16th Day of Midsummer, 2013

The first cicada of the year
Calling in the locust tree
Across the alley
Like a death-rattle
And next door, a dumpster
And men and women in filtering masks
Emptying out the hoarder’s house.

Drunkspeak, Soberly Written

Hello, bunny,
I am a lost soul
Just like
All the boys from Texas
Crying out
Jolene in their sleep.
Or a transparent mariner
Sailing wrecks in the deep.
My heart in a jar,
Grave soil in my mouth,
The vampire
Barred from his youth,
Forever boy,
Bunny moon,
I became
A sun worshipper.
I feasted
In the Hotel California
On wine that never saw dusk.
I found
Without pain—with only a moth—
The ruby in the dust.
Yet bunny, hello
The sea laps cool
Against the coffin wood tonight.
Oar song fills me
And nothing takes me
Just because it can.
Forgive us the remix
Nineteen
And seventy-nine,
Heaven is mirrors on the ceiling,
The world is a cowgirl in the sand.

The Enigma Of The Jester

He is the shadow
He makes the light
He takes him down
The stars at night

He is the laughter
He kills the joke
He makes the noose
And breaks the yoke

He parts the curtains
He veils the stage
He lights the house
To end the age

You never know him
He might be she
He's everything
You'll ever be

Discovering The Red Plum

When my lips found a red plum
They did not know that very soon
All I could desire would be found
In sweet, wet pulp under soft skin
And the tartness of that skin, and
The way my teeth broke through the
Taut, smooth, thin reddish skin.
But yes, then they did know the sweet
Wet fruit of the red plum, and what
Once had been a bit of unnoticed color
At the back of the supermarket was
Soon my greatest desire, the love of my
Lips, the target of my tongue, the one
Sweet-tart taste repeating in my
Mind and that, that is the surprising
Way love falls into our absent, toying hands,
That is when sustenance becomes sustenance,
When a mouth becomes a church and a body
Yearns beyond nutrients for an experience
And what was a pleasure, a force of life.

no quarter for the enigma machine

one voice says
the heart is a complicated place
that demands the lambent language of poetry
to air its spiderweb expression

one voice says
the heart is far too complicated a place
to let such listing lines of verse
be its speakers on the floor

most human wars
are caused by miscommunication
and strategists build secret codes in them
while thousands die trying to find the key

journal in a locked glove compartment

weeks when it was enough
to keep the roads in good repair
and the car sat silent
and only the weather went anywhere

days of looking up from the dirt
to the dashed line convening into miles
and all the traveling we managed
was a traveling of eyes

home was a burnt-out shell
home was the prairie grass strung with webs
home like a silent car
at rest beside the miles we could not manage

I walked out into the night
firelight to firelight
the fireflies parting like truths to avoid me
and the truths I avoided in the name of the sun

my hand
is blackened with oil
is gripping a drop-forged steel wrench
both mysterious to me

my eyes
drive down the highway
the wind blows my hair back
the wind against my palm is her memory

there are confessions
that don’t need confessing
no one should hear them
they live like a fire

they know nothing about engines
or how to rebuild a house of steel
and if we are traveling anywhere, love
then we pray to the mystery behind the wheel

the storm

if I give to the voices
on the winds of the storm
the house will be torn asunder

if the storm passes over
and the house still stands
I know there will be another storm

there is no forecast
there are no sirens
but the lightning knows my name

how many times
can the walls shake with thunder
before I believe it all?