I will make a fangle of mechanisms,
a creature with iron snouts
and concrete aortas.

Its fevered howl will wake the duplexes
perched on sloped land,
built from collected tins and bottle caps.

Boys sooted in grief will balk like ravens,
chew sweet dip, and spit,
but never reach the foreman’s gate.

They’ll crave a tavern with antlers as chandeliers
where a black flame burns
on the brim of a zinfandel.

But tonight they’ll gristle through streets
to a stale room
where fluorescent lights blanch a young widow’s skin.

Basic cable ministries will flick and dim
in the homes of the wigged ladies who wait for them—
the howl keeps them

breathless, each of them fearing
the slow swallow from a snake’s mouth
to its furnace.

Sit, sneak a look at what’s left of nothing,
a tree alone, a blur of nimbus and fire above no one,
a diminished frequency of fury.

Sketch my black coat.
Two bucks at the Goodwill, it confides in the dead,
celebrates mother with a seance.

Ah, do you hear that?
The coffeemaker is the Atlantic. It wants to wear hues,
to be a limbless body in someone’s dream,

gestures with white light,
and never sleeps as it studies the moon.
Let’s not talk about that anymore.

It feels like spiders in my ear canal,
yesterday does.
Stay a little longer. But don’t look at me.

Look at yourself in the mirror,
and I will grin back at you—ah, feel that?
That’s what it’s like to wake up as Mark Landis.

We know not what we do
as we wail and wince,

alone in the woods,
sheltered beneath the hot lights.

I close my eyes to hide
and gibber to be unheard.

The black in my head trembles.
The nothing, liquid and thick,

longs to be the silhouettes
of things forgotten.

Ancient stars once called my name,
long before Yahweh.

Like a burst of Milhaud
they reached through eternity to me,

longing to be seen before they die.
I am made of stars.

I am the quiet that sings,
I am the dust that cries.

I speak the gospel of visible light,
and with it I create everything.

A boy claims the tabernacle shook.
He's right. It did.

The godless set fire to the redwoods
before marching us to the hills.

Black birds wake on jacarandas
without wings.

Their caws raise Lazarus once again.
A young girl's skin wrinkles into birch,

and suddenly trees surround me.
The eyes in the bark

denounce my flesh and limbs.
The mulch tries to swallow my feet,

but my wings lift me.
I'm dancing among fiery ashes

above the boulevards of igneous rock.
Particles of light halt into white heat,

cleansing me of flesh.
All that is left is spirit,

quiet and unknowing,
lost in whatever's between the stars.

We were once black furred wolves
fleeing through pines
towards winter's dark mouth.

We mocked the wooden ravens
who trod one-by-one to temple
to hide from constellations.

Danger haunted each nook,
but we were drunk on moonlight,
taunting the eyes that stalked us.

In a pale clearing
you asked, Wouldn't it be romantic
to die beneath the stars?

But morning came before death.
I looked at my watch
and vaguely remembered who I was.

We drift
on the winter sun’s glints,
where the horizon is a musician’s lips
pressed tight on a horn
repeating a note in 12/8 time.
When I met you
I thought you said you were a parasol,
and I imagined you
spinning upward in a painter’s daydream.
At this moment
we find each other where things are lost,
or—let me put this better—
where we’ll never find each other again.
We’re caught in the memory of shade
as we drift
beneath the ligatures of nimbus,
or in your words a mean-loooking sky.
All bliss drips into each of us
at this moment
when we don’t feel lonely.
But I won’t share what I protect.
These confessions
are for someone else I haven’t met.

I made small talk
with your ex-lover at a train station.
I reminisced about dinner,
and I gave him advice on shoes
because he was barefoot.
He kept moving a pen
from pocket to pocket,
the pen being a nice one,
perhaps a gift from his father.
He spoke of sparrows
pecking at him in nightmares.
I commented that the 5:15 was late,
and it disturbed his thoughts,
his face like a geezer startled from a nap.
He never asked about you.
I did mention autumn,
which reminds me of you,
the bare trees trembling
like your legs
on the night you left me.
But before I could complete my thought
the birds had already diminished him.