there is no magic here, only waiting,
six foot, soft haired children, with shoulders broad and lips
inflated, pining for the snow to shrivel and disappear like some giant
white-bodied beast, suffocated by the sky
waiting to fling off in all directions, sparks spiraling up from the mother flame
the ferocious dancers, lunging towards the moon
waiting for love to overwhelm, to swallow
taking their hands and hair and eyes into its warm, gaping mouth and embrace
them like a womb
for the beginning of wisdom
for the end of all things cold
gripping one anothers hands
a row of three paper people, snipped into shape
by the holy hands of circumstance

or if you want to call it god...

waiting to be lifted onto the shoulders
of some great wind and carried to the sea
weightless
and
dancing

i dont
care about wine or succulent dinners that take two hours to
prepare and are diamonds on the tongue
i dont care about cigarettes in the morning
blinking swollen eyelids and hair like long grass combed
by seabreath
i dont care about fabric on the walls, the colors that
warm your irises when the aging sun hits them
just right
i dont care about apartments with high ceilings and balconies
overlooking streets
that teem with noise from the underground
teem with people enjoying this
centuries version of peace

i dont care about thirty two hour weeks
and paychecks that coat life
in a thick layer of oil


i care about
cereal in coffee mugs,
smiles rested on top
and eyes whispering

i care about voices strung together
like morning dew, trembling
along a spider’s thread

i care about watching
one another
make art, in silence,

fingers spiraling down
the brittle neck of a grandfather
guitar
rainbow splatter

words with hands.

her hair was like wild fire
her eyes laced with charcoal. intentions bold.
her legs were dressed in purplepleather
her hands dipped in tar, candied looking in
their
impossible black gloves. she told me
over pink drinks that
she had grown up a lot
since the last time we met
and tears danced their way down
her apple cheeks
and she didnt bother to wipe
them away
burning holes in anything and everything.

i took two steps back.

fifty years later



you girls wear their old dresses
over sky
blue leggings
lace
and fabric that smells
of lost time

you found them
in stores
with high ceilings
and a sloppily simulated
rustic vibe

you love your
waists tastefully
cinched
and collar bones
concealed

you twirl before
the full length
mirrors and
wish oh how
you wish
you could
have been born
then instead of now

everything
was so much classier!
the women
were a different
kind of beautiful

women
who smoked
in their bathtubs
cardboard hairdos
unraveling

women
elbow deep in
baking
soda and dishsoap

soft secretive
smiles overtaking
their
faces
as they rattled
through the
medicine
cabinet
for a snack
(twice a day)

pregnant again
for
the fourth
time
yet
thin as a rail
somehow

ghosts
in their own
skin

silent but
deadly

crying manically
because of
the smoke
in their eyes

choking gently
on the powder
all over their tight
lovely complexions

dinner ready
at six
sharp as a rusty nail

fantasizing
about what it would be like
to fall in love
with another woman

scuffing their knees
and showing the raw
skin off to all
the young men
with sunlight left over
from childhood still
swimming in their
eyes

or walking home
in the rain
without an umbrella
and having that be ok

slapping their
own faces
at such trecherous
thoughts

obsessing
over how
their mothers did
it with
so much **** grace...

but yes
girls
their clothes
were simply
divine

Foolheartybeerdrinkingsunohfahgun.

“watch your mouth young man” reigning in those eyes
(as falsely blue and pristine as a pool
in the warm and syrup stain sticky sweet drudgery of the deep north end.  children wading through the spots hot like the inside of skin vanilla icecream creaming down their wrists in rivulets and popsicles the shape and color of a dream rocket dripping- tiny neon red and patriot blue clouds bloom beneath the surface of the urban pond

dripulet, dripulet, dripulet)

I can just tell your mother warned those lips with a quivering finger and a voice clipped and heavy teeth crunching around the easy threats tossed at you: your knees raw as if scrubbed with steel wool and the lingering bitterness of backtalk and your first ***** word lay soft and white like moss or foam on the back of your tongue...

I can tell you gripped handfuls of braid in your hands at the playground and confessed love your whole life using destruction as a vessel. you tore out of your mother and tore and tore through childhood gripping and clawing and pulling heart constricting small and fierce the whole time like a fist in your chest.

