Loudly

There was
an affectionate creak
in the floor
of my foundation
A footstep
trespassed here
with delicate
passing
A scent
unknown to me
trembled above
and the walls knew
it would happen
again

A terrible hour
drew in and held close
the memory
of a thousand hours
given to all
and no one
whispering,
loudly

You Sip

You sip
this moment. It is the
exact moment
that leaves are falling.
It is when
you watch those leaves float
with elegance and
aimless drift to the ground
that your heart lifts
and falls
just a little.

In the shimmer
of the leaf
all faith in the power
of nature is restored.
The grand cycle of things
is abandoned to the idea
of stolen grace that seems
orchestrated in that moment
just for you.
It sparkles
it twirls
it flirts itself away from the cling
of the tree. It grazes its sister leaves
It kisses them
cheek to cheek.
Wind releases
a sigh, and it jumps
from its partners
and descends
like a bullet
aimed to exterminate.

Many leaves
on the ground
seem to you
like so many deaths
of what you have known
as beautiful
Every year, you mourn.
Why do they fall?
And if they must fall,
Why do they do so
with such allure
only to be crushed
and degraded?

The cycle
is remembered. And you know
in these piles is the promise of cold
and the need
to draw closer
warm yourself
by whatever you may have neglected
while the sun rubbed your back.
Those leaves
reflect the season prior.
They said, “Remember this?”
You nodded as they fell.
You wept
as they mixed with litter
and rain.
Their symbolism
was your heat.

Tiny Click

Hot sleep plays on
grave subjects
lain to expand and extend
as fears attend

When they dream of you
they dream of a
blackness uninhabited
edged in crimson
and wait for the cool
earliness to rouse them
in rescue

In those days we waited
and the air imagined breathed thick
not searing but
a splintered serous
far from smooth

Through a keyhole marked
by rusted time
a tiny click
echoed untimely
frightful freedom

D.E.

What does it mean
when my heart
feels chased?
We smiled, linked arms
We talked
embraced

The only blame
is the course
of the tide
A deep and open
restless guide

My path was straight
My dreams are true
but now I’ve been
disarmed
by you

Although permission
was never granted
I find myself
here
enchanted

Near Water

I want to live near
water she said
and it was agreed
explicit in a solemn clause
signed by silence.
She had fed her
friendships squarely with
time and expectations
audibly defined:

The option to cleanse
or drown would
always be a concrete
decree.

Codependence Day

As summer sweat
and skin
cravings weave themselves
into evening hours
and tepid nights,

slowed


I allow pictured
nude atop a high hill
my flesh pressed
against other flesh
grass in hair
as fireworks cascade
the city and litter
the sky
in artificial
glitter
(The other kind
of American
bomb)


Who
I wonder
would I choose
as company?

When They Bite

When I allow myself to think of you I feel this
bubble in my chest, this
full, rich, mass of heat and light
and sadness.
People like you are scarcely
met; those as magnificent are always lined
with paralleled
passion
and pain, like an ancient painting that is
even more exquisite
from having survived its hostile history
than the beautiful image
it displays
to the world.
Why did I meet you? Because life
is not meant
to be lived in scheduled
increments, predicted and
segmented into proper slots of time.
There is value
in routine, but the moments
of true meaning
are the ones during which you derail from what is expected
and acknowledge
what is not.
You remind me
of everything that will never
make sense
but always
feels right.
Just by being you,
the savory subtleties of life
propel and pounce and land on others
like shiny eager insects,
and I love it
when they bite.

Chorus

It grew with
roots and a flaking
shell
until one day
steadfast and
tall, it allowed itself
to fall.

Trimmed and sleek
it found itself
forged into
another form.

Familiar beats
from far away
linked by lines
A gentle hum
at times
fevered
fast and clutching in
that hot and
wretched
urgent grasping.

It has been
known that
from that hand on
this curve
the sweetest song
would sigh.

Tuned by gentle
unfounded friendship;
notes pure and clear
like an honest
eager bell.

In a dear and
fragile place
where noise
can only celebrate

these secrets lie
concealed

in silence.

Creases

Genuinely this light pulls in the
furthest direction, to a distance
unseen; the shadows are long and
how she likes them but stepping
under each its own shape and sway
and currency she feels the air chill
a little and her skin dampens as she
reasons against it.

Crunches remind her of a newer
season and all this light retells
the stories of almost
forgotten moments now
chiseled into an embankment that breaks free
with chunks of memory only
when her waters rise
to a greater height.

It is as though
some moments now in affect
were lived in passing and folded
into squares and squares
creased forever and now
stored in
a hidden place.

If she sees your face
again in one breath she will
know your creases and
love each fleshy channel;
those canals that tore into you not
by her assistance
but corrugated over time
in her absence
through pain and shadowed secrets
and unveiled
now to every eye.

Just as here she prays palms
upward and dark
sealed eyes summon a single note that
flutters and sails the chill
without lingering with any guileful
grasp, she yearns
for the greater pardon:
you did your best.

Nothing But

These children tell a
tale of timeless days that blend
seamless into one
another; a string of pain in
darkness and well lit
hunger.

An emptiness repeating in
every face and sorrow deeper than any
western sigh blackens souls young
and old, aging equally
as open hands tremble
lined with nothing
but dust.

I watched when my own height
struggled upward and my belly
brimmed; dolls and trees and laughter lit
my heart and I wondered then,
Who will ebb their aching?

Soon this flesh will clasp
my tired brothers;
these pink unused hands will feed
hold, teach, pray
flow back into their souls
a fraction of my blessings
and work through seamless days
lined with nothing
but love
and dust.

I Met You

I met you
in a dream once
I showed you a portrait
of yourself and you said
we are authors of
ourselves and
coauthors of
each other
and I knew in time we would
embrace
in daylight.

When the ground is
wet and music slows to a
heartbeat
and the air
breathes soft with a
scent you yearn
to immortalize
damp tangled secrets
begin to murmur those truths
resigned to dreams
and stolen glances.

I am not yet banished
to obscurity
but that moment crawls closer
and thousands of tiny hands
have torn away my shield.

In my dream
I hold a sword;
a beacon of strength
and a staff
through the unknown.

Warm Brew

Warm brew trickled
my throat as
those last
weeks my lungs filled
with old love
and stale smoke
The frost crept in
the ice
inched through
A fog cold
and calming
lifted
Through that gentle
chill beneath
I let those new
faces I had
come to love
dissolve in thin
unassuming days
begun at odd times and never
really ending
I have come to know what
boundaries are
I have seen their
blur, their
smeared crossing
We live in
rainbows
and we sleep only under
the kiss of
rain
It is
my time to
feel heat
and for the sun
to light me
A brightness sourced
from an ancestral
course