I light two candles; one purple, one black
Ignite the lavender powder, stick the space between my nostrils
Feel the place between my ears

you have re-emerged from
The center of my brain
This overcast/grey-cloud tattoo of light particles mend the broken, background mandala

I have dreams of saving New Mexico, every shattered kingdom, every splattered heart. I hope you still believe in love too. I hope you don’t comprise oxygen like I do. I hope you still tie carbon into infinity knots.

I promised myself I would only write of god
Of the rose that roots itself in your shoulder in this post-winter aid
But all I want to say is that I hope you’re well

My God is not a genie.
He does not make crosses out of mushrooms
Nor flying angels out of hammerheads
And each night, I lay out a bowl of vinegar
To absorb the rot of my nightmare
And each morning I sit in the cool water to rinse
I wash the windows and their screens
I vacuum the baking soda from the curtains
I place sage leaves behind my back molars
And kiss the earth before my little altar
So said my Lord after the clouds broke
To reveal a hidden blue bond in the sky:

You will not write of pain any longer.
Life will be real.
Love will be the horseshoe that never
Leaves its hoof.

A stranger told me once,
cleanliness is close to godliness.
He told this to me having not bathed for months.
He told me this with two devils behind his pupils
And picked up his 4-stringed guitar with a broken bridge
And sang until the sun-bleached the black of dawn.
That morning the sun rose to scream-o and I left
The stranger in the purity of truth. A miracle happened.
A miracle happened.

to reach the inside the chest
I must pass each echo of your footfall
in sound, a flowering ice
sterling in black cavity

this is not a misguided note,
nothing that was already written and recycled.
I came here on time
tickled by the frost’s silence

as the birds sing
from the right ear to the left: synchronicity/
something stuck in my gills

who is this effigy?
on my knees is how I asked
let me show you what I mean:

I loved how our days thrived
folding the static rain to air
and the giggles of buggied children
nothing in this nocturnal kit
can clothe us from the light—
god always penetrates

my insides house
the four-year-old me
he digs in the backyard
while we both hold him
in day-lit love
in us, in god, he is never lost

[exoskeleton, exhale]

we judge the railway tonight
the taste of our open sores
we tongue in Ever Day
the things without an answer
sleep together with us
their scales, slivered
and silken with our breath

I open your chest
as I take the red sack off my face
I don’t stop the car
as I bend at the neck
and see my own reflection

even in this cold, this sacred pain
love builds the dawn
paints it in goldisect

even when we lose our way
the generous
bind with us
to the depth of this universe until
the smidge is gone

to reach the inside the chest
I take your hand
and pull through the hindering splinters


is anybody there?
is anybody there?

the silence shapes this boy, unheard
in the sanctuary of dead flies
in the clip-side of the brown, microscopic eye
these words ribbled out my chin:

I’m lost, midnightlove.
Now, I’m lost.

I infra-read you again
now that I told the cold to stop
now that I found the breathing tube/
the muck of black lung
and saw the Ferris Wheel tickets inside;
I drank in that night until a glorious emptiness
housed us, until you couldn’t pinpoint my name. somehow
in this veined river, in the lake filled with echoes, you found me
nameless—perfect. and I realized that all my life, I had been sowing my soul
on your tongue.

I get off my feet,
replace the devils that owned me,
find these hexes in rogue. I am detained no more.
the quieted and shielded
boy finds the fence as I fall, empty,
splitting my lip on your knee.

with these shreds, I count
the particles of light in the darkness.
enter the state of dawn.

as hafiz said,
we are two fat men sitting in a boat. when the boat is rocked,
we bump into each other’s bellies and laugh.

this is how I will remember us:
love filling our bellies to laugh
as we sail away in the little boat
to the cottage on the smooth-stone shore

Earlier I saw you untie the Fox
It was in the high branches
But you were fearless/
A reflection in the sky’s acred field
As you set the captive free
To fill his mouth with soil
Now

