I tell myself one life
must yield to another:
fly to spider,
spider to bird,
bird to birdshot.

I tell myself one life
must, in the full course
of a day relinquish itself
to another savage dawn,
fall as each unbidden

yesterday fell, bleak
and ungrieved, twisted
on a rack of tomorrows
no more certain than a silk
spooled about a winch.

The project goes on.
A few stout beams arrived yesterday:
two boxes of nails, heavy as milk,
two pallets of mud from a swallow’s beak,
three incised jawbones,
a woodpecker’s red tilting cap and the dentine
edge of a falcon’s wing — all ready —
but for the plan — the plan balled up
some time ago on the eighth day
when the crew, weary of the foreman’s flap
gathered at the edge of darkness and light
and lounged: well-oiled, unjudged and striking
— so very striking.

Pound
Eliot
Yeats — fascists all.
Would you
?
disposed to such selfsame superiority
make of art
such grandiose assessments
of what is right and pure?
Would you,

in your unpeopled landscape,
gold with harvest,  place
the blemished hound,
the doting mistress, the penniless waif,
and the long bent road
that they invisibly stride?

I make shadows with my hands:
some birds, Nixon,
a spider on the wall, a barking dog.
I make shadows
with my hands — momenta,
false tales of you sitting flat
by the harbor, the ease of your legs
dangled beneath a pier. And I make water
in the shadow, some creases on your feet
and you laugh. I made you laugh.
These hands, disrupting sunlight,
know only the loss of you, your neck
and the fictions of some other tide.

she was blackstrap and off the shoulder
flint eye beguiling she was
***** straight and easy in her clan
sacred in a way
head tossed and smirked knowing
the three quick seconds of our love
that lifetime in the glance
would haunt me old as I am
and not without some clear
and certain lust

Pick one.
Step out of the book clean,
any book, whether bible, cookbook
or blue novel append the phrase
“In the beginning” to the mouth of it:
Harissa & Preserved Lemon.
In the beginning step off from there.
In the beginning there was
Harissa & Preserved Lemon.
Go forth into the worlds
reasonable and unforeseen
& flush with the knowledge
of nothing that precedes thee,
flush as nothing precedes thee
& graced that every fowl or beast
or behemoth fish or mite is
beholden to the tongue
that would taste its name
& every breath spools out
a world anew spewed from
the mewling attentions
of short—tenured gods.
We,
short—tenured gods know
nothing of what we make
until the meat is tendered
& the stew of our lives
cools in that blue porcelain
bowl we save for Sundays,
velvet to the throats of those
that would devour us.

I pray for winter. Summer is fat
and beyond repair. It hardly rains —
children on bikes, on swings
bite the wind. Children eat sky
from trampolines, take
clumps of it in their fists

And fall back on their fevers
laughing, yet to learn
the heft of sag. O! Manic youth —
you’ll throw your greasy chain.
Will it be cottonwood or cloud
that litters the yard come Autumn?
Who’s to know.

When I see children, I see cruelty,
decay and brown ache tumbling
from its stem: the rake,
the shovel, the whine and drag,
some lean deer breaking corn
by the grain bins, the short hex
of old cloud on my tongue.

Soon they’ll be shuttered
in winter’s dry heats these children:
cold-sore, chapped, their bikes hung
carcass from hooks in the ceiling —
like those old men that trim hedges, ****,
sip ambers and broth, wait for snow
like those old women that pry
ticks off their backs.

After the pops we watched,
from the window. Rabid
or not, the raccoon flailed
like ribbons on a demo fan,
life pushed out like pulled air
in the driveway. Two more
from the cop to secure an end,
a spectacle, a gathering.
Five cracks in the driveway
to bring the neighbors out
for a killing. The mowers wind down.
We watched in awe the last
few pulses of agony
slow run to the gutter
where the last leaves
unraked on an afternoon,
mingled with road grit
and hunks of can,
were soon washed down
by the firemen
and their hoses.

I told Luke about it by the iced cream.

Just a forelimb on the road,
careless as a twig,
but no plunder for crows,
no worthy feast for a scavenge,
just hoof, hide and bone.

And that’s how they left her,
a narrow remain, somehow
shorn and distant thrown
as if her full and russet frame
had been lifted, held aloft
and in sacrifice taken up,
into some sanctified bounding
where car and deer ne’er met.