Oh sister,
growing fiercely from between the cracks of those
big city sidewalks

I know you love the new-found
sparkle on your pointed shoulder,
your shoulder now chiseled by a place
rough and dripping glamor,
you have been gobbled up by
a culture booming and
ravenous for new blood
you have been swept away and intoxicated
by the strangeness and the newness and the heartlessness
of that place.

but don't forget us girl,
we
your family of
patient prairie dwellers
don't forget this humble, ***** city,
this heartsoil
these winters are what
made you so strong

big city baby
don't forget our cold season

the way the winter hems us in
and
forces us to
make art and get real

the way that
our faces grow white,
eyes grow dark and humble,
hands curl and stiffen
clenching at nothing for months

the way these hearts and souls,
nestled in ghost orchid flesh,
nestled in snow,
grow fat and red blooming carelessly


like the open mouths

of winter flowers

goodmorning naked body. taut watery skin smudged against my face.
you smell like trees salted and soaked in winter.

(pitch black limbs curving across the pale sky, dripping
sweet ale into patterns on the snow, which children bundled in plastic
and cotton packed into stone, will seek out and decipher.
while old women, knee deep in furs watch mindfully from behind their ancient glass.
language of the forest gods, they will mutter, breath fogging windows and swallowing their old wiry mouths, before turning into the muddy darkness of their homes and disappearing forever)


strands of sunlight dressed up in frost, tumble drunk into the room and drape over your shoulders. i leave a trail of fingerprints across your collar bone.

hes in good with the junkyard owner
and he likes that

they are both old men
trying to patch up their fractures
beer bellies coming along nicely
hands lacquered with paint
and modest discretion
and cigarette
blazing yellow

ABSOLUTELY NO SMOKING IN THE SCRAPYARD!
but he does.
killing time.
he does, fat eyes laughing
at blood on dashboards
metallic toe jam
and irony only he
finds
evident

he knows he can
stroke his vices
wherever
he so chooses
around here

the owner,
Dave
says so

and he makes sure he tells me
as he lights up
halfway out the door
Dave staring me down
with grease in his eyes

that 'not just ANYBODY
gets these
kind of privileges'

i know dad
i know

you and your friends finish the wine
and then you kiss me goodbye.
you leave and
also take all the cigarettes.

this is an awful experience
for me.
because i have become drunk
sometime between half an hour
ago and now,
i cry after you close the door
and have not
a
**** thing to
smoke or
swallow
to make the
tears worthwhile.

there is nothing worse
than crying
alone.

there is nothing
better than crying alone
with a cigarette in hand.

this is a complicated
thing to explain.

you said it happened while you were slicing lemons,
in the back
room
or that it happened and the sensation hit you
...like the scent of citrus, exploding like spit
and light from the pocked yellow
body
and you understood me then
and my quiet fire
and you buckled under your own
weight

mouth cupping an invisible star
eyes vacant and holy

its about time
you
realized
the
teeth
and the
bristle
and the
fist
of this love.

This is what happened. This summer, across the endless shoulderblade of prairie miles, through the mountains (granite teeth, road the crumbling, ageless tongue) spit out on the other side like seeds, all the way from that little grungy city, carried on the feathers of a bird whose bones were steel and organs vinyl, this summer I dreamt of you.

Nestled in orchards, cheeks as soft and flushed as the apples, lying flat on my back on forest floors, handsome when darkness fell. The trees from that angle looked as if they had tumbled upward, away from their roots, unfurling like hands, spines snapping to attention. Thousands of knotted fingers crawling, thrusting against gravity, reaching for the sun.

Body treasured in musty pocket. Dreamt of you beneath open sky, upon the lips of the ocean, her form vast and sensual. The sand was inviting at first, shallowing to house the contours of my body, growing hard later as my eyes fluttered beneath closed flesh. Unwinding in sleep, body seizing up, slowly. Everything slow.

I did not mean to but when I saw you,
in the flesh for the first time, I felt as if we had traveled together, I felt as if you knew.

I could barely speak because I wasn't sure where to begin.  You had filled my nights for months,
I was overwhelmed by your sudden solidity,
wrapped up in tricks of the light, speaking with a tongue that I understood.

I wanted to grab at you and dig my hands into you and feel everything.
You were not a fantasy you were real!
Can you treat them the same? Can you toy with fantasy as if it were replaceable? Kiss it upon the mouth,
swallow it like pulp, sew wings to it's white, quivering skin,
throw it off an edge, dance with it, shoes of fire, voices visual,

tongues unwinding like rope?

