I lost a will:
to write,
to life

it's gone like
an unimportant
memory

misplaced
or erased?

what made
a clean slate?

brain bleached like
whites in laundry

I've heard
words

that herd
words:

a shepherd's dog and
his sheep--

"I love you"
corrals an
"I love you too"

with a few frantic barks,
and fast feet

I **** like a fairy
on funghi:

If a fun guy could happen
to *** by briny waves
ridden turned wastewater
that only perverts could swallow,
and turn rough like a flagellant

Beating against being submerged,
with wings going like mad, and hurt
charting pain like a map on the
body as it lay gasping, oars
grasping for dry land.

My luck lies fairly
on the one guy

my skeleton is
made from the stuff
as sensitive teeth:

it can't take
much cold

instead of a shiver,
there is a stiffening
freeze, and

cavities make them
slip from their folds

Music is the incunabula
-the first traces- of poetry

an attempt to put the sound into word,
not in the lyrical sense: some set rhythm and
rhyme and words, no,
in a biblical sense

in the shape and form:
in a transcription of
minor and major lifts
and dips

Afterwords, I stuff
myself back
within myself--

pleated coils bending
like knees,
with ease,
like they've been on
tippy toes too long--

A too flexible and
overly sensitive
jack in a box:

One whose chest gets too
excited at the turn
of a handlefull of gears
until the lid
pops off

Poetry in translation
is a shower in
another home.

This shower is
not my own-
it is not
familiar and
may have a different
structure.
There

may be a difference
in tub size or water
pressure, or in finicky
temperatures, however:
the water is water,
the knobs twist,
it turns hot or cold.

Foreign words form
and provide the same
function as native words
when you learn things like:
agua is water is eau, and
frio is cold is froid.

Language is a
pantomime of itself,
it mimics itself.
There is a likeness
akin to sameness.

I try to avoid
writing about you:

I consult with
deep sleep and music
instead, but

They lack what
poems have:
a permanent place
in performative space,

A sight full shape: like
the scent of your name exhaled
from the back of my throat.

I admit: time did not
properly permit love to
become anything more than
a thing that could have been done,
But

I've missed you,
                              -somehow-
I missed you,
                         -there are times, still-
I miss you

Water is
so filling

up fruits and
bodies of oceans
like people

Better is better, but
not necessarily good:

Do I deserve better
or goodness?

Why can I not
tell the difference?