into the all

when i tell you we can live on music and bread,

i mean i want to sit with you on the floor of a room. 

when i tell you we can live on music and bread,

i mean we feel. the poetry, the sound, and

those rhythms.

when i tell you we can read the rhythms to each other
over and around

i mean we will touch divine from the act of it,

from our spines pressed together back to back, and

in those half notes and broken chords we will

enter the all.

and when i tell you this is gratitude,
to those tiny children who, with fingers of rubies, made this music,

who picked through mud into opal dirt, who spun tears into wheat
gold for us and who kneaded this bread before sun came and

combined violins and axes, and who

made instruments into sustenance,

i mean we can live on music and bread.

not at him but with him

 
In Mexico

That dog in his ruffled skirt made me laugh, but

Despite that, he looked tough, with angry eyes screaming

And in his December green sweater, stealing meat

From the vendor, that dog made me laugh

Not at him, but with him

And the murals on the walls reminded me of love and dead babies

And the many ways the living will 
compensate for loss.

futile

at ninety, at old age

she was bitter about sanka without cream

and resented fingerprints on picture glass.

she bathed the cat daily
and it ran away

until still, lilies clotted the lake

epic story of alone

alki beach, stones

and sandy toes,

twist bird in the wind.

there is no one to call when the gas tank is dry.

there is no one to call when the tide moves in
and little gulls thieve from us because

nothing is free

inside a driftwood cage

and the bonfire threatens to burn down the sea.
there is no one to call when there is no water.
standing on the shore and there is no water
and the sandpipers scatter. and

orthotic shoes sit by the towel and

pictures capture the shadows and

nothing is free

honest lies

so i gaze into the sweet

past lavender fields and winter wheat,

coast about in the vee, then jump wake.

into the deep horizon

before velvet cantaloupe with a twist of cloud,

ahead of the banana sun, i know your

bare toes slipping up my summer skirt

and i sing welcome, i have been waiting, 

 

we make such loud and blinding light 
neighbors pound on the door and

strangers ask to come in,  for

bread and coffee, our sea blue walls,

and the music of woodblocks clop,

for the percussion drive, the double bass, and

for the poems said one line at a time,

i love you.

we are midnight.

trips to the vape shop in bathrobes

and we are motorcycle hair and

waterbeds full of swimming salmon,

 

with one peacock on the table and

one goat on the roof,

and shoplifted yellow flowers

in a small silver vase.

so i gaze into the sweet 
punch through chocolate pudding skin and

doing the hustle in the basement with the bee gees on blast.

please scratch my back softly hard,

and i’ll bend past it all, recall the spells of

lust and love and know that

the fables that instruct us are the

beads with holes too small for the thread,

slip knots and spoons

folding finger by finger, as

you translate the lyrics from the portuguese and finally,

i understand why the sound is muffled

from behind the mirror.

we are whitened wood masks and

blown glass bowls, we are bamboo leaves, and

a certain shade of turquoise.  sugar baby,

sugar face,

you with the perfect

german ch,

you concussed me with your no.

unknown regions

can you say impeach

can you say the snow

can you say cerulean and
wavering azure,

can you say the quality

of light.  no?

then say ships at sea in

unknown regions, say steer on.

past cyclops and siren those

waters deep cut through, say sail.

say

this is the heroine’s quest,

say, the universe is pressing its

palms together in a

prayer for us

(thank you, nk)

the stage

at the edge of creamy carpet are a woman’s

shoes, stillettos mostly, and one pair that

belongs to a man, untied and placed

next to each other, and as she revisits this

in her mind she wishes she would have

paid attention to the direction the toes of his had pointed, but

has an idea about that even though rewind can never

be hit in this life and if it could it would tell

a different story every time

and two cups with straws

and a drive-thru bag are litter on the table

and on the table too a pair of his pants, a sweater, and

a shirt are folded neatly and stacked by keys, a watch,

and an empty ring, and as she revisits this in her mind she realizes the

implication in her application of the word empty,

but next time,

the story may be different

and in the bedroom a woman’s clothes

are strewn across the floor, tangled

in blankets and floor pillows.  i’m not wearing them

and won’t need them quickly or

any time soon and with our eyes open we face each other,

with my eyes open i watch you, 

listen to you ask, “what about mon--”

and wonder at this weird miracle

of how you can fall asleep mid-sentence, with

such fearlessness, like a kitten asleep with its

belly exposed

and the fan chain dangles and clicks with the

rhythmic swirl of the blades, the sound

suggesting a clock, but not a clock,

and precise time is not the actual moment anyway

which is to say between us only some promises are necessary,

and you will waken soon just as quickly as you slept 

and you will leave, and in each today

the exact present exists just at the inside edge

or maybe just at the outside edge of

enough

basic math

Two apartments.

