Poem for Thursday, December 27, 2012

Gypsy in the Park

She would meet me and Cottontop under the persimmon
tree with fruit stains on her dimeshop blouse and girly little
hands


We did the secret handshake and Cotton pointed at the moon
It always went on like this no matter what color the sky
was


He pointed at the moon said there's a monster up there
Gypsy lit a clove and blew smoke out her bird nose (she swore
to God she had Choctaw blood in her veins and I believed her
alright)


Don't you think I look like a grown woman when I do that
Hush Gypsy pleaded Cotton as he shivered in the twilight
His overall pockets were stuffed with milkweeds from the
swamp


I put my arm around Cotton's shoulder and said the moon
ain't a monster and if it was the sun would lick it in a knife
fight and heat up its blood to keep everything yellow and
warm


A hoot owl launched itself from a branch and dove nearby
Cotton bolted and disappeared somewhere in the darkness
I had my back to Gypsy but felt her gaze penetrate through
me


What you know about the sun and the moon's blood
I turned around and met her sapphire eyes while she let a
stream of smoke slip softly between her pursed lips
Gypsy


Press your palms against mine and don't say nothing now
She did it without fear and pretended to understand the
night


Don't you think I look like a grown woman she whispered
The wind tore through our bones like the saddest haiku and I
nodded

Poem for Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Delores

She was standing by the sea when
I told her. The fall from the top
of the silo
                The siren-like echo of his
                neck snapping.
The blood flowed reluctantly, like it
understood its betrayal.


She took it in.
The tide is higher than usual, she
sighed
               But the salt ain't stinging
               my feet at all.
Goddamn you, tell me about the echo
one last time.

Poem for Monday, December 10, 2012

A Failed Parable

The final bird took flight out of autumn's
gray beard. It was a gosling without a mind
or a map. It honked like hell when the air
stung it out of youth. Suddenly.

It made a deal with the Lord. Just get me
south, Yahweh, and my first egg is yours.
The wind was incorrigible, sulking in a
corner. God thought of a metaphor about
love and incubation.

It made a deal with the devil. Just get me
south, Satan, and my first egg is yours.
The wind waltzed with finesse towards
Mexico. Satan likes his eggs scrambled
and drowned in Tabasco sauce.

It made a deal with humankind. Get me
south, and my first egg is yours. The
wind folded its hand. A man was sitting
in a church near the gulf, throwing Spanish
Hail Marys. Starving.

The bird landed in the middle of winter.
Right before its heart stopped, it laid the egg
next to a tortilla stand on a quiet street in
Huatabampo. It rolled at a tumbleweed pace
before halting in the muck:


               Man leapt forward with a loaded pistol.
               Satan struck with flames bitingly azul.
               God inundated the town with holy water.


The war was magnificent and worth everything.
Every tear shed in the sun. Every crack in the
desolate clay. Every fleck of blood stained
in the sage. Forever.

Poem for Sunday, December 2, 2012

Like the Aftermath

of some eclipse. When the ring was illuminated, a bird stopped
flying. A memory was dipped in black. The moon trumped the
sun and cackled till the glass cracked. She

dreamed for me when I could not. We danced in the shadows
until our legs bled. She talked about science, explained the
physics of her peppermint kisses. Oh god she

laughed when she crushed my eyes; like the ice melting in my
mimosa, she decided. Like a river born
from the whitest flag.

Poem for Sunday, November 25, 2012

Thanksgiving Day

The little cousins play hide-and-seek outside with sweet
potatoes fresh on their breath. Granny approaches by the
porch after she snubs out her cigarette: want me to show you

how an Indian whips his wife? She twists

the skin on my forearm until it wrinkles and burns. Sacagawea
stirs in her Wyoming grave then resumes dreaming of the
plains. The trees bleed in scarlet clumps. The cranberries

stick to the backs of our teeth. An infant

mole lies dead on the asphalt with cat marks and muddled fur.
Croquet on the lawn. Dad snoring in the bedroom. Mom
collecting acorns in a zip-lock bag to present to the girls.

The wind--the silly wind--blows all these anticlimaxes out

of  proportion.

Poem for Thursday, November 15, 2012

Black

The color of the coffee steaming

in the cracked, glued-back-together

mug. The color of the mug. The color
of the morning as the frost crystallizes

against the glass. The color of the glass--

trick question.