You can but it will change, it will warp, it will put on your clothes,
it will love you like any messy beating heart,
breathing blood,

it will envelope you.

i became one of those women
who peels away her voice
and leaves it on the top of
the clothing pile

my body is
a temple of light
and sound shrouded in
velvety flesh

this is what
he wants to sell

he likes to make art
but loves to make
money

i bit the
blade
of flattery

and dragged it
across my cheeks

i shunned the camera
and he loved it
this was empowerment
i was in control

my shoulders were shelled
with scratchy gauze
that cascaded with wiry
precision over
my body

naked lightbulbs
a constellation of sorts
hung around
heating up slowly
pulling beads of
sweat from my
chest and
beneath my eyes

i fanned out the wings
in all
of their cheap grandeur
and braided endless curves
into the lens

i felt better with the price tags
lying around

his equipment cost

seventeen thousand
dollars

and his work was up
semiperminently
on some very important

walls

it didnt matter what came later
the empty conversation
between me and
the only lover i had ever bothered to
treat well


the jealousy i would feel
of all the
other girls who had
removed clothes
with wit
swaying in their
dragonette eyes
and danced before that
golden lens

peaceful and afraid
much like myself

afraid that their mother’s
would see the photos
or their boyfriends;
and that those sacred eyes
would linger
pining over imperfections
that had never been made
so clear

jealous because I was only one
in a dozen
supple hearts
who had been unwound
like a tick from
my very
own body

and placed
in a corner
to watch
from afar

The photo reminded her of bruised fruit. Well first and foremost:fruit.
Her body, curled around itself, sheltering the fibrous crunchy pit of her, her body white and frayed looking, rounded buttock, calf gently sloping, feet modest, willowy toes toenails like shale
face blurred, questionable dark spots where her eyes could have been. they closed as the shudder buckled, her mouth sagged open, lip lolling to one side, brow ancient furrowed like folds of sand nudged by a lazy tide.  None of it concise, only guessing. Her knees brought up, squeezed against small  
crunch-able chest. Full, heavy with pulp (stringy sweet, what snags on the teeth) but what if it were to fall from an appreciable height? Filmy is the flesh. Daring the looker to look closer, see what mite be hidden there.
Ripe:questionable. Sweet like nothing, pouring from the corners of a mouth: what a bite it would be.
That first bite.
The bruising comes in when she thinks of the brain beneath, that open, limitless figure so pale and forefront and brimming with intent, so crush-able with careless fist, so lovable with thirsty mouth. But what of the mind that put her before you, that turned her vulnerable, shameless, open for discussion?
Put her before you. naked.

please lets press our foreheads together and scream until the noise bleaches our hair.
until there is no sound, only little tremors. waves of vibration pouring from our mouths, shattering our fingernails.

lets paint our naked bodies with soot and sit on the kitchen floor, rolling an empty bottle back and forth while we talk about how we will change the world, rust coloured light perched on our shoulders.
we will be ***** and laughing
and then crying
suddenly
as we realize that maybe the world is changing us.
and then lets stand by the open window, fingers playing,
bodies apart, wishing upon the depth of the fissures in the moon
forgetting to feel embarrassed by it all.
maybe you dont even have to tell me
that the moon in fact doesnt have fissures
and if it did, they wouldnt be terribly deep.
because there is brilliance in our unclothed silence
no matter what it may revolve around.

it will be five in the morning
when you finally look over,
your eyes nestled in blackberry purple, and say it is time
for bed.
you’ll sleep before i will
as usual and the room will cool down
and ill grab whatever has been flung across the radiator and pull it over
my head
and retrace our many steps
pause to dance upon the ankles of my own shadow
grinning at the darkness shaking
his fist
turning his back
retreating into oblivion.

the forgiveness came

suddenly like the break of a day so bright
and so hot in springtime mess,
like that first blazing lashing
of sunshine so brazen upon wintered flesh
upon skin, gentle
like the sound of a lamb’s feet on soft mud,
skin, white
and cool as milk.

it came with a perfect and welcomed brutality-
burning slowly,
definitely,
defiantly.

forgiveness came,
so enormous with sadness-
a sense of loss profound as the bruised velveteen of a
sky ripe
with summer heat and
the full, squeaky sound
of june-happy,
beer-drunk teenagers
biting one another’s lips in dewy fields.

the forgiveness came so clear

it tasted in my mouth like penny bile.

