A Resolution

This year
is elderly

monthly shoulders
sagged in protection

toward a cavernous chest
heavy with days, hours
or crumpled moments


When it was young
the year knew itself
and
told no secrets

Now it quivers
toward me,

ready
to take to
the grave all it
has born

since I do not know
already
I would learn
to tell time for you

For instance,
love is
just a yearling
on lengthy legs

Body of Time

There is the way
Time turns its hide inside out

minutes and guts


Arc of neck, then a spilled
month

I am always in the sun
when the taste of hours
metals its way

Iron and rust against my tongue

Slippery now
is the only balm

when hewn, a hide
makes soft the winter

blind, I live in fleece
and small ticks of motion

my cost
bears up the clocks
turning to feeble and

bone
by bone

centuries peel back their lids

Safe Keeping

your face a pulpit
words silk
out of me

teach me my ear
teeth wrapping around it

worldly,
having eaten
foods of other soils

till me like earth

my mouth softer than cottons
holds your name


and time,

a skidding hash mark
black across gentle

begins to erupt
from our brows


I feel it is so

that life enters us all
in secret

no grand moment, symphonic
and gaping open

only a pleasurable morning
slung easily before

the watchtower of our want

faces pressed against
the glass, learning the pain
of color,

a prologue of hours
until we meet again

Wall Street

there are gamblings
roiling
the paint on houses,

making the leaves peel and the
eaves shake gently


the hunters moon
suspended over
a sea of chalky

middle america
street lamps

marks shouts
like accounts
being balanced
on hot red throats


out in the bigger cities, or
the biggest
the people gather their water
and voices
into one
swollen herd
pregnant with
slogans

mewling against
meadows of money:

someone stop
our highest
abstractions
from blocking the winds
that cool

let the wind shoot
across our plains!


which is when
the little houses on plains
sigh
closed throated

and simply sign the next check.

a body for all seasons

In the color of
forgotten organs,

deep mottled tissues, I find

a world diseased in
joy


in only seeing the edge
of things, I climb up

winter through fall,
planning

the tracks I have yet to make

in yielding snows


my gray body sings
even though its

skin is sloughed into
the sky

I am a dappled season,
the fragrance of rot

firmly loved, utterly welcomed

for its shameless ability
to change

My organs are hidden

in laughing caverns
wearing their colors as though they were crows

Civil

something smells civilized in here

like thunder contained on television

or a yearn,
simply
that


what’s basic here?
a breath between
palms

or words that make sex

in the wild
they
find themselves blue,
immersed,
or only eyes


ask me again

in your
whisper that tears up

a room

like strips of paper.

A Ten Minute Treatise On My Face

my face does
little
and peacefully
pushes air around

it catalogues the moments

a jar full of seasons
cracks

then busts and hangs
from a dry July branch


it is a smile


there are only
so many ways
an egg can taste bitter

the shell, for example

my face does
little to embalm
a minute

it only opens

a yearn for your flavor

How Big The Ocean, 2nd Edit.

at night
he oceans
among tense fabrics
scraps of home


hook skin
yet ooze so sweet


they become
blooms expiring





































some home
evolves,

plaits of days
braid lonely luster



plates of food
gesture back

colors behind them

smearing, smiling
missives



lovers knuckles
cloudy violet



































He, or any man
any stupid century

smell permeates
expanses,
seas



their membranes

bloat and fever



























walking into
three-legged memory
is every day

when bells clang
it’s the charm of other shores


I ocean

in waking
unbound

drifting
ancient as continents

through morning’s resplendent rooms











































all unmaking
knows

corrosion’s grope,

memory
is being vertical

is gone times

is shores of houses

drifting in
breath bells
oceans

Deep Breaths

tonight
the air smells
like everything

tastes rolled
between teeth
music that sat in
my ears

the sky,

which talks
picture clouds
arches smell

through my hair

I could mention
borrowing those
bundles of lilacs,


but the rain will replace
what I’ve used

Sunday, April 17th, 2011 (For Gramp)

when I learned you were gone
I was at the top of the hill

when my shoulders began to
quiver I had reached the bottom

robins bounced along
the ruddy grass so insistent
on its verdance

clumps of colors or flowers
passed their lives
under clamor of cloud
and April gustings

what a day to have
your soul
lifted beyond

when I knew I would miss you
I walked to the market
to caress the vegetables,
to purchase cured meats

Sunday shoppers
jostled sleepily against me
and everywhere
colors kept insisting, inserting

when I finally cried for you
I was home
slung deep beside
the warm hearth
of your memory

dinner on the stove
made by my hands
that just last week
held yours

A Month Of Beasts

gullet of March
vessels the vacant
claps of trees

March, my face
lifted words against

March, your lamb
snagged in teeth and
hollow hoof,
shoulders slung
with punctured winter

March, two beast maker
fleece my feet
with fever and chill,
sweat pelts
in your brackish afternoons

March, a skin of talk
words mingled
amniotic,
swapping genetics

March, quiver me
in crocus beds,
epidermal fissures
not pelt
but column of speak

March, plain robes
of sky, bare back of earth
unsure of inevitability
talk with the wool of
your eyes
talk soft

March, hush your mane
March
March
March.

Press

what press is that
on skin
and vowels, tight
hunger ?

(skin before color)
such as sinking
motions or comets
in lazy trees,
when light ruptured

memory, you,
a lump in my spine
press,
press tight

cramped behind teeth, eyes
words
coils
a breath resumes
words as saddles
some things
buckled to
my tongue

to know
snow in lungs presses,
a blue truth
architects our flesh
tighter

time like a coffin
at high speeds
through joyous winds
makes
it over, or if only
pressed
tight

how big the ocean when you wish to be far away

at night
he oceans
softly beyond horror

in waking
a body’s cursive skin
remembers laughing

then the act of morning
resplendent with apology
afflicted with new

walking into a
three-legged day,
each time, bells everywhere

luxury of forging memory
concrete and steel collecting
in the corners of cities

put some blood
to those bells
as he oceans
coming clean away

never the cut that healed straight
mind the life going infinite
in forgetting

a life rendered
from fat of moments
is thus shouldered by skies

missives or letters
plain speak in first waking,
how hungry for the past

still
he oceans certain
all moments
unbound to him