Difficult at Midnight

Our eyes miss us when we taste all over again

Every time we feel our sound our breath our

Mind embodied in voices here between us

We imagine that we’ve counted every stone

On this beach each one smooth as those we 

Poised in childhood for the perfect pitch across

The quietest lake to make ten maybe fifteen

Skims O the looping algorithms of our hearts

Oi! How can we ask our subtle questions and

Still part the green lips of these trees without

Wickedness or gentle branches torn from whom?

Now the leaves fall ecstatic and unreadable

Over what story we can’t yet see what we write

Untiringly these words in our hands in our eyes

Inexorably the Sun of the Dead Rises

We think we know what comes next the orderly

Battalions of souls marching toward purgatory

And hell is still the oldest story we know by heart

Nostalgia sets in and see? There’s no before

Or after regardless of the movies we love so

This river has a name or not and it takes us

Somewhere we may know or we may not

Most of the time we know nothing and we

Know nothing twice as well as anyone else

The shore trees spell out words we speak

Surprisingly well new ideas embodied in these

Odd nothings these broke-jawed gnawings

Our voices name every tree and yet we know

Nothing twice as much as what comes next

Wearing Our Best Grimace

We live here in this quiet city waiting for what?

Storms arrive and take away our electricity

And we grind our teeth in the absolute tinnitus

Quietude of a house growing slowly warmer

All day and we smile and say welcome to

Mississippi but really but rather our spirits long

To find totality and to traverse their dreams

Whose tongue? Whose dark sayings will do?

Who will cleanse our hearts one at a time just

Amid those narrow wails that undermine night?

And who doesn’t erect themes that ripen like

Two bodies in carnal vain? Our love shatters

Ten years of rainbows and three solid hours

Of green lightning and torrential rain we think

The Grim Justice of Light

Each night we soak our skin in salt water dreams

We wear such naked tattered shadows to bed

First light we look and squawk like smiling seaweed

What kind of children were we who see our souls

Entwine their delicate crystal necks desperate

To reach what stratosphere we can never touch?

What buried skies we nearly feel so far from what?

Dromedaries lumber across the desert of our love

Such dry estuaries blow dust to deltas of our love

Such thirsty currents carve these hard archipelagos

Of our love O divine rhetoric of our geometric love

We are nocturnal gods who chew with such taciturn

Indifference the libidinous rhythms and rhymes

Of our love our mouths full of bleeding ravens

So Far Ahead of Us That Is

We land today at the port of Vicksburg in our

Scarred leather and wreaths of stinking roses

These complicated blossoms that smell like rough

Night-heavy sex with a faint trace of pain then

You smile and I think that finally I’m the svelte hero

You hoped for but never dreamed would come

A sword in one fist a bouquet in the other O happy

Birthday America here’s a strange sunrise suffused

With odors I can’t choose between their fine

Fingers lifting me loftward which is not to say up

You’d think the best things in life were free as dead

Flowers and scar-marred grins but in a sense these

Days don’t add up to a life do they? And it's not

Your birthday yet this is all so terrifically premature

Well That Past We Have’s Always with Us eh?

I am the tiny leopard that leaps on high bookcases

When you are away I am searching for unequaled

Knowledge in lonely dust covered tomes you don’t

Intend to read I know so I offer all my gall my tricks

My savage rage to fake leather-bound books I hate

So much when you’re gone I march across the high

Ledge between ceiling and wall toppling three four

Five your Boston ferns I only lunge at what you keep

Secure oranges Halifax and tumbrils are my favorite

Words I won’t become a martyr of your silly chili but

Still I spill it to show how much I adore your secrets

Your recalcitrant heart and night seems to prefer

Us I say but you say it’s all about mirepoix and herbs 

De Provence and looking bored while it happens