Crickets

In spite of great solitude
come the chirp, chirp of
the night
dripping like water droplets
down the sink drain,
straightened out loud,
a philosophy.

Alone as a daydream, deep
in a honeycomb,
nobody comes,
nobody goes,
rolled up in my own cigarettes
horror chirps in
the white plaster.

All day, mold forgets to grow.
It understands it is just a story,
not like the crickets that
chirp, chirp all night,
catching my sleep in their wings.
I miss them terribly
when night falls down drunk
and puts them to bed.

I wait for twelve hours,
picking hair from rubber carpet,
melting soap into black licorice
for the old neighbor man
with the old hat.
I wait till school buses smile
and wave good-bye to
the highway.
I wait until the waves of L.A hold
the last handful of
sun, till the crickets come.

Away With The Night

You who are with me,
who ache with me, please,
lay still, hold your breathing –
we are sinking
we sink,

beneath wings of bad mothers,
through sad voices of home
our dead limbs fall off,
our bones sleep on their own.

You who are with me,
who are silent at night,
who separate stars, who burn with out light

hold on
hold on
to the hands of these words
we are sinking
we sink

through this very dry Earth.
God isn’t softening,
we are starved by disease,
by darkness, by deepness
of the valley’s between us.

You who are with me,
who ache life away, lay still,
hold your breathing,
hold on to your life,
we are sinking
we sink

away with the night!

In This Dark Hour

It is at this dark hour,
it is at this inferno,
it is in this block of rage
that I notice how stale I have become.

I am cracking,
in every fold of my skin and
in each dry bend of my skinny bones,
I become mosaic.

I did not read life properly, I think.
Big doors slammed on my little fingers
so many times and even
though they broke and ached,
I made them wrap themselves around
heavy door knobs and
step beyond explanation.

What is to understand?
Skies are a warning. Wind is creation.
We stirred life up together.
What is to understand?

Age is a gift and a curse.
The past sings me to sleep in
rough fusion, a symphony of screams
that shred my nights out before me.

I remember when she stood in front of the mirror,
red lips pursed deeply at my innocence and
my tremor. She terrified me more than
the thunder that rattled the world outside.

I chose the storms over her natured arms,
but I did not understand. I read her
wrinkles and her pores
and her treacherous explosions
as if they were life,

and now I have age to help me read,
but I am too old to understand.
My body is cracking under misunderstandings
and exposure.

I want the bright day back that I found
when I ran barefoot over boulders,
before boulders fell on top of the four
chambers of my life.
I want what was taken from me by the
thick chalk of her pursed lips.