hear it in my synapse
chew it in my heart
give it to the fingernail
print it on my paper

kiss it to my eyelid
grab it with my gait
dress it in a sweater
burn it with the word

kill it with a timestamp
grow it in the tongue
drink the bitter flowers
live it on the net

idsickness
gut fear, heart-
hurt
some sort of
dirt/decay
the romantics grew
stanzas from
and i want to
bury paper
in, to digup
and put in the
MoMA
strange primitive
love-instinct
of
fantasies
like crashing 747s
charred ecstasy
superego rot
good
night.

waterline unkeeled
siding,
romantic recession
debris.
felled an oak
tree
in overflow
killed a
car in excess
helicopter
heartache escape
rescue attempt
soaked words
drenched words
october raining
blood. lovely
newspaper pretending
forecast beauty,
breakup dryout
leaves
purity ring level
as water
damning as
inspection. no
body's going
through the oak
door.
anymore

when rich died in '97
my mother cried
next to the dishwasher
open, dripping

my family's bones are
holding up porcelain
like daily, sorrow
fills our bowls,

and the resurrection
is respiring
in steam between
plastic vents.

when caleb moved away
i cried and it made
the cover of my
childhood as a magazine

i went to assisi
no less worn than
glossy pages
buried 15 years

and in 60 will be
dead as if three churches
buried my blue eyes
into limestone.

water washes bedrock
in the darkness of the world;
caleb, i've grown up
with grooves in my soul.

vein and ventricle
let's draw our
state lines
where we feel like it

hand creased like a
peninsula,
hold mine
in the cold sea air

a rigidity next to
colorado
slices mountains
in unloved maps

let's plant our
ponderosas
next the snowmelt trickle
and die in the gulf of mexico

a tv commercial in
a daydream movie
about a love's destiny

a white plastic bag fragment
in a brown bird's nest
where eggs will someday be hatched

5 months (january to
may) in a common
life, my own woven story

like:
i was actually at the
village vanguard, tonight.
electric wind in the
speakers is distant song.
clouds are in my
room, now.
plastic bags
dream.
i'm not actually
mortal, at all.
time and place
are blankets.
i
dream.
you are a statue
in l'academia.
you are not
a cloud any more.
it's all an ocean being
drained towards heaven.
we'll hold tambourines
in marble hands.
every day counts,
or we count every day.
we can eat
book pages.
i didn't need the
city, in any way.
trees can collect their
thoughts off the ground.
we're all leaves falling
towards the tree.
a guitar is the only
axe anyone needs.
i knew where i was
going, sans maps/gps.
each raindrop is
a word.
stars are moving
apart.
stars are moving
together.
the world is my
nylon tent.
my lungs are
weather balloons.