Like red leaves,
after tree had fallen.

Would you betray a maple for its shade -
deny yourself the cool comfort of dim light,
sweet woodruff and fern, ground ivy,
violet in spring? Columbine refuses
full sun. Your languors burn, blister
and peel with each maliced stroke
of a chainsaw.

Oh these blind trajectories,
these pure set conditions,
initial, merry, just so wandered -
a shell thus thrown, a plunged
albatross beak, a sheared
stab of ice, a moon’s pull
and a breath elastic -

All these and a calculus,
as crest to valley lumbers
in its way - sine to sine -
chopped though ever free
and unlapped after.

Yes, that is how to build a rogue,
how to find our love - our love
stacked crest to crest -
to lurch up, snag a gilded gannet,
round about a hunk of sun
and fist on some stiff unwary hull -
cast our cargos upon the sea.

It is 4 a.m.,
and a black dog breaks
crust on old snow - stumbles.
And a full moon looms
to reveal just east
a crackling of limbs felled
by gathered frosts and west
a barn owl arcs silent - a slurry
of cream, hunger and brown
winter **** hovered and plunged
by moon and yellow porchlight.
A black dog stiffens and sniffs -
limbs give no more crack.

I know only this:
It is 4 a.m. - something bled
and something fed
in the moon and yellow porchlight.

If not for the hair
caught in the corner
where the broom
cannot reach,
I would never know
that you were here.

And if not for the corner
where the broom
cannot reach -
if not for the moulding
that pinned it -
if not for the wall
and the ceiling’s crease -
if not for the rafters
and shingles,
there we would be no hair.

And if not for the hair,
there would be no fingers,
no soft care to tie a single knot,
then carry it to the window
and release you there.

And if not for the window,
if not for the wind,
if not for the wake -

A nest and blue eggs come April.

A shadow fell upon my sheeted crown,
and she whispered, “It is time, my bonny, it is time.”
And when I rose, a linen for cloak,
I stood shoeless on a cobbled road,
squeezed on a Georgian lane,
where tight faces hid behind tight curtains,
dim shadows in gaslight
with green and scurvy eyes.

With her palm light-pressed
at the base of my spine, she urged,
“Walk now, my bonny, it is time.’
And with the first trepid step the street
fell away in a crumble, the facades
shattered as crystal and sharp,
and bunched hills lurched up as strong backs
from a fall, snow dusted, studded
with black pine and all the tangles of wind.

And though I sought to turn and return
to the bed-warmth of my slumber,
there was nothing behind but gray plain,
gray sky, and the gray eye
Of she that bade me “Walk, my bonny,
it is time.” She then melted to a lynx, svelte,
plump-furred for winter and steaming -
she melted to a lynx and gamboled
down into the crease, down into cutting
stone, down below bones that crouch
as hills, where stiff creeks hide their prey.

And I followed, I followed as old women gavelled
out plainsong with brooms among tines.
I followed and trembled as snorts and howls
of unseen brethren called my name.
I followed, and each round pebble -
a chittering mark on my pink soft soles,
as I descended down the fleet-pawed path,
bent with the tortures of shoes,
and the pines lengthened as nails pounded
from below, some swift and urgent
hammerstrikes pinning a hard sky.

Her track led deeper, deeper
than the slanted roofless mill
wheel half crushed in ice and misuse.
Her track led deeper, deeper
than the vagrant hamlet where
no smoke from chimneys plumed.
And as the path narrowed, thorn rich
and squalid, I took to my knees
and palms and stretched before the mouth
of her den - fuming of musk and sulphur.
“It is time, my bonny, it is time.”...

First the eagle glid low overhead.
Then the farm cat, lame and tabby,
limped from bumper to dumpster,
while we smoked
and whined about our day.

Silent where they fell,
spent ash, dog hair, coffee grounds.
Silent as they were when useful -
for buzz, for warmth, for waking, now
bits of grit to grind down the slippers
and vanished for a pleasure.

Silent where they fell,
old debts dismembered,
chunks of glass that could perhaps
be re-assembled as candy dishes
or ashtrays - maybe porches
where the chew jaw geezers
took summer and low orange light
way back when.

