Millenia Ensnares

We were taken
out of our outhouses
and into the pews
where they slowly
hypnotized us
with an oozing vat
of hand sanitzer
and they gave us
welcome mats
with our last
names written
on them along
with a brand new
brand of fertilizer
chock full of
egg shells.

So.
That was
where I was
when the clock
dropped a dawn
above the clouds
and a white
circular jewel
disappeared
into the new dome
they had installed
just last year.

Song of Myself

I
I dress myself,
and what I adorn you shall adorn,
for the underwear I wear is the same as yours.

I loafe in the lilac-scented laundry... observing a strand of my hair.

VI
A child asked, What is your hair? pulling it from my head,
leaving it in stale clumpfuls around my feet.

Perhaps he thinks it morbid, or perhaps he thinks it dead,
but yet something tells me it is abounding and alive.

And still it seems to me now the shavings of my back yard.

XVII
I abandon original thoughts,
I adhere to the common thought and the good idea,
If my thoughts are not everything they surely are nothing.

This is a poem plucked from the wing of the globe.
This is the poem that has been written before.

XXV
The sun has a gun and will murder me,
but it does not know that I too have a sun,
rising and diving daily within me.

I hear the orbs and seizures of the universe.
I hear you whispering, O planetarium.

LII
I am large enough to fit in my bathtub,
hold nothing back from the present,
and send myself drifting in lacy jags.

I have left a message for you on the sidewalk,
Look for it between the cracks and in the gum.

Soon I will discover you, only later will I remember.
Lighting my fire just moments away,
I wait until the day you find me.

XIX
This hour I tell things in confidence,
I might not tell everybody but I will tell you.

Calm Keeping Lights At Middlebrook

See, my breath is a paw print etched into the glass.
A watermark on the postcard of the I-35W bridge.
Spanning its brave, unbroken metal over the dark
Blue so far from where I stand. Scattering my calm
As the wind wraps about my arms—nicking my cheeks—
I feel nothing short of the lights that surround me.

My awe for the swift-keeping green and my shame
For the rage-keeping red are rocks in a river next
To my joy for the infinite pouring over blue edges
Of the bridge. Even myself fizzling over the rim
At this moment, the wires could snap. The map unfolds
For the sound of tongue icing over jutted lips.

 Do be careful of that bridge—lovely as it is, it has a
History. Tonight I wait for the shining bullet of a star
To splinter my infrastructure. Staring out from
The window of Middlebrook, weaving the river
Like a ribbon between my fingers and watching the
Bridge—O blue bridge—I wait for you to bend at the 
knees.

An Editor's Note On My Editor

We met at an unfairly emotional time of both of our lives: I was bed-ridden with an illness born from my natural design, which is to love and feed off nothing but that love; he was coming to grips with the fact that he was an editor. The editor calculates success constantly. The editor rearranges ventricles to create a much prettier leaf. The editor pores over stars stamped into books and makes dwarfs out of them. We were not set to get along, but then again, much of what I never got along with became the flask for my elixir of personality. My editor is such a flask, mysteriously self-filling and fulfilling. I've borrowed from him greatly, whenever my cracked lips reveal their worn flaws, every time I'd disappear from myself, reappearing with the smallest pull from the flask, my editor. There is, I know it, a story to be told here, but my editor has just texted me asking me to tell the story about when we first met, and I am struggling to tell him it, so now my attentions should return undivided to my editor, like an undivided captain nodding towards the bow. 

My Editor Comes Back Looking For Another Mistake

I was making fruit salad
when the bastard knocked.
I blanked, asked who is it?

Knock, knock, stet.
The wood was harsh.
It was winter, and cold

in certain parts of the world.
I let him in, and the wind
hammered the walls.

I went back to the salad,
dicing cherries and whatnot.
He laid his walking stick.

Through the thick current
of electronic licks
from the idle radio,

I could hear him wheezing.
So I gave him my journal
from the bottom of my heart,

and he made a puny fire.

Releasing My Editor To The Wild

Stumbling down the stone stairs,
my editor hardly had time
to mumble goodbye.
He slipped out of sight.
I was eating an apricot.
I threw one at him
so that he
just like me
would have something
good to eat.

On Sleeping Nearly Naked In Another's Guest Bedroom

It's either the house
or the birds making noises.

Don't charge your phone,
you're a monster.

Have a glass of water.

The sink is down the hall.

I'd bring it to you,

but I'm in the process

of installing security cameras
in every room of the house,

so that when the spring
comes, we'll find out

if it was the house,

or just those damn birds.

Wring About It

If i offer you a coffin
and let you
pick the music
at your funeral
can i throw away
the rest of your
invitations?
i'd like to attend
alone
and not because
i'd cry
or write
or touch you
in your sleep
i'd just like an empty room
in which i can
think
about you

Angel

From the way you carry yourself
it was inevitable, the big split
between your beauty on the right
and whatever else is left.

Rail 135, Rail Away

The water spreads out before me,
moving away from me also,
a flat-lining hurricane
chasing a late-afternoon train
well into the pit of evening.

This is where I am, this is where
I make my absolute stand.
This is where I am out of cigarettes
and the sun filters through the straw.
This is the announcement, the attempt,
the withdrawal, the consent!

These are the woods, the rocks,
that by the end of day will fill me up,
and make inquiries about how
my portfolio's been filling up.
"Funny you should ask, wild woods
and isolate rocks, about my portfolio,
because in fact you are filling it up."
And that is how it would go
if I could talk with woods and rocks
who fill me up with company.

And if I could talk to trains,
I would make a few citizen requests.
I would ask it to stop and allow
me to ordain the dilapidated barns.
I would stop to baptize the islands,
teased by the New England spray.
I would order a resounding silence
of noise rattles, and love rattles,
and rattles of both love and noise.
Because there is no love loud enough
to stop this train, it only goes — 
in lack or for lack of love,
it goes and goes and takes me with it.

Out with the sun!
Out with the marshes and tracks,
with the harbor and the breeze,
with the flutes, tams, and squeals,
out with the rocks and trees!
All is out with the secret of me,
unintelligible, transparent, which is me,
the secret and all good with it is out.

Now I know what it is to sleep hard,
have you slept hard, lately?
Have your dreams pull'd you inwards,
have you explored the vacuum of your belly
using the lamp of your imagination,
has the mine ever fall'd in over you?
To say that your dreams
are an escape frightens me.
Your dreams may escape from you
but O there is no escape.

Whose treehouse on the hill cannot be found?
I spot it only for a second, then it flits backwards.
I think it unlikely I should find it again.
I am so high above the pavement
I think it unlikely I should remember how to drive.

Everywhere, I have driven and been driven!
To Stillwater, thru sixninetyfour and thirtysix,
Thru to Marina, up thirtysix overlooking the Croix,
To Duluth, screaming up thirtyfive E with stories,
Down to Shakopee, looping down to onesixtynine,
West to Watertown, following everything in front of me,
East to Wisconsin, ninetyfour cradling us to Madison,
Then to Eau Claire, on to Chicago, to Indianapolis,
More cities, more lights! More of Kentucky, Nashville,
Louisville, thru Tennessee and blazing seventyfive,
From top to bottom Georgia! To the sun, Florida!
Now from Boston, now onto Philadelphia,
Every state I encounter and see again
I see every state, and remember affection,
because it was me who first placed that affection.

Now here we are in New Haven,
the sun glinting off the aluminum railway
that's headed the other way.
I am a gliding confessional
that would never spill a drink.
Don't you miss when you had secrets?