I.
I am not going crazy this morning, the ocean to my right, those crumbling cliffs to the left. i am only tired, so tired. Rusting signs nailed to driftwood posts proclaim quarantine statistics, tired. Train tracks run along the bridge, splintering, creaking, tired. In less tiring times, in our youth we'd climb like fugitives up its scaffolding and inch our bodies onto the huge cement blocks that kept it grounded in the sea. a six pack of something cheap in cans suited then wonderfully. the cigarettes were marlboros. Even then I might have seen, my palms foretold it in their lines: tired. The ground shakes with the passing of the train. No passengers, just unidentifiable freight. and an egret suddenly midflight.

from somewhere this sadness rose in me like moss, green life; it broke through the ceiling and surfaced in my chest. it grew quickly and lithely, little purple flower facing the sun

i am proud; my pride won't let myself admit i gave a little bit away
and that the bit i gave left a well in its place. deep dark and blue

but the truth is in my eyes

looking so sad

i don't ever want to scratch the surface of the comprehensive history of lovers. even when, in the night, i turned toward the window and saw the ghost of
her all in blue, my great grandmother

i knew that she didn't belong and that all must lie after a time
so tired

sleep is what we all have to do, i said to you
you agreed it was true. you were glad it was true

and it all made me glad for you,
so i sit frightened now.

these days i speak a different tongue, i want to sew myself into the hems of silence,
blow my warmth and my wishes into stones;

i never had a tiger's eye til yesterday. this tiger's eye my mouth: now i need to crush it small, pulverize it to dust to set drifting in my blood, i will be strong

summer solstice come and gone yet only just begun. and i must let that wrap me in its long arms, and i must let that make me feel i have a friend

that there is still the best thing left, the only thing
still time. fibrous and foliated and sometimes, on a good day
merciful

1 train wreck


I know myself to be a train wreck now, a train wreck to the core

and i can be in a roomful of beautiful people but still look toward the door
only wanting to slip away to my room and listen to the night moan

i seek a cold and smooth stone to lay my body down upon

to dissolve into the night
i would adore
to be stronger than my wayward, flailing heart

i've got to try



2 Four minutes

I only have four minutes
four precious minutes, fleeting and incorporeal and green
i've just lost three of them in looking out the window and seeing

not yellow daisies, honeysuckle and dead vines
but a different view entirely, in my folly

the four minutes have passed
yet i remain optimistic:

i no longer care about the time. i care only about the song. i care only about the song: the way it aches in my chest, the physical pain of beauty

very distracting

head full of snow

'When the wind blows and the rain feels cold 
with a head full of snow 
In the window there's a face you know 
Don't the night pass slow? 

Sound of strangers sending nothing to my mind 
Just another mad, mad day on the road
I am just living to be lying by your side 
But I'm just about a moonlight mile on down the road 

Made a rag pile of my shiny clothes 
Gonna warm my bones, 
I got silence on my radio 
Let the air waves flow, 
For I am sleeping under strange strange skies 
Just another mad, mad day on the road 
My dreams is fading down the railway line 
I'm just about a moonlight mile down the road'

the rolling stones

the leaves of the trees in your yard screech low like cellos; it is too dark to know where the narrow path leads, creeping as it does to the right and then out of sight, but that's where you go

a head full of snow: have you a head full of snow? is this the origin of your ghostly glow, your emaciated smile ?

your hands are warm anyway

a head full of snow. it's a feeling i've known (we were all clean and young before we were grown but the nights are cold, and through the smoke we only seek the heat

that we need for our own)

your face in the half-light, the shadow of your collarbone

of course i can only close my eyes,
remember a song

stirring up the stations of the radio. my vision adjusts to find you moving slow, your eyes ignited by a lighter's adjustable flame, beautiful mouth, a perfect bow, and

a head full of snow

i shall lay back on this table and watch the stars explode. and i shall not cry because i am too high to remember how.

i have a glass of wine a cigarette and the rolling stones
and i peer through frozen eyes, hear through a wall of snow

(as do we all, i know, because we all have felt the pull. along the narrow path, that's where you go)


to calm a feeling that is stronger than your bones, that threatens to grow darker than your immeasurable black pupils know

a piece of carnelian, cellos, a head full of snow

asleep and dreaming

i am asleep and dreaming, like the coyote lying limp on the shoulder of my most beloved
highway 101

a casualty of spring

note my four paws finally come to rest, my full, speckled tail does not wag and
the foolish, rattling pinball machine of my heart stills and ceases those deafening, breathcatching beats

so unruly and reddening to my unsuspecting cheeks!

'how they once plagued me,'
laughs my dreamself

'i was so in love then'

it's a face i want to turn to me with all the warmth of the sun:

despite various ominous sightings,
of hunting birds, a swoop of vultures, a black cat staring
at me through my window,

my own doom all spelled out for me by candles;

despite all that i know that i'm willingly walking
in the direction that tugs constantly
at my limbs

of course i am
have i any choice?

a rhetorical question,
the answer is no.

half my heart

set free by love, like aretha
seventeen
by the cigarette in his mouth
by his mouth as he'd sing


driving north on the 1
to his house
in the heat

glasses secured with dental floss
fingers tuning strings

i miss half my heart
tucked in his glove compartment

half my heart
next to a carton of disintegrating chesterfields

half my heart loyal to our love only for the classic
only for each other
only for the summer

my compass points irreversibly toward
his smile

still the north star, still the sun
still the brightest thing i've ever seen

still my best friend, still my only friend
still mine and
still his

the best thing perhaps ever to happen to me
still half my heart

'he's a rebel, and he'll never ever be
any good.'





inclined to make a sketch of him and not for the first time, it is
most cruel

enigmatic from the start, dark eyes like coals, that conscienceless gaze

(a guiltless gaze, so unconcerned ...!)

i'm nearly inclined to pick up a hairbrush
and start singing

of how he was
partly hidden by shadow

absolutely criminal in his first impression
absolutely criminally
bad

leaned back in his chair, arms limp at each side like a junkie, smiling vaguely
as if transcending

immediately recognizable as a night owl

pale, anemic, thin-wristed and mean

a crown of thorns i wear round my chest
every time i move i bleed a little

he's a rebel