The feeling of the anvil dropping.

The act of conceding. The unanswered

questions, the spaces lingering around
the cosmos and the shadow of Charon

himself.

The residuals from the camp fire and

the absence of warmth. The distance

between the two points in the line on the
coordinate plane. The skin of the Maasai

and the Serengeti at midnight. The use
of metaphor.

The texture of stillness and the taste of

salt. The color of colorlessness. The The The.

The last line of the poem and at times
the poem itself:

This is no          exception.

Poem for Thursday, November 8, 2012

Release

if I were to
summarize
my life in a
haiku

it would go
something
like this:

             born in dixieland
             i learned to be verbose &
             eat sleep write love etc.

i would take
all my verbs
string them to
a kite's tail

release them
on a cloudless
windy day in
mid-March:

watch, now
watch as my love
drags the ground

Poem for Thursday, November 1, 2012

Caveat

At some point, it will hurt.

Not like lemon-juice-in-an-open-cut hurt
or even post-heartbreak hurt. It is meta.
It is the ominous cloud shadow. The divine
cold shoulder. The repercussions of sneezing
too loudly. And it lurks behind you with
dark stealth. And it will seize you during
some innocuous moment--a trip to the bank
or buying flowers on the street. It will reach
inside of you, violate you through untouched
clothes and take part of you with it, upward.
It is not death itself; it is the death of what
you thought you knew. And it hurts the worst
during a soft crescendo of violins or a memory
of a girl with caramel skin.

Poem for Friday, October 26, 2012

Harvest

Leaves frolic around us

hitch windy rides find

homes or don't.

                   This autumn you claim me

                   twirl my scarf fringes

                   manage to whisper the

                   ineffable.



                   You claim me with the

                   hues that sough in gusts

                   sharp deciduous and

                   bleeding.



                    You claim me without

                    gray-skied conditions

                    stand before me naked

                    as the birch.



                    This thing we cultivate

                    mustn't be carved or

                    shucked  like remains

                    of a harvest.

                   
Please understand:
                 
                    I won't reduce you

                    to some analogy.

                   
                   
                    You will keep me

                    through the seasons.

Poem for Sunday, October 21, 2012

Effects of Transience

what she would do:

come in with the storms, crush the browning leaves
between her toes. ramble about how she belongs to
the night. how she loves every grain of salt in my
body. how chilly moonbeams feel when they graze
the nape of her neck.

the world wanders among her enumerations. they
are evergreen crown canopies--sky-blotting. she
speaks in Hopi myths, sleeps in the bed of a truck.

sometimes i wake up moving, she tells me. i like it
because the road is smooth and the moths never
bother me. i can see the faces in the stars all parallel
above me. they know i am a recusant. they know
where i am going while i do not.

Poem for Saturday, October 13, 2012

Epitaph

Below

the dates etched in limestone, the implications
in between: people waking from dreams, red salt
fresh on tongues. One savior biding time, counting
the cherubs. Another giving the death nod
behind the concrete. Wordless.

Someone sticking a flag in the cosmos.
Someone breaking a heart in an equinox.

Below them, those words holding hostage
some legacy, a single accomplishment before
eyes became drapes
half-drawn.

Poem for Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Fruit Fly

circumventing the bananas, the white bread
that which vacillates between ripe and rot
that which spoils in the sink.

breeding in the air, biology catalyzed by
strawberry smoothie pheromones
seedless grape aphrodisiacs.

you suck the nectar from my countertop.
my five-fingered shadow lurks nearby.

Poem for Friday, October 5, 2012

Desert Child

i.

she is a summer solstice birth
a compromise in lieu of rain
she is a bear
crawling up the roots of a stalk
she is Desert Child
skinned knees and corn teeth
she visits Dune Husker
lends him her kachina dolls
she is ochre skin
eyes carved from obsidian
she is baked bread
hardened in the sunshine
she is red river clay
burning in her mother's kiln
she is the pueblo
she is the pueblo
blood spilt in the sod
buried underneath the moon


ii.

Dune Husker told her how the
winos call him a bastard. one
man says your daddy must've
been some mestizo who fucked
and fled the rez. another says
stick around boy I'll let you
throw stones at my bottles when
they're good and empty.

