what is it about this landscape
early angle of light
bouncing from flat of glass to glass
in clean and eager cuts against
the visible shrouds of exhaust
expired breath of automobiles
darkly herded
swimming in their lanes
light still so separate from the dark
in the long arc of a hollow sun...
this dissonance the chilled shade whose eyes
close to brace the rising retinal burn
of an overbright disc resurrecting
illusions of warmth
what is it about this landscape
rimed with gold
that draws the wilderness in my gut
to grow hooves
to stamp and dig among the briers,
to eddy an inward sudden
too much a wayward compass,
those spooked adrenaline horses...
until I can answer this question
I cannot write the poem.

This is not the sound of an ambulance sending its omens calling.
This is not my life- shattering crucible with its hot fluid burden.
This is not my stop and you won't tell me where to get off.
This is not a hopeful situation, my scared stupid found dumb looks
and cast-iron idols,
my insecure voodoo dolls clutching at their ******* buried headfirst in sand.
These are not mine.

This is not a math problem; it will always add to an improper sum.
This is not a miracle. This is not a ghost.
This is not a reflection in parabolic distortion
this chatter has nothing to do with thought.

shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Count how many things are blue.
How many balloons are in the room?
Light a candle and still the flame.
Clear the mind of intrusive thought.

Strike the bell and listen for the moment
between sound and silence.
Why is the dark sky at night black?
What is the nature of blue?

Finally. A question with an answer.
When, amidst the immensity of all things, she
exhales; the sound is tremendous.
It is a sound that has an end.

I rode again the horse cover
of night, where indiscrete yearnings
cast doubt upon the aerial
flagellate of milk spumed stars.
A jealous denial: their
froth no terrestrial hide.
How strange to imagine the stars want skin,
or kin,
and must think that I touch you
as if without consequence
moving my hands
from peals of belles to petals,
stamen, the flower unfolding
one cupped nautilus
full of a prismatic wanting.
This is how I learned that something larger
than me speaks in echoes
stands at vital distance
a shiver in the vacuum infinity...
Unimaginable. Infinity.

displaced to the sterile mercy of this place.
Diaphony withdrawn as probably as
destiny, recalling her palm upturned
to feel the grains that slip into
our sleepless eyes
where she dreamed our futures.
This thought threads arachnodactylous wisps
spreading their many jointed legs to fill
the dancing of a body well used.

I could have come sooner.
I could have divested the clatter,
the shine of baubles and nebulous distractions.
I could easily have offered my soul.

All you wanted: our eyes locked into a perpetual bliss.
All you wanted was a deep and endless pool
the darkness so complete
so comfortable, you said, so final.

You couldn't have fallen the coloured glass like
rain on the asphalt, and somewhere a sandman
dusted the reverie of the highway in downbeats
across the windshield an etude in betrayal.

The night before I tried to call you into the shower,
to call you with my body into the sacred space
that might have saved you for a moment
that might have closed the distance

strung too tightly, the tendons a terse
and gut kept silence of reserve,
between your bruised eyes and shutterred hands.

You, predator, studious of commercials
I break the rule to learn it.
You symmetrical repository of faith
I learn to rule the break it.

She paused for some time at the gate,
failing light passing through her skin.
She felt the plum of her living heart
strain veils of viscera to the unhinged
cup of clavicle, bellied ribs
undone by the wings of a dove:
the breathless little bird whose winds fluttered,
heavier than a feather.

He suckled from her scalp.
She fit his fists in her mouth.
They had not yet untangled
whose body was whose.

The door stood open for several weeks
impossibly
while the web spun between them in the womb
became the slow unraveling of a cocoon.