Last night at 11 I walked
around the corner of the house
to where no porch light shines
and the night greedily swallows
the smoke I do not absorb.
There is a metaphor about
what was sacred to me.
You were every cup overflowing.

I want to confess my sins. I want
to put the knife in your hands,
I want to push it into the
permanence of a scar.

Tomorrow is Tuesday, I will not
stand in front of a Rothko.
I will stand under the tension
of a desert willow bloom in
late October. It is paralyzed
in its insistence after the bees
have already left. There is no
backhanded kindness.
Membranes vibrate against
the edges of a dimming season.

The past makes me a ghost.




.

Would you wear yellow,
under the moonlight it is
white any way. All those
missing midnights on rooftops
we inhabited bleeding
into dawn. Baby step out of the
light, you know if you make up
a word it might make it real.

Maybe it is October and it is cold
enough at night that when I am close
you remember August when the heat
was still heavy. When the flowers
littered everywhere and your hips
like the river curving into my hands.

With the orange glow of your cigarette you are
Jupiter, you don’t even know how large you are.
The brightest spot. I spied on you once, a voyeur
with a telescope, watching you spin. Dancing
with your storms.

The crickets still sing their hunger.




.

Immaculate Conception

I fuck myself




.