Ruins

outside of Cairo
there's an open air restaurant
where there are sphinxes
too many skinny cats beg
cold chicken from your chipped plate

where do deer lie in winter?
is endurance for them the same badge?
is morning's violet dusk a joy?

how many years do they cling to an impossible love?
what would they surrender?

driving home Christmas night
the only colors black and white
a badly broken deer

do they have sacred places?

remember the blackberries by the edge of that pond?

at the sink

you cup water in your hands
    and it runs through your fingers

maybe we are all exiles

offering

lone winter maple

            in whiteness 

                          empty black branches 

      scribbles

   distant clouds

the motions of planets

Amid the stab of night
in a break of winter clouds
I look past constellations to forgotten stars
find Venus waiting beyond sliding glass

I used to own a telescope
the odor of machine oil lubricating its focus
dust on the lens

Once I bought a red filter
forced my old man from the TV to observe an opposition of Mars
never again so close in his lifetime

I took my remarried aunt's new husband
bent him down before Jupiter
the odor of vermouth
two billion light years to Andromeda
repeated in a southern drawl

Summer slipped away
even my Mother learned the motions of planets
it's the only thing I gave her of me to love

The loosening

I woke last night
for the first time ever
pulled down one of my poems
floating away on a gust of wind
everything chained to it—

The screen door laying on the porch
leftover chicken scattered in the lawn
a trail of broken dinnerware strewn across a damp field
knives spoons forks
worse than hail

I pulled a fork out of my arm
cut the poem loose
watched it blow toward the lake

If you find it buried in the sand
an address stuck to it with masking tape
don't attempt to read it
don't send it back
winds are still blowing
let it loose before it maims you
it's not my fault

alittle further

it's alright
you can only go so far
before the red dirt road turns to mud
and you get your dress pants dirty
they'll wear out long before you give them up for gone

I wonder if my voice is tired
it seems so hard to coax
maybe I'm looking in the wrong places
asking the wrong questions
I want it to say what I mean
instead it tells me
things I don't want to hear

who really cares about a rain storm
or how the cut hay smelled in boyhood's summer
why do they want to remember salamanders under logs
where are all the women I tried to love?
I used to tell myself one day, one day
like a promise

12.14.12

Is that my child's shoe?
The space inside too tiny now to hold any hope.
How can I be thankful that it isn't when another found it was?

the night is sure

even when seas are calm
 when breezes pause as if
   considering

even when oceans rage
 when gales cast before them waves
   stars still shine

regardless

the direct route

walk the          straight line
cut off all the       branches
drag them
burn them
if you find a     robin's nest
if one fleck of      turquoise
would regret
would remorse
does a crack begin to form
is it already       absolutely
destroyed
yellow of a yolk
isn't that enough to   know
and if you go another  way
let branches be
are all of these
would you
will you          ever arrive

Nameless

When did I forget the full moon really had no face?
She was beautiful anyways
her black shadow hair glimmering with shards of stolen white diamonds
she danced in a buckskin dress made from the ghost of a deer
it had no bead-work.

She used to whisper lies
frostbitten kisses burned my cheeks
oh her lips against mine
what I thought was lapis lazuli was turquoise instead
I valued it still.

Some nights I go back
sit alone on those hilltops
among long grasses bent with the burden of seed
watch waters below mirror endlessness
until her weeping ripples the sky.

abyss

i query the Database
it keeps returning nulls

invalid parameter
subscript out of range
script timeout
404
404
page not found

you will not find a tiger in this poem.
the night has not yet come.
it is not cold.
you are laughing
but have you seen the sun?
have you tasted it?
or something like it
orange in the desert
some salt in your blood?
the light that comes with sunrise
it's not in the sun
but in the clouds
not in the clouds
but in the not-clouds
not in the scars of claw marks
you do not have
but in the scars you do.

early winter shore

winds blow through a worn and barkless beech buried in receding dunes
what weight is there in hollowness wrapped within a tree?
gray sky clouds drag their shadows where tourists used to stand
where does a shadow go? which color are the pebbles that remain?
what is their number? how are they arranged?
what determines where the grass will grow?
the vertebrae of fish have gone
seagull skulls lay staring
eyeless though feasting on eyes
none of them see
overhead glide high in the wind
echoes of screeching
the slap of waves
draws mountians
on the shore 
one after
another
erases
heels
toes
all
of
it