it saws old rain in my skull
and your thoughts take a tour; wet and heavy
and quietly, the dirt shifts in the metal tracts

you break me every single time
my internal spilling is entangled
hopelessly

my summer-psyche enmeshed in your season
and forever swallows a few more ribs
don't wake the children of the light
for their feathers will burn beneath my nails

a storm hangs patiently on the wall
like a delighted painting made from frantic crystals
and I skitter from your towering moods
yet the moon dances in and out of every calm abyss

the lid is no more vacant than my veins cursed with
your silence
like algae, I slip on

my terror squeaks like a vehicle possessed
cheeks go ashen in my gay smiles
you will blush, in secret at what I will do
to you

sails lift on garlicky air in a port where ships don't wait
and my tongue loosens another melody only doubt hears
I'm completely in your hands
and willing for that crush

my acts for coins fall meaningless in embedded frustration
       don't come to the table, then
       keep the shades drawn
only the sense of phantoms
will be hanging in my smoke
intoxicating me to radiance
racing through to the ripples in your day

I'll keep lancing pebbles across the ocean's surface
they will never really reach the riverbed
frosty comes in agonising diamonds
a feast of distress sitting urgently
a shudder flutters through me, imperceptible

reduction of sweetness
a date with the cherubs from a netherworld
my nose feels the snows you carry
and I know you constrict still
my language falters and thinking shatters
and although slumped and vulnerable, it flourishes.

You’ve put leaves in piles
with ceaseless breath—
before, they were green
and dilated. I think they
knew they had to fall.

I’ve seen the grayed walks
lie under milkfoams of
fog you spear with flits
of once-in-a-while rain, as
Jupiter swallows comets.

You wrap birds in tight
black coats, slimming
their feathers. You don’t
let them speak. A dim
shadow is uncovered.

I find sheets over me,
all white or all sky blue—
remembering how clean
the cool dryness feels
and rustling in the wind.

Sour.
Bitter.
Bright.
The sky before the night.
The leaves in the fall.
The rhythmically bouncing basketball
The poet’s nightmare.
The fire’s glare
The bottle of prescription pills
The pumpkins on our porch, still.

balking, then walking into the suburban night,
I have escaped the TV, the PC, the clutter of memories
and the last two hanging, breasty incandescent bulbs in the galaxy,  
soon to have their filaments burn out amid the indifference
of florescent pigtails and their infinite, incessant hum
I have escaped into this night      

marching on, marching on
the sullied, sacred sidewalk squares
past the dentist’s house, past the woman whose husband was murdered
by his best friend over a case of beer, and had her eternal fifteen minutes on Dr. Phil
past the retired educator, past the woman who…hell I don’t know what she does--she drives a gold Avalon
and never retrieves her Sunday paper before noon  

marching on, marching on  
I count cadence, move as if I am headed
to another battle, and I am, but I won’t see my enemy tonight
he is yet on the black horizon, waiting for me, and you    

marching on
when I pass the widow’s house a second time, a third (?) time
I smell her cigarettes and see the orange glow in her garage, like  
a lonely firefly moving to and fro, in the universe she creates for it
before flicking it to her oil stained concrete graveyard, stomping it out
never to let it fly again, though by my next circle she will have birthed a new one  
and given it a foul fickle journey of its own    

marching on
a truck passes me on my final lap  
its fumes mixing with the cool moonlight
I hold my breath, wanting neither lunar light
nor carbon monoxide for my evening repast
  
when I breathe again,
the scent of tacos soothes my olfactory,
I do not know its greasy origin in this dark place  
nor do I care, but I inhale again more deeply
daring the odor to tease me again  
and help me forget what
I escaped to find  
marching on

I wrote you each August,
asking you to break the
tall, thick clouds into flat,
cold floes that vanish when
the sun vaults over them.

You bring your cool moon,
and it slides over my skin
from head to heel or hand
to hand. Cicadas feel it,
too. Like medicine on a cut.

I typically pause, let silent
vowels swallow the air
peeking around the curtain,
and until we feel fresher
by it, crisped, I stay still.

You test the leaves one,
two nights pulling with open
hands; I remember ice,
shattered on the pavement
and spread thin, whitens.

my retainer broke and i held it in my hand
my nails were ***** because we were at camp
it was red plastic despite tasting like metal
and you were there, we walked into a boat
abandoned in the dry sand piled high
i kept seeing flies and i felt my heart
it was enormous and i couldn't stand
you made a face to show that you felt the same
when i told you about my fear of them,
and i made a face when you said you'd
forgotten to let me know, that in seven weeks
it would be goodbye, and you were leaving
for the empty deserts of California

i thought about the days and how to tell you
that i loved you, that i loved you, here,
that goodbye was all i had and all i could give
because my mouth was full from all the camp food
and the darkness you had chased away

you told me to sit by you later
when we watched the symphony play

when i woke up i couldn't shake the feeling that you had
died

I am a cluster of
seashells on the floor
lend me your hands
that we may
seize edges more
that when I thought
of you, with
penstrokes down
the last of we
bearing up
what fruit there
is to share.