drops from a canopy
musical falling tears
a concrete step
saturated mat against the wall
faded stripes a catchment
rivulets gather & flow
to the ledge. underneath
plants drink, leaves dusted, roots spread
bulbs replace their powers
soon they will bloom

i’m so disgusting— grease-stained, paint-stained, dust and decay. the label said dry-clean only but you put me on a rinse-and-dry cycle and called it a day. i’m all cleaned up but nothing fits the same. is this what they call salvation? scrub the sins from our sooty souls, leave them in the sun to shrink, shrivel like snails burned by salt. take it back, give it back, give me back; i’m spotless but it feels so wrong.
     how do i repay you? credit? cash? my intestines looped like garlands in my arms, my heart like a pulsing jewel in my palm? i can’t afford an arm and a leg so that would have to do. your service has left me in shrunken skin; when i burst at the seams it’ll be my guts that splatter on the floor. look, it’s not like paying you back would be hard (it still hurts still hurts).
     you tried to fix me but now i’m worse than worthless. no one wants someone they can’t show the world. it’s your fault, your fault (i’m still to blame). you made me this way, i begged for it in the first place. this wasn’t supposed to be a ******* diy. read the label next time, *******.

the slow smoke gloats and motes of atoms matter
dappled in the dingy blue of wintry twilight, frozen swollen
with white ash sunlight and long shadows, noodling in the canopies
of our vast wilderness. in the back room.

my rocking chair grinds an arc on a single point beneath me.
i teeter on the minuscule reminiscence, much -  
as a wave teeters
on the moon's
whim.

i rejoice.

and deny.

i long for gone remedies, while pondering
what plagues my faith -
in the Mist...
what troubles the blight elan
of my ignorance.

and
at the door, i find you sleeping
on god's dime.

and i dream with
you.