Under his helmet, up against his pack,
After so many days of work and waking,
Sleep took him by the brow and laid him back.

There, in the happy no-time of his sleeping,
Death took him by the heart. There heaved a quaking
Of the aborted life within him leaping,
Then chest and sleepy arms once more fell slack.

And soon the slow, stray blood came creeping
From the intruding lead, like ants on track.

Whether his deeper sleep lie shaded by the shaking
Of great wings, and the thoughts that hung the stars,
High-pillowed on calm pillows of God's making,
Above these clouds, these rains, these sleets of lead,
And these winds' scimitars,
-Or whether yet his thin and sodden head
Confuses more and more with the low mould,
His hair being one with the grey grass
Of finished fields, and wire-scrags rusty-old,
Who knows? Who hopes? Who troubles? Let it pass!
He sleeps. He sleeps less tremulous, less cold,
Than we who wake, and waking say Alas!

the shadow picks
a nice path on your face;

across planes,
                        in wells
I never drank from,
                        on a pink bud
from which I stole
sugar
        instead
of
tasting.

Where words slipped
I thieved, not
                       kissed.

shadow hovers
as a bee
             searching
for pollen
in darkness.

It loves all
the places
                I missed

because

I substituted French phrases for
your limbs;
spoke to your
light
in a language I didn't quite
know yet

but

sounded
         like
              like
the poetry found

in light's absence.

there is a camping trip planned and preserved
on the reservation of our hopes and dreams and summer sweet nothings. we
retreat upon an open-toed weekend, cooler gemmed
& ready.

there is a place in the mountains
& on that wooded ridge it is waiting to be seen and witnessed. lived
upon, lit upon,
seedling.

sure, i love you.
& sure, i’ll die. and that is forever.
& forever is -
no worry. no bluffs. no sweat.
because this life is right, and right now is everything.
yolk.
to become a bloom of love more than just words and digits and plays of
time. this time
is ours.

is good beer. great beer. &
the heat. the her. her soothes and sovereigns
on this land in which we live with the whole tribe and fun days.
we are our own dreams.
good dreams.

meet her on the shore of a river.
& she is listening and speaking and sung.
with an urge
to love and let begin.
take precedent. take my nettled little heart
and crackle like fire from it the nutrient of lonesome ode.
& from the strum of that
we begin.

we end.
we cog back into the existence of small time
small town nobodies. worked little we.
service and cinema.

thus
busting gut toward town and more weekends and more movement.
there is motion to this curve of time, kids.
curve of pages expressed
& exposed here in wayward traveled poems.
truths of some sort or hallucination. here
we daydream.

Fire in my veins, blood in my mouth
Her mind was shattered, while mine travelled south
Did he cut himself on your pieces? Or did you learn to put yourself back together?
I hope you grew out of finding beauty in sadness, that you understood the possibility of happiness without depression.
I hope you learned never to fall in love with a broken mirror.