You put your sister in his place
Her hands bound to the trunk as
Cars yank the highway closer
To the park of ratway silence
You

Pick up the pen for her
Write how it is easiest
To crawl when you are
Tied and drooling
When you take the place of
A martyr and expect nothing
Except something
Blue and brindle-striped and barking
Perfect

Day: you and I take a little white dog
Tie her to the tree and call her our own
Tell her to come and sit and eat
With us around the tree while
We tie each other’s teeth to the roots
With fraying wire
Why

Are we so tired? We ask.
Two too many separations.
Two too many rescue missions
And forgetting how to keep things close
Don’t

Tie the cross-stitched sister to your liking—
Maybe a bow tie or braid but
Imagination only binds itself when
It is allowed to be bound
Phil

Osophy: yet you still danced
To what is
What is
What is
What should be leaves falling now
Is the sky
What should be leaves falling
What should be
What should

clouds are knotted over—
soft q-tip plunge
into your mopped halo.
time dilates
itself into big rain, big thunder—
a concentration of stringed lights
hanging on a rusted picture wire

I’ve written this before but
we are nothing but bones underneath—
mortal refuse cooling in the shade
until our joints are locked
and we toboggan down
with tight jaws

seeing the physical doesn’t mean
you can see—
the tendency to blindfold oneself
snuggles inside judgment,
moves inside the tracks like a swallowed pearl
until you dig through
and find the bruised dream

I let the lightning roll off of the
table, spill on the wood floor.
I don’t mop it up;
I no longer buy the delusion
of messes made. I **** the
electric lemon. feel my face go
cold and numb. succumb to
the dominant, coronal moonshine.

here we are—heaps in the corners
of a corner-less world. we hook things
like fish. we perform fire drills. we love
the act of escaping.
here we are—piles of human, our knees
in our hands.

the next strike comes. ommmmmms into omen.

in this cardboard kingdom, our houses sag
when it rains and we crouch down to survive.
but I will always remember the clouds,
driving knots into your cells as the roof
fell in. and we were both soaked. both sacks
of pearled bones.

In the place of bright dust
We ransack the sun
Back from her bed
We stretch high/baseball bat/wood
Crack in earthen shower
You are there behind the fence
Holding the baby
On easter sunday
We walk in wedding circles
Discuss the tropics, somewhere
On your back I write
Sixteen dances/crickets in tall grass/waves melting shore rocks
I pour you coffee as you squeeze the yolk in deviled eggs
And I fumble with the crepes
Halfmoon/full/french peninsula/the photograph of your riding a merry-go-round
Full, wordless smile
I search for the soothing leak that
Sleeps with frankincense
First, nameless day/nameless, silent bowl
You place the fruit in stained glass
Watch the skins reflect blurred jet-plane/kind sky
What’s left is my burning muscles
Aching for you in tiny flint
Your lips
Your thing that bleeps with breath
With the empty canteen
I leave it in the car
Reset
Cigarette kiss to your bird,
My best friend
Cuddled in croissant
You  make rain a baker’s dozen
Awake
The body inhales

I write you to sleep
in the other room
the leaves and fire of
your dream wisdom,
a dosha to create
each particular function
wrought in sweet, bitter, uncanny can-can
last night I saw you
in the rain with my
jean jacket
you asked about your face
and read me
catholic gospel/the body’s innate wisdom
free of threadworms, windup toys,
each nasty gut of wind
when I love you
I always see you in white
(this is all the time)
and you clear the toxins
from my accounts,
hold up my husband by
his flags,
tell him to
woosh
woosh
woosh
there is a pearl at
the bottom of us
and we touch it with
un-bitten fingers
this essential does not
go unnoticed in
our hearts but
ties our mouths so
we cannot speak—
a grammar lesson on love
and checkmate of birdwings
you awaken
come out for your phone
tell you to go back to sleep
you smile

I have so much to love god for

I shaped you like a door handle,
washed you out with cerulean trees,
I took the clippers to my head
to make myself clean

