the tiny thing life has hands making hands into gold against light
flashing against dark and bones beneath skin the smell of roses
and taste of a girl neck drunk in short hair and black nails chipped
catching in the chambers of its heart the easily nothing blood
that makes its hands to make laughter, saltsun, thighs deeply new
and rush thrusting with quiet silk and the neatest trimming of
health.

how again these alive with men breaths
go to work and stop their living
on balance and "problem solving"

every morning to make
just stuff with which to have
a little this and a little that of
life and drink merrily with

friends, a neat car
and to
(perhaps)
longingly ******
between the lives of others
even more life:

it is completely appropriate;
and to be strange is maybe
responsible if you have an cat and
have to get home early to feed him–

(cats can't feed themselves)

he says under the breaths
he is
going to work
on balance
and "problem solving"

Every  Morning

hello dying you look so pretty
in short shorts suddenly
over skin a little,

                            .

                    hangingly
with increased health
the air up outside my
  hillwindow

                            ;

each graciously
perceiving thigh
a thing full with
lush and wonder

                             .


                             .


                             .

                             groped with hair
                           with
                             some
                           short
                             shot
                          through
                               by gold
                          and like you
                                   dying also
                       sun


                             ,

this thing has eyes.

its mouth does the wide thing
with flesh and teeth over its
voice which seems easily
keen and darts under its
breath;

it can't but hear to speak,
and says softly–somehow:

a dream which dreamily dreams
up the sun scarred air into
the summer sunlashed
,and comes through window
a little gossamer with pale
blankets of downy light.

(you are dreaming, my dear,
in our bed your hair makes
a dark coiling of itself over again
against itself, and the stark pillow
of your nape and breast;

–breath easy–

it is summer within and cooly
shrugs with the light patter
of seawind, gull throats,
and the stuttering jangle
of a somewhere bell-lined
noose.

how easy it is to be an orchid,
i think, leaning into my thoughts
and the words on a page
while you sleep
your lips
around
each
smooth
dallop of your
chest–breathing–and gently:

i kiss you in my mind.
                                         )   )   )    )      )

this rough sometimes of a star
within the grit of wind
moves all scepters to still

the stirring of their grip to seize

and make loose their hands.

(that they might hold
the cupping of that final flint

where from which a spark shall new
and in colors bright, a morning do.)

giving up of cent;
and bills no more their fists to clench.

(my dear there is world within this kiss;
this breath and dew.

i live; shall feel;
have of body been and went
into fields alive with colors bent.)

make this thy cheek to speak:
this single promise of the earth to break

beneath the tread of stars,
where grass and flower coo–

and with the rain
a tiny song of evening make,
                                                  ,
       ­                                           ,
                    ­                              ,
                                 ­                 ,
                                              ­    ,
                                                  ,
       ­                                           .

That I was alive: I suppose,

there was a certain eager meaning to
these moments–wide and short–these
hours–fat and narrow–these years
long and deep–

the stars, the lunging of my breast, the
turned curving of a sunrise, the rapid
expulsion of blood, tunneling suddenly through artery and vein;
I guess.

Looking and wondering; I turn my
hand over in a spent beam of sunlight. Its span tumbling with that heavy glow–it iridesces.

(I love you.

Knowing I will die–I love you.)

I am walking in some hall. There is the fast purring of a cat. Easily my breath inhumes and exhumes the space within my chest. Heart beating. Air and flesh exchange.

How easily it is to be–it seems these
hands are mine over your *******. I put
my fingers in your mouth. Your tongue
tousles their fiber. I make and unmake
myself in your hips.

The thick leaning of this chair into my back–where are you?

(Reading this perhaps.

And am I alive? And where?

Or dead?

Could be.)

And what is death?

Dying after all, it is, I guess, what I am.


There was the forest today. And five minutes ago I kissed you.


I am incomplete–I can feel
the way this shirt turns over the skin of
my arm. Somebody is speaking French on the radio.


"I will be dead someday." I want to whisper.


(I will be dead someday.


I love you.)

there is, after all,
one thing
(after my breath)

–a star–

hung loose
and into the night
(which is my soul)

dreaming through
moist lips
and the cup of flower

a kissing of pale light;
the rough newness of rain;
and the smell softly afterward.