it bugs me, the way
you walk like you own
the place, standing tall
prideful as a lion, yet
selfish as a thief.

You are all you think about.

sway back and forth
a beautiful array of
emotion dances
side
by side
I feel a menagerie
and my lips feel dry

Not a word spoken,
yet so much was said.

I made a thing from weeds and bark
and called the thing I made--a heart.
I wrapped it 'round with wire and twine
and crossed it, kept it--called it mine.

Love my heart, love it much
despite the rot and wasps and such
and when you're done--I'll love you back
to see what nightmares come from that.

Espantajo,

I kissed you
but my lips knew no remedy
for you, standing cruciform
  in a desert wind.

Espantajo,

wrapped in
  cornhusk feathers,
no sky knows you.

Espantajo,

I could not move you
from your place in the night.
   For you,
all things rise in the west
sleep in the west
make love in the west
and die in the west.
   You married a northern woman
like un espirito muerto
   appearing in a photograph.

Espantajo,

Face away from my house now.
I have blue glass
   bottles sleeping
in the branches all night
   to snare spirits.

Espantajo,

The same old wind
rattles you
   and you call it talking.
Silencio, ****** scarecrow.
If you can't love,
can't move,
can't hold a woman,
   what good are you?

If I could ask the world a favor,
I’d ask for it to be gentle with me.
I’ll be anything you want me to be,
As long as you never ask me to be me.

It didn't matter if it was
August, and the air felt like an
oven on broil, or if it was
February, and the dumpsters
were icecicles to the soul.
We needed *****, and since we
didn't have jobs, the cans, at
5 cents a piece were our
aluminum tickets to sweet relief.
The magic click.
Enough cans meant a bottle of
whiskey
*****
gin,
anything to dull the
sharp, vivid pain of life.

We sifted through
cat ****
catsup
***** diapers
discarded ***** mags,
and all the other
garbage from the
rich and the poor.

One winter morning,
I threw back a heavy metal lid,
and there was a fat
raccoon looking up at me.
If Bacchus or Dionysus were
smiling, we found a
full bottle.
It happened once in
a while during summer when
the college kids headed home.

Miles of walking,
freezing or burning up,
We were the aluminum
cowboys.

Tin cups
rattle steel bars
no birds
no bees
no sounds of cars
on open freeway
far and wide
chains and manacles
stuck inside
a makeshift shiv
of broken picture frame
wrapped in leather
oiled in soap
each passing day
diminishes hope
until I can't
take anymore
I carve each day
on my front door

Be reckless with your words to me;
incite, provoke, use words as lips
and teeth and hands and silk restraints.
Press them deep into my skin –
leave marks, leave late, and come again.

What hunger drives us out and back
and walking, walking, free of men,
unquenched enough to taste the lack
that set us going out and back again?

From Riverside you turn on Spring
to stalk a night that will not end,
leaf-hurt, gray grieving thing
in darkness spent -- out and back again.

Alone, a million miles from dawn,
small wonder guiltless ghosts pretend
that hunger guides all exiles gone
out and back -- out and back, my friend.

Say you want a cat. A dog's too easy,
would wag when wag is inappropriate,
and slobber on the guests. You'll take the cat,
so different and strange, it drives you crazy,

its shiftlessness, its ins-and-outs, its chi.
You call. It does not come. Is this a pet,
this Dharma ***? You say you can't accept
its vacant gaze, its scorn, who yearned to be

at home with feral grace, with all you're not.
But you're a Body safely locked from Mind,
that Problem no Mind solves. This point's defined
for you by ****, who's not the pet you thought

but Otherness, one owned by God, or none.
Cat sleeps for hours, wants out. A job well done.

she is organza and rough, nubbly raw silk
that tears your fingers
and bleeds you purple, sweet.


civilizations rise and fall
in the curve of her mouth.

There is a deeper run of color
More raw scarlet and burgundy hues
  splayed
Eying pitiless
 edgewise mouth spangled with tobbacco
Hindsight plays into the corner
barred tooth
wounded & scrabbling at the wood
Without purchase
Come now
Look at you
So pitiful and gorgeous