Marginal Notes

The lightness of your skin lifts

me without feathers into an atmospheric

coma, sifting flour through my fingers,

looking for gold in a placer on the southern

bank of an oxbow. Blankly I stare

into the infinite depth between your

freckles, the green in your eyes sprouting

from fertile soils, not hyberbolizing

into the grand and methodical void where

we used to swim on summer's nights,

letting the moon paint our bodies white

as we lifted off our shirts and let goosebumps

illustrate our arms and legs as our clothing fell

limply to the black beneath us. And we, shadows

in film negatives, dived into the cold and drowned

for an hour. I would look at you looking at me and up

into the stars we would fall, dancing like a paperback

in your hands at night in the half-light

my parent's living room. You would sit there, eyes

traversing the terrain with precaution, lips

mouthing the words written in pencilled margins.

Your legs would droop over the arm

of the chair, as if morning had missed the last train

and would arrive late. But morning, we both knew,

would never come again. So I stared

into the chasms and cravasses of your skin,

and let the wind lift me, with the lightness

of your skin and without a jacket

in the evening air, to the peak of Vesuvius,

where I would sit and watch the sun rise

for eternity, as around me orange tongues

would lick the air and warm me.

Together We Cry

As misunderstanding stood up and walked

out of the room, his eyes met mine

as if to say follow, follow and i'll dive

into your soul, to that sacred secret place

beneath the tightrope, beneath the falling

clouds, and together we'll wander through

shards of glass like a cemetery and feel

the blood rush to the tips of our fingers

and spill out at impossible angles,

like the look in your eyes right now.

He painted the colors of the skies at sunset

as he walked past, blowing away thousands of years

of dust, uncovering the leaf tattooed on the sandstone

shoulder of the Earth. He could have painted

the moon and the stars and lifted me effortlessly

into that submission of the leaves to autumn,

that submission that causes decay and resurgence

to a life unknown the day before, the year before, my

life before the flood. And he tangled his fingers

in my long hair with his eyes, that forgiven

sin of Adam the morning after his first kiss,

his first taste of the empty pond and the decrepit

barn where his father taught him to milk

their ayrshire, singing not a word not

a word not a word - his father would stand there

crying crucify and climb into the loft. Adam

gently squeezed the utters, not knowing

when to stop or when the next day would come,

unwanted and uncolored by the cold air

on his cheeks. I stood there and wept,

knowing that misunderstanding had left

the room to us, strangers of twenty years.

I looked across the room at the slowly burning

fire, the heat gently burping the stew, patting

gently and singing rockabye baby. His head

in his hands and the bottle at his feet, half full

in the evening light, he wandered through

that distant land of enthusiastic love, now memorialized

in the photo album under the bed, collecting dust.

Now, as winds clap their hands against the windows

in pungent delight, as the orchestral touch

of his hands against my shivering body inspires

eminence, as my mouth opens and closes, surrounding

the earth and heavens in ephemeral night, I

wrap him around me, his every inch of skin against

mine, a tapestry hanging on the wall above our bed.

In Autumns, Gently Weeping

If every winter they called

my name, my lips chapped

beneath noon-bright midnight

skies that dance an interpretive

odyssey, I would hold her

hand in mine, crying. She would

look across the snowfield, singing

of the Seer's tower in whispers like leaves

turning red and falling, then

like day to night, drying into

memory carried on the wind.

Her hand would grow cold in mine,

and together we, turning toward the end

like the sun in November,

would let the snow blind us

in its infinite wisdom and grace, letting

ourselves die.

Five years ago, she called me from my room

with a voice like steam rising from my cup

of tea. I didn't move or breathe. She

called again, and steam fogged

on my glasses. My lungs hesitated,

and I let go of the highest branch, falling

into blood-stained grass, the heifer,

still warm, beside me, steam rising

from the red cavity in its side, as grey

drizzled down, its eyes drifting

from black to that empty white

that filled my mind after saying

goodbye to my best friend

as he, quiet, slept in his final bed.

Pre-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder

And then you tell me, "Boy,
we can do much more together." And I
open the window into the violent

dance, multi-faceted arrangements
of sound and combustion, calling
from a world not ours and not falling;

and I feel the scream, the shyness
in the window, as you slide your arms
under my shirt and embrace.