the morning is a piece of rhubarb pie.

the evening hides until it’s almost too late.

* * *

Somewhere along the line you learned how to unbutton buttons. Push them. Open them.

Let the starlight in, but not only. To love the starlight, respect it, praise it for swimming in the lake, for its independence.

Moving past you in kitchens, feeling on my fingertips days in this place that will never be spent, and, through desire’s glare like glittering lines of late-afternoon light refracted off the summertime lake, wonder how much they are worth, how that worth will be affected by time. Accrue or depreciate.

* * *

apricots. rum. peat. cream.

* * *

I did look in your eyes. I did wrap my fingers in your hair. I did say I love you. I did know what it meant.

* * *

We both live with music in the next room. The door closed. We won’t say it’s not there if asked, but we don’t put a sign on the door, don’t tell casual acquaintances about its color, how it tastes almost like blood at 3 A.M., how loud it moans, how much louder it can scream, how it whispers always.

life is not a milkshake (poem for the olympics)

the chairman dances, and the council
calls it a lavendar extravagance, a flamingo,
a woo hoo holiday in overpriced pants

as though pandas starving were a lark,
as though carving faces into mountains
was a method of paying ancestral debts

perhaps if he wrapped his head in yellow,
the machines would better obey, the animals
would come when called. the giraffes.

across the border trumpets blare. it’s meant
to cause a hollow feeling in the hurdlers,
and javelin throwers, and 50 yard dashers.

they’re big. the trumpets. and although trained
in heraldry, in incantatory affirmations,
lately they’ve been seen carrying knives.

so the coffee gets cold. the windows rattle,
and on the ice he’s landing a triple dipple,
a whisper ripples through the thronged spectators…

celia scatters pennies on the floor in a not random manner.
acrobats call on the phone, from a height. there are no messages.
I wrap a towel around my waste and pretend not to hear.
there are more alphabets in the world than you would guess.

“don’t fall in love with sounds that you can’t yourself make,”
is what she told me. she had a collection of puppets. medallions
seemed comfortable pinned to her breast, but never learned to sing.
the beast in your nightmare calls me friend, sometimes brother.

I never met a sound I couldn’t fake. there she goes again. listen.
listen. these moccasins don’t make a sound on the floor.
paranoiac. absolution. trick or treat. she sends me out for fuel,
but I get enamored with a rattlesnake and forget to return the favor.

all of the shoes i've ever owned
lined up in a row

side by side, toes facing the same direction.

an army of myselves steps into them

it is raining

minor ch

till tomorrow sits up and obviates, a miniature dinosaur ravages the back lawn, the need for sleeping companions has disappeared. calamity is a billboard you've learned to ignore, not because of its ubiquity, but because it advertises a product you have no need for. or the need for beehives, which pinches the corners where the walls meet the ceiling hard enough to globe the room. shambolic. alka seltzer or a bromide.

the miniscus of the pony keg

as though monkeys pulled the strings
a serpent walks the sidwalks of aqua.

no, there certainly is no euphony in
this statement or truth for all that

pissing away. there are many methods
and suicide is merely the least redemptive.

sure, I’ve thought it. but blinking and
blinking sounds shrill. think it through.

enough to calibrate a certainty or santa
coming several times a year. blade

of grass. wide and green. lemonade.
she’s sitting in the hot seat and frankie’s

got the swiftest arm in the joint. probably
she will be soaking wet by the true a.m.

i want to be able to be in a room with
anyone. but there’s a but. and a sure-

fire high-wire tragedy seeps into the
imagination of every girl and boy.