it pulled in my heart like a small perfect spoon pulls
through honey sat uncovered three days too long
on a windowsill
the ripples folding over themselves slowly,
grey and golden with sugar.

the forgiveness changed me right then, as
the loss of you changed
me before.

it struck me.
it was holy.
it carved something
smaller, newer, smoother
out of this life.
a glimpse of my core
was revealed then.

the perfect part of me-the finest grain
the purest fragrance
most sensual to the touch

my core-what I grew from, what my life swirls around
my core-what breaks light into fractals, what is heavy for it’s size
what is pure and secret in me

through this forgiveness is unveiled
for the first time
since I was born.

double the time it took me to realize you
werent everything
and here i stand, jawless,
all teeth and tongue and homeless, meandering words

all for your love, the butter-sweet nature of it
the *** drizzling down my throat and wrists
hot, clenching feel of it.
you arent everything as a sun ripened nectarine isnt
everything
but you are full as it is-
of generous, pink
pulp, pressed sensually against the
midnight flesh-
you are heavy with heart, uncrunchable,
rippled heart.
you are silent in crisp morning
mouth
suspended above ground reared for chaos

suspended on
a branch that appears as an old woman’s laughter would,
thin, purposeful,
veined with childish green

your are the juice staining my lips
and escaping like poetry
dribbling down my chin.

there is a hor  i   zon (the spine)
and a sky (the cold azure cape)
resting upon it’s back
there are
black birds
tearing
small, soundless holes
into the blue

this is my version
of nothing,
so call me poison
I dont care.

i am wearing a kimono,
this sheer, garish, floral shred of fabric that wafts about my frame.
the cafe people snip at it with their eyes full of sharp edges.

ive been here all day
the view is terrible,
the music
is like the sound of a snail in seasalt.
little
crackles
of wet flesh hot and retreating, no, burning.
but i am so tired I cant move.
maybe it isn't so bad,
maybe I am just being difficult...
everything,
even the kiss colored leaves that
toss themselves down the boulevard,
seem shrill to me.

all i can
think about
is what you said to me last night

"a pretty face is a loaded gun"
tearing holes into me with your angry eyes.
you know
the line itself is crap,
a splinter in this thigh,
it is snapping, that line, under all the meaning
i gave it  in my drunken storm.

i walk along that line,
as though it is stretched between sky scrapers,
high above like a tightrope.
today all the great buildings that surround, give me perspective on my size,
and they hiss
as great, hollow objects seem to do sometimes.

now that iam awake
i see that it doesn't make sense
when you said it
you were swimming in a gin bath and
playing the poet with a shredded heart
but iam trying to give you credit
and find something other then an image
-image of my body
with a heavy, black barrel protruding from my throat
and a tantalizing trigger, curling like a tongue taunting you
to pull it
and blow your ******* skull apart-
you were just trying to offend me thats what i see.
dont blame this face, you are just angry.

goddamm the music here sounds like nails!
that man over there with the sloppylips looks like he might disintegrate
in worse shape then me I think,
I hope.

anyways i was saying dont blame this face
thats right i say iam beautiful,
you said it first though.
though you only said it, in search of the trigger.

christ,
we all need to get up and go,
this place is like a horse's mouth
lets all get up and walk out together in a thread of gorgeous bodies who just
wont take it anymore. lets go.
forget it. wait
what was i saying?

this game
is not okay with me anymore.

you animal i am tired.

i am tired of the
antique glimmer in your eyes. boyish and
hunting and thirsty with instinct.

i am tired of the bones that jut through
your flesh and carve
into mine.

your knotted, silky figure drifting
and catching in the macrame nets
through the mammoth doorways
beneath the swelling curtains

in my mind you are an insect or
a wisp of frozen breath or
an actor sweeping the floor
with his eyelashes

at the end
of a brilliant
and terrifying
performance.

your hand twists around
the milksoft steel of that long
slender stem
a vinyl blossom shelters
your head from godspit
your features are betrayed
by the watery spears

i know it is you
by the skin, white and pressed artfully against
the bones
the irises-
like a clever bouquet of
knives, glinting in
shattered city twilight

oh come here, draw blood
come here
apparition
trick of the
dampened light

kiss my wet face
with your wet mouth

let your lips slip across
my forehead.

if you come

i won’t say one more
word.