Two houses.

Two hotels.

Two kitchens

Two offices,

One rolling cart.

One table,

One balcony,

One shower. 

Three living rooms,

Three broken hearts.

One bar stool. Twice.

One broken table,

Three counters,

One desk chair,

One slipper chair,

Two coffee shops,

Five bars.

One tea house.

One broken bed.

Two couches,

One mini van,

Six rides in cars.

Several broken glasses,

Two deaths.

Two nights and 

Two mornings.

Two desks.

Five kids, Two marriages,

One divorce.

One surgery,

One bouquet,

Two sunset eyes

Two sunrise eyes.  Which come first?

We don't want to brake anymore

We don’t want to break anymore

We don’t want to break any more

We don’t want to

No photos

No families

No anniversaries.

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.

sacred one

her eyes describing bloodshot lines,

suspect routes, connection sites
hackjob sutures cross-stitch town

and she checks through space
for the distance between our bodies.

the distance between their bodies
stands solid dark fossilized flow
but for stroking small gestures

midday screentime caresses
her towel dried fingers release

to type
where the fuck you at?
on a tiny keyboard.

two one none

electric stairs

to a pond of heat

crawl up double close and

breathe, breathe. i

inhale, inhale,

flip on, slide through 

so, how long did it take us to meet?
four lifetimes.  maybe three. 

you say in my eyes
you remembered to breathe

and memories braid the

literal, the figurative.

meanings of

two, one, 

none.
 

sacred too

she
glass shell, put to his ear, 

hear smoke whisper samba inside,

come move.

wide sea, carry on carry back,
hear snare drums and surdos inside,

come move.

so sway. quarter beat.

play she lips and he lips

so sway.  quarter beat
pull she to he hips

afternoons slow, the telephone left

on the desk

witness

i hear the geese

this morning and the cooing
of something much closer

the neighbor boy

screeches "Reid!  Catch!"

and then wailing

and with this blanket

wrapped around my legs

the sun has finally come up.

sunday risen.

open doors

look, i don't believe in god

so please don't pray for me.

though it makes you feel better
i would rather a cluster

of dandelions just past their

yellow, to wisp my counter top

and in their vase, 

illuminate the wishes i can make.

look, not god,

but the earth and weeds give me faith,  and 

sitting with the autumn leaves falling on

my chest, my heart.  i believe in the

rabid foxes in my back yard, and that

people will love me

like a boa constrictor loves a bunny.

don't pray for me.  just bring me bouquets
of empty spiderwebs and stalks of wild
and unwanted, fistfulls of skeletons,
fistfulls of lived, and
walk with me
through the door half closed,
into the universe.

so simple so intense **after William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon
   
you and i
entwined

smiles with dark
eyes

beside the high
bed.

plain and white hindsight

it was joy, us.
beauty:  fragile, evanescent
fulfilling our own
function

(i think of williams' red wheelbarrow

and the drop of rain that glazed it,

and made the base shine, and

lovely.)

now you and i.

our touch: cavernous, small.  furtive
function.  only: feed.
and death, alive

(and i think of williams'

bird that, plain and white,
made the red clear, so
starkly.)

mis-additions

sure in her body, finally confident

in her skills, on her birthday she counts piercings and tattoos,

pounds lost and men tossed,
unhad babies, unhad marriages,

unhad dreams come true.

and fool,

she sums up her life in one word:

rejection.  and cries herself to sleep after

singing aretha at karaoke and winning trivia with bar crawlers,

after betting a blow job and winning.

forgetting she can grow tomatoes

and pull the cart when the oxen fall,
she is solitary, upstanding and finally

faithful after all:
that with her, only love will never come.

at peace & with gratitude

 

true:  the happy ending was each time we met,
and longevity was never a part of things. which I knew
and too,

wanted.  it was not a construct that included promises
though youth was back and hollering

(noise to break the windows, wake the neighbors)

pedestrian, human, obvious,  but it was not ugly,
it was not
unbeautiful.