Boots belts button lapels
Satin slips on too cleanly
Is it 32 or size medium
Inches verses miles to go
in someone elses shoes.

The reason for lockdown is muddy
Bricks stacked in a hole make a room
Of sorts
The roof is the sky in blue 8bit
Infinity framed to taunt a finite life;
Two lives -
A heartbeat and a tree
He cannot imagine the view from above
With his neck craned angular all day
The only way out is up

He gives his water to the tree
Leaves only drops for his prickly tongue
And when it rains he blesses the imprismed sky and drinks his fill

Green flag leaves unfurl
Climbing to search the sun
But he is brown as the muddy floor
Which cracks as the sun rises up with
Midday
Mayday, he says, remembering the boat in the Aegian - the radio spitting static
Maydaymaydaymayday

Surrounded by black water
The desert stretches on
Each wave a fist descending
Always a feast of inpotables.

Progress of the tree is measured in squints, patting the trunk, whispering lines of poetry - whole passages forgotten

How will I escape this labyrinth of suffering
Kiss the bark with prayers.

Isolation breeds desperate dreams
Teeth knocking around his head, falling to the floor
He buries them in the roots
Have one piece more
Grow tall, let me climb
The wind answers his words in the leaves
Yesssss yessssss

Wearing a gown that wouldn't cover my ***
And socks like starfish feet
I peered across the dim gloom of my
Robot bed to the nurse board, which read, Treatment Plan: To be Determined.
And in my post-pancreatic anesthetic glaze I thought it was a note meant for me.
Too true.

"Only in border towns do people know the price of peace."

Because the border fences move overnight, barbed wire stockades grow legs and strut backwards under the moon. In the sun, entire houses have been devoured by Russia.
A woman, in Georgia, milks her cow, who is in Russia.
A man awakens in the morning, only to find the road to his fathers grave has been swallowed wholly.
That was six years ago and he still cries about it.
But he does not cry over the houses, the farm land, the livestock. He says, "We are not afraid. We sleep peace fully, knowing the difference between wood and flesh, a threat and a promise."

How long is history made
20,000 years or three hundred?
The dedham cracked, releasing as it calved the chip on its shoulder
A glacial erratic
A plutonic catastrophe
Or a geologic pilgrim
Which we call Plymouth Rock.
When we landed on the chip,
It broke once, twice, and its demolition continues as tourists whittle down the stone to its smallest of meanings
A sedimentary token of mistaken intention.
I wonder how long we shall be here.
I think the truth is found in the dwindling stone.

Sing

I plead with you not to speak except to break the air and sing
Bring forth the heart that is listening
Dutiful to your passion, fulfilled, holding aloft that which can never be still;
The jagged heartbreak, the quavering schill calling plaintively, "Are you coming for me?"
...
"Are you coming back for me?"

And you reject the old bylines, criticisms, cataclysms of popular opinion
Noise buzzing within you turns to vibration
And you know
I have always been here

X
X
X
X
X

Grasp that which they say cannot be held
And continue as if no one is watching

The sky over Canal
Cuts my eyes: a blue blade
(Larger than I've yet seen)
Hanging over my head like
The sword of Damocles.
Tooth and nail - cuticles
Like my mothers' fingers shred
Another signal confirming
Now is the time to grab the blade
To fight.