Riesling and cat. This is Christmas for me. This wine used to tickle me, it is sour,
like the grapes were young, like I was young when I drank it and praised it.  There are always tears around this hour. This time of evening is the time when enough of the day has passed without me doing anything to feel bad about it, and there is enough time left to be unsure. Will I be lonely again tonight? Will I spin in the kitchen, feet slipping on spices spilled (the remnants of some sort of communion)
will I outstretch my hands and let my knuckles crack against the sacred objects-a fridge, countertop, stove,
will I drink all the wine in the cupboard? To that I say yes -my mother would weep at the thought.
Mother, just so you know, I always drink the wine in the cupboard if it is there. But not in a sad way, in the way that (simply put by a heart that I burn for): in a way that makes the gravel against my eyes easier to bare. It is not sad. I repeat. Do not cry mother.
Tonight I will sit in the spot hollowed out for my lonely body, a place con caved especially for my spine-rigid and warm with aching. I will allow the furred creatures to slither across my lap, curl around my neck like vibrating scarves. They have ladylike evil in their eyes, they extend fingers and pronounce their claws and let tongues creep between them and I do the same in my own human way. And without anyone watching we will be beautiful all by ourselves.

Will I write you a poem, one who has blackened before my eyes? Yes, and this is it.
Christmas for me, crackles with time retrieved and run over the reel again, it is stiff with wear and sweat and tears that squeeze from those traditional embraces, dried out, worn out like a dish rag, draped  
over the faucet and forgotten.
When you finally come home, I want to pull on the shoes and slip the coat that has become like a second skin over my back and leave the door wide and gaping open like the mouth of an old man dreaming of new pleasure. I will run then.
And you will watch my small body retreat from this, light pillowing before me giving you the illusion that i have no dimension:only darkness within me you will see, from your place by the doorway.

there is something tragic about the young.
there is something haunting about the ***** of a young man’s browning neck.
his neck and those sweet earlobes and the tremor and clench of his thoughts provoking him
and tension bleeding quietly through the tissue and muscle and precious bone. there is something tragic about the young.
men, how they break out of one neediness and into another….

i had this lover who hated women
he hated women because his mother hated him.
when he told me this i decided i would forever keep my heart away from him,
he was dangerous
and full of fear
and full of this need to destroy.
he needed to ruin.

he needed to tear into something tender and pure and foolishly expectant
and pour all of his darkness into the frayed, howling gap.
suddenly he needed something in my slightness, my body whiteclad and open and unbroken ...
one spring cold with persistence
i forgot about that promise to myself
when for some reason i felt                                     so ugly

and then yes  he ripped,

ripped softly

into me.

the cold and the snow
hang above in giant monochrome lungs
that sag and are filled with fluid halfway
to crystal: clouds that devour themselves
and spit themselves back out
quietly above us.

we wait for the grand purge.
the throwdown of winter's hands.
the release of copious white.
the gentle unfold of sloping blankets
and ice expanding in every concrete vein.

we wait for the wind that has teeth in it's mouth and
a *******. a wind that grew fierce rolling fitfully across
aching prairie miles.

it is nearly december and every day we
wonder about the impending deep freeze.
we consider (eyes cast warily upward)
the fist of mid-January noon,
the subtle split of lips and chapped hands,
boots gnawed by salt spilled raw on the streets,
necks and legs
and fingers and feet
put away until spring-
swaddled in flannel wool goosedown cotton tightly wound
until all curvature is lost.

how we will shuffle penny-eyed between pockets of
warmth, curled into ourselves
in protection of our hearts that rattle sweetly beneath
every binding layer,

buried in a six month breadth
of silence.

the cold and the snow
hang above in giant monochrome lungs
that sag and are filled with fluid halfway
to crystal: clouds that devour themselves
and spit themselves back out
quietly above us.

we wait for the grand purge.
the throwdown of winter's hands.
the release of copious white.
the gentle unfold of sloping blankets
and ice expanding in every concrete vein.

we wait for the wind that has teeth in it's mouth and
a *******. a wind that grew fierce rolling fitfully across
aching prairie miles.

it is nearly december and every day we
wonder about the impending deep freeze.
we consider (eyes cast warily upward)
the fist of mid-January noon,
the subtle split of lips and chapped hands,
boots gnawed by salt spilled raw on the streets,
necks and legs
and fingers and feet
put away until spring-
swaddled in flannel wool goosedown cotton tightly wound
until all curvature is lost.

how we will shuffle penny-eyed between pockets of
warmth, curled into ourselves
in protection of our hearts that rattle sweetly beneath
every binding layer,

buried in a six month breadth
of silence.

you wore this shirt on the first day of red lipstick
lipstick in general
lipstick that created on your face a new dimension
fire around the mouth, metallic red smear, beckoning light and
darkness to enter at once
to
play in your mouth like foreign tongues.
paint that stained your stories pink.

