We Tunnel

For the support
Of breath leaking for
Oil like thawed glass
In cathedrals containing
The body of a baby
A waterlogged glow
Or a stirring, sinking
Merciless woman, cranked
And diving deeper
Curbed
Like a black oak
On a resplendent evening
In keenest territory of
Bewildered woods

4 June 2009

The Newest

I roll restlessly on carpet
In a house you’ve never seen
Scaling rungs of a ladder
Gray and splintering
But it’s the ladder you built
In photos, I lose my life
Sucked dry and seen only
In pixels, pasted and stamped.

I have goals and knowledge, tools
Like gloves and buckets
Gazing at plums and forgetting
How to pluck them
Fine motor skills that need tuning
No calculus required, but
I am rusting in disuse
A canopy destroyed by hurricane’s gale

Being pampered and powdered
Taught us lethargy
Our skills of discipline are
Wanting, on indefinite furlough
In this imitation Mecca
We sow energy and seeds
Our liberators, fuming at the decline
Retail and dollars and budding consumers
And I sit vacant

I need Colorado peaches, dripping
Down our chins and staining our smocks
Sticky fingers kneading shoulders
We’re hair and coffee and indecision
Canvassing the town and scouring
For what,
I am still gathering.
I erase all anger,
And I am curious
At the ease.

Timber

The dolphin, unhinged by the surf, dove
Headlong
Into the wreckage.

I'm talking myself out of it,
Sinking into moss and mica.
Like the Queen, I'm going mad-
I make the same mistakes,
I'm nothing new.

This, my cocoon, is but a
Carnal shadow of tepid, sleeping you.
We chant with each luscious bloom
Birthed on the breeze like a spore.
A coincidence.

Be the corona of my sun,
Ignorant of meters and minutes
Our glare will live in the fireflies-
Inking over my eyes, dripping down
Swollen cheeks, chattering chin.
Disorderly, delicious.

I am shaking, an unswaddled child, and
It feels a bit like free-fall.