HIDES

We heap them upon us
to keep warm in cold months.
We ask them to lie with us
when we are dizzy and sick,
when the tented skins only
provide so much, a construction,
a place by the border we tilt
to trap the sun, a shadow
we harvest, an empty robe
for someone else to step into…

MY THROAT DOES CATCH…

again and again
like a liar ahead of the mob,
like a workman ready to douse
the torch, like the repentant
leper willing to take back every touch.
I have everything ever owed me
in a pouch paper-thin and out of luck.
I am a stricken syllable. No,
I can still say even less…

LATE NIGHT HYMN

The barrow-eyed windows of Brooklyn
look back blank at this point in the AM.
We’ve got nothing left to say to each other.
The moon is a broken tooth flying
off the sky’s jaw in eternal slow-mo,
some sort of clichéd fight scene
replayed over and over again.
Some tiny slight led to this,
and now the tides are set
in our blood, and the dreams
we sleep are bigger than any of us.

TURNCOAT

I’ve turned mine—have you turned yours?
The fuse in the bunker has been lit.
I am my own worst enemy—
and I refuse to exist.

OPEN THROATS

A throat thrown open to sing--
A circus trampling the dust
of day-old post holes in their rush
to clear the next horizon.
I’m sorry. You may have
forged oxygen into a commodity,
out of thin air made even thinner,
you may have hard-wired the choir
down to the spine, but these breaths
we take are no longer stolen;
they are our own.

SANCTIFY

Do I live by the altar
of water meeting water?
Do I die by the tide it makes?
Am I less if I don’t drink of it?
Am I more if I stand away?

PRAYER

My lips can’t say it enough,
my arms can’t lift the air enough,
my eyes can’t strip-mall the nearest forest
to get the word out on the front page
fast enough---I pray that this new shore
breaking on boulders and shards can be ours,
that our thirsts can be answered, that we can
turn a page that leaves behind a blank testament,
that we can fill it, end the sentence, start another,
begin…

INVENTORY

The owl finds his perch, and what other song
can I hear, but, “Who, who, who, who?”
And the trees splay dead-strangled fingers
to the sky, thwarted capillaries
drained white against the porch light,
as I pace back and forth, trying to measure
a shadow to its’ course.

SHAMBOLIC

To walk upon seas that were once
oceans, oceans that were once
perforated pavement, pavement
that would crack upon impact
of a suspect dream.

To see it all before me
in shards, to see it all
like stars gleaming,
like the strip-tease
before the cops bust in.

To see it all, in the moment
before impact, breathing.

EXILES

I could take you out back and give you a whipping,
I could set fire to the postage stamp of our
long distance ancestors, I could claim no kin
in the frothy blood. I could erase everything
I’m about to say, I could say, “I’m penniless!
Redundant!” And you would still lay this key
to a forgotten kingdom upon my tainted brow…