Your foot is
up on the kitchen
chair, noticing
a little dust
on the canvas
on the ked’s
toe edge.
If we had just kept
running, for no reason,
stayed in
dusty playgrounds
so to speak,
living un-seriously
in the l.A sunlight.
Your hand is
on my shoulder
without pretext
or apprehension.
Noticing your dress
is faded from
the washes,
the puffed sleeves
repeatedly unstylish.  
If we had just
been arm in arm
without a plan,
just reading to
the lonely,
making bread
for anyone,
as easily as smiling.
Your eyes never
got old, to me,
if we had
just kept
lives uncluttered,
like a rented room,
left with just the crease
on the spread, where
some one else will
sleep next.

Maybe we belong together
looking at the transit
trains with sides
like scuffed chalkboards.
Maybe we belong, reclused.
A single museum gallery
postcard on the
bare wall. Maybe we
belong lost to our
children, inspired by
a new longing.
Maybe we belong
On the window’s edge,
feet on the iron
landing trying to
see with
just one eye, trying to
survive with
just one heart.

Id like to ask your
brother for your hand
I’d like to have
A three act play
The first is life,
And in the third,
is resurrection,
that takes the second  
act away.
I’d like to have
you look at me
held within your
hands.  Feeling
like the spinning
ride with the floor
that falls away.
I’d like to hear
your call across
the field,
To bring inside
what’s grown today.

I’m not going to think of
you the same way.
Looking at the glassy
sea, a dark cup
on the lips for the
early morning.
I’m not going to feel
you’re gone, the same way.
As a chance that passed to
hold your waist
in the high school
hallway.
I’m not going to
talk about you
the same way.
As though we’d gone
forever in a world,
our lives combined together.
I’m not going to lose
you in the same way.
As though an atmosphere
was still there, once there
was no air.

The weedy field is cracked and
dried out. The water flows a
little slow. The screen door hardly
keeps the flies out though
they’re dying and I think they know.
She’ll grow up to take dictation
her sister’ll marry
and have a child to show.
Mom is dead since last mid-winter
They dug a hole down through the snow
Lets take off and feel the twilight,
school begins in a week or so.
Then return to deal the cards out
and later pack the cars to go.
I don’t know a single secret.
Are you shepherding me to sleep again.
Every word another brick.
Every thought completes the wall.
I know you’ll tell me of a new love
before tomorrow afternoon.
Cook some soup this Sunday for us.
The rain and dark will keep us home.
I’ll imagine that I gave you bouquets.
Not the trivial life I’ve known.

Let's ride on
sepulveda avenue
from sawtelle to encino.
Lets believe
we are alone in life
and there’s nothing else to do.
Lets make all the links
we failed to make
living with no threat
from tomorrow.
Lets not think at all.
Just believe
there’s no one
we should follow.
Lets pretend you
have that dream.
Even though I know
it’s not so.
Lets just paint
this sunset
as if we’ve
felt no sorrow.

I don’t know how you
made him not stay,
simple as
handing a fare,
in the open window,
so the cab would go away.
I wonder how
with your smile
making its way like a
moving shadow from
the mix of cloudy wisps
and high summer sun,
as it so quickly forms
and disappears
across your lips.  If it
floats inside him,
as though
in a print,
started, when
you slipped too,
past the aperture,
riding the light.
If it had been me,
unable to let alone the
image, not trying to
grasp what it meant,
or remember where
I’d been,
beyond your thoughts,
beyond who
came next,
with useful
hope departed,
holding on anyway,
giving a relentless
purpose to my heart.