paper kisses

what can be done with paper kisses.
they are small seeds accepted because
your legs are not nothing 

you redwood,
deep anchored enormous and
shifting perspective

from eight days away I consider taking the kisses you’ve left propped against the whisky bottle
and folding them into airplanes and sending them off to become pulp in the December rain
because there are many ways to leave and

then you swing through and up close.
but then up close 
next to you I am 

young and I forget everything else because up close everything is 
your thighs, your calves, your knees, your heat.  your stance, your hands, your cypress sap 
my tonic.

what can be done with paper kisses
small seeds of redwood accepted,
bodies of infinite and

I fold those two kisses you’ve left on the counter into fish and they swim up a waterfall
and become dragons in the sky,
free and powerful outside the current.

depression games

He asked me if I would rather
have thirty arms but every time one came near a baby the baby would die
or no arms and babies

I answered thirty arms, to his stricken face, then laughed
and said

JK!  Of course no arms; it would be hard to feed babies with my feet
but we'd make do and he said

JK!  If you had thirty arms and the babies died, then you would die too
but you would only have two arms in your coffin and everyone would think
you were a baby killer for fun.  You would be dead and couldn't defend yourself.
Now what do you choose?

and I said, I picked no arms!  I picked no arms and babies!

and I think of these moments that one afternoon,
and I think and think and can't stop:

You are in there, couched in riddles,
you are asking me to vouch for sacrifice,
to prove my love, to tell you the
exact price I would be willing to pay for you,
and the answers I give you cannot accept right now
and I am frightened by our game.

conversation

two strangers meet

pour,
pain, speak:
a cross burned on your front grass
those sinister dresses and pointed hats
and your dad.

pour,
pain, speak:
my impulse, my heartbeat
is chest-caged and free and I'm
one eyelash beyond amoeba.