~
Wake, no wake

He dreams of obituaries
And toe tagging

Exhuming dearly departed dollars
And biting the nails
Of his cadavers

Forensically speaking
He can talk of the dead

He's one lucky stiff

Pushing up daisies
All over the yard
Of his rose cottage

This life at rainbow's end
Each day mortiferously expires

It's all there in the brochure
~

~
Holy smoke!

This is a drag.

Nevertheless,
I've come to depend upon it.
~

a falling boy's
measured out footprint,
slipping in vain search
for a breadcrumb of solace

lost is spring, and green,
and bird nesting,
lost is his mother's smile,
he breathes in deeply

a memory of trees,
an afternoon sun
emptied of fertility:
a high wood on its last, teetering legs

urban air is everywhere
and wishes to be free,
but we are all carbon emissions,
separate living-dying pieces

polluted hieroglyphics
with nothing to convey,
fragments of a prayer
with nothing left to say

~
I cast my net
                  into the tributary

and release into you, a seasonal swim,

I give to you a mother's color,
        as you recite
        infant hymns,

                    you're a bleeder
on the days sunfire meters out its origin,
                    you're my river

free and clear from the grip

      of anchorage,

                         my river,

drifted on to wherever
                       moon wishes glister
~