We came upon the delta, we, brothers,
split out from the blue wide river,
contrapuntal and lost among cypress,
moss, muck and brute-teeth jangles.

And though I never carried a tune,
I carry the tone of your faded fifths,
your deviled tri’s and slip-foot riffs,
an octave less than finding you gone.

But in these stale bite-fly airs,
in this green moss-dripped fiction,
better hoped than hung as fourths
for a firm resolution - I know

You perch upon a stone, not lay beneath it,
and pluck the roots of black mangrove.

Some days pass by fast like a flash
of white, a young woman
crossing her legs on a park bench

while some nights roll slowly
like dark stockings a widow takes off
at the end of her mourning

but tonight is as black as *******
draped over the light by the bed

a silhouette of a lady in the glow
of a cigarette before morning.

The pin is broken,
And the wheel has slipped from the rod.
The mechanics of our passage
Are broken now,
And all our worldly ventures
Have spilled out onto the ground:
Her red backed Bible,
Your cast-iron pans,
The lens we used to burn down ants.
All there in the muck:
My bad corduroy pants.
Jerseys of just so much
Victory - and victories
Counted large though
Lying there in the brown ruts
Of just so much passing,
Garbled there in the treacle.

And yet we stand here,
Mute to repair with dumb hands,
Mute to the simple truth
That our eyes must now,
As they always have,
Wander vagrant away
From what is now untreasured,
What is now unburdened garbage,
Beside the still spilled cart,
Beside the wheel that dragged us here,
Beside the sheared-off pin
That left us here
On a muddy track
That will never lead home.

It is red brick and steady.
Though the herefords tread the floors these days,
She is steady. And though the window frames
Carry little paint - it was white - and hold
Where they fell, and though
The creek has wandered, no carved,
Deep against the footing stones,
She is steady. Steady as the ma’am
That taught them. Steady as the hand
That scraped the chalks and simple maths,
Steady as the wind scraped eyes,
The chaff chapped hands
Tracing letters onto boards.
Yes, she stands forever
And only the bell is gone.

Come all ye winter brigands,
Strip these tainted fairland woods
Of their baubles and wares.
Take what plump fruits remain
In glistened fists and bind,
Bind the spruce tightly -
Such prideful beasts these trees.

Come mock these captive summers,
Taunt them white in the forest,
White in the glade and fled,
To the shrill and fluted wind,
To crackling beats on wire and limb.
Such a wagged and giddy pilfer,
Leave them lap on brittle leaves.

Come ye winter brigands,
Strip the burdened hoards,
The cone and gray gem juniper,
The blackened berry, the wild blue phlox,
The painted trillium stem.
Vanity in such soft profligate pendants -
What need have we of these?

To become fluent
Is to walk with the hands
The resilience of starch
Dried on the steep ***** of the bowl.
And what may seem clean
Is a trick of the eye
For the residue of rice
Resists the towel and scrub
And clings there,
Known only to the fingers
That would seek this knowledge
And ignore the one thin hair
Afloat in the soup, yesterday,
As we closed our eyes,
As we closed our eyes
And savored the broth.

She chucked herself from the library,
Five stories blind and hung briefly.
I heard it from a friend.
                                    Laura’s dead.
She found three dead boys,
Hung from cable
                                    and that broke her,
He said.

We threw empty sixteens
From the roof where we gathered,
Spoke each a shattered dream
rushed upon the pavement,
One,
Upon another.
The sidewalk gleamed
In all the shards of Laura,
Green and Amber, Blue and Clear,
And ever farther than the eyes of her,
Splashed out in every blink night town,
In every flick night river where
Everybody drowns.

part of you
for me anyway
will always be there
beautiful
on a light and
tumble journey
watching me
watch your lashes
paint zebra stripes
down your cheekbones.
we’ll run from budgies
and make friends
with otters
out-stretched, grinning
tickling the noses
of long-necked
ungulates and
hunting for imaginary
creatures between
cages

I’ll send daisies
because they’re already dead,
bias cut for a few
last capillary pulls
of aspirin-tinged water -
soon to cataract, milky
in a lead
crystal
vase.

These are no “love me’s” or
“Love me nots”.
These are from he who knows
not love, but beauty - decay.

My darling little Aster,
this is the day of your death,
another year counted,
backward from a birth,
as each petal falls as love,
as paper,
as dust,
onto your dining
room
table.

Pull deep these gathered Springs
there, pull deep the wisp
of meadows once dreamt
soft beneath your feet,
and gaze into the yellow eye
about which all these
frailties
fall.

Think not me grim my darling.
Think not me cold and thin.
I am nothing but a florist -
the florist birthed within.

when nothing-girl met everything-girl,
the world broke open
and their fingers intertwined subconsciously
and they looked into the core of earth
and laughed together at the irony of it all

nothing-girl put down her grandmother's blade
and used her right hand to instead hold everything-girl's
their laughter rang out across the valleys
echoed in caves and through churches
and god stared down at them as they pressed their lips together

What can I say?
I was a bad sunrise,
quick scudded to cloud
and withholding.

Look at it this way,
it was a great day
for pictures,
unshadowed,
no hotspots
to burn away
in a dance.

We were a function
really, a shallow
angle of incidence,
a glancing blow,
mathematic,
not prismatic,
no split beam,
just one garish
morning thing,

and a slow
overcast
trundle
to a setting.

I saw a picture of you today,
that crow's foot smile, your eyes
blue behind wisps of bang,
arm around his shoulder,
same old still,
and I felt nothing.

But then again,
I was small fish to fry,
and you laughed and said no,
you are a whale and went away
that Tiananmen spring.

And there was fear in your voice,
strung out, evacuated, long on the line
and coming home, unnerved.

I missed you at the terminal,
you didn't wait.
But that was no nevermind.
You met me at the station,
red on your breath,
giddy with a gift.

You pressed that sterling
Shandong bell in my palm,
that small Shandong bell.
The bell I keep in the never box,
behind the broken watches
and shells.

You called me a whale once,
but when you returned from away,
you pressed a small Shandong bell
in my palm and held it there,
impressed it there with a finger,
that bell with the small fishes,
chasing each other's tails.