I wear it now in your absence and there is
no colour on me
only within
the same slippery shade-
it keeps me alive.

the trumpet
cries, protests, howls

grinning, wide and toothless
all the while
wailing, weightless heart

jovial complaints
about trivial this and that

heavy and warm
against the ears

it reminds me of
fibrous, monochrome images

fat lips

and happy, bashful men
that don’t exist.

love poem.

eyes sink in skull quiver
lashes feather, hands reach/check yourself/hands reach
lip on ear, lobe all flesh and sweet little hairs
tastes like:

oh god and then we were on the street
corner and the light made skeletons out of
us
and he clawed at me! with his drunken limbs
he swiped. put his
mouth next to mine, over mine like a palm (for the first time)
breathtaking:
V-words-viciousvivaciousvolatilevent

tear away, fling off

slip through space: tumble up the stairway:
heart howling: leave him
swallowing darkness in

frantic gulps.

and you dream of: your bodies
made out of words-thousands and thousands of
minute black crumbling
compilations, language is the blood.

:wither:wasteland:clutch:sweep:swell:smear:grit:heave:

done.

he and i, smoked on the balcony
in our underwear, ducking out of
site, throwing
flowers, long stemmed unkempt dusty with
perfume flowers
over the edge, flicking our small brown wrists
blossoms falling head over foot,
twirling languidly in the
evening breath, landing at the feet
of the passers by
our foreheads pressed together
hands pressed together
dusty
with perfume

i am endlessly small and endlessly deep and endlessly chaotic.

this body is coming apart, piece by piece and floating off,  molecular
balloons of flesh trilling in
the air, making small music
staining surfaces and objects-floors, windowsills, the smoke of your cigarette withering
in the ashtray, the fragmented glass of the ashtray
the whites of your eyes,
the whites of the teeth of the animals that hang around (shivering with
need)
-heartbreathpink.

I used to curl my body up small
and write poetry in the kitchen

heartwater cresting in my eyes,
***** smoke crawling upward from between
narrow fingers
and blooming open against the ceiling
like silver flowers,
ashes on the table,
teeth like bone berries in my mouth
red and sour cloaked in cooking wine
heart bleating,

losing heat and composure
in the icy swaddle of
bluewinter afternoon lastlight

continuing the crazed scrawl
onward into the black hours of morning
arched over pages
like a mother or raven or predator or gargoyle
shrouding my prize:    
my vicious poetry      
                                                    ­                  
                                              ­     my hopeless meandering prose

with your tender resolve
and head full of theory

you pry
open my faith
like an oyster.

god and all
of his friends,
the weightless skeleton of
my soul,
and watery bodies
of love

pour from the split
and into your
eyes...

(having been plunged into
the sea

little fingers, laden with salt
inflict unsung pain
onto docile, faceless creatures

with such innocence
it could make you cry.

wild eyes that don’t
yet know
the fragile difference
between the living
and the not.

and their
treasure

these
rugged pockets of mystery
retrieved from the surf,

do not protest.

delight streams through
the gaps between
their opal teeth-
spaces
as dark and
warm as sorrow-

at the feeling of
jumbled
organs against
their hands.

they do not know
what
it is that they
touch
but the ******, grey
silk inside
feels like all
sorts of heaven
to them.

it is just yet noon,
although the sky
swings low,

the old
titter from afar

and the children
have
several buckets
full
of everything they
need
to keep going

until

they know better

)

lens is ancient and crusted with a film of
old blood of the skies and
liquidy fragments of soul that fall from eyes
souls that brush up against the glass
again and again:

the woman with hot black nest of hair
and strange greyish (bone grey flesh) that was
my muse in the winter of nineteen
when she swaggered between warm pockets,
smoked in her t-shirt and apron-
blades of wind
carving out of her
a masterpiece

woman with brown brown riverstone
eyes, settled in bruisy crescents. woman
with the stones (petrified ghosts) that
swung heavily from her neck, my muse in the spring
of nineteen in the trees heart wrapped in musky fabric and
feet wrapped in leather. god she was
beautiful:cloaked in the reddened husk
of shrinking sunlight, hands curled around
my every word

muse in the summer of nineteen. man with
ruthless, undefined lips, long body charcoal
smudged by a sweaty thumb edges nonexistent
neverspoke of evil never heard of
the brand of love i made
came and went without a sound-

flock of blackbirds, oceanheave,
death parting her lips

my gift to you are these few little things
that i have managed to save
like moths who fell asleep in my
care
and
who probably will never wake
preserved in a yellow clothe, folded and placed
in a box beneath my tongue
carefully so as not to disturb the dust on their wings
in case they should
fly again...

