Someday I will leave
the cold sea

Leave its dark quiet wake
like all the long nights
I've forgotten

I will go sleep
on the soft shoulder
of the mountains

Watch her hands
cupping the moon

Somewhere west
of these frozen sad dunes

Say goodbye to the cry of the gull
and the bluewater wind I love

that leaves me feeling so cold.

I've only got one bar
on my phone and there's only
one more between here and home.
Ten dollars in my pocket may as well
be a thousand. Like a penny
in the fusebox, I could make it last
until the lights go out. There's a cowboy
band playing. A wooden Indian
by the door. I don't think he listens
to their stories anymore. He's quiet
on the subject. He's quite an object
of curiosity. Instead of two-stepping
all night long, maybe I should take
that Indian home. Use the last bar
to call Coleen. Tell her to put a ***
of cowboy coffee on. We'll tell stories
of our own. Sing songs in the old way
about better days when we were young.

Instead of a card
I carved you a pome
on my heart.

It didn't hurt too much
until I sewed myself up.

You see, I know
you'll never see
the words I bleed.

I took my name off of the *****
donor registry. I don't wish to wish
myself on any-body. I'm a hard man
to live with, you see. You've seen
the way I treat(ed) my liv-er; any way.
Anyway...if you really want a piece
of me take my heart. Cigarettes and
women haven't yet ruined the best part.

A blue guitar, twelve pieces of silver-
ware, some feldspar, an essay on The Art
of War, two pine bookshelves, fifty-four books
about the past, a stone axe that must have
belonged to the last of the Mohicans, fifty more
books about bones, stones and famous pomes,
a sliver of glass from a mirror that shattered
the last six years like they didn't matter
plus one to go, a shitload of old liquor bottles,
a fossil of an inner earbone from a killer whale,
a spear-point older than 12,000 years+plus,
a tooth from a shark as big as a ****** bus,
dust marks from missing pictures of us.

When the distance between us
 is measured in light years -

I hold her at arms-length
and step quiet like a shadow -

dancing with the sun
until night is upon us -

she draws down the shades
and we bathe in her glow.

Deserts are the color of her hair
Gold and bronze her skin

Silver veined salty rains
Tears a color never named

The ocean tries to please her eyes
Reflecting blue onto the skies

Or grays as gray
As the coldest days

To ever grace my way.

I took a broom to seven generations
of moths in the spare bedroom closet
when I saw the red wool sweater in a box
with crossed white cloth baseball bats
sewn on the back and a # 1 patch smack
dab on the heart; the window to my past
shattered like glass on a long ago Saturday.