And the sun fell where it falls,
like threadbare throw rugs
and beaters, old dogs
chained to trees,
and the red rust Fords
thumped by the woodpile
and scavenged for parts -
silent playthings for children
racing in the torn sprung seats.

It is not the sapling or bit snow
that scrapes the window, coaxing,
Come out little boy, come out -
Come out where the sting wind blows
Come out where the wind plays a sapling
as a rube to scratch its bidding on a window.
That little life left tight against the foundation
missed in the pruning now the dim witted
accomplice to the sound of nails slow-scraped
on a chalkboard pane, Come out little boy.
And the spine shakes as the windchimes
rattle like keys, rattle like mother’s teeth
sharp above the crib, and taken to the breast
of winter, that cold milked ******,
that rippling drift. And that lullaby sings
another to sleep while the smallest of rodents
dig deep and wait, wait in some self made heat
that little boys and little girls somehow forgot
when the first snow fell upon their tongues
and they tasted death for the first time -
wet and quick gone with eyes slow closed.

Three rib bones flush from the culvert pipe
after hunks of pelvis beside the tracks -
the tracks with no arms but rumble
rumble strips and red bell ticks.

Clang go the bones
where no grass grows

Bang go the trains
and the pink prairie rose

Rattles with the rush
in the same stiff pose

as ribs and hunks of pelvis whiten
and wash no further than the small
and shallow depression cleaved
by spilt rain through a culvert pipe.

We came upon the delta, we, brothers,
split out from the blue wide river,
contrapuntal and lost among cypress,
moss, muck and brute-teeth jangles.

And though I never carried a tune,
I carry the tone of your faded fifths,
your deviled tri’s and slip-foot riffs,
an octave less than finding you gone.

But in these stale bite-fly airs,
in this green moss-dripped fiction,
better hoped than hung as fourths
for a firm resolution - I know

You perch upon a stone, not lay beneath it,
and pluck the roots of black mangrove.

They are not yours, those eyes -
those hazel eyes crusted
with sleep-thrashed release -
and neither the mind behind
thinking of toast on a new day,
soft-buttered and still yet crisp.

And those are not yours, those fingers,
curled smooth-knuckled on the cutlery,
waiting for toast and soft butter -
and neither the wait for the kettle’s
pitched steam or the dry tea bag
hanging beneath the rim -

And neither the milk nor honey - ,
never the milk or honey.

No, these are not our things -
these eyes, these minds, these hands -
breads, butters, tea -
not even the footfall that drags
across the bare wood floor is ours
To break the one true fast.

These are our grandmothers’ things,
and all the grands before them
that soon as sunk into sand, rise
and blink in the grandson eye,
takes the granddaughter hand to spread
butter on toast and boil water for tea.

Am I thus soiled by envy and toil
or bettered in a blind groped striving?
I will blow a hole through a massif
not to defile its majesty, but to carve,
to carve and cut my own dark passage,
below the harrying slopes, below the treeline,
over which ice ever bars my way.

And as you push on to the summit,
short of breath and vague before the wind,
I will burst upon the nether *****
and stand, caked in the grit of digging
long and veered off from the clear true line
to find below, a mist soaked glen,
hunched beneath a hesitant dawn
while your eyes are stung white
in a naked unyielding sun.

I find
not many lighters and too many cheap shades,
lain against a loose-hinged trifocal,
Expensive, lost and necessary,
upon the flip-top notebook
bound with crushed spiral wire.
And within, the gibberish
of a young girl’s day -
there are holes above the i’s
and myriad loves to Matthew.

I find
a green squeeze coin purse -
an old man’s plastic strongbox -
scavenged of coin
that only three washers remain,
three washers and a button,
nested in the scarves,
in the acrylic scarves
and the coarse wool plaid ones.

And I find gloves,
brown, amber and worn,
and taking them for my own,
slipping them on, I find
my fingers curl in the fashion of yours
and the momentary warmth
of your hands upon mine.

What was it, that chocolate crust
scalded in the *** from yesternight,
leaning, off-burner, with the dangling
spoon, wooden and stained?

Best give it a soak, my love,
that tomorrow we may find
its nature framed tight in stainless,
framed tight in the soap bubbles
that have raced and cling
to the round squat walls.

Perhaps we may find, tomorrow,
among the gray pepper-flecked film,
risen to the surface, a few plump kernels
of our own yellow yesterday.

