with crickets

directly applying salt to a belly wound
every night. measuring the sting.
oh all i have known.

tired accidental daughter of a
couple in love peers at the
sky a charcoal smudge.

i shall not limit myself.
i've seen what that does to
limbs, cramped,

seen what that does to
turtles in tanks and
sad sun-deprived succulents.

we both got sober
without
the other knowing.

i could not kill
the child, she was too sweet.
only one alternative.

roll the pewter
boulder off of her chest.
breathe into her lungs,

squeeze blood from between
her legs, give her fifteen lovers and
three friends.

no mama problems
here, red guitar, i've
been talking to God.

dreaming of forsaken
eucalyptus trees swaying beneath me
like shifting balance beams.

i feel like snake with a new skin,
shuddering rapture faint and
almost-glossolalia


like alone in my nightie embracing
my bed, the child again but
this time whole-

my love does sing with crickets all
the night long.

dreamcatcher

now that i know i will be leaving, i can see
oakland.
there's a lot of cement. broken
glass and tire stores. i
see myself most sharply maybe
at the gas station across the street
from my house, its sweet
stray tom with the gnawed ears
and those cashiers that don't
leave me alone.

the dishes have been piling up
for a week. when i see them i sing
i'm guilty, baby i'm guilty, to myself like
randy newman. i just dread the scum.
i hide in my room, on my belly, like a
fat snake in a hole and stare
at my dreamcatcher.

i burn a stick of incense and the thumb
of white sage justin gave to me.
i think i most likely wont ever find jesus,
but i guess if i do he'll understand
what took me so long.
more likely i'll find some porous
red rocks, a river, a tree with
needles to bleed for.

i can't wait to get the hell out of here.
i don't care much where i go as long as
it's somewhere i've never been in my life.
kept myself from the mud for too long,
the city is not my favorite color or
anywhere close.

today at the warehouse i read poems
on the sly and felt like i was stripping my
employers of a resource.
then i laughed. i was so happy
to learn that you can write poems
about anything at all.

after the apocalypse

listening to leonard cohen 'coming back to you.'






the room is cold. when you were here 
when you were here
well, you were here


my bed was made so neatly 
sweet slim fingers beseeching 
all the wrinkles from the sheets


now i'm slumped. on the bare 
mattress and the shawl does keep
the naked body warm


only the shawl to keep
the naked body warm. the aftermath
of the apocalypse 


amounts to twenty six ounces of salt
twelve ounces of honey and i don't really 
care what they say,


the box was between pandora's legs
the box was between pandora's legs
all along


and i don't really
care what you think, 
it's my box 


it's my box 
and what you thought of me 
when you loved me less


than most of the time
was probably 
true.

most recently i have thought:

1. 
There was not music to them all, or perhaps there was. Some strange discordant song (of whale?) for every ribbon of flotsam drawn ashore by the tide. Some ending in silence. Some in earthly echoes.

He knew the ancient composition of sand. It brought him closer, maybe, to its song. Off to Singapore now.


One of the gods was appeased that morning, or two. 








2. 
No one wants to give away the thing they love. I've only known one person who has, a woman. I can not speak for her.






3. 
It became apparent that there was something wild within her. That someday, she would need a lover who also possessed the wildness, that fluid. 


"You're going to sleep in your jewelry?" he asked. 

Portia

Portia coughed the ashes up and
she rose again


every sorrow which had rendered her
leaden veined


blew heedless in the wind, dissembled.


The map of grief was gone, there was no
destination


the door shut on the cartographer wielding
exhausted vellum


and she slept two days on that embroidered pillow.


Having eaten and been
swallowed by death


Some things seemed small,
now


nothing colossal as a kiss on the arm,


as finally something sweet on the tongue,


as blue as new day,


these the gods.