Desert Child smiled showing
her corn teeth. the sky is your
father, mine too and everyone's.
He followed her up the mesa
spotted eagles and repeated
their screeches. She wiped the
sweat from his wrinkled brow
smeared it on the sandstone.


iii.

Desert Child's vision:

an old Indian man fed her stars
she swallowed them whole
became a supernova and felt
love. He dressed her in wolf
skin. He choked on his own
faith.

Dune Husker's vision:

an old Indian man rattled off
in the arroyo. he ate the glass
out of the sand. tell me, boy
has the truth knocked the wind
out of you yet? god it hurts when
it does.


iv.

she is a moonbeam
glowing during kiva prayers
she is cactus juice
trickling down Athabascan throats
she is femininity
brown breasts hidden in cotton
she loves Dune Husker
gives him her body on the mesa
she is a rain dance
stomping on the cracked earth
she is language
forgotten by the blue-eyed ones
she is a loom
spinning threads of rainbow
she is the pueblo
she is the pueblo
purple in the night sky
faded by morning breath

Poem for Friday, September 28, 2012

Strangers and Pilgrims

when you tore out of my skin, sewed me
back up to hide my shy vitals and sopped up
my blood on your supple body in a single
towel wipe, you asked,

if we have to be here, can we at least walk
without sinking into strangers' footprints?

no, I opined. we were born too late on
finite soil. you embraced me then through
all the seasons, sucked out the remnants of
death from my neck.

pulled the hay fields from my hair. said I
tasted like the cedar in your granddaddy's
table, the salt in the Dead Sea. Let me tell you
a story about Lazarus,

the universe and drowning in bathwat--
before I finished, you tore me open again.

Poem for Monday, September 24, 2012

Fetal

in this manner, the cold needling my bare back, you will find me
excavating her image. Squeezing a pillow for equilibrium and
she appears, apparitional. Let me tell you how to feed your heart

by the spoonful, she whispers. Let me tell you how ghosts taste

the wine we cannot drink. How I, with Japanese hands, have
repaired all of your torn sutures between breezes in the syrupy

nights, painstakingly. Do not cover yourself, then. Let your bones
breathe in the afternoon lull. Before you awake, what is most
tragic will be irradiated: the broken-winged crow in the morning

sky. The blood taunting the veins so hollow. The words that
could have saved us swallowed down with Sunday's breakfast.
You will not have me unless you shiver and sweat a minimum
of five drops. I am inflexible on this matter. I take one of your
eyelashes along with my sorrow.

Poem for Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Cemetery Saunter

All those tombstones with German names etched on them and

alabaster Christ illuminated by a futile fluorescent light and

God the night dripped opaque but I still saw the spear wound.

          To house the dead along the railroad tracks is not an

          accident. It is steel smothering the sobs. It is strategy.

And the black iron fence smiled Death with gap teeth.

And the wet grass stuck to my bare feet and ankles.

The tallest monument screamed farm boy and Roma.

          You learn how people love when it is time for a

          burial. How all of the quiet years suddenly sting.

Poems for Sunday, September 16, 2012

The Midwest Circa Simpler Times

In the 1950s, my great uncle usually slept in his van
parked in the lot of the mattress factory where he worked
along the blue-collar edges of Kansas City. His family
lived too far away for him to commute every day. In the
factory, god only knows. Tiny flecks of insulation always
hovering in the air, creeping up workers' nostrils and into
blackened lungs. Sticking to the crevices of skin that
weren't inhibited by plastic or canvas. Chemicals slowly
dining on their organs throughout the Truman and
Eisenhower administrations. When his day-eating shifts
ended, he curled his gloves into his back pocket and
retired outside to his van. Lucky Strikes balanced on
the dash, cans of Coors Light crumpled in the passenger
seat. What he probably saw: smoke rising from concrete
stacks, dancing skyward. Rusty Union Pacific boxcars
smothered by their own shadows. Emptiness here
and there. When he finished his beer, he ate the sunset
and dreamt of the suburbs.


*     *     *


At the Pick-n-Pull

Two dollars to enter, hang a left
past the imports. Patiently parked
at the end of the row:

a white 2001 Ford F-150.

The model was inexact, but the
color and the parts would match
well enough.

The tools came out quickly.

Ripping, stripping, popping and
lifting. Prying and unbolting for
an easy outcome.

A picker approached us.

