Your shoulders gather freckles.

I know where to find potsherds, there is a place

by the river where abandoned adobe melts.
Polychromed geometry discarded near the

broken bodies of trees and the wire strung from

rusting iron crosses set to resist the siege of flood water.

The light sings through the fabric of your dress,

throwing curves into silhouette.

I know where the illegal dump is, the road veers

left but if you turn right onto the dirt road you’ll

get there. Look for the signs both for and against it.

Three friends died when they couldn’t make the turn.

I could find a home in the air of your smile.

Every day I wrap desire in a new package,

I get tired of dissecting middens for voyeuristic

pleasure but sometimes there is ketchup

when you need it.

.

I kept your lipstick print on a demitasse

for years. It has faded or is gone, I haven’t looked
at it in a while. I’m not sure who you were.

The house is full of small hermetic rooms that I
never enter. There are trails that lead to safety.
I’m tired of reading stories in the dust.

The spiders bring the spring, they are hungry
after a long winter sharpening their desire.

The flowers have come out everywhere. They
are not shy with their sexual intentions. I am not
as bold as the rain; I will not touch their softer skin.

It is a picture postcard stuck in the frame
of a mirror, the season doesn’t pass, it is a
memory no longer noticed.





.

Come on baby, I got the pig sticker lined up

between two ribs, all you gotta do is push, it’ll
slide right into my heart like cupid’s arrow.

Pulling a trigger is as easy as picking your nose.
Every bullet a guaranteed winner.  A shotgun is a
buckshot blast of hard candy kisses.

Wanna get hitched?  Put that ring on your finger,
count to three and throw the rest away. A hand
grenade will splatter me like a bug, I’ll be in every
nook and cranny. You’ll never wipe me off.

Love ain’t no pretty thing, you gotta spill some
blood, get your fingers sticky, wallow in it.

.

Tell me how you are a stranger, that your lips do

not move when you read a letter found with
someone else’s name. That the distance
between dearest and always is a delectable.
Tell me you do not glance at the trajectories.
How the words held in your hands taste better than
those that fall from your mouth. And I will not tell
you that I only have words to imagine touching
you, syllables as fingers to run along your spine.
That a line break is the inspiration of your skin.
I am only a craftsman binding these words to desire.




.

This is the last Sunday I will write
to you, after this the book closes.
I wrote my name on every page,
all my names in every word. It is a
glossary that goes nowhere. I pull
the thread through the spine, my shoulder
dislocates in the effort to shore up these ribs.
Some architecture is doomed at the start.

Sharpening match sticks and pouring out

bottles of kerosene.  I light cigarettes and

regrets to fill the time until the rain and her
sisters show up. The cat finds my lap, I should
share her contentment but that glass is empty.

.

Because of the way the tree of the night rests
on your shoulders.  I built you a crown of golden
hatchets.  You left it holding the door open;
you said you tried but it was too quiet when
the leaves didn’t crinkle like spiders.  And
breathing was the only disaster to run
roughshod through the room. Besides
where would the moon rest? I built you a
lattice of beetle backs in the throes of
flight, but the small chitinous flowers made
you sad with their promises. I scooped you up,
cradled all night in the ocean of my arms.
What holds an ocean but the bowl of the sky?
You were the island I clung to, marooned in this
purpose every. Somethings settle too hard,
the first raindrops like hammers, the dawn’s
knife at my heart.

.

I want to peel back
the skin from words, 
hear them scream as I
release the heat of
their flesh. Suck out the
marrow with a straw
while the truth of their
blood runs through my
fingers. I’ll breathe the
gore and wallow in the
eviscerated guts until
I know what to say.

.

Loneliness is violent. These words
are not a knife to excise pain
but a blade to scrape off the shit,
collect it, condense, and throw it.
the blade, the bucket,  the words.

.

I question the efficiency of lungs to displace this

dirge of a blackwater slough, I set backfires and
draw them into me, candles burn and obscure
heaven, something anaerobic still struggles.

The surface is wracked where your hands dig,

all the crosses quicksilver, the gems flake, and the
only keys are broken. I wonder if the bodies are
where I buried them. There is some part of us
that still hears the subsonic sobs. Or is it feel.
At what age are the symptoms lost.

It’s a common thread, pull it. Don’t worry

I’ll lick your fingers clean.

.

I am curled tight with the night’s listless dreams

still writing memoirs.  Your voice is a wedge
widening the gap between me and sleep. I side-eye
the light, I can see the glow of your skin, it is
desirous prey. You always could make this blue
light special. You peel the stripe of sleep from
my back with predatory fingers. My skin rising to
meet yours. The animal I am wrapped in begins to feed.




