Seeing It

stacking boxes again
this realization the burning
bush this moment this you me

The Ritual of Killing the Crab

I watched as bubbles rose form the submerged fruit, spilling out in columns. She tore the thing apart with her fingers, familiar and soft to me, and the cracking red skin echoed in our chipped kitchen.

I Lied When I Said That I Missed You

and yes, I love this life that I have
built, slow mornings and love that keeps
me warm, but a thrum beneath my
breastbone may always sing
for the chaos that I learned to call
home, for that eternal yearning
for something, anything to burn

She Wolfs

She waves to them, smiles even in her sleep,
never learned to cook, lost her hair in
menopause, uses a cane for mushroom
hunting even when on wet days the tip
sinks in with the weight of her limp till she’s
bound to fall on the soft ground, lying in
wet leaves and giggling like a girl.

Oxnard

Oxnard. Sour blueberries, a taste like the lake water from the little pond in the house where I grew up second. I’m getting better at fueling my body, not good, but this city-town is beautiful, beautiful and distracting. I’m trying to be more in the where that I am in.

Horizon Saber

Cold in December, dry up, but flared up with the fire of love, dancing bud catches the rain and knows that there is no death. It melts with moisture on the tongue and the gums are his bed. Probably there is no beach, probably there is only one blizzard in my head.

Buttons I Keep

I still have
glimpses of her -
mouth wiped
on a soiled sleeve

Today

today, i am unemployed for the sake of bitter rest, sat at
a bar drinking my savings, considering the chattering
through my spine that might happen
if i place a blue lilly in someone’s
hair, the woman who is still
my secret

Alone Together

You can feel his pain. I’d get it on with him, but he’s always in some kind of world all to himself up there on the stage, the smoke from his ciggie swirling around his head like a curtain, him alone in the fog, part smoke, part dope, part isolato.