I love her
Not in a ****** way, but
She's my friend, my friend
She helps me so much
For 7 years Ive known her
Laughed and cried with her
She hugs me and my daughter
Makes sure my house is in order
She has capabilities that I do not
I fear for her
She isn't supposed to be here
With her brown skin and Spanish tongue
She works hard
And I love her
And I'm so afraid for her
I don't understand fences
Or "papers of belonging", citizenship
I was born privileged
Free and white
In America
Because my ancestor came here 340 years ago
And begat generation after generation of my blood
I wonder if he had to have papers?
Her journey here nearly killed her
Sent by her mother, with a bottle of water and an aluminum foil wrapped sheep sandwich
Across the dessert
For just the idea of a better life
She was 16 Then
I love her
And by the GOD that loves every colour and nation,
I'll marry her before I let her be dragged into one of those big vans they put "illegals" in

a patchwork woollen blanket
bare feet pulled up
wild weather the other side of the window
snuggled in kind of day.

Her touch is as cold
as the snow on statues

I wait in my dark suit
like a suitor in the shadows

cast in the courtyard of the dead
alone in the middle of the night

she shows her folded hands
holding the Ace of sorrows

black like the flowers
I bring her tonight

beneath a silent moon
gathered like dust on my boots

late in the afternoon
as I walked along the low road

to call on her
in the garden of stones.

ten 'til twelve now
thoughts etch holes in my fingertips trying
to make it all rhyme or legible
eyelids droop and the call
incessantly drives me wilder wider far
off where I had thought I would be
at now nine 'til twelve now

we rode to work together
Steve and I, Steve a true believer
in his second coming
and I a born again atheist
awkward at least
that he had the bad habit
of smoking up all his money
in eightballs and ******
and I was content to help
a fool like that
buy cigarettes
and coffee
that morning

Warm summer breeze,
Heat
         l
             i
                g
             h
          t
              n
                  i
               ­     n
                g
                      illuminates the sky.
Cloud cover masks the stars
The space between the sky and the earth,
      Constricted...
      Confined.
Dark...            Gloomy..­.
Nature's mood ring.

Leaves rustling,
          Crickets sing,
                     Insects hum,
                               A nearby bat chirps its warning,
      Mother Earth's symphony stops me in my tracks.
                   Chaotic and beautiful.
            Wind whips through the trees,
                              Like whispers and cries.
         L
         o
         u
         d
         n
         e
         s
         s      E
                 c
                 h
                 o
                 e
                 s
I focus on her music.
Nature's distraction.

I look inside my skeleton
Love-hate bulging
eyes out of my face
Two warts of ambivalence

I want to hug my skeleton
Heart twitching in a rib-cage
Admire the asymmetry
of every piece broken

Dear beautiful skeleton
In veins runs the river
In a stream of excitement
I flood in disappointment

I talk to my skeleton
I tell it that I love it
Rub my head against it
Lungs violently sighing

I believe in you, skeleton
in the blood of your tongue
A kick in the stomach
Everything is working

Strands and strands of my hair
On the ground
I’m twisting, I’m balding
I watch the minutes and seconds rake

Strands and strands of my hair
From the time
I stayed put on the ground
But a **** of cutting wood remains

Widening and splitting
Deep in my body

I see me now
I’m loud

After many years, a small seed
Under earth, a lost child
I was never this loud
But I can hear me now

The moan of these branches
wrap around me like wires
My weary throat
tightening, tightening
with nothing to show

From a tongue in its comfort
Long impaired in the silence
Hushed, hushed
till I blacked myself out

And now my roots rip
above land
they
hold
on
like desperate hands
now that I must
get ready to leave

And the minutes and seconds,
won't wait for me

I cannot sow leaves
back to a tree

Take my name plate
To the farthest of gates

It is too late
It is too late

*We must now
rake
rake
rake