tell me, happiness
your secret

the deep you
you keep hidden

come let us share
something profound

depths of being
depth of ourselves

Only in a democracy
do the fire hydrants
and car tires
elect the dogs
that **** all over them.

If you walked through the woods with me,
at first opportunity I’d do you the favor
of blistering your skin with tree sap,
scratching you with thorns,
making places for blood and mud to mix.
I’d jump on your back, push your face
into the loam of last year’s leaves,
stuff your nostrils with earth smell,
cake your tongue with earth taste,
mud your eyes closed with earth sight,
all for your own good.

When you remember where you come from,
that even you need water and air to live,
I’ll let you up again,
let you chase me,
pleading with me to buy your shares,
help you divest of your past life;
but I’ll be way ahead of you,
laughing like a nuthatch
all the way to the riverbank
because, like I was commanded,
I love you and not your sins.

Antarctica
let loose an iceberg armada,
enough ice cubes for ninety-nine zillion
pina coladas.
So have a couple, just chill, don’t spill,
as Earth keeps warming as you know it will.
You know it’s partly your fault,
but don’t sweat the gestalt,
just add some more salt
to the glass rim of your next margarita
while you ponder the meaning of Karma.
Though we all pay the bill
for the oil and coal we drill,
you can feel fortunate if you live mid-continent
and get the Manitoba/Minnesota discount-
less firewood to cut,
an early start to your garden-
while coastal dwellers have floods in their cellars,
the Eskimos lose all their snow,
rising tides leave drowned ocean islands
and islanders with no place to go.

A dictionary in a bag of bricks.
I watch it sink down the swamp.
Words only mean what we do with them after,
So I never feast until I know there's dessert coming.

I am the stone before the statue.
A block of possibility.
Waiting for guidance like a wiseman,
From anyone that can convince me we're not all mad for trying.

I am the stone before the statue.
Waiting to be carved.
Waiting to be told who I am.

She's taken your body wash, and used it without permission.
She's used it twice before and
presumed it would be fine to take it again.

You never gave consent.
You even said No.

She's used it twice before so what's a third time,
or a fourth or even a fifth,
she's just hoping you won't snitch and tell someone
she stole something from you...
Your confidence or your peach shampoo?

She lied about the temperature of the bath water,
you were supposed to drown
before you felt the heat,
but you didn't and now you're
tearing your skin to shreds,
Self-destruction on the first date,
how sweet.

She wants you to wash your mouth out,
you said something you shouldn't and now she's mad,
feeling sorry for you is in the past,
the new thing is drowning you in the bath.

Your heads now under water,
feet kicking the floor.
She's doused you with her perfume,
just to see you choke against the wooden frame of the door.

when hands reach to touch you
may they reach for you
not hoping to find anything
but you
may they reach for you knowing
that you cannot fill empty spaces
and that you
do not have any empty spaces within you
may they reach for you
gently, in love,
with wonder at the wonder
that you are

We are elaborate animals made of wood
earth, flowing like water into the veins
of the sky.

The sun being a fist of lava, and the night
being an enticing molar—we are
a succession of tides, being swallowed
by successions of day; and how beautifully
we wilt in the presence of joy.

The moon may be nothing
but a luminous
stone

and to eat the poetry of it
is how one chokes
on love

but the romance of morning
is that if by midnight
you are alive, that is joy.

Winter demands to be heard
its cold hand reaches in
grabs your heart and
runs ice fingers down your
spine. Blows cold air
down your throat and
given the chance, to whisk
you away into her storm
into the vortex and never
to return, never let you go.