From once to somehow to somewhere,
The brittle language of hope cracks
Between my teeth, much as ice
Cracks beneath my boots as I,
Unhurried on a wax gibbous morn,
Make my way to the car.

For what is hope but an admission
That what is is not enough. Take this -
The assertion that on this day,
In this winter, it is the care of a step,
The purchase of a sole,
The purchase of rubber on ice
That holds this teetering balance
Upright above the ankles.

I’ve little hope beyond that.
I’ve little hope for I know come April,
In the surety of swelling streams,
Each once somehow somewhere
Dripped from the mind,
Stripped from the hope-bound winter,
Will babble on to the sea and die,
While the earth sinks a little
Beneath my feet.

The pin is broken,
And the wheel has slipped from the rod.
The mechanics of our passage
Are broken now,
And all our worldly ventures
Have spilled out onto the ground:
Her red backed Bible,
Your cast-iron pans,
The lens we used to burn down ants.
All there in the muck:
My bad corduroy pants.
Jerseys of just so much
Victory - and victories
Counted large though
Lying there in the brown ruts
Of just so much passing,
Garbled there in the treacle.

And yet we stand here,
Mute to repair with dumb hands,
Mute to the simple truth
That our eyes must now,
As they always have,
Wander vagrant away
From what is now untreasured,
What is now unburdened garbage,
Beside the still spilled cart,
Beside the wheel that dragged us here,
Beside the sheared-off pin
That left us here
On a muddy track
That will never lead home.

The orange slim line of the chopper overhead
Means only one thing here - certainty.
Certainty that northeast of where I stand
Is a near departure,
Perhaps wedged behind a wheel.
I will count the minutes
As I count thunders and strikes.
I can do nothing else.

For in the next thick hour
In the next thick breath,
A mother may weep a son,
A father may curse the winter ice,
Perhaps wail a daughter’s name.

We must all then pause and wait,
Listen and turn away from this moment
Of our own sure circumstance
And bow our heads to the certainty
Of another, out there,
Uncertain in the crumpled snow.

It is red brick and steady.
Though the herefords tread the floors these days,
She is steady. And though the window frames
Carry little paint - it was white - and hold
Where they fell, and though
The creek has wandered, no carved,
Deep against the footing stones,
She is steady. Steady as the ma’am
That taught them. Steady as the hand
That scraped the chalks and simple maths,
Steady as the wind scraped eyes,
The chaff chapped hands
Tracing letters onto boards.
Yes, she stands forever
And only the bell is gone.

Otto rode filthy down the slumpline onto Cowpers - past Bleaker's Brick, Mole Rat Slim's and Dave’s Sour Onion , on down to quayside all hooked and hungry. Flyer said Gracey Mae Beam was hoarding the stage at eleven, hitting the planks of Varlot’s Velvet Rope with no back-up - no thunder drum brass or strung out string section to stifle the hoots and howls of them mongrel boys scrapping over leavin’s. He knew the drill. Gracey would lead with “Heaven” then lilt dissonant into “Hell and Lula”, spin down into “Luna”, swing out riffs of “Hypnosis” and barrel into “Gun Metal Blue” and run “A Lass To Mara.” Yes, he knew the drill cuz the set was theirs, arranged in a one bedroom walk-up shotgun with a Wurlitzer and bad plumbing. ****, has it been that long? But Otto knew, felt it in a rib, it was coded on the leaflet - Gracey was playing Varlot’s - the first haunt - going it alone this time, no Wurlitzer, no Otto, just a dim lit backdoor black-smudged around the ****. He’d wait for her there, three smokes left and rationing. Three smokes left and hoping for a glint-eye nod.

To become fluent
Is to walk with the hands
The resilience of starch
Dried on the steep ***** of the bowl.
And what may seem clean
Is a trick of the eye
For the residue of rice
Resists the towel and scrub
And clings there,
Known only to the fingers
That would seek this knowledge
And ignore the one thin hair
Afloat in the soup, yesterday,
As we closed our eyes,
As we closed our eyes
And savored the broth.

Come all ye winter brigands,
Strip these tainted fairland woods
Of their baubles and wares.
Take what plump fruits remain
In glistened fists and bind,
Bind the spruce tightly -
Such prideful beasts these trees.

