I’m just a man looking for a woman and a therapist

One to fix me, one to love me, in any order

And you, you’re just a lovely, sweet, spoiled

Left by a father, whose death ruined you

It burns like a wildfire, ebbing in all directions

Our duo resembles a bear and a bear trap

While the poacher of souls trains his stare on us

Chewing tobacco with a tear in his shirt

With a wife somewhere, with all her chords in the proper sockets

Bored, dumping her love down the sink with the extra beans

Running the water we’ve come to share like barroom jokes.

And back to you and me, it was only a month; and I loved you

You never knew, because stitches never love a wound

They fall away frivolously, and anonymous

Much like us, now, with alarms of harder times burning in our ears

Yet the sound never fades, it sticks around like the old friends

The ones who helped you before you were famous, or infamous

No one hears this or sees it at all
It's not life, sound, or feeling.
It's an absurd apology from an ancestor,
A silent delta supporting static streams,
A breeze displaced from intentional orbit.
On it we float, aimless as little baskets of Moses,
Destined for quarries filled with birth stones,
Passing stables, sprawling into sensible horizons,
Through fields of recirculating whispers, and beyond
The nebulous mountains of abstract memory.
This seismic world divides us, eventually
When we come to the coniferous death:
one emboldening, one defying the sovereign sun,
We lay down our life force--
   -suspending the moments long enough
   -excavating lives lost in massive capsized ships
   -forgiving each other's steps in the inevitable fall
--and rest among the fertile, archived graves.
She visits there, laying a flower on each stone,
Replacing black with yellow, again and again.
An echoing gesture of love for us all,
The drifters outside of sight and sound.

grandmother’s pond never moves

it’s alive, preserved inside her like a bubble.

an unknown aquifer, dreaming of us

no birds, no insects, no worms there

with a consistent season-less breeze

perpetually tousling the tangled grass,

her silver quivering hairs,

slow love rises from her porch perch

that chair rocks her into another time.

The Feather-fines hold the fences in place

a crown of thorns protects her herb garden,

she watches over those young, certain mountains

unaware of their Appalachian ancestors,

The Maple trees huddle, coveting their oldest memories

grandmother’s a stone, listening, under it all.

Nervous chewing college kids circle above her,

they think about this ancient perfect stillness,

this is her own        the morning of the grandmother

her pond remains frozen glacier still,

her chair cradles the illness

we remember her well, the owl of the anonymous valley

From my window, I stare into the blue,
Without the faintest clue why,
You never come.

Time drips away.
My soulmate gone,
I’m not sure, she was ever here.

Lonesome George,
They used to call me that here,
Before I became the last.

The island fills with our empty shells,
I don't know how to escape it.
I dream of visiting the caves in France.

But I too, will soon become dust;
Perhaps, I already am.
Though when I taste the water, I do remember,

The feel of Fall's fluttering leaves, together.
And while the island washes us away,
My heart never forgets you.

MARITA
PLEASE FIND ME
I AM ALMOST 30

Found this older man
Sleeping in my bed…
I threw him out
And my day began.
He was pleased, I tied
His shoes: a small comfort.
He walked submissively,
Warmly greeting
His newfound life.