spilt milk

the ring caught on fire and I didn't put it out.
the next door neighbor winked at me.
I stuck out my tongue at commitment.

two can play at this game.

Things that quake

Its not just teeth this time--
its your hand inside me, your body
on a cross on a hill far far away, its
the whore on the floor, the man wailing
at the Wall. This time
it is things I should have left
behind that still follow me
into the night. And the thing
I should have been carrying-- should
be gripping, should be drinking and
eating-- left in a hollow along the way.
Yes, when you spoke there was
night and there was day,
and I'm told that your hand and arm
and muscles rolled the stone away--
so, tell me how to lift my tongue
in such a way that may cause
you to fall for me.

a triune tribute

In the beginning was the word
and the womb- a tight fist punching
its way out of the heavens.

She lives as an upside-down
clock- in time with breath and
death. Each heave a sign of life.

In the upstairs room is a couch
filled with fluff and flies-- the threads
unwind and tear at the thought of weight.

bitter cold

I woke with a bite
of frost in my mouth, leaving
it's mark beneath my tongue. Winter
has come early this year-- like a burn,
or a war. It breaks my knees, my spirit,
my coat out of the closet. Autumn forgot
her name, forgot me, left me
to jump this ice-cubed puddle alone.

There are things that break--
I have been one of them. A pile
of yesterday trapped in my shirt pocket,
three minutes of fear-- this is not a list.
I am not a list.
I can't remember ever hearing my dad
pray. I can't remember the last time
I knelt down. I might walk away.

She was like marmalade

She walked like the ocean-- each
step a blue wave of length and balance.
She sang like the misty mountains-- each
note a deer lapping the crystal pool with his pink tongue.
She had fingers as long and slender as centuries,
a belly made for times of labor, the mark of
strength under her eyes.
She was like marmalade-- coloring
everything with life, but she
still wasn't enough.

Bonfire in Philadelphia

Matches are never enough by themselves. They always need
steady fingers and no breeze. And then
we wheeze—the smoke adopting limbs of its own and
growing around warm faces and freshly tongued beer bottles.
Blue blurs into marmalade orange and violent yellow—we are
all connected. Each flame develops fingers and toes that wiggle
upward and snap at people sitting close rolling cigarettes. The source
spits parts of itself into the black orb all around—the little orange balls
fly off and die before they land, or meet with a pair of torn corduroys or a strand of hair—receiving a startled gasp and silencing slap. The limbs replenish themselves at the base and twist their legs around each other;
unashamedly making love in the middle of our circle.