Your Dead Cease To Love

Her inverted whispers stand in the rain

like a dog, waiting to come in to the hollow house, tail

motionless and cold. Then she fell asleep, yellow

cotton sundress melting down her chest and arms,

her legs, sap on papery bark, constellations forming

across her face and a newborn sun crying,

crying over her brow, light spilling into her closed eyes

and the resonating room, slowly stilling. She

slept while the sky wept tears of compassion

upon her cheeks, her hands, her thighs. And clouds

disfigure their faces with black paint, while day

with night, fingers woven like ancient baskets,

walk to the bed and lie down, covers unfolding

blooms of butterfly and hibiscus, opening

and fluttering away.

Her hair grows long in sleep, a Rapunzel seated tenuously

at her tower window. In sleep her hair grows long,

too long to be seen or heard, like watching your parents

walk through the sliding doors and into the airport,

while you, alone, open the car door and sit down,

waiting to hear the click of another door, before driving away.

Inflorescence

In florescent dreams the moon spills

over Jupiter into the Atlantic

undulations of my breathing. Once

every 14 years the bell rings, calling me

home for dinner without exaggeration.

On Saturdays the moon sleeps until

noon, opening the door for strangers

only, like childhood memories of dancing

around my friend's living room:

we didn't start the fire

we would yell as perfumed fists,

like cotton candy, painted our faces

red, black and blue. We could have been

patriots. We could have walked,

the streets turning like peaches in season,

for hours, midnight disappearing

over the horizon as we approached, each step

a minutely proportionate arrow,

finding unseen targets for the first time.

Her eyes closed in me, hands like marionettes

tangled in their own strings, and she

would cry, tears in her hollow eyes that hung

from the eaves of her second-floor room.

Wait for me until the morning, she would often say,

falling madly in love with reflections

of a former life in a distant land, undiluted

mistresses clinging insatiably to walls

of glass and unscented smoke. Together we breathed,

the air long enough to touch, and carved

masterpieces upon each other's skin, blankets,

the bible in our comfortable routine, draping

us in effigy. Together we breathed

and together we burned, ashes of orange sunsets

smothering affection from within, like the time

when I was a child and I fell from the weeping

tree, tears like symbols crashing around me,

into unconsciousness and delight: her breath

resting on my fashioned lapels, pink and worn.

Opening my eyes - two or four I forget -

they, the silent, encircled me, arms of plastic

calmly caressing, tenderly tugging at my clothes

until I rest naked on my front lawn, the night

spitting insults at my undeveloped body,

warm and enticing. A tree spreads

its branches within me, budding, flowering,

fruiting, its roots penetrating and strong,

holding me to the Earth and rising, downward,

like arms and moss.

The Anatomy of Waiting

Without feathers, he stood akimbo

at the watering hole, parallel features

on two faces paddling like the ante-diluvial

sun over mountains, unseen

through pages of fog, toward him. Hair lifted, carried

by some fortune, whether good or ill,

from his forehead and eyes, watering

and blue. Like sunflowers at noon stare,

unblinking as gargoyles atop cathedrals

majestic and dark, the faces on the water

sink, a diminuendo into a winter's morning,

before collapsing into shards of cloud,

milk tinged with wildflower honey.

Yet eyes, like mallow in the sand, look to heaven

without guile and spring forth, the taste

of salt on their parched lips, waiting for those

with wings to carry him away to the tundras

of immortality, words unremembered

since the first day of rain anno domini, dancing

like a bee for the flower, naked and indehiscent.

In Vivo

Whether or not she stepped out of the shadows,

he said, eyes spilling to soil, mixing for breath,

I will never see the light again on her face,

calmly, palely, unuttered. Then

the ghost came, whistling, coming

through the valley and she

came, a smile nailed to both of her hands,

without a face so clear, so subtle.

Four years ago they sat together,

plastic looking almost mahogany

in the evening lecture. Like bumble

bees they climbed into flowers,

rolling and twisting, almost

writhing, but coreographed, until

the hope of life wrapped around

their legs and limbs. They licked

petals from their eyes, unblinking.

A momentary breath caught her thinking,

caused her to breathe, as he looked

into the mirror, walking slowly to the wall,

then to heaven. Without a whisper

he could never understand, turning and turning

in a bowl filled slowly, gently, with little

slips of paper, the lid unclasped, leaning closed.

Like a child grasping a pencil tightly,

writing d'nealian on widely spaced paper,

repeating pictures, slowly and carefully,

daringly, he touched her and she withered,

opening, her words flowing and revealing

tomorrow's first child, resting

in a basket without tears.

