empty bowl

Now that winter’s gone
I sit by a slow river
come here every day
a pair of mourning doves coo
how long will I have to wait?

trouble

winds strong or gentle

diminish not the waters
nor wear away sands

neither shall adversity

carve out spirit from a man

desperate sideshows

atop a great rock
we watched smoke
curl off the horizon
a sudden urge—
I leapt a fissure
three feet wide
thirty feet deep
mistook her fear
for desire

up a mountain trail
pool beneath falling water
we leapt boulder to boulder
her bare legs trusting everything
but someone else
you could fall
I dove deep
currents pulled heavy
strength almost gone

rooftop bar
in Morogoro
I pointed out a ledge
if you see me climb out grab me
stars burned bright
the conversation—  noise
I knew he would fail me
that’s why I picked him

crammed into speeding taxi
rumble of gravel
no elevation
dawn’s dwindling stars
hands on my legs
all of them shouting
stop the car
halfway to the roof
my final act foiled

Sorry, I've been hacked by an automated WTF generator

Oh great, I've lost a flat tire,
I can't even start the electric potatoes.
Who opened the doorknobs and let all the carbohydrates out?
Please, turn down the piano it's getting yellow,
can somewhere smell me why the hell is turning at?
A.P. everthought,
I'm feeling alittle timezone.
Maybe? is something on this?

deep the blue

i long to taste a mermaid's songs
siren lips melodious
to wreck upon the ribcage of a shore
be dashed into the cavernous sea
to unfurl my hungry sails

Winter's last

upon March late field
an evening snow lays down blue
all the gravestones gone

Venus de Milo

arms
                        of modest line           
                                                   contour

                        pure


how her hands

                        catch her skirts
                                          
                                                                fingers
                                                                     without blemish

some unintended sorcery

I woke last night
realized it must've been Jim
my co-worker who turned my eye
who was always turning my eye.

I suspected some overnight chaos
rattling objects on my desk
averting its gaze left or right.

In the beginning
I didn't know it was an eye
picked it up in a parking lot
walking to work
milky white quartz
smooth and round.

For a long time
just a stone on my desk.

I colored a black iris
never thought of Jim
working late into the night
all alone
with a stone eye.

at the end of time

in barkless tree
a great nest of silverware
knives interlocked with forks

in uplifted spoons eggs turned stone
against an empty blue
no circling silhouette of mother
strange bones strewn beneath

driving from the beach

still picturing her beige one-piece bathing suit
aching for her smooth wet hair
the sand clinging to her feet
the cool transparent water
where she floated
beyond Summer's afternoon
in blue sky above pines

sharps

the old piano
at Winter's picture window
waiting there for me
it's time to learn the black keys
unravel the vernal chord

words

written on egg shells
heavy words like recompense
glued to a canvas
as I listen to her voice
all the empty years dissolve

Oscillating

This sea I swim in
where I encounter you
it undulates with light and darkness
I am drowning in you
then I am drinking you in
then I am floating and still
I can feel you quivering
against all that I am

Doorway

I don't know why the way in is through a barn door up a ladder to a hayloft empty of hay after our last horse, Nugget, was sold, or why I awoke there that morning alone with a crow fluttering its wings to wake me. Maybe it coveted my eyes, was checking if I was dead, but when it spoke I began to wonder if God had ever used birds as prophets before. Go to the house for breakfast, your mother will tell you what you are missing. She'll tell you that along the three miles of highway you walked last night someone found your wallet, then your license, and then all the other crap. All I remembered was how drunk we were, how tightly she held me when I'd carried her across the outlet to Lake Michigan. The barn, a picturesque red, was traded for fill dirt at the end of that summer.

dinner missed

red sun dies
out a square window
dark wires cross
cracks in the sky

ceramic shingles slope into gutter
a magpie watches over women
washing in the court

they clean black pots
pull off burnt rice
not for magpies but themselves

heat lingers
tin cans rattle rough music
patio nearly empty

magpies land on tables
perch in low branches
say things
I don't want to hear

The Way Back

One summer when we were eight my twin sister and I hiked back in pine hills where the brilliant blue skies whistled above shadows of hemlocks; where the north sides of hills hid June snow. We'd run away, but only she came back. I kept wandering among the shadows and burning heights. Winds lifted me to the top of a pine, it snagged me by my collar. As I fluttered there I saw how clouds were distant isthmuses, peninsulas, endless chains of islands. I struggled free and floated off. I have only recently returned to rummage through rubble foundations, to sift through ashes for my whittling knife, to whisk away dust from my first sketches of trees, to uncover old Dittos of elementary math problems. The ink has faded. All that remains are answers written in pencil I did not erase-- nothing else, and now I'm out of time. My skiff is moored loosely to the top of a pine, the moon is rounding the ridge, eventide has come, my lands are burning with blood of the Sun. The winds and sea are too unpredictable, there are only a few endless stars to guide me.

It wasn't you

It was the nights of lies I lived
waking in strange slums
off cement floors
in hotels under assumed names
taxi rides of promises
dreams that were bullshit
the late morning sun
burning everything
from squinting eyes

arising

out of nothing
returning to nothing
things small  still  empty
like a coffee cup
a heatbeat with no blood
echoing before sound
before the beginning
an end destroyed
created
doesn't rain fall and fall and fall?
a thread unravels
has been unraveling
since before it was wound
in that great machine buried in some lost factory of time
silent gears turning always turning
slow imperceptible motion
CPU burning out bits
its  0 0 0
sometimes 1
0

Redemption II

wings
the mechanics of flight
not prop planes and smoke hearts
but prisoner #1853-M
the bird man of alcatraz
visited by sparrows
teaching himself to save them
doing solitary in leavenworth

beating a thousand times a second
not candy hearts but heat and metabolism
why bludgeoning a man to death is wrong

Redemption I

Held in bone hand—  a life
unmade, drips from worn joints.

Marred by dark grains
it melts away—
an undulating pool of silver
seeping into sand.

As if caught in flame—
it becomes glass
just for an instant.

All that remains— grit
takes the contour of bones.