CRUCIBLE

Arms can lift the air
and the dreams we sleep
are bigger than any one
chalice passed between us,
its’ healing work to fill
in the end of the sentence,
a smile caught unawares.

May you carry the goblet
that provides for the rain.
May your cheap hymn set
the roots to rush the next horizon.
May the barrows turn brittle
when you are thrust upon them.

IMPRINT

The full moon hung like a bright
frozen explosion, seen from the tip
of a telescope, or the barrel of a gun.
A birthday was a party hat stepped on
near a puddle of a booze. A smile
was a river that had to be waded through.
The black pavements gleamed with their
secret etchings, the heat of the day rising
up, dissipating. The last light to be turned
off stayed on, a little bit longer…

THE PULSE’S THROAT

…is open for business, and taking no
prisoners who aren’t willing to shake
their money-makers for a greater cause.
This is a free economy, after all.

The pulse’s throat is looking for the beat,
like a deaf-mute by the road side, about
to break into song, like a second cousin
second guessing the second coming,
and the pulse’s throat is really more
a matter of suggestion than law.

Please act accordingly…

SUBJECT LINE

Press the compass to my forehead,
select the GPS location from there.
Oh, did I say compass? I meant compress.
As in compress all this into a proportionally
acceptable segment. OK—Derek did it,
with a claw-hammered family heirloom
in the back garden. Wait—who’s writing this?
I got dibs on the man running out the back door…

COBALT BLOOM BLUES

Strike my eyes from the record.
Put my tongue in rehab.
Wipe the smile from the face
I haven’t made yet. Have me
be born asunder, halfway between
a lamb’s ear and a petal’s slow withering.
Lift me toward the heights that plunge.
Deliver me, an incomplete package,
to the door of my maker, insist
they sign for me, inspect the scrawled
blue ink of their signature, the DNA
bloom upon the page that proves,
“I am the one, I am the one…”

NATURAL’S NOT IN IT?

Why am I not surprised?
Contents implode upon ingestion?
May cause Digestive Armageddon?
Was that part of the social contract?
When the wood was stripped of its’ grain,
when whale bone found its’ way to
spear head, when the princess phone
could dial up a cluster bomb,
I stopped asking who you were…

TRACKS

Well, apparently, Jesus left a few
on the beach, but so did Toucan Sam.
I’ve been tracking them both,
and I’ve got plans, man.
I’ve got plans…