my voluptuous. my home.

inherited forests

my father's forest.  my mother's.
walking   staying      shadowing
sometimes shooting

again.  again. 

crisp air and the hish of quakies.
the careful noise of feet printing
the frosted dew and no.  again no.

a bluebird day.
in a bluebird lifetime.

using confidence but
         they get wary.  too.    

airwashing breeze
and no anchor.  iron sighting
but      see how shiny these boots
are?        and then
always always breaking
always busting
                     never hup. 
and damn.  

that broken down rainbow.
chasing it
whole years,
listening to everybody's mamas about those colors
and ignoring everybody's papas about the mists

now glassing and glassing and what are they
even talking about?  raptured captured and
gone.  

neither are there now,  anyway.

keep on keep on deeper in, higher up.
to the montane and look.  for
one thing do not give up.  say
yet.

flinching even
with a big runner and
casting casting casting wide.  and wider.
following some other bell.

he's all birdy.
never holding.  and wavering at wing.
the jiggity of the hotspot jolts the nerves and
unsteady to shot.

jumpshoot
jumpshoot jump.
and rebound.

false pointing.  yes.
but finer than that and harder to scent
are the clandestine           the blinds.
the chasing prisms    and running for re's:
refraction.  reflection.  and others. 

being defeated by the specter of
a rainbow.   never yet has it been anything else.

passage

beginning with words it
contaged.  to singularity and
canon spanking

the uncodified allure of small fables
culled from cherish and
rare.  collectible.      

this leather and clutch.  these
moments of                     pure
eldorado

unadulterated,
horizontal riches and gold,
sharp finned             a new
strange       and staggering

with her aztec red
intentions and then that white
convertible top lifting and

oh            luxurious  glossy   
those cadillac thighs.
finally:  arrival.  home.  she had
come so far she was back.

===

published in Poetry Quarterly, summer 2012

blackberries

this is a story of ago.  
a remembrance. 

Once upon a time,


and drinking that
seven seas blue     lingering
eyes gave new visions
of nourished, and buds.

full and
unhurried hands offered
abundance and gave
small wildernesses of berries

and careful  

and

the sweetness was surprising. 
the want exotic

talking through the breakdown-----for k.J. with love.

am i crazy?  this is a ship which seems doomed, but all i find around me is silence.  it is the silence of the first winter snow, i know it.  and i'm in this thing pretty much alone so there is no one to confirm this but my own guessing self and the driver of this tub,  but i don't know if i just suspect it because of the past or if it is really happening again and i don't really want that so i try to ignore it, if it is an it, and so am i crazy?  why do i feel like a doormat? 

o distracted and chilly
remote paramour
i wish for you still
it's you i adore

i'm sure we are nearing the iceberg and nearing and nearing. what is this submerged absence?  there is something present under the surface and i keep asking the captain and get don't worry.   asking again i get busy-ness.     finally guiltily worrying despite advice otherwise and taking his valuable time despite warnings of workload pressures, i ask again and receive a have faith and an i gotta go there are customers here.  i have no faith but i have a pillow next to me with two cool sides and i'm sure of that.  but am i imagining this? he probably means it all.  which is almost like telling the truth.  right?

you're half-hearted and tepid
"amor" distant or dead.
affection saved up for
rare moments in bed

this reminds me:  prostitution should be legal.  is it legal in mexico? what is the difference between this and that, except i have health insurance?  well, and no one is paying me.  in fact he owes me 11 bucks.  of course if it were legal i'd be taxed, which at least i am not, now.  well, not taxed financially.  the whole thing is wearing and tearing, but i can live either way and i don't have a pimp pushing me around.  well, how is pimp really and truly defined?  again trying to discern the difference between this and that.  there better be a difference to discern.  not that there is anything wrong with prostitutes.  anyway, thinking of this is better than imagining other stuff, i guess.

annoyed and lackluster
drooping and dull.
you're torpid. and dormant.
i'm lonely. and cold.

                
am i crazy?  i know there is danger here but it isn't the crash.  the danger is in being forced to see volumes in the silence.  the freaking signals which are so easy to misread when people come from different perspectives or cultures--i mean, it's a bit like smiling at a monkey.  you could get your face ripped off just by trying to be friendly.  signals are powerful and words fickle i find--especially when the language of love being universal thing is fake and people really do speak in some sort of language with words and when the languages and words are different, it gets hairy. but since there are signals i only think i understand, and i don't like what i think i'm understanding, and the words of confirmation have been withheld, my plan is to wait.   for the words.  to hopefully not come. if i choose this i am not really a doormat, am i?  because i'm choosing.  right?   am i crazy?            
                              

without a doubt

heaven was bursting
last night and it snowed down color.
shameless bitter cherries dropped and the fig trees
were bare, the cracking skins of their fruit
revealing deep red flesh and seed and
drifting too from the sky.  ripe coming after flowering, 
they were naked in the storm.  the blizzard.

not questioning.

the kaleidoscoped landscape deepening
vividly made motion and
without doubting
that it was not whiteness settling
coldly,  motion was and

standing alone
in the night and then dawning.
the chartreuse
pears and plums hued of healing bruises
and those apples flashing their gardens
were all falling from above.

absence of color had been and
it was a familiar sterile clean and
its brilliance its lack blinded.  and

wishing now
for expected elements
would be wishing for a powdery
disintegration.  of skeletal structure.  and
for the chiseling of frozen into snowflakes
so pretty and so exclusive.

and made from very bones.