The rain like rubber bullets on brittle glass.
Everything is broken up in the light
and hissing
slithers serpent like
to the city's sunken sewer.
All the ticks of this season fade together.
One drop at a time
the air is cleaned
and the memories we find in it
have all washed away.
The rainbows of oil slick streets
run pitted up rolling hills
and I found my *** of gold:
all those moments of memory
under the pines dripping gin stink serenade.
I swam in the streams that trickled down your lips
the hum of heaving skies
blocked out the world
leaving only our warmth
as salvation.

For the same reasons that I stay hungry
for dinner and tired for bed, I keep my
heart a little lonely for poetry; that way,
I can imagine your weathered hands against
my pale thighs as clinging starfish – my
fingernails, bleached cockleshells washed up
on the barely evening beach of your back.

the kid with the world in his backpack was very smart
his parents loved him very much
every morning they put the world in his backpack and sent him to school
This was cumbersome for the little one, but his legs grew strong fast
he made sure to keep his balance, as a wrong step could turn fatal
every day the world grew heavier
every day his legs grew stronger
he grew so strong he could jump with the world in his backpack
one day he gathered everyone he knew to witness how high he could jump
he compressed his legs and sprung towards the heavens
the world became unfastened by the jump
the child fell to his stomach upon landing
the world, now free-fall was so large
and his back so fragile
the child didn't even scream
as his back shattered into oblivion

cicada song--
faint ocean sounds in a shell
while lobsters scream

No Garden, but this stand of
pines, and no serpents just this
side of night, but a sleepy,
startled porcupine; I'll offer you
some apple wine. You'll kiss
me in the fading light; I'll love
you without shame this time.

When I was young and bold and strong,
Oh, right was right, and wrong was wrong!
My plume on high, my flag unfurled,
I rode away to right the world.
"Come out, you dogs, and fight!" said I,
And wept there was but once to die.

But I am old; and good and bad
Are woven in a crazy plaid.
I sit and say, "The world is so;
And he is wise who lets it go.
A battle lost, a battle won--
The difference is small, my son."

Inertia rides and riddles me;
The which is called Philosophy.

Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.

I'll *******,
If you want.
Cause I want it
Just as bad as you do.
But I also want to hear the rustle of the sheets
When you turn over in the middle of the night.
I want to feel your hot breath on my neck.
I want the stubble on your chin to graze my cheek
As you kiss me gently on the forehead.
And when I whisper "goodnight," you don't have to reply.
Just nudge me with your knee
Or poke me with your elbow.

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.