trace

in the shade drawn room
you are spectacle in the light
that slants through. golden. but you
cannot be bathed brilliant without
the shadow binding you with no
subtle urgency. my hands
are the darkness tracing
along your brightest edges




.

faith

other people's faith can comfort.
the architecture of belief in hands
shaped to contain a god for easy access.
mud walls smoothed, timbers to hold out
a sky that bleeds through the pale stained saints.
the rustle of candle wicks and coins, tokens or
treasures. forgiveness for the asking
and a small taste of a gods blood




.

chance

Your words are the radio pulse drifting 
through light years, a beautiful frequency 
disembodied beyond time. Isolated from 
the collective hum of countless stars busy 
reaching through dark matter, a void only 
in perception. if I am star stuff it is the failed
remnants, the reactions that didn't take, a 
victim of bad math. The odds climb 186,000
miles a second, not everyone can bloom 
into a hydrogen furnace




.

OK

converging air currents spinning
beyond reason grind timber framed
lives into a landscape of reliquaries.
when night falls is there sleep or is
the refusal to turn loose of all the
hands held dear too great?
The moons shattered light builds
shadows where shadows stand.
living becomes paramount again




.

where is the edge

where is the edge
of water, is it the line
that ripples. What then
is evaporation, colonialism?
or the moisture that
creeps through the sand
unseen unless you dig
a depression that becomes a cup.
boundaries are porous
and the wind always changes
pushing through every membrane




.

there is water

there is water, a thin 
surface resting the clouds
shimmer in your eyes.

teach me how to float




.

Inachis io

Paper veined wings, pages of
organic equations, a graph of movement
over the spectrum of the visible. But can you
feel my heartbeat cross wired into
your garden? Desire bound in ultraviolet,
purity beyond the fickle water's whims, but
drowning nonetheless in your hurricane seeds



artwork by Jel Ena
.

last night

I feel the pressure of your lips diluted
by the cotton weave, a kiss by intention.
roots pushing for more push slabs of concrete.
I can see you but I cannot move the blanket,
laying on my back I feel the bed tipping, a
localized tectonics, you are falling back into the dream




.

vespers

the floorboards are crickets,
every step is dark enough
to make them sing. Beyond
the screen door meadows
of grass stab into the yellow
light holding it captive. the trees
are contriving to release the
night they hold all day under
their leaves twined with tiny knots.
Fireflies extinguish themselves
in the heat, before the moth's
frenzy finds them.
I spend all night pacing
these sheets, a map of pointless
complexity and dying oceans




.