: we as butterflies hawk the day
and below come forth our prey.

The center bleeds down damp and up it dries.
But we enclose the bulb with petals
and the stem becomes as red as purple.
But its colors reach beyond and become
the air about it.  The air about it is an orchid.

Your colors diffuse in hushed streaks
across synapses,
as empty spaces also become orchids
and butterfly petals reach for a scent
their counterparts in rain.
A fringed April is actually an orchid.

Let’s divide the sky, you and I,
With Wilco tapping our gut, our eyes,
Supplanting the clouds from our grape cigars;
We’ve been folded, too creased to remember
Those country nights, those starry remnants when I would

Always point east with a fettered finger.
If I held it long enough, just enough,
Horns would bud, deviling my digit,
And the fireplace froze over.
I destroy homes and fall, fall, fall with them.

I play the bench observer,
Cigarette **** to people with permanent smiles.
‘Relax,’ you said ‘you need to relax,’
But your lips chapped and bleeding--
They resemble mine in humid daylight,

And the sky moistens and melts
To the tantalizing tune, yellowed summerteeth.