You have opened all the valves
Of my attention.
Your hands stain with my rust.

My frame
It wakes
In dust.

You're getting good at setting up
Your spotlight and your stage.
The subtle flick
Between your lips
Reaches out to turn my page,

And my imagination
Rattles in its cage.

A tangled heart
Is a work of art
Sweet, deliberate, crochet.
Spare no thoughts
That the prettiest knots
Must all unravel someday.

It's late in the evening and the world is winter
and bare-treed. She goes to the window, where
at home it was sage and yucca or some other
pretty ****. But here it has yet to be classified:
it's just bark, stem, seed. And at home the stars
would yawn into being, star by star; rubbing,
stretching, blinking. But here they are one, and
they always come late. Their light they withhold
as if lying in wait, so it's dark till the moment...
she's not quite aware. She just wrinkles her nose,
looks up,
and it's there.

Palms unite, a huddled crowd
And thumbs convene, as lips

A language native to the hands
This meeting of the fingertips

One by one (like stars) aligned
A congress of the quietest kind

For eyes it will unfold, unwind
Unheard, and yet, the word, defined

You couldn’t catch the poetry:
The subtle glimpse of eternity that
Stripped for you like a lover.
You were in no mood to feel
The tenderness of another,
So blindly he stood waiting in
The doorway of your soul.
He held the seeds of insight that
You would never grow.
Even as you shared existence with
A thousand worlds untold
You closed your eyes and felt resigned
To let your lips grow cold,
Despite the womb inside your heart
That could have nursed creation;
Despite the boy beside your head
Who whispered inspiration.

*Versailles, France

what makes you so different from the people you are
fighting? there’s no middle ground when fuses are
lighting with fires igniting and children delight
ing in whatever they eat off the screen. ado
lescents restricted to the diet of infants.
don’t tell me about the hidden mean
ing in the things i am seeing in
the things i am feeling in the
things i am eating while
you are still teething.
five senses can’t
sense the fact
of my being
. alright?

*Albuquerque, NM