these things are my house, the
house of my body and my flesh
swing singing
singed and swaying
over grass cut freshly short

the knots and roots
of who trees blister
through the soil and meet
with feet
their rough and earthen body.

there is a light piercing the dull
night crisply hurt with twinging
of star song shaking and excellent
inside the smooth nearness
of its dark skin;

my hands make quick fingers
into nice fists of daylight
catching the strummed humming
of its string sound–borne over
the mouth of a mountain–
vibrates and intense.

i walk and the chilled asphalt
is the tiny sound of my feet,,
these halls of night
a rembrancer
and so newly full of nothing
stink with rose and thyme.

i am alive–
i hurt to love and to love
is hurting; my dear i love you
i told you a thousand times
(and a ****)

i'm sorry because both.

i will live
–i guess maybe–
or i will die becoming
worm pursued eating
the earth as eating becomes
me

the            new          grass

which
(freshly cut)
grows under
the house

of your body.

i held two hands and
one let go but one remained
and i clung to it

i think i still held
on even when you let go
i think i still am

"I am alive,"
says the
tiny
rapid poem
of your wrists;

fair and not fair alike–
both soft
and hard with
beating
inconstantly
heart,

      (you will i will)

which won't but briefly
kiss perhaps
**** perhaps

saying lewd thing of
mouth through ear
to air;

art which
must have both
light and darkness–paired,

tough love, coarse like
gritty asphalt, torn knees

makes me ache for unscripted
cheer, for a single bulb in an
otherwise dark room

unremarkable and
significant

this moment is drunk
and occasionally says
dark things of remembering

about pushed apart legs
in April when it was alive
and something loved it more
than living–cooing even

into its soft ear vaguely
promises of forever and
keeping through death
its hands and lips and feet

     (whoosh)

but goes through the mouth
and nose hot dollops of dreamless
wine occluding speech, taking

tightness and smashing it over
the head with a memory of
a coy poem that tasted like the
sea in your mouth when

it sat on your face and
it was the only time it was ever
–truly–
                

                Alive.

Listen, it's a beautiful thing
when distilled to its essence;
reduced to its purest form.
A paradox and a paradigm;
a paragon of perfection.
Epic in its arythmetic
progression; poetic.
Like Chinese arithmetic,
so hard it hurts. Yet soft
and exquisite, like a bubble
of love caught in a beating heart.
That place where poetry starts.

There's a place for those
like you and me, kid--staring
through this window pane, at odds
for hours. Conversations even out
these nights 'til a year's passed.
A smile of glass that dies too fast
ain't all we're sharing; just the
loudest thing we're sharing, staring
through this silent frame.

There's a place for those
like you and me--where we can go
when seasons roll
               around our guts
               and come back up
in boiling years.
          That place is here,
in this square frame,
with our smile of glass that breaks
           too fast
when dice cast cry out snake eyes;
          ours are blue,
and some are brown.

But she looks pretty
                         happy
                           now.

So it's back into this mirror frame
for debates had through window panes
and scrubbing hard with scalding water
          rinsing off our name.