muse

I lie on blank sheets,

their breadth unburdened.

that emptiness swallows.

The only useful mark

among detritus, I

am underwhelemed:

deftly placed semicolon,

no clauses to connect,

only the absent minded

strokes of the author--

two fork tines, aquafina

cap, salt deposits

(from tears, these),

the memory of your curve

around which my form

still curls in sleep.

In dreams i see

the imprint of drafts

tossed aside, novice

phrases erased for want

of a new set of syllables

with sexy facade,

longer legs, Latinate,

chosen for implication

of sultry viscosity

into which language might

swim, languish:

there I did marinate,

satiate variable appetites;

exotic verbiage challenged

grammatical alacrity, yet

I wanted for familiar subject.

II

I wish on elevens,

elevens with such symmetry-

eleven-elevens, exact,

multiple onenesses

singing octaves:

redo, redemption.

I wish on blue arteries

mirrored across wrist skin

buffered by lime green

fraying hair tie you gave me,

on palms' proximity.

I wish for fingers,

woven wicker knuckles,

mahogany and olive;

I wish

for 1 tsp. of clauses

within me cupped;

Moods of the Season

Last swallows leap

just after dawn;

the canopies they frequent

burst into flame.

The smoke contributes

cinnamon.

Pear, dogwood, maple

dipped into magma

headfirst, replanted.

Bruised sky echoes elegy

for tomorrow brings

a double-dip, deeper;

boldest boughs, now

nude, stand out: native antennae

forecast by example,

transceive correspondences of God.

Grey rolls in.

Wilted leaves are

stripped from boughs

by that selfsame wind

so the selfsame gloom

that drips from clouds

drowns every corner.

So dirge begins.

Western wind redeems

this song, defeats

the force that depletes

limb of life, tree of leaf:

“Despite the cruel death

body slowly seems to die,

soon birth's green breath

cries out.” Refrain repeats.

What evidence could be

that justifies to my

short temporal span

this wild inconstancy?

These lies your smile hides

steal sustenance from me;

I stored no single acorn:

sunshine promised possibility.

Each spasm mourns

for skin that lacks warm,

joys your grace bestowed

on ungratefuller forms

in the same backyard as me.

I awaited, awed. Expected

sight, in you, of God.

What customary fraud.

Speak of inconstancy

daily, Lady-- Demonstrate

willingness to hear me

some days, manufacture

pure sky devoid of all things

not gold-white sun, blue space

or shadowed flocks doodling

fluid geometry, active;

these flap for artifice, thus

temper deciduous climate

with frantic kineticisms--

You give me these but shortly, Autumn,

before that still-white sun calls all

light and heat from within blind pitch

of swallows; they coagulate at

his Westerning holler, congeal

into protean shades, violent,

approaching critical mass,

(part of me lives for volatility of

goldenrod ↔ living blue

{5:37:28 – 6:47:11})

mourning the collapse of our

photosynthesis into these tumbling

foothills, aflame--

Favortie kitten, Plieades, sits

crystaline at the zenith, watching

me watching her watch her icicle

tail tickle the trophosphere,

her image, altitude made low

by a sudden lapse in passion

that chaps lips, toe jambs, last nerves

until exposed soul burns raw

from cold, fusion, and crusts

thinly as the old drops

cupped in brown leaf--

monster

I feel his vibration as if a boeing cleaved the top floor bare
as I slept naked on the basement couch; pillars shiver, crumbs
dust my upturned visage. Exclamation erupts like puffs
of thought cloud, and how funny my speech sounds,
tinny in my own ear, veiling fears thinly as echoes. My voice,
a ghost's, screams translucent octaves that gurgle something
wicked with the texture of raw honey, the texture of sandy feet
fresh drowned by lakeside, still, wrinkled, rotting.
His approach clamps muddy fingers tight to windpipe.
Last breath ejects from throat, phlegmy; final hopes
of survival exhaled like smoke. There are no tears, no lip
ever trembles, but brown eyes close and I in reverie remain,
calculate, deadpan, that I'll never taste snowflakes again,
or in another January, learn to love a vegetarian.