One day a dream will come,
bustled up against the cold,
finally
at my door.
It will sit down to tea I've made,
asking serious questions like:
"Do you still want me?"

And I will answer,
in the while it takes to mean "Yes," when staring at a promised face.

My body, political,
promotes solitude and sleep
against a restless campaign.
I shy away from relentless investments:
things that are, that will not cease.
My heart aches of its investments,
hankering to break its steady line of deposit
to a vampiric world.

So lightly I've left you,
without the storms of detachment.

The river of affection slows to nothing
and dams give watermen no hope.

Yet my craft will assail the dry ground,
adapt
and go,
happy without you
to the shore.

There instead to pursue the sea
and what is constant,
for it loves better.

an early day,

when my eyes awake to the lapping of sunshine.
i feel the tassels of this blanket come lose.
red thread threading through my hands.
thoughts of you heading through my head.

as if you were pulling in,
in that old Ford,
shaking the California from your hair.
all that wilderness and happy rust leaving
a dusty beach in our driveway.

as if you were clunking up the stairs,
familiar,
waiting later to unpack.

To wake,
when the only light is a greasy yellow morning
oiling itself up against the window.
When the door stands,
around the corner and out of sight,
open to the humid comfort of rain today.
To wake.
To see how far I haven't come,
though I do want my life,
and all its stagnant petals,
for the sake of truly ardent ties to the people there.
To wake,
and want death as well.
No more prostrate thinking,
dwelling on the fragrances of lost Edens,
and other things I cannot have.
To wake,
and discover a season
so rid of constants that there are no ports in this storm,
nor lands to call home,
nor even shoals to sink to
in tears.

There are many places I wish to be,
but foremost of these is further,
further down this road.
Further down my many roads,
not being here, stationary,
with the capacity to learn lacking will.
Desires to rise, stifled by ordinary life.
The rains of every day pour on my limbs,
rooting them to the spot I'm in.
This tree is in the wrong state.
It doesn't move.
No forward motion. No fruit.

The dying gaul,
in my mind,
saw three days of mad war.
Empire had come to batter,
the forests that stood the doors of home.
Swords were run through the woodland gulleys,
making way for culture's end,
for yet more roads to lead to Rome.
And the sculpture speaks,
upon a shield,
of limbs for quieting dreams to rely on.
A veined marble hand kisses lightly to the knee,
saying in some wild, dead tongue:
"Sleep.
So long have you carried me."