here's a barter to the gardener who made Eve then marred her
who fathered the carpenter then martyred man's armour
I spit at the sky but He spits back harder
one roar and a flash and i'm a blurred charred marker
and while I know I'm a carper to start a rant over rain,
I'm cold and I'm tired and a little bit vain

so to the almighty all awful
why when you reign does it pour?
naught but rain until dawn
is this the law of the poor and lore for those born with a luckier draw?
I cry to the alpha to compromise his plan
and just for tomorrow, clear the skies for Sam

I'd forgotten about the last frost
the tv casting a flickering glow on
the opposite wall, I'd been counting
the number of times you'd said ****    (six)
still expecting (hoping) you to take my
hands and blow warm air through
my thumbs--

we left the cows (which had dwindled since I'd last been)
and climbed the rails near the house to get to the roof
it's so dark that it's light out here, I've got some song
by the Randy Rogers Band coming up through my
hair and buzzing on my lips

curse the photographic memory, I see you wobbling on the icy ridges
putting your faith in bolt heads to hold you upright--this stretch of
stars linin' up with your shoulders, your heart is crooked but beats
pretty straight--sometimes the air glistens around you like you're
still cookin' in the sun or maybe you've got some of that anger
still left over from Ashley, (who knows) I don't say a thing.

People say the night is black, but the night is blue. The night is the color of the year, purple quartz, johnny cash's long drawl, the night is your shadow, your laugh, a wily hand briefly tucked in the seam of my thigh where it all runs together, where all the water meets on Coleman land--disenchanted by our differences, scouring skin like shrikes waiting
for an opening, going in for the dive and finding that I am all melted
wax and whimpers--
lying shoulder to shoulder like we first
did up on Skyline,
boy, did I.
Boy, did I?

when when  when
and the more I say it
the more it sounds like
another language, archaic
german or synonym for
rice bowl in mandarin
the more I say it, the more
it fades from minor burn
to casualty, from rhetorial
question to plea, until I'm
sweating out in my apartment
angrily slamming clothes hangers
into the closet, shakily raising my
voice at God like a waspish child
and tearing dresses over my head
proclaiming see? see? I'll never
get to wear this one either.

curling my fingers into the bedspread--
around bottles of tea tree oil and dragging
an old kabuki brush through peach blush
holding my lips this way and that, when?
when will it be enough?


When will it be enough?

I'm a resonant body,
made love to the man I hope
comes around in my dreams
and his torso distended and separated
kissed his stomach before his legs became
driftwood and slabs of black marble--
his house was carpeted in grass with
rivers running through them
and I stood half-naked at the
stream with a makeshift fishing
rod, folding spotted paperclips
into hooks, there were no doors
but you came around the sunlight
as if there was, stepped through the
air and stood beside me--and the fish
came to you one after the other
until I accidentally dropped the wire
and it floated downstream to the front
entrance,
where is my heart?
in the misty moors
burnt off by noonday
convalescing in mossy burrows
trying so hard to make sense of
the people that become bales of hay
matchsticks and empty cotton shirts.

if our paths met again
a string of red will take its
place, crimson and bleeding
god once spoke and then
there was us

tell me everything over
these star bright scars
how in one hand these
constellations spark
light, and in the other
the orbits glow forever

water recedes in these
lungs, the sea she knows
watch our moon wane
here I will be the shore
give my all when the
tide takes

(a.h.z)

when you have watched me all my life
and never warned of ashes in the west,
our prodigal son that returns again
my unrepentant lover lies in sallow skin
silhouettes only dance at night


the sun never sets in the east, but china she
screams from the earth when you leave me
wondering if warmth burns like ice or fire
with both hands smiling, you drive it all
a stake through my heart


father, my samson
home is four walls of the lion’s den
mother, my delilah
home is four walls of the lion’s den


all I know is sacrifice.

(a.h.z)