Pushing his pseudo-wheelbarrow:
"You guys need any help pulling
those parts?"

He would've charged us.

"No, thanks. Appreciate ya." He
rolled back towards the entrance
with metallic ambition.

After that, off came the fender.

Hauling it, I sliced the base of my
palm. Contemplated the chances of
getting tetanus.

Ah, fuck it. Gamble with blood.

The door came off fifteen minutes
later. It weighed more than I'd like
to recall.

Through muddy gravel, we left.

The parts cost $114. We sweated.
My hand stung like hell when I tried
to wash it with soap.

We snaked back towards I-435.

There are certain people who never
leave these junkyards. Their love is
measured in cylinders.

Their poetry hidden in truck beds.

Poem for Saturday, September 8, 2012

Leaving Hernando

conquistador country
sunny delta driving
dripping Memphis blue along
the way


i. Hwy 51

At the Citgo, I interrupted the clerk with
his Greek conversation. Put me down
for nineteen, I said. Why don't you get
twenty, he asked. I wanna buy a drink.
Oh. Then I headed north, past the Love
Cemetery and the obligatory chain of
southern Baptist churches. Past the ice
cream shop where jean-shorted men
devoured simple vanilla cones. Past
the intersection that had no business
existing. Past the stoic Mississippi
oaks planted by post-antebellum hands.
I left you near the lake with thoughts
of lichen on the willow.


ii. I-55 N

Breaking north again, Tennessee a blur.
Gunning for the river bridge. The water
blocked from view, I knew it well enough.
Blue-gray in color, bordered with
barges. Catfish and motor oil. The things
we're too afraid to contemplate. When
they fought that war, I bet they never
dreamed of a sky bisected by steel beams
and hot asphalt. I bet they squatted at
the bank, cupped their hands in the water
before they wrote to literate lovers.
Sweated out a little death. Halfway over
the bridge hung the sign for the Natural
State.


iii. I-40 W

All these rusty structures claimed by
kudzu. Fields of lush-green soy four lanes
across from wheat stalks burning
dry. I was welcomed into Palestine by
racing clouds and verses from Mark.
I drove the stretch mile dedicated to a state
trooper. To have your legacy carved out
between piss-ant towns in agrarian Arkansas
is sheer poetry. I held in a piss from Hazen
onward, coasted at fifty miles through the
road construction. This interstate goes all
the way to Los Angeles, but once the tractors
and combines cease, America starts to shrivel
up like a worm.


iv. Hwy 31

From Lonoke to Beebe, the churches
spring up again. Apostolic thrown in the mix.
I swung into a Valero to relieve myself
in an Employees Only restroom and didn't
buy a damn thing. Sun-scorched, the
thunderstorms of yesterday were further than
a memory. On the radio, Bob Dylan pleaded
with Queen Jane persistently. It wasn't even
five o'clock yet but I wasn't melting. Hwy 38
stuck its thumb out on the left. I turned,
headed for the place where we first learned
of each others' existences. All of that gold
de Soto might have found is suddenly
pyrite.

Poem for Monday, September 3, 2012

Some Kind of Rebirth

i. when the pine needles,

   dampened with moon sweat, stabbed me benevolently
   i took them with my skin. when i rolled over, i gave them
   to you, gift-wrapped.

ii. arkansas summers,

    they let you breathe once in awhile if you catch them
    in an easy mood. my breath was infrequent. my lips
    were spiced rum.

iii. if there had been stars,

    i would have picked venus from them and placed her
    in your hair. you could not have crushed my chest
    if you tried.

iv. arkansas nights,

     those dark, humid paradoxes. they give you rashes
     but keep your secrets. they gamble with the hills
     for your memories.

v. thirsty and dirt-kissed,

    that is how we arose. like some kind of rebirth
    achieved through non-death, spelled out in the sap
    stuck to our backs.

vi. thirsty and dirt-kissed,

     you separated me from the sky. i will never forget
     how i closed my eyes, despite the darkness. how you
     did the same.

