When the window opens (this window is open)

When each bridge whispers, then rips

When I slip through the filter

Then,

our sin

is swallowing

our lowest hopes

The result is the sound smack

of pleurons, lateral plates

of body segments, landing

in the pattern of a scrapbook.

Numbness.  Feeling the company

of feeling.  Feeling the company

of others’ thumbs, the complexity

that falling leaves.  A dove (however symbolic)

A dove on a tightrope.

____________________

The earth is a handful

of fingerpaint waiting

for the next glacier.

This world is a handful.  But,

late night, no one arrives.          

We are water people

(though no one told me).

We are water people,

but waves can’t erase

the pulse of what’s under

our table.

                                                Enemies:  our task

                                                                 to develop the craft

                                                                 to gut the structure

                                                                  to discipline the digging in

Late night,

I finger the window frame,

feel the air.  Guilt’s great eclipse

lifts the wind.  This elegy

should not have been–

Half me, half you,

half moon.

Even with hands closed,

I know it is you.

This night, cruel rain and lamé

But when I had you, you know

the cliché by heart,

nausea set in stars.

Searching for the perfect always ends

inside the muse—

who smears honey on lips,

then leaves.

Again, we forged our mother-tongues,

kissing one another’s islands.

We fold alike

as tight kaleidoscopes at the door.

You force your red flowers.

You force your yellow ones, too.

Buttercup under chin:

Yellow.  You like it.  I’m smooth.

Our backbone and lips

share errors the colors of blood and butter.

Veins are wounded so we look

for other means to send the message.

The moon, giant pushpin in the sky,

posts this note:  it’s time to forget

we’ve been getting what we asked for.

Again, it is the living ghost who sits,

dressed as a stereotype.  Proof

already rendered its services—

its quiet current pulsing through skeletons

whose senses have strayed.  Distant conversations

discover our mutual flesh.

 You uttered this one desperate sentence

and waved pieces of gray cotton under old ebony tables.

Into the arms of each other—where sleep dare not down

the fallen birds.  Distracted by the young man’s usual steadiness,

we cannot see the lips that are well worth the feels. 

You can think of those last leafy branches vanished,

the last woman loved pink satin and dropped her fur

next to the fire.  She heals all defects and that induces him

to lower his head before the nightfall gives this iris

honorable youth again.

 “I wish I could tell the next thing, But in dreams I can’t, 
 so will let this stand in for it, this me 
 I have become, this loving you either way.”
                                                 --John Ashbery
                                     from “From Estuaries, From Casinos,”  Hotel Lautrémont
  
 “Throw away the lights, the definitions
 and say of what you see in the dark.”
                                                 --Wallace Stevens
  
  
 Said Dali to Lorca:
  
 …escape
 from the watch
 and become
 a new bodily joint—
 in the place
 that corresponds
 to the sex organs
 of bread crumbs…
  
  
 If you think you find yourself  here, 
 you are correct.
                                     --Judith Feathers 

for you, once and again

You left your calling card
on my spine, etched as if to say
“I was here and here—again.”
I could love you
in almost any city, so
let’s get gone
and see.

 I remember when we first met
 beneath the bridge.
 It was back when your mother’s house
 was painted Cape Cod grey.
  
 We hung from the jungle gym
 like prisms catching light
 that broke our laughter—
 not even/out, 
 but hushed and lulled 
 into a blend of dusty brushstrokes.
 White hands clasp black hands
 mesh white hands now blue.
  
 Years later, the planets learned
 how to pulse in tune 
 with the seizing stars. 

 You threw something on the floor, 
 and I had to move in to take a closer look.
 It was a model of a ------   that I
 no longer know.
  
 Deep weary, without veils
 and a long time since 
 you relinquished judgment.  You left me
 alone yesterday to pledge fury 
 to the last olive tree.  
 Nothing protects me from
 the expression on these faceless mannequins—
 their arms dislodged by domestic thieves.
  
 To shed doubt, he left me
 in a whirlpool to weep 
 without release. I canceled
 my golden hair, and kept more
 of what the silence gives us.  
  
 Looking back, I should have noticed
 why there were no photos.
 Muscled up by wanderers and mystics,
 there are no more antics on tap.  And that’s fine with me, 
 but I’m still curious about the strangulation.  
   

 Let’s meet for some prefabricated
 language play where we can hone
 our seductive keyboarding skills.
 I’ll bring my rainbow
 duplication rights. 

 In which reaches of my muscles
 do I miss you most?  Like a saint
 hung to dry, humidity’s hot hand
 presses against our foreheads. 

 Si tu le souhaites—
  
 That the hummingbird
 hitches rides on the backs
 of other birds is a fanciful myth.
 As dust twists, smothers us
 in its unromantic cloak,
 somewhere moving parts
 spark ingenuity in the tender quiet. 
  
  
 Si tu savais—
  
 Within a gnarled tree
 that’s name escapes me,
 the small night scatters in pieces,
 calling night swallows to surge and fall
 in gentle arcs.  Too cold a sentence
 the gingko tree bears.
  
 Si tu veux—
  
 The Santa Anas
 aren’t always the enemy.
 In fact, some say
 no better friend
 will you find.
             (I have the right to burn bridges.)