Turns
Sand. Thousands of grains surrounding the rusted legs
holding up the playground swing set. Start there. Start
with something small, something memorable. Turning
the sand over in my mind, I see the blue veil of memory
slide like a lover over the Now. My palm tickles. Grains
send waves of pleasure from my hand up to my neck,
collecting [...]
Stubborn
We sat down on a pile of rubble
where we stopped to catch our breath
after clawing our way out of a maze
we stumbled upon while exploring.
Between ravenous draughts of air
you accused me of being a stubborn man.
I managed, in between shallow breaths
to muster up one cynical laugh.
A few moments of solitude passed
while we [...]
For Bonnie on her Thirty-First Birthday
Your name is Beautiful, the truest label
any human language could give you.
I revisit childhood often, and I smile
while you thrive in forgotten moments.
Seventh grade –
I get a candygram while dissecting a frog.
My cheeks burn as classmates tease me,
but now I have the strength to be grateful. [...]
The Birth of Cut
Cut remembers the Owl Moon.
Cut remembers the gray snow,
the rusted spade which sufficed
as a shovel in a toddler’s hands.
Cut remembers the black ice,
revisits the thrill of terror as two
threadbare tires lose their traction.
Cut wants to feel that alive again.
Cut remembers the moldy phrase
“missing in action.” Missing in -
Cut has acted. [...]
Worst Moments
While we were smoking cigars in the blue beach chairs
decorating my front porch, my friend confided
“You always remember the best moments
and forget the worst when you mourn lost love.”
He may be right, at least generally, but not tonight.
Tonight I forcibly recalled a random fight you and I had
over the way we play [...]
Fractals 01
You speak. You inhale worlds to exhale
fragments. Your mouth partitions
one from another, finds crevices
in which to seed complex divisions
like crabapple sprouts in sidewalks.
I watch one shard splinter and shatter.
What was once a whole jackknifes
away from your lips, its tip colliding
with an equally proportioned bit
of what was once to form a fractal.
So two [...]
I misplaced
the future.
It was there
one minute,
gone the next.
What’s odd,
however, is
the gaping hole
the future left
in my chest.
I didn’t bleed.
Instead I wept
myself to sleep,
then slept myself
into my pasts.
I tumbled from
dream to dream,
up one path and down
the endless next,
in a futile search
for any self
the future left
untouched.
Because you change
a thing when
you observe it,
because the future
stared straight
through me,
every [...]
She floats beneath the surface
in a pool with obsidian walls.
Her hair flows like electrons:
each strand is a field of probability.
She floats beneath the surface,
her eyes closed, her pursed lips
whispering bubbles into existence.
I cannot tell if she is praying or dying.
My head hurts; I hear myself say,
“You know her.” I do know her.
Her name [...]
Desert 06
It is no metaphor to say you move the earth by singing.
You inhale the wind, the dust. You exhale water
vapors that, on certain cold-snap nights, form clouds
which rise and unfold outward in the darkness.
Your tune illuminates the Unlit City, reverberates
down the open throats, knits sinew onto dead bones.
You tear a part in [...]
Ends of Lines.
The day ends with white noise.
The day ends with a syllable
—– covering the edge of his tongue.
The day ends with humidity
—– hovering over a displaced Miami
—– as warm in December as in May.
The day ends with a long yawn.
The day ends with a long echo
—– resounding in an empty bedroom.
The day ends with a long [...]