Come mock these captive summers,
Taunt them white in the forest,
White in the glade and fled,
To the shrill and fluted wind,
To crackling beats on wire and limb.
Such a wagged and giddy pilfer,
Leave them lap on brittle leaves.

Come ye winter brigands,
Strip the burdened hoards,
The cone and gray gem juniper,
The blackened berry, the wild blue phlox,
The painted trillium stem.
Vanity in such soft profligate pendants -
What need have we of these?

It was something else entirely.
It was not the ripped yellow t-shirt
I pulled from between the boulders
Where the lake met Chicago.
It was not the penny or the wasted
Gull feather. Nor was it the child’s shoe
That no longer flickered as she ran.
It was not the rusted corkscrew that
Faintly read Jackson Hole, Wyoming,
By the gold and chipped cowboy
Tall in the saddle,
Nor the green and brown shards
Of empty glass, nor the used
And smoothed shells of mollusks.
It was not the bits of blottered pages
Whose inks no longer spoke of hands
But water and dissolution.
It was not the lensless knock-off
Rayban’s - severed at the temple. No,
It was something else entirely,
There, hidden in the rocks,
Where the water beats upon us.

Sun go down in boxcar blue
Swing arm crank go down them dew
Flash eye drag with horn and load
Coupling break for sorra’ stowed
Side dump **** and tank car ****
Jag the night-black knuckle jump
Jump the rise and run the moon
Next town down be falling soon
Loco Pilot spark them strikes
Wrest the ties out from them spikes
Second howl coyote song
Mayday brake air long ere long

Which river to cross -
The shallow brook of faith,
Tepid in the slow run to God, or
That which drains into the oily pits
Of loss, tormented though alive
In sure and certain combustion?

Give me fire and hard current,
Give me love and rounding stone,
Give me rasping scale and snag,
Jagged rapid bends,
And the black swamp moccasin
Bite into my fat ripe shin.
For that is where I’ll meet you.

And what is more sacred
Than knowing true pain,
The poison of it -
The broken limb, the broken heart,
The breaking rind and taking,
Taking that what is broken
And breaking,
Into a broken hand
And tying pain to pain
And thus healing
As long slow scabs
Conceal the wounds.

I will not confess my sins, no,
But burn them in the river to Hell.
I will struggle - with you -
the orange-tongued waters,
Grit-toothed and unburdened,
Dragged a half-mile down,
Until we reach the ashed
And muddied bank and fall
In the gray and muck of living -
Laughing that we tried at all.

...Sleep conjured a small dog
with a granite eye, mats and mange,
Three legs and a vagrant tongue
That hung from the left of its snout,
A viscous drool that strung without
Shame, without breaking to the floor.
And I, though broken in a dream,
Shorn of hands,
Less a body than a thought,
Became a dream for a stone-eye dog
Who rolled belly up to offer its scars
And plump tumors.
We were one then.
We were one -
A broken man and a broken dog
For once thus calm in a dream.

Smelted down,
A pool of rendered gristle,
Slick on the floor,
That’s what a day leaves us,

After the tethered heaves
Of this most sought production,
Blendered the dawn news,
The hooved mews, cool dews,
And all that smelled like gravy.

A slump line to the drink
Of old business not attended,
Piles as laundry, clean and otherwise,
Crowding the table, the floor,
And all the chipped dishes between
The sink and my mother.

But now, after all is taken away,
The fingers curl
Between the heel and the ****,
And crisp leeks yield to the edge,
Celery snaps and rains -
Carrot - thin as harvest moon
And a fume of crushed garlic.

What next? You may ask.
The permutations of evening
And stew are yours to taste,
To take and wander -
To simmer and wonder -
To plunder what soothes
On the tongue
And melts the fat of wages.

For what, then, do we trod
The husks of dead men,
And for whom?
Is it the trinkets improved?
For we are no larger than the beast -
And there the judgement - the beast
That fashioned the first *****,
Turned the first soil,
Laid the first seed,
Sure in the touch
Of sun, water and repercussion.
No, perhaps diminished, reduced
Upon that self-same soil,
To seek, beyond the seed,
Beyond the shoot and bloom,
Beyond the very grain of dulling truth
That all is not forsaken.

