home

clear rain washed concrete,

and seagull feathered air blew.

and mist rolled to land,

in the center of

a sidewalk in a city

of hills, the leaf scent,

green scent of fern and

leaf, of algae and wind, of

the insides of shells.

this is cologne of
outside, streaming from your skin
this is your wild, mine

growing

From crisp summered perfume of dew coming in the screened door

on the early morning breeze and coffee, and scrambled eggs, and
strawberry freezer jam on grandma's warm biscuits and

marijuana plants growing tall outside the window, behind
the bearded iris and behind the rainbow of gladiolas and
before the sunflowers, with their sunshinepie faces trembling down
on us, banks of flowers with secrets, and

a fort under the skirt of the Japanese maple where we could read
about Betty and Veronica in the shade and occasionally glance
through the weepfall branches at the strange people

who were our relatives wondering at the figs fattening on a branch, and
plucking sprigs of basil from great green pillows of it, and
plucking raspberries from the vine, and sucking whole eggs in and out
of the slender necks of liter bottles to amuse the children,

and the scandal of the aunts who didn't wear bras under their t-shirts, and
Mount Rainier was in the background, and the sky was
the clearest bright blue of all of our eyes, to afternoons with

prostitutes appearing from beside scarlet rhododendron hedges 
on the side of the road, cars weaving through the rain and
slowly near and stopping, red lights flashing quick and then white and
disappearing again and we didn't understand where they went,

what they did, who they were, and then you.  That crystalline
night I pushed your car over the ice to the nearest service station and
advised you call the police for help,

stupid youth, stupid me, with those tracks up your beige arms
and I took you from under the stars to the hospital instead and
I held your hand, and they lanced your abscess, and I fainted

stupid youth, stupid me,
dizzy from the bright florescent light and
the stench of this life,

Pinesol saturated the air and
nothing was clean anymore, anyway.

Hisses

you would have been dead a year when

i learned of it, and i did not feel sad and

i did not feel happy.  i feared the

energy that had splashed from your many heads
into the universe,

the ferocious ink and dribble of your soul, vicious
sprung free

you still, my chocolate nightmare

you lurk hydra in my me, you

slither down my back, sneak attack,

a liquid cocoa poison,

oozing wounds 
until i wake

it’s still the same.

and no one there was listening.

so i salt my apple pies and

i iron the pillowcases and i

dream that i can run

from believing.  dream that

relative is a place,

beyond seduction
                    thrust and recoil

and love is a place,

beyond seduction 
                    thrust and recoil 

but all those years i

looked like hell and was
an embarrassment, from you 
i earned one dull black stone
and

you still, my chocolate nightmare

you live hydra in my me, you

swimming down my back, sneak attack,

a liquid cocoa poison,

ooze from my wounds 
until i wake

your long cinnamon breath, your slippers and 
sad eyes, your kindness to everyone around me

rendered

me 

dirt 
and cake my sleep, fear i keep

you still, my chocolate nightmare

you lie hydra in my me, you

trickle down my back, sneak attack,

a liquid cocoa poison,

oozing wounds 
until i wake

and you are still my nightmare