.

No matter what word I cut into the paper, the

blood is not indelible. You would think it sinister
how the tempest refuses the midden. I stand
and sway, eyes closed against the grit. Hand
in hand with an awl I draw desire against the days
that do not fold themselves away. This dust that
settles into the open drawers coats the yellow
flowers of the paper you lined them with, a
desert advancing. The sand always sinks to the
bottom and the fines will be levied for the
proper transgressions.






.

I cried the first time I saw a Van Gogh, the
paint thick with pain. The rain fell in slashes.

I should not drive and write poems to you. I
should not drive and think of you.  I can almost
feel the warm swell of your belly.

Under this persona of the sky the tall grass is
never green but I can not believe this yellow
is happiness.

.

The dead of winter was generous when
he laid his weight upon me. Hide-bound
fingers scratch against winter’s skin,
a young sun’s fire teases through
the frost of morning. The darkness does
not yield it’s shadow so easily.
Hunger hunts at the edges, sharpening
the seasons resolve. I am a poor man,
my hands have curled around their emptiness,
growing accustomed to what can be kept.

.

In your voice i feel a god growing in this land, 

an exquisite violence pushing through the soft
bodies of the dead. I am disingenuous in my
faith, my hands dissect remembered motions,
depleted and soon abandoned. I piss on the
flames, because I like to see the smoke and hear
the hiss of the choir.

I would kiss your lips to taste the formaldehyde

your heart rests in. Blood has grown rancid in its
roots, this winter’s stagnation long settled.
Whatever home there was never survived the cull.
Where do my bones rest, this ghost is weary
of the perseverance of hope in the graven image
of your face. Meager eyes seek abandonment, 
a piece of the holy land. I promise not to draw
blood but it is still corruption.  Look at it,
it is your murder.

Dark curtains of rain sweep into the mountains,

carrying the night against the dawn. There is no
gold to mend this.

.

These hands the color of your blood serve only
as a warning. There are knots that might slip.
The entirety of the night sky exploding around you,

stars glittering in the red shift of brake

light’s squeal.  Every edge a kiss that will draw
blood. I cannot extricate you from the torn
desire of steel or the perfect pink acceptance
of your splintered organs. There is no confusion
between desire and salvation.

.

It is cold. The house has drawn into itself,
feeling abandoned. The light bulb pings when
I switch it off, I wait for the filament to rattle
back into place.

In the dark this path is well worn and hedged
by the early songbirds. There are threads loose
that no longer snag, spiderwebs that do not
stick. I feel their thinness slide over me but I
no longer know the ghosts they are tied to.

I embroider this song through my fingers.
It is fragile, this remembering. Twisting and
knotting, an unseen force of unity or chaos.

.

Faith, love, or charity pick the one that doesn’t bleed.

There is the moon, it is dead, and it floats away from us. This knife is not keen;

the light catches on the edge. It holds nothing, the slightest twist and it is empty.
It is not a hammer. 

Let me rub out the truth between your thighs, vicodin and peyote, any chemical

excrement will do. I can’t say fuck, but I know it is sacred. Panties snagged by
coarse fingers, winds too dull to tear.

I wait between the air and the expectation. A heaven not in season to bloom

has settled here in silence.

I am supine, a line drawn, a horizon open. Liminal. I am a fly in your honey,

my tongue knows no language but your sweetness. That is a lie, I have licked the shit
from my fingers. There are words that will not forget, always landing on the wrong
side of hell. I love you so badly you would think it was malice that struck these matches.

 Where is paradise now?

.

To be light, to be remembered

.

My knuckles splintered, my fingers wept the first time I touched you, all the

electricity left me.  And still I want to touch you the way the light rests upon you,

reverently occupying the space between your breasts. This crude mouth and

coarse fingers are a poor hymnist.

.

We were two thieves crucified, we bled roses
in the beds we stole, midnights passing nails
between palms and teeth. The flesh is a memory.
The flesh is a prayer.

Wrapped in the shroud of last rights we occupied
the spaces between other’s desire. It was sin.
It was pure. It was a funeral bier we laid
willingly upon.  Fingers slipping into fire.
The blood born mortality, a cup brought finally
to our lips. A world in flames consuming
the rest of us.

.

