Three rib bones flush from the culvert pipeafter hunks of pelvis beside the tracks –the tracks with no arms but rumblerumble strips and red bell ticks. Clang go the boneswhere no grass grows Bang go the trainsand the pink prairie rose Rattles with the rushin the same stiff pose as ribs and hunks of pelvis […]
They are not yours, those eyes –those hazel eyes crustedwith sleep-thrashed release –and neither the mind behindthinking of toast on a new day,soft-buttered and still yet crisp. And those are not yours, those fingers,curled smooth-knuckled on the cutlery,waiting for toast and soft butter –and neither the wait for the kettle’spitched steam or the dry tea […]
I findnot many lighters and too many cheap shades,laid against a loose-hinged trifocal,Expensive, lost and necessary,upon the flip-top notebookbound with crushed spiral wire,And within, the gibberishof a young girl’s day –there are holes above the i’sand myriad loves to Matthew. I finda green squeeze coin purse –an old man’s plastic strongbox –scavenged of cointhat only […]
Must we sing the round ecliptic?Must we suppose a star immortal –Must we trace these patterns of us – up there –While we, down here, know death? What a noble self-loathing –To presume upon the unthinking nightOur disdain for cloud, to swellIn our own black vision when a new moonUnmasks oblivion, when a new moonDenies […]
Dormant in dry divots,in the basins,what I am, what I will and what I will beis rained, is whetted,by what is, what is not and what will not be. There blooms the green resilient,the sulphured algae,hot spurned by weathers –the must of us. There plumes communion –chance and wide endeavor –flush and fumed –above the […]
When the lastsoftpoplarfell,and the bluejays – the bluejays –rolled out; When the mangled nestspilled outthese mouths,these bentfeatheredtufts; When the chainsaw stilledits shriek and whir; When thick air closedabout us; When the larger jaysswept off the elmand veined away –blue lines on a blue sky,blue abandon in a blueeye; It was then,in the clearing of dead […]
I’ll send daisiesbecause they’re already dead,bias cut for a fewlast capillary pullsof aspirin-tinged water –soon to cataract, milkyin a leadcrystalvase. These are no “love me’s” or“Love me nots”.These are from he who knowsnot love, but beauty – decay. My darling little Aster,this is the day of your death,another year counted,backward from a birth,as each petal […]