Poem for Thursday, August 30, 2012

Years Later

here is what's left:

             
              fields of soy and wheat, wilting

              a hundred god-poking steeples

              the memory of her scent, the

incense half-burned

dropping carbon into silver cups

not among them:


              polka-dotted skirts, navy

              atlantic oceans and the like

              the glides and fricatives of, listen

the thing about love is

it is a transient toting a single bag

stopping for no one

Poem for Thursday, August 23, 2012

Man of Velleity

At some bar--

his daydreams ride the smoke upwards, stick
to the carcinogens and evaporate.

the finger of the woman three seats down
skates along the rim of a whiskey sour.

her finger could be more majestic, it points
towards his chest and curls backwards.

he is neither drunk nor courageous but wonders
how she smells in the morning.

how does she smell in the morning, is the sun
kind to her bare olive skin.

can they exchange words about Rimbaud
when the yawning ceases.

if she sprays water next to the sink, will it
irk him or make her more endearing.

does she have a sob story about her people
falling under painted swords.

can she speak French, will she comment
that his wardrobe is tres passé.

her finger, that serpent now writhing,
renders him immobile.

she glances down her glass where the ice
distorts her facial features.

his eyes peripherally stroke her thighs,
his wallet is out on the counter.

the door opens into afternoon heat, but
he halts on the threshold and turns.

how does she smell in the morning, the
words, the yawns, the sink.

Poem for Thursday, August 9, 2012

In Santa Cruz

What I remember most is the damp sand colonizing between
my toes as you told me how we could technically meet death
at a couple of places. It was high tide at Panther Beach. The waves,
blood-hungry and thrashing. Fiercely azure. The cruel separation
of grace and mercy. I hid the beers and my wallet, dug my feet into
the slick rock, longed for solidarity. We scampered towards the
cave in wide arcs, avoiding the suicidal wet spots. Every time I
gaze out at open water, I think of Edna Pontellier and wonder
whether she was courageous. I envision her seduction by sea
whispers, inching nondramatically towards the Gulf of Mexico.
The wind, coaxing her hat from her head with white gloves. Then
I think how this time is always different. I hugged the outside
of the cave, became a physics problem. Fought the roaring gales.
Can we be more than scattered ash and salt, she once begged me.
For awhile, I suppose. At the mouth, I hid the Pacific from you,
ravenous for the view:

Flawless. Symmetrical. Azure. Tinged with God. So many things
more.

Poem for Thursday, August 2, 2012

Things Hidden in the Fog

At the intersection of Del Monte and Aguajito, a pelican
lies dead in the mulch. Wings akimbo, neck and beak tilted
sideways, there is no blood. No apparent cause of death.
It could have choked on kelp or lost its heartbeat. Perhaps
it swallowed chemicals or was shunned by its flock. But

the fact of its death, like the thick fetor of  fish and diesel,
hovers. If I were much younger, I would have forced tears.
I would have cathected the bird's charcoal neck feathers
and slit eyes. Speculated the flights it took, the ones it could
never take. Pawed through the sand with my tiny hands to

make the grave. Prayed. Being older, I worry that the species
may be endangered or the ecosystem is contaminated.
That this particular Pacific memory will be marred, despite
the roaring waves, masted sails and all the wonderful things
hidden in the fog. I try to shirk off such thoughts and walk

towards the beach, where tourists tread along the brine in
camp shirts and Vietnamese conical hats. The gulls swarm them,
pecking at food scraps and nothingness. Their cries resonate
somewhere between the bleak sky and the lulling water, and
they will never be sated.

Poems for Tuesday, June 27 & Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Rivers

when the rain pelts
unlevel ground
it becomes a
cropless squatter
settling in muck

or a vagrant
wandering in circles
not crazily but
without purpose.

you see miniature
rivers trace them
upstream all
salmon-eyed to
its source:
                                         a rift
                                         in sloping concrete.

you awkwardly hop
from curb to
rock while
your pant cuffs
suffer.

you think the
glass shards
make horrible
fish.

sweet sun drinks
brandy behind
nimbus clouds
red-cheeked
growing old
                                        the city stench
                                        down below.

(7-4-2012)



Background Buddha


glows                                  big and
gold                                    behind a
stretch of soviet blocks that have
been shedding their plastered skin
for decades.

rain                                     drips
down his gilded spine, tickles
his posture. he dines on rice grains
while everyone dozes through
mosquito nights.

i gawp at him through windowless
frames five stories up. i tell him
my asceticism falls with each
cigarette flicked at the sentient
grass below.

he tells me through the bleakness
that everything has never been
more alive.

