A poem falls short; I'd like, instead
to draw a single line from me to you
and watch it curl into a word
so beautiful it's still unsaid –
or press paper to the window pane
so that the day might saturate
a note that brightly warms your hands,
spills birdsong from imagined trees
and buzzes like fat bumblebees,
but I am bound by language, love; I can't.

My bowl is empty.

Bits, spits, and washed out leaves.

The curling twig swims through circles,
Drowning in broken squares that look like triangles.

Crying in Spanish dance halls,
To the smell of jagged smiles.

Leave me a piece, a whiff, a touch,
To sigh, sorrowfully, with sweet incense.

---

Sunflowers and posies,
Nuts and bolts,
Painters of all things lovely,

“Circle my heart,
Cut it deep, with an ‘x-‘
Your riches are buried forever.”

*06.2011

Honey won't you take me home?
I've been waiting all night long
Out here on this cold and lonely highway-
Open up your Buick Darlin'
Let me get warm.

I must be a sight to see-
In leathers and these ripped up jeans-
Won't you let me inside
And take me for a ride
Down your Dark Ohio Road?

I've been standing here for hours
Watching all the cars drive by-
Don't you think Baby that I've suffered enough?
Pull on over
Let me crawl inside.

I promise I won't ask for more...
And I won't tell a single soul...
If you pick me up and let me
Go for a ride
Down your Dark Ohio Road.

There are stairs
And sloped roads
And hills
And blind curves
And switch-backs
And dead-ends....
Sometimes.
Sometimes there are
Twinkies and hot chocolate.
And comfy chairs.
And Pop-Cycles.
And low-gravity days.
Sometimes "Sometimes" is
Worth it.

Two boys
and girls
unclothed each other
simply at a picnic
flush with wine
alongside
sun-flecked trees.

The girls,
easy as the
forest round,
burned,
delicious,
as the boys
eager and nervous
in unequal measure
partly gave up
concealing
their joys
at forgetting
or remembering
in flickers
their bare bodies.

It went on
over nettles
and half-hours
and clambered
trees and
photos taken
almost formally
(on film,
of course).

And boyish lust,
at first sinuous,
a darting tongue,
began to
soften against,
for instance,
the sheer,
unthinkable
texture
of the two
girls carved
now backward
over the bough
of a storm-felled elm.

And there
in the embers
of evening
they learned
to thrill originally
at the vast,
gorgeous
and astonishing
irrelevance
of what
might happen next.