i have sense

(vector) no

form. i will

wake up to

morrow changed

as the day

ceases at ev

ery footstep

and born again

are we. i am

not the same

roses bought, plastic

boxes, clear, stacked

in grocery-store fashion-

could crush them

in my hand-

fragile and

malleable (modern).

the petals adorned

thebed.

could have been

for anyone, now.

love is served

in single pieces

scattered from a

hand, not thorn

bushes, drawing blood,

old as a

stonewall.

to

under

whelm me,

will do.

to build

too tall

under

mines

all and

it own

s me.

it's no grave matter that
you write fossil poems
underneath
skin-soft facts and
clothey dross giving way
to their own kinds of
mutability.
i want to read your bones,
to boil you down to
stuff found in books
about the past,
check you out of
shelf-death, hard cover
pressing dirty hands like those before.
i want to know you live
and dig down through your whens
to trace behind skeleton pens,
i want to read your bones.

his eyes caressed

42-pt futura bold

(coldly, of course).

as she slipped by,

he lifted his eyes

to see no straight lines

in her moving body,

then set them back down

on the table,

next to the black-hot cylinder

(he never spilled)

and those grey

19th-century rectangles.

faithful.

if we are not awakened by light,

we are by wilt;

knowing even living things

loose their living to the wind,

feeling cusp of shifting ground,

suddenly the planet tilt.

you were worried by the car,

its noisy power steering

broken and leaking spots

on the ever-curved ground.

i missed fireflies.

the signal flares in the grass

whispered "God is light"

or something else.

did they lie?

where we've been,

we don't need cars, or

halogens, driving to see

hands-in-pockets billboards

offer odd transubstantiation,

new wine cupbearers

lying without consciousness.

awakened leaves tell the truth

when they die to tree

and live to air; we are

obsessed with our own impermanence,

clinging to tense.

fading fake colors

in the suns of our imitations.

you made my heart a homeland

in the days of open skies,

rivers in seas sent you to me

and you made port in my eyes.

colonized ribcage, settled side

filled up with hut and house of

rough-hewn logs, than brick

weighed down on trodden soil

i droughted you out;

sent you back to unkown waters.

your xenophobic mouth tensed

at the sight of odd-shaped sails