up here on the right,
no, no, you can stop here.
I don’t mind walking the extra twenty feet.

I had a nice time,
it was quite the evening,
especially when the moon descended overhead,
staring us both in the eye,
rough lover, sunday morning, and my chin’s all whisker scratched.
is some body you’ll never touch allowed to make you feel that way

centuries earlier,
people staggered their sleep,
dormant for three or four hours,
and around midnight, they’d wake,
swathed, international blue moon lit
while lovers were conquered,
and neighbors addressed as if it were morning,
fresh and jovial, short-lived land angels
connected to their bodies,
to our moon, to floors,
turning in them,
below them,
spatially, elsewhere,
never having left the gap between your forefinger and temple
under duress

Her, never having known ‘her,’
the idea,
‘her’
becomes an irregularity for me.

it is not part of my schema. that vantage of man,
as the synthesized post-******.

nevertheless,
her frame rises up stairs,
petaluma sad wink
watch her disappear behind the half wall.

furtive glances into you.
lone, and left wandering.

when we travel along our vectors,
we fail to consider that our bodies are not whole, complete entities,
they are porous, and the closer in,
do we realize that borders of flesh and air,
are indeterminable.

i don’t know what made me choose this tree, specifically.
it did not choose me.
i swear, i could feel it trembling in my hands on the train home.
a canary frightened of slaughter,

it’s calmed down by now.
trees have no memory of goodbye,
or maybe that’s not true. they’re the higher beings,
i’m thinking they know something we don’t.

“whichever you choose. you live here.”
“nonsense. I live only in my body. Outside of that,
I control nothing and that alone thrills me.”

buddy didn’t tell me buddy was a two-spirit.
buddy rode into town,
blonde-horsed and golden god,
of my people’s cargo cult.

this was buddy’s second incarnation.
once before,
buddy rode into town,
we knew nothing of gold,
or time beyond the lengths of fingers.

buddy stood before us,
buddy showed us ourselves,
our unspoken intentions,
anointed us in oils,
buddy always said,
look up each night,
on a supermoon,
i leave and return within you endlessly.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~­~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One thing I would miss,
the elegiac street names.
angora, moyamensing,
escaping my red-berry throat
as if terms invented by a willow tree,
its ancient, parched lips defining first utterances.

from her droning tongue,
terms incomprehensible.
the closest we’ll come to some ‘true name.’

she speaks in our words now. they enter us from all around,
words seeping in through porous flesh.

she reveals my truest intent.
looks at it through her leaves,
but will not tell me,
because she has none of the authority to do so.



to you, i want to look like home.
arms, peripheral walls.
unfortunately, inside you’ll find the wings of the stately home cordoned off,
closed to the public.

my great tragedies lie in the thought of you having no curiosity about the events of those rooms.

feel free to do with the house what you’d never do anywhere else.
you’ll find no temple here.
no servants’ prayer room populated by makeshift pews.
let so many fall from its windows howling with competitive laughter,
each guest trying to outdo the last.
to see who can be the most clever about getting the joke.

you want everything to look like the setting sun,
or a marble bull,
charging at your viscera.

what draws you to these lines?

nothing. i drift heavy,
only toes touch land, wood, and sea.
lustful, i was, so bound to myself i lie
in some endless death march,
bayonet, tracing silhouettes into my backside.
girls from home, mostly.
a mother,
friend,

what salvation are you seeking?

not salvation, only time.
seconds, to turn into minutes,
to somehow, without blinking
bind themselves into one life.

i’ll see what i can do.

It tapers towards the bottom,
inverse conical,
mimicking an egg.

it is a tradition among these people,
to have in their hands,
even in youth
the urn that will one day house them.

their compacted fingers, lips, and eyes,
in lacquered earth bounty.

the urn that will one day house my ashes will sit on my shelf,
naked and ready.