I stared in your sigh as I
I grabbed your waist and swung you in
rope coo-coo,
eyes you described as muddy pools
turned lime-green cats in bathroom light
there,

you had blond hair,
barely-visible eyelashes,
tall, norwegian beauty,
outer-universe olympian

I was not right within and
you saw, unphased moon again
for the billionth time,
you rolled at my tiny bubbles
and I
waited, baitable breath

every clock was digital 80’s
and you, polite queen,
were tired of holding your spoon—
candy bride

with this candy man,
little bride, little
my worms festered
as I pulled the hair from your neck
and saw my own eye on your spine’s skin—
frail, too deep, and shy/additives to pain

I heard the big crunch
in that mental hospital bathroom,
my universe went back to no-space,
so far from you as we danced
and you looked somewhere else—
much

smaller than an atom’s nucleus
we were everything
but neither of us knew
the gift of dying
to be born again—

you dream
one-thousand pounds
heavier than me—
a weaved, night sky
complete with brass buttons
and the bobby pin you forgot to take out
this

tessellation of Sunday letter
haunts me with your

lace and peach
as my fingers conduct

the bundle of flowers
to smoke

I dig into my pockets and find
lint
gum wrappers
the invisible switchblade
of mirror ride and wind’s roll—
the KABOOM!
of diluted catastrophe
or how your mother screams in her sleep

now I understand how seasons
faint from peppered emotion—
strong enough for teeth
to bite and rip the leather
or at least scratch patterns into
that old belt

smooth breeze down the throat
tastes as September dies down
at the alley cat’s feet—
dead prayer
and the leaves swoon to
twitching whiskers

I am born again
this September morning as
each thorn on the rosebush
breaks pink with the sun

the hummingbird buzzes by,
echoes and springs in
the mist of chamomile flower—
a yellow-bodied bloom and
liquid-sugar disco running over
conscious body,
conscious mind

a chord is struck and
pecks the roof twice—
tap…
tap…
and I see god for what she is—
suddenly and always present as
two birds dance their wings
over a cradle of planted flowers

here I find you
my little wildflower
unable to catch
the powder-blue butterfly

the breeze—something sweet
to wet the clouds
while mountain’s edge bites
horizon’s crushed and swollen lip

you blend in—a pile of jade
something blue to budding wheat
but no fear found
by a little scout
holding the spider with caged palms

how easy it’s been to love you
leather hat in tow
as you make your way to
snowed lake’s basin
now melted, shone, and gleaming

my love for you is planted—a babbled sunflower
leaning over the sidewalk
as you return home
skipping over cracks—
child’s play to the mountain, ocean, forest

you are the universe’s first creation
blooming out its chest—
there is no room for anything but you
as the pollen of night sprinkles down,
spirit o’ spirit
and sprite of loving girl
wrapped in candy wind
now asleep and closed petals
to grace
from grace
and the life in between

sheen spreads from
light blue paranoia—a rainbow,
tough magical, slippery, and krilled

to enter all but my mouth would seem ungrateful

rain, lighthouse, big money,
and the shade of fish approaching

the rope
now shredded, wet braids
to loosen and snap swatched opal
peeping, peering, ripping larger
with the rifted water

and so goes slicing red

quartered darkness drapes
and so the blue painters cry to
fainted and promised womb—

the belly of beast
cut and bled the breast,
coined the moon—
so said its rusty peaks
as they were sticks for legs
and grains of sand

womb held a note
womb hold me close
womb—the breeze
sufficed in c-note string,
the blood dripped and cooled
with pin-tipped vibrato
and so you would
sleep too—

dear one
and progression of static
where the real and unreal
meet

thirsty soil,
hungry sky,
I rent the earth and swing over
curled in a heap of buddhist death—
a mischief light breaking a paralytic sun
so taught in no-thingness,
so creaked and crafted
as I sit at the bar—the last foam of
night popping on the bottom
of my glass.

