Among the mountains and oceans we claimed,
Environments we no longer know,
Starvation from the knowledge lacked.
Strange men of unknown origin push us away
With feathered spears and their spirits
Flying above us like the angels we seek.

The spread of our culture like margarine
Angers the earth it's ancestors tread on;
War and thievery. Disease and infection
Was wildfire in a land containing no such
Immunities to the harshness.

First cities died as infants, stillborns
Of history and freedom, yet
They survived in their determination.

at what point in your life do you realize the futility of chasing the elusive

acknowledging all your past love stories are tragedies

stillborns, held briefly, remembered daily, for the rest of your life

to meet the paragon that matches your impossible list of requirements

the odds are against you, possible, just highly improbable

to find the unicorn on a merry-go-round of painted, wooden horses

mindlessly, repeating the cycle, searching for the one, in a universe of stars

how many times must you be pulverized in the online emotional meat grinder

craving the unconditional love, acknowledgment, validation of prince charming

to be kissed, caressed, cherished by the bad boy on the harley

romantic love is a dangerous illusion, a mirage in the desert, la fata morgana in your heart

I asked the love inside me
to sleep but not to die.
To fly like swallows at sea,
give me peace,
but please,
be homesick.

I asked the love inside me
to relent it’s doping up
like an Indian Luna
discarding the moon
for daylight.

I asked would it be stoic,
Drown the sun for just a day
and hang dark over street-signs
that have anagrams of her name
or point to wherever she sleeps.

I asked the love inside me
to keep the love-bites
in my capillaries
lest they phosphoresce
like the backs of cuttlefish.

I asked would it be patient
to shine them later,
as inkblots, reminding me
of what the softness
of her lips can do.

I asked the love inside me
to remember and not to hope.
Keep our room everlasting
alight with music,
and like my love,
my own.

there’s lipstick kissed filter tips
and roaches made from textbooks
littering the ash-hardened carpet.
The lift of bra strings over collarbone
tracing a mole
meeting like the Saone and Rhone there.
Hungover afternoons
where the heat stays asleep in the air
circulating with our radiance
as if our hearts fill the whole space.
The time moves glacially
like we’re children
having nothing to compare it with
but the length of hair
and the states of cliff faces.
Two stillborns
meeting in the afterlife.

The first time
and the last time
and all the love in between
is alive.

I wonder where the stillborn souls reside
from breathless births, the cherub orphan parts
to migrate; as the promised womb had lied
so close to air and lands with beating hearts.

The love is strong despite the eyes unseen
and rattles snatched in for a gilded wand,
no carat haze could meet what love had been
if cries were nurtured by a mothers bond.

If rearing love outweighs a seraph's love
no golden mother measure to replace
then is to reason; infants wait above;
until the babes and kin unite in space.

A haven till the babies lost reclaim!
O' stillborn wait for love as tho' became.

I am the burner of bridges,
Said Bridget, the smoker of
Cigarettes who lies and stares
At the passing day. My childhood
Follows me like a shadow’s dark;
Its ghostly presence is always there,
Its non wise words echoing in my
Ear. I sleep with men for the lost
love, kiss them in the search for
my lost mother’s warmth, hug them
In the lonely hours. My dead babies
Cling to my legs, their tiny fingers
Clutch at my dress as I walk along;
Their eyes look up like lamps in the
Still night. I am the aborter of babes,
The owner of a useless womb; I push
Out stillborns like a factory, give birth
To a form but not to life; I am anyone’s
Woman, any man’s wife, I lay and gaze
At the moon, I watch smoke rise from
My cigarette, it forms rings as father did,
The smoke curling and rising with his
Phantom presence there in room, the
Ghostly cigarette hanging from his lips.
I have searched for God in the blackness
Of night, sought His love in the arms of men,
Awaited His coming in the winter’s wind;
His love is there, but I do not see, His arms
Caress, but I do not feel; I am alone still.
I am the walker of cities, the sitter in lone
Cafes, the easy ride, the fuckable dame;
I wear the badge of kiss me quick or leave
Me never. I am the sleeper of nights in a
Musty bed; see dead babies in heart and head.

god made man to re-caulk the bottom of the bath tub for his daughters to splash in,
man made god to send his stillborns someplace nice.

It seems that unborn offspring
passing before birth
actually yield in the Spring
in blossom fragrant mirth.

In floret violet haze
hyacinths cluster eyes
harmonic in swaying gaze.
budding - the unborn guise.

Robins melodically ode
tuning for mothering Flore
that blessed be an abode
unlike dreams lost before.

Snowdrops, are stillborns,
eager infants - were close
sadden bells still mourns
eluded breaths and bows.

Garden times of springs
sensor a revival of life
a budding glow that brings
ardent greeters to rife.

[I still bring snow]

I think mom’s new dog must have the bones of a kite. I have a lover, now. a he, a beekeeper. a she if she saddens in the nearness. a nothing, a dowry. ghost china. spacesuits for stillborns. under this blanket, a puppet reads to a doll about light. under that, the shape of what goes blind in a poem. I miss you. plural. I don’t wash my forehead. I still bring snow.

~

[house musics]

no star foreign, brother kisses a spiderless ceiling.

the diver
dead
our father
loved

~

[untitled]

a sick child can be in two stories at once. anthill. calvary. tell neither. I feel like maybe I am talking my way up the dollmaker’s ladder. eat? I won’t the black duckling. god

won’t the owl. angels

just birds
that faint.

~

[response musics (iii)]

...weigh god in photos. free a crow from the gospel of the negative. (we) revisit the medicines. call you dead and call you hawk gone to curl in the lap of a cyclops. ask (we ask) for what landbound thing did your body carry time? your past, every year, the same spot. thing never shows.

~

[response musics (iv)]

a run on mirrors. lowkey exorcisms.

wheelchair, lamb’s minus
one.

mom and the angel
of last
names. dad

and the snowplow.

dad and the ballet slipper.

yea the shadow
of his yawn.

~

[removal musics (xi)]

it’s always your story to which the afterlife gets added. did you even want children? do crows

hear thunder? no butcher believes in time.

~

[how I want you to remember my sister]

in a puppet show
about washing
my son’s
feet, or waving down

the ice cream truck
with her bible, or

as farewell

to nothing’s
church
of neither

~

[pseudo]

between the house of the first suicide
and the house of the second
there’s one
with a dog door.

the moms all work at the same ghost jail.

the dads say things like

/ finally a parrot I can hear / & / in hell
nobody steps
on their reading
glasses.

the dream is there we put our mouths on. our hands.
the dream
that was nest.

brothers dressed like jesus
brush their teeth
and sisters
keep a tender
thumb.

~

[takeaways from his speech to the poor about what happens overnight]

horror movies are all the same.

babies can’t get amnesia.

I once pointed a starting gun at the head of a thing that wasn’t looking.

sleep is the christ of the mind.

~

[dream saw and dream tooth]

to be
as asleep
as a father’s
left leg

as a birthday
for a window

~

[removal musics (xii)]

if childless, we call it mother.  

-

how long
did you fake
being young?

-

this part / of her poem / is empty

-

three men remove my shoes

-

translates

to yesterbed

-
  
self-portrait in milk