I tell you this.
Bone has fashioned socket.
And in that socket - an eye.
And in that eye, and in those eyes
Each a burden falls.
Look not to the lover or fool, fair prince,
But gaze upon the beggar
And find there inheritance -
Find there, centered in the iris,
The black pool of our communion.

And no greater is the elm
Than the hand.
For the one that prospers light to soil
Is the same as that which turns it,
Is the same as that which yearns
Beyond the follies,
But takes one into another -
Cupped and held -
Flesh over bone -
Calloused but braced by the other,
Alone, no, never alone.

Must we sing the round ecliptic?
Must we suppose a star immortal -
Must we trace these patterns of us - up there -
While we, down here, know death?

What a noble self-loathing -
To presume upon the unthinking night
Our disdain for cloud, to swell
In our own black vision when a new moon
Unmasks oblivion, when a new moon
Denies a shadowed path.

Stars must die in their time,
Must crush upon themselves
As we wither and lust eternal.
But what can never pass,
Like a low and clever fog,
Is the mute unknowing
Bestowed upon a log.

Endymion shrieks,
For what is beauty if hidden,
hoarded, if posed in youthful sleep?
None forever in plump symmetries
Held a stone and cast it thus
Upon the cool and clouded lakes
Below thunder, and sought
The bridled stain that looms
From under. But there, there
In fragile dispurpose cut
Below the eye - the frailty -
The red gleam indistinguishable
From the fly that laps upon it,
Indistinguishable from the crust
That makes a scar, ripped
From vain slumber to bend
Before the wind, to break
Before the white lightning hand
That takes each our pink clays
And molds a chasm
For the drain of days.

Dormant in dry divots,
in the basins,
what I am, what I will and what I will be
is rained, is whetted,
by what is, what is not and what will not be.

There blooms the green resilient,
the sulphured algae,
hot spurned by weathers -
the must of us.

There plumes communion -
chance and wide endeavor -
flush and fumed -
above the gathered ponds.

We called him Mr.Chins cuz he had four of ‘em.
We called him The Chizzler and he hated it:
Always chugged a brew before playing the rube,
And taking the *** for himself.

He whiffed a’ porkrinds and blackjack,
And his lip ticked for the snow.
He ****** down the Jaeg like a hunter,
Too loose and obtuse with a bow:

Missed his mark -
Like he missed his mom -
And his dad was good for the whoopin’s.

He was straight-shot in the flatters,
But took a cab home alone.
He said he gambled for the ladies,
The ones he’s never known.

He had a keen eye for the rail run,
Cued low for the buck and the lie,
He was a stacked-quarter hustle,
A con that went glibly awry.

Sun-dogs lope over the bloat of a rise,
and the nocturnal kills freeze in the ditches
waiting Spring’s decay, crows or an inmate’s *****.

What is strewn there: husk in the fields,
cans in the fields, bags in the fields,
stiffen as strata before next-Autumn yields.

Smoke plumes flat from the chimneys
of those at rest for a season at best,
and all the green tools are put away.

Long-fingered frost blooms on the limbs,
threatens the wire, renders each
these gaunt and barren things
a hard-crust and promise of fire.

The harrier glides down close to the ground,
Long-swept with hunger to catch there a sound.

You ain’t no butterfly.
Forget them wings.
Ain’t nothing but worksore,
blister and things.

Ain’t nothing but cane -
we ain’t nothing but cane.
Come out that cocoon, baby,
come stand in the rain.

Come out from the womb.
Come down from the bed.
That Sickleman needs us
in the barrow instead.

It’s fifteen below
And a fat buck lurches,
Spindle legged, four pointed,
And cardinal -
Fishtail and brake.

I don’t trust this road.
I don’t trust these tires.
I don’t trust these ditches,
Smoothed and driven with snow.

I’m a six-layered pig at the wheel -
Unsleek unchic -
But I’m warm, **** I’m warm,
And the road slides like pinstripe
On white gabardine.

And the waning moon,
The waning moon,
Low in the rise,
Gibbous and garish,
Scabbing a cloud,
Spills the whole thing blue.

I don’t trust the red eyes of mailboxes,
Always willing to dive the grill.
I don’t trust the farmer
That lives on the hill,
Behind the blue spruce line,
Behind the blue flickered window,
Counting on futures,
Clumsy as mittens,
Still as the finger drift
Thudding the glide
Like dull scissors
Snagged in gridded giftwrap guides.