whose to say life shouldn’t be this way—
a tempest strong and virile
as she lies clutched by the moon—
the nightest of night
blocked by resurrection
of a half-dead sun—
hungry and dear life of lost faith

my laughing river
banks the shivering pebbles
into silence—a hot, holy
moon that splits and crumbles,
rushes and spills into
a space vacu-ata and serene
loss of meaning

I never thought I’d miss you this much—
red, toiled, and soaked to the bone,
letters and numbers jumbled to bake
in hot mouths, hot atmosphere  

a shimmer
a shimmy
a bottle
and nurse a wound burnt with
a hair straightener ten years ago
dear friend,

I wear you on my shoulders everyday
and you are heavy,
sore to the touch,
cradled and band aid-ed cross
until
there you are
dreaming like you always did
in the back of my mind

I try to
loose the knot
tied to the dark

canvas of sky’s skin.
I confide to the rain
my wet lies of

noose,
trigger,
falling gun
taught against each bat
that swings and flutters.

what can I do but stand in the rain
and feel the hail melt in my hand?

I am of little
faith no longer than
a fingernail and proof
of OG goodness
this night of

re- and un-
tying ribbons

my complex jupiter pops
full body into
infectious night—mouth
bursting and bang
taught curtains
so the light can shine through
every cherry blossom
I

never asked
what I meant to you
before
you

pink in my watching

slip into
the miniature composition
of splotched blue—

and I know everything
in space
is finished

all my goodness has flown—
from the wildflower’s wrath to
my fingers

pressing invisible buttons on
grassy dew.
I

should know this season by now—
dry of meaning and bent metal
into the frozen river.

the note I wrote you was short—
spoke of moons we cannot see
and my rushing ego
drowning mountains
on tiny blue-green surface—
a million

bleached bones
are wrapped in their tired stripes—
now crushed,
miniature,
and multiplied—
many of the many

and the red feathers that float

away.

milk warm and
child rotates backwards in womb

clouds become the drums

angels in the front row cheer
as men fight over screaming throat

woman smokes with dragon—
never before corked *****
and the ash that settled over

this is my innermost truth:
a dwell of birds inside my body

and I think so little of myself

I shred you as cedar
to eat your smell—
a crick of words to ultra face-off
between bone-splitter and bliss
I

am your writer
and my heart’s cavalry
pounds your lips
with sweetness
the

submission of sugar
the

taste of honey
the

number of times
I’ve

had you in comb
buzzing your fuzz-ectomy
into a new mind of flower
to be pollinated
with the lilac breeze
of my going

high-noon sun waits for
ground to catch her beaming child
dresses the hat and feather
canonizes the dead worms
imprisoned in their hardened skins
these

shards of you
sit on my front porch
wide
wide
and I open my arms
to their concrete daughter
now full-grown
and working the night shift
like every bird that flies

into my glass dream

I forgive my dreams cut
in the maritime gloom of your blue eyes—
a rehearsal and hush of dead shells beating in the water

I never knew the binds of you would cuff me for this long—
your naked ocean now overgrown with a different plaque
and somehow more beautiful, younger, and vulnerable

I am the queen of shock and shiver,
proclaims my wondrous mind
I forgive my dreams of loving the invisible
and the seagulls fly
one by
one by

I still skip stones
across your ocean—your foaming white
cut from the butterfly vine
flips the beached fish
into the definition of liveliness
takes to the sun—a pearled pantina of ocean rain
connecting my nose and mouth
into the rainbow vision
of your thin lips mending the
the maimed crab’s claw

this is how I will always think of you
my wishing well babe
neck-deep in sand
the butterfly vine entering your mouth
pulling your tongue to say
those three words aloud
finally, like you mean it
like I want it, the ocean tide
bathing my ankles

I’ll chase you over
backwards and sideways

cover you in chocolate,
peel off your shell,
fill you with another body

I’ll eat you a rainbow
separate the opals,
moonstones,
malachite

love—little girl with scotch-brown hair
soft, eggshell yellow and
crack

oh god...