(6-27-2012)

Poem for Thursday, April 26, 2012

Post Funera Gifts


your bones became black
tea leaves, submerged and scattered
in the spring earth--
          i tasted you in my water.


your son or daughter
grew stoic, stuffed bags with soap
incense and matches
          as if to say,
          "her corpse is clean."


i struck three for you
smelled the chemicals you once
breathed, watched
           the flames dance
           and die out.


they burned goldenrod
like our sun, which was shining
that morning
           but inevitably set later.

Poem for Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Burn

I knew a girl
shapeless save
her crooked spine

plain as beige
tasteless as
communion crackers

but her eyes
the last two embers
under heaps of ash

dig deep enough
you can extract them
from their sockets

pocket them and
you’ll burn glowing
a newborn phoenix

she had a name
that blew away like
refuse over the sea

Poem for Thursday, February 16, 2012

Underground

I.

She sprang from beneath the soil
smudges of winter on her
face still delicate not hardened
sprouting lilacs
her mouth was pure nectar she
smiled up at me I asked my god
don’t you need to breathe
she said let’s give meaning to this
February snow
she dragged me under

II.

Flecks of minerals all over
under my fingernails dinosaur bones
preserved in milky glory
an earthworm coiled around a clod
of dirt it yawned when
we passed
she whispered this is where
old trees grow from there’s water
pumping through the roots

I said my thumbs weren’t green
she lifted them to her
nectar lips kissed them and
everything trembled biblically
soil-showered we could smell
crisp oxygen I would’ve followed her
to the earth’s core

III.

To our left was a garden
snake it shrugged its shoulders
it shed its skin for us
so fibrous and lithe
I fell in love with its bent tendons
I let it lick my nose
forked tongue cartilage and creation
peppermint breath
you don’t need legs where
you’re going it lisped

IV.

Down a ways was a bed
of moss glazed with
permafrost

she dangled her secrets there
when they slipped through her fingers
she buried them all

V.

Clouded with earth I was
suffocating she coddled my lungs
but I needed the sun
she told me alright but she
had seeds to sow so to speak
I left her tunneling
in tatters
found the sky through a hole
swallowed a star
on the way up

broken-legged shivering
I craved her honey
I slept through a season

Poem for Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Apple Skins

Granny told Willy she’d check the pickins
for worms and other crud if he’d
wash and dry them. Willy snatched a
damp rag and said he’d be obliged.
Granny sat in the afternoon

sun passing most of the lushgreen
apples to Willy and casting the badly
bruised ones aside like the Sodomites
she would laugh but Willy never got
that reference once throughout his
childhood. When it got too torrid

they each grabbed a wooden bucket
loaded with the fruit so full they
regurgitated an apple here and there
on the bumpier parts of the grass. Willy
hated those darn buckets ‘cause he’d

always get splinters in his thumbs and
Granny was too rough with the tweezers.
So they plopped their buckets on
the kitchen table with watery lips and
empty bellies. Willy reached in his
pocket for his maroon Swiss Army knife

but Granny shook her head no. She
told him he couldn’t peel them
apples ‘cause he’d toss out the skins and
the skins were the healthiest part
since they were chock-full of vitamins.

Willy groaned and mumbled shucks the
skins tasted like rubber so he wasn’t
gonna eat them but Granny could
have at it if she wanted. Then Granny let
out the strangest chuckle and swept
the skins off the edge of the spotless

oak into her wrinkled and calloused
palm. She said alright Willy but be careful
when you make a deal with the Devil
‘cause sometimes you gotta pay up
double. Willy rolled his big blue eyes and
stood up to leave the kitchen. He

wasn’t even hungry after all. Before Willy
stepped into the hallway Granny commanded
him to hand over his knife and he’d
get it back after supper. Then it got so quiet
the ceiling fan whirred and bellowed
like a police siren.

Poem for Monday, January 30, 2012

Happenings

Icicles are hanging from my drying
jeans dripping the color of denim
the dog the poor restless dog is
barking puffs of wintercold air I
can see them drifting then dying
anyone can.

“Be quiet” I’m scolding
that orange-bellied moon has
nothing better to do than gawk
giggle at me through the cracks.

The sky? well it’s holding its
breath somewhere between baby
blue and lights out.

Poem for Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Death Dream

you assured me

the hurt would come
in small circles over
different parts
of my body
not in one malicious
attack

i wept the same
as when
you gave me life
head first