she brings me pancakes and lights me a cigarette
my ***** are cement and icicles form on my toes

she opens the curtain to a dying dove on the balcony
the banks are closed and the stock market has crashed

the periscope lens, so lucidly balanced, has fallen
irreparably into the crypt of a dream

i take a bite of an apple and stare into the mid-morning sun
after bagging the bird, she drapes herself across my chest

she is worshiped like a cradle, or a gravestone in a thunder storm
in her ecstasies, a prism, a poem fits like a glove

as the sunlight warms her ******* she heaves remnants
of last night's whiskey into my adam's apple and it burns me

the words she struck me with still sting in my ears
her fingerprints remain on my back and my bathroom mirror

there was a time
when we slept together in train cars
and you kissed my ***** cheek
like a mother

you used to say things like
it'll all be over soon
or
no hope out here today

and we were hungry and
lonely until the sun came up
and made sure we were fed
and held a conversation with us.

i woke up in a place where white girls
don't wear socks and she tickled the small
of my back with her icicle toes under the sheets

now the bulge of a small animal
is confronting fear in the form of
one loving glance

i was not poetic enough
until i lifted you from behind and
set you on a cloud

you pushed me towards a megaphone
and i announced you to the world, saying
she's a wild dove

and the wind pushed back
the lapels of my jacket and
you kissed me on the collarbone
without fear and then we
doubled up in laughter
like two souls tossing in hell,
on a grill

parked like a limping jalopy on an amputee park bench.
watching young soft girls sell hard against the boulevard
so they can do smack out back with the white trash boys
who size me up.
hats crooked and backward like their mothers teeth and their own beliefs.
slouching and leaning in their stride like two drunken penguins
shuffling home from the ice bar, fighting over fish sticks--no real threat to any one but themselves.
their drawn out skinny arms with bad backs and barroom tattoos already turning blue.
this is our future--or part of it.
while a young couple breezes by both with their noses buried in iphones.
oblivious to anything outside their happy little bubble.

remember the last great
unpredictable summer
deluded by codeine and cigarettes
pulled by lunar cycles toward reproduction practice
interconnected over coral reefs
before real estate won the forest
we slept untouched on the beach
encouraged by chemical overuse
with our hair tied together in knots
and seagulls flocked on long leafy wings
their beaks pointed out passed the big rubber sun
and i struck your vein with a needle
and you struck my strange heart like a runaway slave
you danced naked in the florida sun
and i stood behind you on tall stalky legs
laughing, getting high like an osprey
sweating into a shrine, wringing out my heart
on the banks of that lazy river in my hometown
when the sun went down we chased each other
through the thready umbrella of vines and pine roots
under the old abandoned bridge
a mile long