when I was in the room
with all the pictures
on the walls, in the half light
last night.  I wanted to
straighten them and
could not without
a reference point
from your life.  
when I was with you
walking
in the glare and crackling
of the late morning light
and sounds sprinting about,
I wanted to hold flowers
for you.
I could not without
having a small role
in an opening night
show of the rest
of your life.
when I was in
another city knowing
you'd been there too,
I wanted to refill
the glass from which
you drank.
I could not without
the clue your glance
provides saying
I am not lost
or alone
like a language without
its rosetta stone

It seems like a
never ending summer
daddy in his short sleeve shirt,
walking as he gestures
with a bare arm,
Without echo
the car door shuts.
We've got things to get,
let’s go.
And the neighbor
through the wood screen
door
Shuffles, quite
aimless, again today.
In a close knit
navy shirt, only ten and
in suspenders, he carries
too much weight.
With the dusty smell of
unused cellars, webbed
and cool and put away.
She remains a lovely lady
carrying produce
from the yard.
With her grandchild
at the table,
can't quite finish
this banana,
so he leaves it on the tray.
Somewhere across the
ragweed fields, the dusk
bird stalls the ending day.
And in the street,
the night
with glow bugs,
it is for
lonely children
that they play

You should have said you
loved me, in a militant
way.  Like hanging up the
sheets on lines in the sun
for the wind to
shake and
****** the neighbors.  You
should have loved me
wildly, home at five in
denim shorts, with art
and adventure, instead
of food.  You should have
loved me forcefully, an
echo in a seashell, intensely
poor, passionately rich,
you should have loved
me always.

In the end of the world
you are un-flattered. In
the end, the world’s
trapeze is like a
chain from which you are
unfettered.  In the end
of the world, our houses
are spun from the legs
like the webs of spiders,
as they become some other’s
cages. In the end of the
world the sky is cleared
of clouds, the mountain’s
peaks are pulled, with summits
that fall then
rise like tides
pulled by mercury.
In the end of the world,
we fly like birds
behind the waterfall.
With no front or back,
are like lovers only
once in life, and lose
all perspective that’s been
tried so hard to keep.
The words are lost,
spoken with doubt, unsure.
They are stretched and slurred
and like the collision
of heat and light,
this is love,
in the end of the world.

We all have windows
in our houses
and behind them
pat around in almost
dazed purposelessness.
Some covered, some uncovered,
the windows may
only slide roughly
on aluminum tracks.
You feel like
you’re only on the very
surface of the earth
ready to be
pried away.
And everyone
is captured behind
their windows. Making
paths on the floor,
parallel and perpendicular.
So we struggle
against walking
against sleeping.
I guess if there is a crime
then it is being knitted
to the ground so late.
And someone has
to keep it neat
and curses in his house
at the blessed ground
in which to sleep

There is no hope.
Summer was skipped.
It is like monet
without a coat
of lavender.  
There is no flight.
Delivered, the post’s
torn pages
were of a silent heart.
There is no slight,
these are lines
not lies, blindly parallel
in the still
september sky.
Above the dry milk
n’tick weeds.
There is no word, a
vast and vacant sense.
This is the gift
of absence
without a footprint
of regret.

I want to think
about you, un-posed, beneath
the mimosa, on the warm
morning, with the sun urgent
to stretch high above the
protected terrace.  Rake on the
sand, careful about the plants,
reckless about the night, a thick
band of silver, about your
wrist, each stone, agave and
orange.  I want to watch you pick
the cards up, safely,
corner to corner, unhurried,
like softball, near the end
of  the game.  
I want to know the
thoughts, delicate, triumphant,
beaded with drops, not tears.
Threads that shine with the
last light.
Deft finger tips
careful to unwind, and
not to unlock.