(the rustic child’s toy)

morning as blue as the eyes
of god

upon the roof

entrapped in it’s
crisp clutches

love and other
shining, stupid things
teeming below our crunched
bodies

something like euphoria
(or much to much wine)
and

silence finally

watching planes
leave their billowing
impressions on

the flesh
of the sky.

2.(the newspaper clipping)

we sank into the ground
bellow the bridge
and pretended we were
trolls
scaring the
goatlings
that trampled
by

you smelt of oranges
and wood-chips

we
grumbled and smiled
into one another’s
available
skin
to keep

laughter from
penetrating

the web of
fantasy

we were spinning

3.(the photograph)

naked beneath
the togas of wool that
our mothers gave
to us

tears trembling on their
eyelashes

(before
we walked away)

there is now fire dividing the
space between
our salty smiles

neil young-
a tiny voice
tickling the smoky
air
like little fingers
of sound

4.(the letter to yourself)

no contact
aside from

the mingling of
breath
and other
invisible

body things

like the mutual
recognition
of comfort

when was this
but
most
moments
mornings
in
cold that
froze
words
between ear
and mouth, slowing them
like insects,
caterpillars
slugging along
a frosted
branch

imbedding them
in the space
between our cherry
faces.

You are curled around your tattered, sky blue, chunky flannel
second childhood skins.
dreaming of that childhood as the sun stretches her slippery limbs
through a tear in the curtains
your mother made
and i am watching your body at peace with your mind and the bed
that suspends you
everything about the image is overly thin and threadbare and
crumbling coddled rubbed by the stories

that
hold you up and hollow you out
and **** you dry and stroke your bones and
kiss you again and again and again

until your heart is eroded


and the cherry dust settles

around your feet

they fill your mouth with light
and stones
they
illuminate you
here and now

before my slumber
tarnished eyes.

The Pigs
symbolize for me now
the hell
that was the year that just fell away
a year now spent and in ruins
dropped off like a golden husk
dead cobra flesh
summer sugared flakes of skin,
torn with teeth from a wintered mouth

The Pigs were an omen on that day
last January
day of first blizzard and weather churn,
sleet and howling,
first day of white knuckles and prickling thighs,
first day of numb chins and jowls,
thick and gummy feeling against hands

dead and uncovered in the back
of a grisly pickup truck
The Pigs came into existence,
piled ten feet high and fifteen long,
bodies jutting stiff and macabre
reaching for the sky, blank and indifferent.

I remember being disturbed by their enormous heads
and the way the ice formed a crust over their bodies
binding them one to another-snout to useless ***, milky underbelly
to back
creating not a pile
but a mass.
Somewhat
globular.

I watched
mesmerized by them in their sorrowful death bed,
gliding over black ice down that empty leg of highway,
black beautiful forests woven into color hungry sky
and chalky fields on all sides
devouring sound
I felt numb and small on the back of that prairie stretch
In my blacks and my wools,
gut colored scarf around my throat
Stuffed into my panting mouth
Breath freezing to the yarn and to my lips
Cold wet song escaping me
-my protest against the freeze that held me
Music about wolves against my ears-the haunting lyrics
Stumbled upon by a man with ancient desires, the need for
Animal blood, stone dwellings and strong women

This collage woven by the senses
Became me in that moment
For me a holy moment-every piece of me engaged and
Acute
Body clenched, mind awhirl, ears ringing, eyes filled with white

And then The Pigs whipped past me-in their resting place of crusted steel and chipping
Paint, their eyes clenched like hundreds of tiny fists,
Their mouths open and crookedly petrified
around the last breath of their lifesong
Their flesh as pink as the day they were born
Their minds and organs preserved by the patient
hands of Manitoba winter
The smell of death was imagined then-I was
Stricken by the harsh, wet scent of flesh
Against the back of my throat it lingered for only a moment

