Don't exaggerate the price
paid to meet the pay off.
Ms. Magdalene oiled up a
pair of great feet only after
turning a blind eye too many,
to forced entries.
No sooner.
If you give pain a false address,
no one will visit.
They'll leave sentimentally
orphaned flowers at wrong doors.
You won't even answer your own
door knocking on itself, you hide.
As time chisels your sacrificial altar...
candles huddle closer and closer
for warmth, even as they burn.
Surrounded by answered prayers,
growing hungry for acknowledgement.

I'm not rebuilding
I'm growing
I'm not failing
I'm changing
I'm not running
I'm arriving
I'm not healing
I'm becoming

The right eye
is the window of hope
the left eye
the window of despair

And this proposition
is proven in my photograph
a portrait of a grizzled guy
taken just before
he stepped in front of a speeding car
while gesticulating wildly

Who knows what happened there?

Yet I will live!
gather fallen timbers
to form a stockade
against time

Because finally
I have discovered
that time is not my friend

It's a simple game she plays
time girl
trickster girl
but my ancient beams
will prevail

I swear it
by a handful of ash
and mark the moment
with a rune that exists
outside of time
and says simply

Be this.
You were forever thus.

It's a difficult rune to read
and a harder path
to follow.

Our house is a black box.
We drape every window

but one, a pinhole
to capture the sun.

At night our eyes go dark as ink.
Our memories marbleize at
the edge of the bedroom.

Come morning,
we are nothing

but inverted images
fed by shared light.

You tell me to smile
and I braid your hair.

Upstairs, the children
develop like ghosts.

I put on another record
and the dark disc spins,

its needle lulled
into grooves the way
you are lulled into me.

We could almost dance together,
but the couple at the window

will not move until
we come into focus.

Some nights I shade
my eyes
from dark dreams
like a broken hawk's wing
stuck in the hot tar
of a back country road
when sleep seems
like a long ways to go
in a bad war
and desire and desire
and desire like a fire
in my bones
won't leave me alone.