gathering up my threads,
my bits my pieces my wools
those funny little socks
these tight ****** garms
all my happy sparkling pieces

THEN there is the cadence
of tying my red laces
licking and lapping over my sappy amber boots
my foot tickling inside a fossil.
And of course the happy little dance
--the wild jig of putting on my pants

a look at you. a slow saving glance.
with your arm above your head
the wild grains grown on your chest...
you unspooled me! my bits my pieces
my wools, and my silvery threads too
you took them all, took them all
took them out

FINALLY stepping outside
existing away from your bed
I feel like there’s a trumpet playing somewhere
walking into some sunlight,
a shimmering realization:
there's a parade in my head!!

it's five am
the straw reaches
for the wet ring
at the bottom
of the cup

AND
it smells like
your shampoo
everywhere

As the bombs go off,
a world forgetting
a world being
a world becoming


Putting on my shoes:
We will have to find fun
outside of our innocence soon


the slants of my eyes
saw the curve of your stomach
as you pulled your shirt over your head
home you go, my Zionist friend
despite my muffled wish--return to my bed


Saturday is full of spirits
the ones who dance like this
to the beats of a forgotten scene
i never thought saturdays
could become so mean

Where were you when the fire went away?
When the thunder escaped
and the lightning was saved?
What did you do when you heard the sound,
but bore no witness to the golden down
that gives a sky that godly crown?
Certainly it was a matter of confusion,
transfixed by the pandemonious afterthought
of a storm that was simply illusion

If I cannot be the lightning in your bed,
but only the thunder you celebrate
--marveling at my storm and e-lectric charm,
and bottling the warning of what you forbade:
"Thunder tells distance, and lightning gives harm",
and yet I too have some meaning to display:
thunder cannot satiate,
nor can it corporalize into much
beyond from where it originates,
I am left blind as sonar and with
a desire that can only bring belly-aches

God made skies so that they would break
and splinter into seconds of worship,
--a blue vessel readied for harbor's sake ,
and with the beating it takes,
the wise sky adores itself enough
to revel in what was and then remain,
forward-fast and backwards again
healing, heeling and staying the same

Birthdays are for nostalgia
and Kings of the desert
Like Moshe, Jesus, and Xander the Great
who came and saw and tried too hard
to mend some ever important scar
that much too late had been
left too long
to settle in the pyramid of our sleeping parts

Birthdays are for reading Hart Crane
and in his fashion, an attempt to become
indiscriminate as the wind that turns the weather vane
atop the roof where snow may fall
in an imagined winter,
lethargically covering all
in it's bitter farewell to Fall
as its grave-site is buried
by the Winter who loved it most enthralled

Birthdays are for thinking about you
The voice that remains
inside and always before the lights go out
and it's the end of my day
It's there, indiscriminate and howling
just like the wind that turns the weather vane
or the imagined winter
that only falls on my nearest window pane
in the pyramids that sleep beneath my very veins

the id of things
the id of me
propelled me like a wind
bringing milkweed
combing over your fields
spangled and sprawled out--
face full of an unperforated grey,
listless and forced to watch
the uneasy presence
of forever changelessness
no matter how imploring

One drink,
And the flower's ponced

I don't know how to exist
outisde of your bed.

My life is a chapped lip.

Blues and yellows forget
Math exists.

Vignette, vignette, vignette
A vin yet
Have you been yette?
Vignette vignette vignette

in a cereal bowl at noon
is it nothing then
If I was not here
to see it and to smell it
Like a bee visiting flowers

I make pollen from the
Stems of sugared breads

(simpleton)

Tied to the web of your bed
that lunges forth with a bite so hard
A loss is gained in those arms
a cold heat retreats to the
somber safety of our sheets

The past sings a song, fair and long
And I ask in silence
But directed with a truth so innocent
"am I the only one who hears it?"

You find my rare grace tempting
caught inside you with scissor legs
cornered against the fire of your best

Live in my bends forever like the lush moon so bright

The humming together-- a melody remembered,
Your doorway is a highway and a desert from
the webbed corner dually spun
"oh," your response comes loud,
Disruptive and volcanic
"I'm no exception
And neither are you"

And like a singed plume,
The running squalor of us,
the flames escape
And the heart moves away like walking
Alone, on concrete and inside a grey morning

i never unlearned Santa Claus

how does it feel to believe in god?

Is different from containing one
And putting it inside a bell jar.
Then, sitting that jar on a shelf
Above your bed,
Like a crucifix.

Stepping into sunlight,
There's a parade on my head!!

in a waiting line,
my mind drifts to you
in your bed
arms wrapped tight
i feel
the hair of your chest
between the shoulder blades
of my back

those kisses
you stole from me that night
in the street
beneath the yellow light
felt like silver fishes
swimming from my mouth to yours

so, it's my birthday
and i think of you,
dead friend

it makes me lonely

dog barks in the valley
my friends don't hear it

i wonder
what his name is

i used to think the sidewalk was the way
until i stepped off and climbed a mountain
i mined my heart from the rock,
dusted it off,
and opened it up
i was met with a thousand kisses
and a thousand steps to climb