In that moment I was complete

I blinked and The Pigs were beyond me-one hundred miles an hour
to nowhere beautiful
And I was left with a sense of awe and a thousand questions
Death riding my thoughts
Hand against my padded heart

I moved forward in time-caught my ride
Which followed the tracks gouged by
The ***** pick-up for a little while
Something small and true stirring within me
Protected beneath all of my meticulous layers
A new awareness of something
dark and curious in the world.

your mother spoke of god
in whispers that threaded your childhood
with this golden sense of safety
that could coax you to do anything
because if you
****** up and
tum
bled
the landing would be soft and padded
with furrows of cloud and
spidersilk angel fingers
brushing the dirt from your forehead,
every time.

now you
find comfort
not in thoughts of
the gnarled brown
fingers of
your heavenly father
grasping your heart tight

but in bloodstained sunsets
observed from wet ground,
feet loving the long grass
beneath you,
ugly birds slicing strips
of the livid sky into ribbons
beyond you,
the nakedness that
will come later
when the night
lumbers forward
like an old, black dog.

these days
you don't think about god
at all

unless you are drunk
and feeling nostalgic

then he falls upon you
like an ocean of canvas,
clings to your bones like
a milky fog,
the sky sinks low,
you feel the truth
raw and wet
in your molecules
and against
your shiny eyes.

your mother would be
so unimpressed
with your snagged
version of
faith.

to this you would argue
that you've got no one
to save,
you awake happy
on most sticky
cherry-eyed mornings
and it's not like
you have forgotten.

you are in the thick of it
and

you still watch the ****
sunset
whenever you can
from a perspiring patch
of warm ground
beneath a
tree that looks exactly
like your
grandfather
and you praise it
with all of
your hardboiled youth
feeling
coddled and breathless
all the while.
feeling  


safe


as you ever have.

caught! caught! caught!
lustrous bodies tampering with light on either
side
my hands suffused on my knees
my eyes closed against them

dreams about drunkeness and
rain on the back of necks
hiding places
and mouths like ribbon convulsing in september
wind.
but no sound
ever.
feverish,
silent existence.

wake up unsure of the
solid
wary of gravity.

the bodies float along
side my own
even more
animated then before
dripping with pulpy colour
overripe and smelling of death
and summer
and backalleyways as tight and hot
as a vein
and hair dipped in seawater.

i keep tricking myself
into thinking
it is about choice
and reality falls away
like a row of convicted
bodies
backed against a wall

and then it is just me
coy, faceless, constricted like a mouse with
fangs in my neck
and them, bleeding
fantasy
all
heart
all
heart
with

teeth.

i write about what i know because
ive got nothing better to say
and i try to fit the length of a thought
onto a single page
because i just hate it when
ive got an entire poem or whatever
almost finished,
only a few words left,
and  they just wont fit

and plus who am i to waste
a slip of paper
on a phrase or two
that doesnt make sense alone
and that (who
am i kidding)
no one is going to read anyway?

unless there is someone
out there
that has always wanted to know
about what its like
to watch a person

transform from
water to ice crystals
in a matter of minutes

or how it feels to hate your
father and then weep at the thought
and then hate yourself for weeping

to blindly step with
bare feet
on a baby bird
and feel its naked skull crumble beneath
your heel      

to dance alone, throwing yourself
into frenzied spirals, smashing
against the walls and breaking
apart like a tired old star
to collapse then
letting the light drain from you

letting the               light
drain
from you
and reaching up to touch it with quiet hands...

We walked home along the river, eyes puckered like mouths ******* on secrets,
mouths tight like angry fists.

And my feet grew clumsy under winter's crush
so i held onto his arm to keep from crumpling
as he wordlessly cut through the night, its jagged particles sawing into his ruddy face.

I nattered and moaned as my feet slipped along the glassy path
and we stopped in a convenience store,
wilting a bit beneath its bleached glow
and he bought me chocolate bites to redeem himself for earlier
evils.

Within the place we shared i curled up with the sweets
hot and muddy on my tongue while he fried himself potatoes
quietly and made a few extra for my crawling fingers to steal.

And the cold slowly seeped from me,
i could feel it rushing to the surface of my flesh,
blood dethawing, veins exhaling, skin rising in faithful protest.

He entered the room and I payed no mind.
Our bruisy silence continued until slumber took the reigns.