~ youth ~

holding a baby
as if she’d
had it thrown at her
my mother
came out of the museum-

it had stopped raining
it had also
stopped
snowing

and people
were giving me
money
 
~ to message ~

to be somewhere without a book on my person. hard word this, hard word that, for the never arriving marble of grief. to rename fish from the lobby window of a submerged hotel. to let the water from my mother’s body but not before telling her god lives in me as long as my son is outside. to have nothing but the mewing compositions of rooftop strays to keep me from becoming the devil your pen pal was fed to. to die well. die punctuated. by imagery the drowning cull from years on land spent openly preparing the eaten, subliminal beast.

~ disburden ~

god went from wall to wall unaware he was god disguised as a graffiti artist.  renderings of my son on a ventilator adorn the moving city.  the homeless are tattoos that remove themselves.  I guard the outlying cross and go through the motions again of nailing to it the same madman.  my only tool is comfort.  in flight, a wasp carries something it’s not.

~ apace ~

after a child drowns in a child, the church bathroom is scrubbed

     in full view
of the elderly.

provided they have gestural transportation

a second class
on image crafting
is held     off site.


~ clotheshorse ~

     a father shepherds his family from the storm cellar as his own father prepares to lose the orchard.  

your life is a boy
looking for signs
made by women.  

your mother is a vow of silence
you were born     to second.

I am nobody I speak of.  those alive to nuance, those seeing

a necklace     in a grandmother’s     clotted leg.

     god is not silent.  god is forgiven.


~

from - father, footrace, fistfight -  (June 2014)