The day seems dead
you wake from the dream of death
and realize again it was real

I walk around the house
breathing the dead air
feeling dead inside

with every loss
the air grows thinner

Now that they’ve taken the body,
the German women begin cleaning,
and they clean everything, walls, floors…
Why all the cleaning I wonder?
Does death leave a stain--
or shed its shadow like a viral load?
They must clean out the humors
just like in the olden days.
Cleaning is Germanic grieving.
They put their grief to work,
and the Protestant angels
who appear on the scrubbed walls
witness the rinsing of death’s last traces.

I know about dogs who are half house flies
I know too about the praying mantis
and its preoccupation with dragonfly brains
I’ve watched a leopard slug outrun eternity
I ride horses with six legs
play with ceremonial knives
if I cut myself
I bleed out a little dark energy
and move on
I’ve opened the curtains
and seen the monster give birth to a monster
I’ve opened secret doors
and stepped into the arms of the dark
forgive me father for I have sinned
for the world as it is and my idiot grin

RIP Frankie Ala

Where space flows like water,
So that nothing is hard or sharp,
Everywhere the pliant, buoyant, firm,
Infinitesimal balance of motion,
Equilibrium's endless flowing
From every direction holding, releasing…

Or eternal and simultaneous interchange
Of subatomic and celestial particles,
Infinite number and regression,
The farthest point always near.
Gravity’s first rising.

Or regeneration’s genesis,
Beginning of all emerging,
The birth before birth,
Genealogy’s first molecule,
Progeny’s spring and curative.

Or clarity’s deepest water,
Simplicity’s essence distilled,
The weightlessness of all need
Where love is greater than chaos.

Last night storms drained life from the air.
I breathe in what’s been taken,
with the same breath I put it back.

With nothing to see I look at the news,
only to be disillusioned
by evil’s triumphs and the fall of goodness.

Yet every day I try to add
something of being back into the emptiness,
haunted by the suspicion—
as if a shadow moves across the page.

A suspicion that meaning is fulfilled
only after you’re gone and unaware.
But that in others, it will make itself known.

Sunlight on the outer
fringes of the clouds:
somewhere,
a table set for summer.

A nun levitated above her bed,
While a fish peered through the window,
Sobbing in the way of fish.
The silence swarmed with ants.
A watch opened its mouth to show its teeth.
A trophy ram’s head looked on,
From the mountains in its glassy, dead eyes.
Then there were mass arrests.
The whole state turned into a prison.
After that got boring, we went to a ball game.
The nun was now levitating above the field.
The game was suspended until further notice.
Then it began to rain baby antelopes,
But all of them were dead,
Limp as the rain itself.