Though I have closed myself

When your brother’s kids woke up

On easter Sunday and they thought they had

The run of the house—watched from above

By proud momom in a nightgown

--When they played the abc’s

On an instrument they did not understand and we could hear

Them banging and singing gleefully upstairs as your father

Yawned with a camera in his hands--

When I woke in your highschool bed

to see the sun warming your skin

The soft fold of your head into your neck into your shoulder,

and your eyes, so blue about to suddenly open—

when your father said “I don’t believe in heaven,”

and I thought I sure as hell believe in good places.

when you put me inside you in the shower,

Arched your back and opened your mouth as you looked back at me

but we couldn’t come because we had to get ready for church--

When I saw your brother in all black,

Stepping in the door after a cigarette,

Weary haired and hot, and avvy shouted “uncle nick”

And stumbled over with arms open,

literally fell into his arms that

Were mysteriously, even to him, cast open.

When the day grew hotter and we went to your grandmom’s church,

Pointed out all the tattoos we could see

And smiled at the pastor, our coconspirator

When we thought of all the ways we feel about how he rose,

When you leaned your head on mine and curled your arm through mine

And our hands didn't quite line up so your fingers traced my veins

When we carried tulips in full bloom in each arm

Passing the ones who had raised their arms in praise

When I turned you down on the bed with the windows

Open on your green lawn, spread you out like a map

And plotted what was mine along you with my lips—

When the family descended

and we couldn’t find each other

on the carpets or wood floors

and I saw you in a blue dress

making the doctors laugh and talking

about retirement

when we were dragging tables together to eat

and you caught my eye and we went very quiet

and let the conversation hide us—

When you said you were proud of me in front of your whole family

Even your grandpa who watches fox news religiously—

When we found a place at st pete’s village in the sun

And lay out on a big rock with only the sound of running water and each other—

When we came home together to west Philadelphia

In the lazy almost summer streets,

with the men out on porches smoking

And calling out to women, and we

lay together with the windows thrown open

and I wore blue jeans and you ran your fingers

across my chest and through the kisses

I began writing this poem as you,

and you never fall asleep, fell asleep

night hangover

Well the whipping rush of pretend is gone,

Flown like it was flung

Sung by the bard, the bear, and the barrier

Breaking boards with fists seeking

Favor through whistles and grabs,

Dodging jabs and playfully dancing through the world.

Now is the hood wearer,

Bearer of bad news, old druid

Seeking communion with innocence,

Rickety fingers splaying to find the chords

Of hallelujah whenever he smells petrichor.

Damn this dust, this grime,

The time spent not knowing where or how

And seeking those things, trapped in the cycle of

Desire, expiring moments each wholly good or at least holy

I am no preacher, though

Every man may be in word or deed.

My gables are painted in the evening,

Serve drinks to uncles and daughters alike.

I celebrate the victory of symbol over symbol

Or even symbol over reality with the smashing of a glass.

I am borrowing ritual from everywhere trying to keep us

In the running. Across the churning waters is the sun

And beyond that the moon and beyond that a fox in the stars and beyond that

We are there again reaching out to each other, impenetrable distance disappearing

If only untraveled. And everything in this world lies down to rest and everything opens itself to me in these moments, dark or light so that it is all I can do to breathe

Breathe and remember this is not just a breaking or an ending or some god thing to be touched and remembered but to know ive got a girl

With lips like early spring and I’ve hunkered down in the rocks in the night and felt their cool rumbling in my bones and I’m singing a tune I never had to be taught

And though every week or more I might strut or play the part along another’s stage,

Beneath those boards lie the foundations I know so well

That I can touch and feel like the tide.

visit

When the winter sun comes

Through slotted windows by the bar,

And the storm melts off your roof

Like all the other roofs for miles,

When the dawn is clean and blue

And the one who needs sleep does not wake--

When the sparrows flit between browned

Mounds of street snow, and the anger of the restaurant bubbles—

When the future tense draws blood

Though you muscle into it with eyes unaverted

At questions of “Philadelphia? Organizing?
A life of spirit?”—

When your soul cub draws the bus card

And slingshots down the interstate,

Curbside bard in a Canadian tux shrugging off

A winter of war, of debt into tight rolled

Belly laughs shivering through two skins goosebumped against touch—

Destiny isn’t something

Apart from all the rest.

This is the moment on which it all hangs

In balance. I feel it when the contacts

Last too long and blur the world,

or when they bail on meetings.

Everything is held when we are afraid,

When we hold each other with tears,

When the campaign flounders

And when the magnolia trees whisper of spring.

This cold light is breaking through to something hard and deep.

What to do with a day?

As green sleeps beneath, my heart

Retreats into its known homes.

But that is not for us, my wind.

That is not for us.

We blow through sun and rain,

We cherish the seasons.

Though at times we seem still,

Always is when, always is when,

We are moving. Ours cannot be buried.

pie

It dried into the wool today before

I had even realized, there was a reopening.

Solid snow kicked freezing bleeding pouting skin

Butting through shoulder pads of rubber soled

Glistening boots out into the cold first cut, first

Glance, price of youth, price of love bubbling through veins,

Percolating perfection perforating the thin bin of the everyday.

My body is trying to open itself up.

Solid form storming through, born a reckoner,

Seconding blended misties, thrifty and trendy, bending

Altered morals, wending ways along byways and highways

To a piece of sleep, the peace of the everyday.