I am as invisible as the
passion of the piñon's
short fingers trying to catch
the wind. The waiting of the
settling snow while space fills
empty hands without protest.
Can you see me sway?
The sky is glacial and heavy
as the time it has taken to be
found blue.  The sun screws
into my eyes like a memory,
those pressed flowers persistent
between panes of glass sliding
away until I look again. I always
look again. The pine cones are base-8,
a clever lock against catastrophe.
In the bed under the boughs I imagine
your hands looking for the small
stones of the future.  I imagine you
finding at least one.

.

Get me to the woods, leave me in deep

where the trees hold back the sky.  Where
the sun has not been seen since the bitter
claws of winter.

Someplace hard to break myself open, lose

all the stale days, the word counts, the needs
with their trinkets clasped close.

A place to pawn my skin for a new set

of lungs with a new rhythm and eyes to
see the blood of the land rise and the
sleeping gods stir.

I’ll grow into a new flesh of shadows,

insidious and necessary.

.

These days my hands do not ache

for the sinuous pearlescent splendor
of my body before I was trapped
as this ghost.

These days I hardly hear the echoes from the

screams of my voiceless heart.

These days the only ocean is what swims

in my veins, such a small stain that slips
down my legs with every moon.

These days I laugh at the irony of true love

being as significant as last night’s dinner.

These days I dance as light on the water,

the smoke of brassier twirling into the
heavens, the writhing ecstasy of snakes
entwined.  But I am still anchored to this rock.

These days a dagger is a friend indeed.

These days I do not remember the feral

teeth rabid for what I used to be.  This
mouth glittering with scales and spit.

The rancid violence of hunger.

These days I am a shipwreck in a bottle

and I only wish to drown.

.

In the haze of cigarettes, the place

was always approaching midnight.
The only bulb golden in its lassitude.
I never told you how ugly that dress
was, but it was magic when it slid
to the floor.  The thin fabric in the
throes of gravity, a sensual descent
across the care of your back,
slowing at the curve of your
delectable ass.  I imagine it as the
sound of flowers opening, the
softness catching in me.

An unlikely richness amid the squalor,

sometimes charity feels nice.

You were my favorite goodbye,

the rain of your hair held back,
your lipstick leaving me a faint
memento in that rotting atmosphere.

.

My hands find your knees and I kneel

into the space they occupied, it is
the position of prayer and supplication.
Lighting a candle on my tongue
we recite the old songs.  Lips, tongue,
and fingers draw the signs.
The grace of your fire rises to
encompass me, we are divine, lost
in the communion of pleasure.




.

The sky is the color of an Easter egg,

the faded blue disappointment
that is not cobalt, royal,
or the deep sea. But a filmy
thin approximation of nothing.

I should be grateful it doesn’t

demand any attention.  Uninterrupted
I can drink my coffee and wait
for the cigarette to die.

We have been here before, tethered

to this silence.  The tides softening
into retreat.  Wasn’t it always about
retreat, the small pivot of the trigger
and the release.  A finger on a petal,
a tongue almost wishing.

Just give me a moment to set this

memory to bone so in the years to
come these marks will not be mistakes
for animal gnawing.  To gauge the wind
with a hasty fist of grass.  To linger
long enough.

You are tired, your breathing bottoms

out into long pauses.  I can dream until
I sleep




.

A sucker for instant ambiance.

Let me break over you like

satan falling, or an iceberg
in a spring seas dawn, the
screaming steel, the ageless
resistance of geology against
inevitability.  The curl and the kiss.
Was there a reason to go back,
a violence unmet?

The waves wash everything

into silence.  A seasonal derelict,
Hades lost in the darkening spring.
Can he sleep now that life has left, can I?

The mad songs of men and birds
staking a god to mortality, lost dogs, and
murdered children.  The fall is not failure
where no echo is carried to shore.
I am so tired of standing here
a prodigy of hunger.

After a while I’ll give up.




.

I know the animal crawling in your

gut, the keening mouth wrecked
against a savage heart.  A body scraped
raw, galvanized and feral.
The misguided fervor of gnawing chains;
let’s grind this faith into a weapon,
an edge to release.  A rapture of blood

and loss until we let go.  Unburdened

and naked of constraint, a knife,
a flame, a hunger free in the night.





.

The Bosque is black behind the

two-way mirror of train glass.
What moves, moves without notice
away from the noise and desperation
of this machine.  The river slips south,
fattened by snow melt.  Reservoirs are
eager and corpse like in this drought.
The bleached banks crumbling under its
persistence.  The soft brown belly of the water
turns to the sun, it is not submission but a
luxurious stretch across this morning.






.