I'm sorry.

there you stand
on the bridge above rio grande—
miles of rock hungry and unfulfilled,
the spring snow chasing your name
into my mouth,
the synth of sunrise tucked
behind moon-cut mountains.
I pull off on the side and see
this is how I will be without you,
my bright girl

spring’s breath hums on your face
sits upon a fencepost, hawk-like and stoic

its infant rays nuzzle, organized and coded
its beauty, slightly bothersome
to the man who mistook god’s warmth as permanent

all planets in space operate between two foci
and ted hughes wrote “crow” as a bedtime story
for the lovers he abandoned  

what I’m trying to say is this:
spring will leave earth
like a two-faced lover
but never forget the monday you shared with her
as she breathed winter’s hangover
down your holy throat

for that is something memorable

your fabric—torn and bent
into antlers as you
breathe in the chimed field
now, caught in fire
now, diseased
now, a hatchet peeling the rotting apple

this is the paradigm of my sadness

girl smudged with
full-zinc expression
and paper feathers—
I wonder what
you think about

your gaze
bathes hot in mind’s basin
as a pink rose skips
the wind across
your clothed table

the trees laurelled above—
so indistinct and stamped
with war-zone bleakness

so painful, your expression
as you take your cup and sip
the daytime-soothe

I look at you one last time—
squint my eyes
and put my thumb over your tiny face
to mark you as my own

the muse of nature revels
in the cradle of a loved one’s whisper

the salsa of wind knifes off rock and
spreads melting sand into stained glass

a rainbow loops out the ears
and croons the rain into a gentle patter

the indefinite bruises the back of the throat
as half-notes are woven into air—

silence forever dreaming of music

crew-cut,
winter’s rust,
my tongue smudged with coal,
snagged with the bug I rise,
crawl my stare across space to where you lie
perfect in ashes,
un-spread and boxed,
I plant a kiss on your screaming lily.

I ****** the blood
off your cranberry hide and
I wiped my mouth
with the wail
of passing stars—
"twang" (a broken guitar)…

you’ve been the prize all along.

moonlight caught the top of the lighthouse
bounced of its silver mirror
its beaded tears filled my bottle
and I drank until I couldn’t stand any longer
it’s okay, boy
said the man selling fruit at 1 am
and I embraced his dead shadow

the shock
of bodies—
a sound
rippled in
cheetah lightening
to wings of blasted
flowers taught
red
yellow
lavender sky—

butterfly wound
festering pollened
breeze to
where your
mouth
is opened
breath
tongue
and twisted cord—

opaque bee
twirling with
opaque stamen
lit
in a wall of
rushing
waterfall—a
perfect contrast
of forgiveness

gnaw red your bone
in the aliform of dream
this

allocation of my
guts spreads lips
onto stained paint buckets
I

never meant for
us to be beautiful
adding

music
to every line
that came out
your mouth—

a moth-springing
butterfly
its

wings no longer
dusted but

dried and wasteful.

it was the
paradox of doubt
and

I cried through
painkiller night

—helium
along the tracks
squished and turned copper
sounding space scratch—
a record when listened
through some great machine where
James Taylor always hits the
high notes and matter explodes
forming the heaviest gold—us always
singing pennies.
us, remnants
kissing the core
of aging stars.

you stand
and offer

the sun
not yet risen

silver-tongued
you tilt words

into winter

you whittle
the wind

trick the sky
into death

pound my
love into stone

I scrape
my knee

and cry our
love open

to wound
and bleed

a dog attempts to
lick and heal

how could life
be this way?

