explain this knife's wound.
gaping and jagged
and, surely,
without cause.
empty, too, look--
inside there is no substance,
only sound, vibration, shuddering,
flickering, shattering, glimmering, deafening

explain this knife's wound.
always secretly my mouth hanging open
in imitation of it.
no words come out though.
if they did it would only be a call
to close up the wound and
suffocate its interior.

explain this knife's wound.
fear on its edge
though no knife.
that was tossed aside long ago
no longer needed
since the wound opens anew
every night.

an ecstasy of snuggles

make no mistake
we look for what's funny
when it's not funny.
we look for the humor
on the edge of despair.
it's always there.
alone, we struggle to survive
though we're fine.
and that endless loneliness
is humorous.

This isn't the poem I came here to write.
I'm circling round it, and will circle
for years.
Not to write a good poem.
Just to find the truth.
So very many facts
yet truth so rare.
I'm circling round it,
and will circle for years.
Circling, soft circling.
Gravity calling, hungrily, for a pair
for another part.
That pull feels true,
but I don't know.
What does it ask in the glass?
Ask, night after night?
For what does it cry?
What

(love)
is enough?

Now this dark pool is quiet,
it hardly drips.
And so we wait here, contemplating,
nervously.
Nothing to say,
little to plan,
less to reveal.
Your private space is safer,
most of the time.
I know that much.
I would lie beside you
and play with your hair
while you drift to sleep
glad that I'm there.
Here, though, who can say
what lies in my dark pool?
Scry if you like and see.
It will tell you of something distant,
not what's within.
Always hiding, disguising,
pregnant with what might be fear.
Elsewhere there are women
with red maps of meaning
coursing through their organs,
veins, muscles and bones--
My heart's as alive as the underworld,
weirdly irrepressible,
eternally mourning.
Still there are roads here too,
and those who know some parts of the way.
I want to do better, be better--
not collapse on the instrument
but touch it one key at a time,
controlled and skillfully wild.
Must remember,
must remember,
I am still alive.

late at night
when you want to sleep
and you can't
bear to surrender
press the strange button
disguised in your remote control
and your little television will flicker
with an odd and greyish picture
and you can hear my voice
and see another moment for a world--
pearls of wood tinkling
a wild woman hacking through a jungle of words
uncovering swirls
of teacups and curls
and tiny grey horses
sprouting antlers of moss
and dancers and jokers
and portraits of loss
each one of these threaded
through the path of destruction
she's hacking her way through
your television
while murmering
oh so quietly

then turn off the image
and lie down and rest
reassured by the knowledge
that out there in the world
there's something just as deranged
as you feel in your chest
and it's there as a gift of
tiny horses in teacups
for you if
you can find it.

somehow you
still have a hand
on my heart,
though what part I
don't know--
you are
passionate yet
disinterested,
sudden and
deceptively
straightforward--
yet I
know you
somehow
past your
rigidity
and can't help
but want to
caress your
lonely
impulses.