I still taste the coffee
Down under the tar.

I trust my smokes.
Yes, I trust my smokes.
I trust my hat. I trust my boots.
I trust I’ll never find my roots.
I trust the jumpers, there in the trunk.
I trust every single roadkill thunk.
I trust every knuckled ill-advised ride
To tell me yes, oh yes, I'm alive, I’m alive.

She chucked herself from the library,
Five stories blind and hung briefly.
I heard it from a friend.
                                    Laura’s dead.
She found three dead boys,
Hung from cable
                                    and that broke her,
He said.

We threw empty sixteens
From the roof where we gathered,
Spoke each a shattered dream
rushed upon the pavement,
One,
Upon another.
The sidewalk gleamed
In all the shards of Laura,
Green and Amber, Blue and Clear,
And ever farther than the eyes of her,
Splashed out in every blink night town,
In every flick night river where
Everybody drowns.

Come, O Love for down the vale,
Where moonlight frocks the lovers’ tale,
Where moonlight mulls the staves of trees
And shreds the fuschia from the leaves.

Come, O Love for down the vale,
Where cleave and stumble long prevail,
And woolen grass reveals the press
Of all that slept there shorn of dress.

Come down the vale for it is known
The miller’s grain was never grown
Here below long-shadowed stone.
Come, O Love, and come alone.

Put down your labor’s winnowed sheaf.
Lay down in heaven’s gentle brief.

Whiteout on 250,
shallow shouldered,
deep ditched,
though straight as dope
and piped icing.
The wind knows the way
but canters,
canters and drags
this crate south,
south into the beams
of some some other
sad **** bent to the clock
and near death for a dime,
for a mortgage,
and some other
******* adherence.

To give us naught but bleak display,
To say, to say,
Love has never tethered moon
That way,
That heather never blooms but brays
To drop the stars in sage and grays.

And in this flash hewn verdance sent,
Aghast the sea in violet vent,
Abhors the ******-singed regret,
This skirmish lost though never met.

And where upon a furrowed leaf,
The miner enters as a thief,
To take the blood but not belief,
Was not the time to span a grief?

But given naught but bleak display,
That tethered moon has gone astray,
And pulls not tide but skin away,
To slink beyond a son and pray.

It is the peeling that breaks me.
It is the skin once a thin bastion
against dirt, against mandible,
against the boring small things
that blister the flesh, brown the pulp.

And as I slide a blade into the onion,
wincing in the sting of sulphur,
these fumes of disdain, it yields,
again and again, to the rocking steel,
humming unto the butter and pan.

But it's the peeling that breaks me.
Thin papers loose as sunburn,
loose as ribbon unwound
from the core, loose as young men
bound for the shore, loose as a living,
a living no more.

Cowled and eyeless,
the slouched friar on a slow mule
Dispenses Gospel to the road.
In the shallow fords and mountain clings
He loafs, the hooves of the mule
Sure, certain as bread and crisp water.

And after a bend, a scent - a smoke -
Affording comfort, at least for a moment -
A shack to weather the evernight.
And there, before fire, with crackling eyes
The deaf one blazed in a spectrum,
Unseen.

And what was a matter of course,
Became the matter of hands,
Testing the blisters of a moment,
The friar engulfed in the palms
Of the deaf one’s guidance.

And there in the flurry of fingers,
“Here is the tongue, here is the ear,
And here is the way forbidden to the blind.
Give me your hand that I may place the hammer.
Give me your hand that I may place the stone.
Give me the Word as exchange for the World,
And each we’ll find our own way home.”

I’ll send daisies
because they’re already dead,
bias cut for a few
last capillary pulls
of aspirin-tinged water -
soon to cataract, milky
in a lead
crystal
vase.

These are no “love me’s” or
“Love me nots”.
These are from he who knows
not love, but beauty - decay.

My darling little Aster,
this is the day of your death,
another year counted,
backward from a birth,
as each petal falls as love,
as paper,
as dust,
onto your dining
room
table.

Pull deep these gathered Springs
there, pull deep the wisp
of meadows once dreamt
soft beneath your feet,
and gaze into the yellow eye
about which all these
frailties
fall.

Think not me grim my darling.
Think not me cold and thin.
I am nothing but a florist -
the florist birthed within.