you are called away
clear and cold

pummeled by the ice
that tears dove wings
into water

diseased blood is spread
in the snow
art in the clarity
of genius as

evil is cut
from your body

here there is
no winter

only a deep light
harbored within as
you sit on dream’s pier
with a worm in your mouth

you

alone

and nature
watching you cry

the furrow of
your brow grows deep
as a bear’s growl

your eyes split two
the bang of
red sweetness
the communion of sleep
never to wake

the wicked queen of morning
greets you with
clutching shore

little pebbles in the stream
rob red rubies
from dead fish bellies

on a rock
there are some feathers
a broken beak
crunched bones

your attention is cut
with the dead kiss
of a woodpecker

you are bound
to relive the death
of thousands of forests
bound to kiss
the stream’s mojo
laughter

listen—
the stream is still asleep
its floor is falling through
the weight of its slumber

nothing can contain it

spark the flask—the vitality
of natured *****
and

tears (they fall again)

releasing the bloodied heron from
sleep—

yesterday,

I drew a lead around you
and harnessed your heart
like a dog and (for the first time)
you

were on your own,
schmaltzy from

daddy’s liquor.

this

blindfolded euphoria
creeping in channel 99’s

static—how

I’d drink you whole
until my toes swelled up

rough and one-rooted

the sun prowls around
its rocky master

and you
a shadow in its breath

your eyes closed
your hair blowing
like a brushfire
bleeding oolong

the brazen claps of
sunlight thunder
down upon your shoulders

a freckle appears

then another

then another

your sea of blank skin
now crushed
tiny islands
cooling you in
sun-drenched picture

I still have
your taste

in my mouth:

the dregs
in your blood

your ghost of

disparate powders
and hair
your

red bone

daisy veins

body
sewn to

a butterfly

and the
rain falls in

twelve beasts
as I tell
the window

how I still
write you

when the thin rain
tents over

and patterns
your name

on my roof

my hand touches
yours

wild in wind

flesh and
insect

a plume of rapid
so pink and

gorgeous to the
biochemist

within my timbre

I sing your
praises to the moon

eighth note
yellow-tipped

flat-cupped
cord and

piano blooming

I see a ****** of crows
parting the sky with
a ******* V

it hawks and blecks
down as if to say
good afternoon
to the child wheeling
across federal
on her
pink bicycle—

a travel
that rots and witches
the sweet, grey air
sailing into clouds
of pounding tide—

jewels

colorless
and divorced
drifting
across the
blue-domed
pearl of
missing you

my orchid now blooms
twelve to match
the bird pecking at
midnight

the yellow tongues
of blushed cheeks
become fans for
soft, white petals

inner honeycombs
turn red when
you say
(in perfect sobriety)
how beautiful I am

and for a moment
there are orchids blooming
in the diner

the race of the sun
pattered through

on angled feet,
the gypsy-psychic

moment stood

honeyed and crisp
ready to be bitten,

the breath told
a breeze away

from the weapon of
dusk soon approaching

come with me

said your eyes
as they picked blades

of grass and placed them
in a crown

and I took you by the teeth
and kissed you

the skyline watching
all the while

starlight snaps your
cigarette awake. the imperfect
circles of earth’s motion orbit
around your breast. the moon
chimes
from your ears.
north and south run
the rivers of
smeared mascara,

you stop. listen to

the man
playing fiddle with
half-hearted
bar light.

tenderness leaves
my eyes in capillary ribbons.
your diamond lips are chalked,
released from rock.
your head, a knot of angel pine—
a dark-brown blooming
sticky and lucked to the back
of my throat.
it is in this moment that
I hear a wisp of rapture
blowing through the oak overhead.
my heart’s motor cranked
like October’s last churning
bumble bee.
pollination
susurration
be gone…
you kept looking past me,
your hand on my shoulder.
the precious gauze of your profile
mixed porcelain doll and found a
chisel to perfect your nose.
I feel the love of everything and
you—so unaware of your
beautiful.

The birth of our sun wrote megalithic,
two-word bursts of observable heat to life.

It pounded the density of a billion
squealing animals and thought itself
star—a pencil

being lifted by an oven-mitted hand
somehow deft, fortune-telling
witch.

sun—which will, in time,
bow out to a goodnight city
where every light is eaten

by dark-spelled window—no reflection
of flame,
no kiss of magnet—no

just cold death to
the bones—a molded meatball
dancing in a spiral once believed

to be beautiful.