But in the narrow streets filled with snow

I come across it, splayed across the world

Like the blooming carcass of god.

The bedroom has cancer, stance against the night

So upright and practiced, airtight seal to feeling right.

When I am alone I cannot go there, I am not strong enough.

And lately, bikes have been pitching me sideways,

Small glitches in well-versed arguments

Disrupting the intoned pitches of the shadow self

Mirroring the abrupt end of the body with its

Soft edges and fuzzy margins, hollowing out

The fear of death, the fear of rebirth, the fear of just one life,

The fear of importance.

Here I am again: burnt hole in the world

Through which the thread is pulled.

Self-conscious windowpane.

Eye in the fireplace.
Dust of the vents.

Salt in the darkness of the empty kitchen.

I am fighting to stay alive.

We all are. In small ways.

Not for life. But to be alive to it.

Fighting the absurd thoughts and ways that keep me from BEING

Suddenly in the exploding night air,

Cosmos folding out above my craned neck,

The beauty of it turning me river, turning me song,

Turning me sunset.

the First

If the world were to begin,

It would be here

The dark opening through blue eyes

Swallowing everything,

hungry legs tender pulling,

Guiding light into the world

Bright light without beginning.

In the beginning there were words

And then light

And only afterwards a source.

Here, now, the fount, the mother lives

Gasping under me, I see it now,

The source of all, every meaning hidden deep

In the way your buttocks quivers,

The way your pelvis reaches out to kiss me,

The way as you rise up,

lips reach over themselves

Crawling up my neck, drinking dew,

Raining manna, sucking up and silent.

There is no beginning to understanding

The beautiful poems your fingers trace

Stretching and cracking, singing

With the breath which comes as you come,

And goes only like feet stepping down on the path up the mountain.

But I am beginning to see you

For what you are

You unfolding

You crazy arc

You hoarse whisper

You screamer and pounder and slapper

You rider

You human being animal being.

Beginnings are hardest, for the card and concept never align.

The spine of the moment is never clean

Never carrying its own weight.

There were moments where hardness was hardest

And the only respite for my lost, faceless soul

Was the home you opened up for me.

And so it goes with the first poem,

Already over itself, shapeless assertion at its voice and master.

Your eyes open, spilling darkness from the primordial something

And your legs are slick as a tongue and just so never still

Like the ocean rising up to greet me

And then falling with me, taking me down.

This is something beyond beginning,

Though I never leave it behind,

Though I never reach home*:

Inside, filling you and full of you

And no more than a child

With weeping, with trembling,

With no image, nor shield, nor image upon the shield for protection

With No sense of what I is

This feels like a reason to write songs, of which let this be the first,

This feels like the stuff of the earth, the source,

The reason we are here.

2nd fall

I fall off my bike every Tuesday

Skin shuddering, mouse

Escaping, the red splotch of dirty

Blood perforating the aether.

She is on my thoughts, dead dark

Bark growing soft lapping layer catching

Ivy into cranny fetching,

Batch latching snatch grabbing,

Super warm the chest unfolding,

Level headed head unknowing,

I am hurtling into the city.

I am machinery unworking.

Desire un-origami-ing into lack of tension

Grabbing tension from the folds,

Scolding comfort in its deepest recesses even as,

We are building a house that stands up to the cold,

Even in spring, 60, 70, 20, nothing can penetrate deeper

Than this babe, that

Shelter is needed for life

To keep the skin from skinning off

We’re faling down to earth from above,

We need shelter, we need shelter--

And we’ve got it here.

moonlit

I'm moonlighting bourbon into
the dirty plastic cup i keep locked
in the closet until such time
as it is warm enough for the roof.
cold enough tonight.
it tastes of the limestone i let
it run down like the abs i will
sneak into the dust to create.

what are we being punished for?
the caress of memory blurring
the metal structure of myself
to steam. shirts with funny phrases
used to line the dresser.

what have we chosen?
the life down to the tired
wire. and now taking time off,
i see it more. they are
raiding the cemeteries.
They are strapping bombs to
imagination, trying to take
bodies.

Above the street, i flex
and the boards flex, and i count
to 100. not good enough.

the bicycle frame is good enough.
old and bent, yes, but usable.
it hurtles down the streets with no bike lane,
wind skipping beats, the earth curving
down.

i am a thing they cannot take.
you are a thing they cannot take.
we will pierce and pull and paint
ourselves because, though survival
is not war, this kind of love certainly is and
i want my body to stand against
when the time comes.
I have learned to hold--


I had a dream they came for you
in the night and in a struggle
down to the ground i bit their throat,
and then bit down still further. my face
was warm with it.

In the morning,
i am slow to come
to, i am still taking my leave,
taking my pieces
back, gathering my
pieces.

I have shored my fragments
against this desert wind. closing my eyes
during commercials. laying
down to speak quietly after the sun
begins to sleep. we are
in this together, created things--
a decision-- hand on forearm on
forearm. send them right over.

I am learning to love again in the white walls
with desert plants living on the air
that seems to be strangling the world.
They strike ancient designs in wire and shadow.

I am in the car stretching
a hand on your thigh, finding it
difficult to say.

Can we get a clear picture of where we've come from?
The camera, built on itself,
swiveling on a now muscular neck.
I am not the pipsqueak or the nerd any longer.
A face to meet the faces you will meet.
The mirror too.
There are things i have become,
(and we all have)
that i no longer see,
Pieces I have chosen
that i cannot recall.