it's the morning of Tuesday
June twenty fifth, and the fog, again
rolls in against lima and listlessly scales the escarpment
and Dana (like I) high on ******* and circumstance
has gone with Chris and Cameron, to watch from the cliffs
(this time something loose has shifted, and I hope they kiss).
and Corey is here
asleep to my left
tired from a whole day of travel and
Dana calls her an insomniac but
I think she's at rest.

And an empire is how she took off her shirt
and gold is the way she doesn't object
when I trace maps in her back and put an ear to her chest.

because I don't know who this is or why
my fantasies fixated here, but they work, unbidden
behind purposed eyes
buena vida es buena ficion y
good fiction is impossible to expect.
like when under your skin, New England, dunes
drift and dance to the hand at your neck.

because I have everything I could ever want and for
me in my figured out life, these flighty daydreams aren't problems but
more like preproduction films to maybe see, to get lost in, given breath and a bit of sunlight.
because I have never heard Corey complain or object and until I do I
will continue to give to her everything I have, will continue to
try to understand the invisible hairs at the base of her spine.
try to reward what goes unrecognized.

because we're all bent up patchwork machines, and
I'm sure Corey crumbles inside as much as I, but
when you fly to peru and lay with certainty your head against mine,
into a stranger's neck, and lie still
when you could struggle to explain but don't even try
when you are beautiful, but keep on going still...

the ******* can't what my hands will,
in walking the staircase of her spine.
keep me watchful, and up all night,
to try in fingertips to recognize,
that you are beautiful and someone needs
to see you to sleep. to feel you to fly.

I promised to write a poem for every city in peru
the eager, the sleepy, the proud, the sooty. even cusco, rude and slow.
but there's nothing to say
having come back here twice, besides:
why, freed from home into endless space and time,
why why why we couldn't find someplace new to go?

I'm trying to write something that makes sense.
and growing frustrated at that.
which shouldn't be a surprise, but is, because I've
been looking for the same skin all night, in
old hills in new muscles, in
the way I probed the tones in Corey's back.
in the way I'm exhausted but can't sleep, shaking still.
in the way I stand in the shower thinking surely
if human warmth won't work hot water will.

then it's too quiet there too much like a tomb so
maybe outside.
maybe I'll go maybe I'll
look up at the sky maybe I'll write
how cusco's hills can be alive
despite such fickle fragile lights.
and how romantic, here, I know.
but the air sticks in the mouth, the throat
it tries.
and the throat is tied.
and the little lights are little coals.

reach for the tap.
try to turn the faucet back to cold.

no one reads bedtime stories in
cusco, there is no numb preservation of
old heroes, no myths–
maybe because it was built on older gods and they have died
the air chokes the lungs and it rains in a hapless way
(as if to pass the time)

the days go like this
we wake at 4, eat one free meal
have a few beers
find a line, do a line
do so many lines, get impossibly high
and then peter out sadly and disoriented when there's no more to find.

I'll look back on these three weeks as simpler times
with good friends in a bad city, fighting in a way what
can never be changed.
these gods have died.

dear cusco: stop shaking old bodies, cities should
grow, but you tear yourself up,
trying to find something below:
dig up shards of spent ghosts.
lay them out in a thin white row.

arequipa central has 530 registered buildings
according to the world heritage archive,
and this room this bar these four old couches are supported
by eighteen foot ceiling, four foot thick walls, limestones
urged from the earth in forever ago, so
when the earth shakes there's somewhere to go.

this morning I couldn't finish my coffee but climb in a bus
with a man who
said the mountains, here, were once people too.
misti & wife chachani, urged from the earth in forever ago
once fought with such destruction that God, in His
almighty Wisdom
sundered and separated and a canyon placed between their
penitent heads all bowed surrendered
in caps of snow.

but every age or so
she is much taller but he, a volcano, spews and
spits she stands and
we carve out the earth in hollow dens, so
when it shakes there's somewhere to go.

and they say when the ground gives way, you
all you can do,
is to look up and see snow.


in the holy talmud they wrote,
cover thine head
in order that the fear of heaven
may be upon the living.

and conduct great sorrows on the those who dwell below.

I saw snow this morning for the first time in forever ago and
said a silent prayer
to the beast and the bereft and the preternaturally on fire and
wasn't sure whether I was addressing land or sky
but I was brought back to the time
you pleaded with me
to, for you, recall please a single happy memory
and when I couldn't you cried.

and I can't explain how it's so
like snow that comes to rest in the sky.

I'm just saying that sometimes the mind fails
sometimes the best of us are fickle, fallow, fake
sometimes the sky sends water into the grave.
but the ceremony goes on anyway.

sometimes there is so much a body can take.
sometimes the volcano decides
that we, all of us, should shake.
and the ceremony goes on anyway.

if you only eat from a feedbin you have a limited number of grain

kafka said the leopards would become part of the ceremony but no matter how many nights like this I keep waking up with
out any wild animals
or rather, any sense of the mystical rhythm that surely guides
deviations from this steady alpine path.
today when I got off the bus in Arequipa
I realized that some people look up to the mountains, even in summer, and always see snow.  
and some people don't.
and this is the way it goes?

I dreamt South America would provide a release onto the page, and my words would set at least a dozen feet free
but the more ******* I buy the more I realize that all I strive is to feel tired
deserved or no
and to lift my head and see snow.
and some people don't.
and this is the way it goes.

autumn found us in bed, hungry
and left us staring wide eyed at the ceiling
wondering for rain.

the sun tries too hard in this town, it is
so dry.
and every shower shorter, every
raincloud thinner.

sometimes I don't know what to do.

we spent six weeks
trying to bring back the flame
but oh, it would sputter
and you treated it like a child.
which one should never do.


I sent a bus for us, sent us
packing
sent a letter by regular post
spent two weeks trying to recreate
in ink
the portrait of the rain of you of the bus stop.

I set the table for dinner
and I sit, and I stand
and I am drawn out for the winter
if it won't rain then it must burn
if it won't burn then it must rain.