Unintended Morphology

everybody knows if you don't mind

your mothers words, they sneak up behind

and lick the wounds from yesteryears

and former lifetimes, distanced by you

and a momentary pause as I

look into your eyes. you only smile

on tuesdays and I can see life

in you. I mirror myself, emulations

upon canyon walls painted orange for autumn,

staying here, playing here, on the shelf

across from pianos sprung brightly.

time has come to open the envelope,

a silver lake across the open sands

sprinkling rain like flames rising

from your grandfather's pipe, fresh

lit. each breath coughs smoke

into eyes watering. fading smiles with eraser strokes

across the mountain's feet, a winter

deep underground, moss and fabrication. hold me now

or hold me once and for all, an ultimatum worth

repeating. no,

she won't bring back the days filled with maple

and powdered sugar. Filed away in some cabinet, miles

and miles

from the beginning of nowhere, the edge of serenity's

infertile sanity. We'll sing and we'll shout

until the aah's and oo's

crack into little boy, little boy lost

listening to a mother or a stranger. she'll run

on, alone between his knees,

naming the children with each breath, measuring each step:

one alligator two. In time

to the opening of another window

at summer's precipice. joy and a girl catalog

stories untold, secrets hidden

behind guitar chords, wearing a dress.

The King

He wears his passion like a thorned

crown, tears blending with blue

tears on his cheeks on her cheeks

on his cheeks on hers. The once-king

cries as promises slip with her robe

down her arm revealing the hidden

skin: her forbidden skin. The night

quickens to his touch. Dark and dark

and dark. She smiles, eyes light, floating

from the thought of a husband

off to war like a candled prayer across

the water. Skin blends with pale

skin in the moonlight. Hair on hair

on hair. Eyes close. Blood dries

on his robes on his hands on his

lips as he stands with her on the roof.

Hand blends with bloody hand.

Lip touches bloody lip. Robes fall

with bloody robes. His crown

of passion thorned.

exiled, we penitent come

she spoke through the switch

grass and looked up

at me. words like yesterday

pass and sing and scratch

at the back door, whining,

wanting the door to open but not

wanting to come in.

she came in and i didn't hear

the glass break on the table

or her nails across my back,

feeling the chalk on the blackboard,

and my tired eyes, wiping away the dust.

she forgot to whisper, like the time

two years ago in the cathedral

we sat as the father stretched

his eyes toward adam and our lord

and the stained glass-

a virgin dressed in shades

of red, and her mouth pale,

waiting for a kiss, and wanting-

she wouldn't look,

not at me, not in the eyes

but then it's funny, isn't it?

the way eyes can turn a man

to stone. can turn a man.

her hymnal rested red in her lap, almost black

and unravelling.

the words never changed

so fast or so empty

as when she spoke,

penitent and unforgiving,

into the palm of my hand

we cry, poor, banished,

children of eve.

the father raised his eyes

from the heavens

to her

i raised my eyes from her

lap and the hymnal, the words

a stagnant pool, and my arm

floated to her cheek

and the tear, black

on white.

white dust fell, not like snow

in the middle of december that winter,

dark with streetlights.

my hands were dirty then

and now as i wipe the dust

on the leg of my pants. she came in

when she didn't want to,

she only wanted an open door

and the smell of clean sheets.

Sound and Fury

Curtained rooms open

to dusty eyes

feeling the Earth go

(ing) through my clothes until

the sun emerges

from its quiet tomb. Clouds

burst, the rasping

of crickets, a substance

felt on the flesh: flour

on hands kneading

kneading kneading

to remember

then forget

when I last breathed.

To Me

There I sit, unpardoned

of former crimes against myself,

and I blink between words

on the page. Come

to me again, she would always say.

Come to me

again. Again and again

I failed

to leave the cave

which bound me, the shadows

playing silently

on the wall, reflecting

in my blue eyes. Tomorrow

I'll stay again. And again. And

still she'll call, come

to me again. Again,

come. To me.

I close my eyes and leave for her.

My Face Is My Mask

without any hat

water makes me sick

and Lorraine

if you had wings

you could fly to heaven

if you just had a quarter

instead you toil up

the steps shapeless

breathing

a painful

and terrific

slowness

a soundless arpeggio

my eyes hold their breath

meaningless and sustained

the sacred tree tick-tocking

solemn and profound

and she says in her single soprano

yes Jesus! the dry pulse

of her decaying house as two tears

slide down her fallen cheeks

I see the light and I see

the word

just sound

sometime maybe

she'll hold him at the nightfall

whilst the angels singing him to sleep

He Saw A Woman Washing

Glass shatters as her tea sifts between

her toes like the sand on the beach last June,

salt drying anklets

on blushing skin. The sun was setting

just right then, like a memory

cleaned and recleaned with time,

where only pure curves and tinkling bells

exist: the horizon, a wakefulness swimming

deeper into black. Come morning

she forgets that she even existed,

even if for just a moment, once,

long before the genesis, before

the trees greyed with age and cast shadows

on soils unafraid. From her the flowers

go, petals like kisses from her

mother's eyelashes, gentle on her

cheeks. But now, laughter carries a cane

as he slowly steps,

hunched, down

the hall. Salt stinging, eyes

open to the blue, divinely-hung triptych.

Among women, blessed art thou, she said.

For I alone wander.