If We Could

talk about orchard red petals on wood tables
plate upon each other
soft eggs whispering to candle wax and I am

just buried in wallpaper
trapped in a past life
guessing on about oil in still life canvas

on a second thought my eyes shift
to roll back
and he slithers up toward my lips

because if he could he wouldn’t exist
yet here we begin
just two pieces of black ice
melting pastels into sunset

and if we could get it back together
from memory – where it is what it was –
we would pluck tiny pellets from
pomegranates in winter
for juicing

individually

without each other

The People

Starved out of politeness, cockroach-kicked feet
walk across a blue night.
My lungs are stuck together, breathing in
radiation from the hot air
blown in my face.

The people, the people glow
white teeth at every camera. I see
the teapot boiling,
steam rising,
whistle blowing….

my ears ring out electric chords,
far from the classic, ghostly shadow
that sprawl across my nerves
when they start to shiver.

They eat very little,
or a lot, or they drink
or not,
or they lie and mispronounce their own
names on purpose and move around mountains
blending in with the tones of the town.

These people seem largely designed, I
walk on needles. I am little and not
proportionate. I dream about
ages, and eggs and other meals
that are not enough on their own.

Is anyone? Enough with just their teeth and
their camera and light?
“She’s only crazy,” says my mother.
And the hills are long monsters leaking
into my brain. I’m dizzy
and distorted. This image.
This image set up in sanity, or not.

Am I New

Flapping tongue, to change your name, to change yourself,
to change,
to change,
you say it’s smoking time, maybe if the zone changed,
but we run on desert time,
at devil lake
I wish I was, a reservoir, I wish I was a dog,
rolling in the dirt, a tumble weed,
collecting time and breeze,
in the hustle
rolling,
changing,
flapping in my sleep to change position, to change disposition,
to change,
I meditate, a trumpet sounds,
an angel sings, is it me?
Did I work? Did the clock split my tongue
and now I am two?
Am I new?

Come With Me

If you have ever bit the skin
of an orange, lifting
flesh from flesh,
life from life,
you can come with me.

If you have ever sat at the wake
of death, eye-to-eye with the
giver and, or, the taker,
you can come with me.

If you have ever put your body to rest
under a sky full of the blackest of
widows,
then come with me, please.

If you have ever coasted over a
thousand scissors cutting
every corner of every thought,
then please, come.

If you have ever melted into
the sun, begging to be rooted
into the eclipse,

If you have ever swallowed a pearl,
hoping to be turned into gold

then come with me.

In A Dream

Pig snouted soldiers strut
like heavy cannons,
over dry wild desert weeds

I tumble behind a boulder
maybe twelve or thirteen
I had not met the cycle yet
of Mother Earth and her Moon

The others slept in the madhouse
where echoes of screams
jumped from wall to wall

I tried to burn all of us down
once, melting us into a boiling
ooze where we could flow
together the right way

but she caught me and
I was sentenced to the garden
living off tomato bugs
and raw onion

This was when there was something
now it is this
desolate; sepia spotted trap.

I closed my eyes behind the giant rock
begging the shadow to suck
me into its safe home
It whispered that I was not ready
that my temples were froze

That’s when I heard their cries
mother and brother being
cooked alive
I opened my eyes and
the pig snouted soldier snatched
the dark hole from my face

I am awake.

that my lips may part for lava

winds sail slow
arriving with difficulty
to confession

I speak against another
back turned
burned by sun light

I am familiar
with the dark –
with poison
with automatic disappointment

that my lips may
part for lava
but not for pardon

and I sail slow over
raging seas
arriving with difficulty
to confession

where familiar darkness
speaks mostly
about me

The Great Crime

You will lay aside your suspicions of me.
Slide the doormat over your back,
be still.
I turn silver coin accusation
between my finger tips
and flip.

The great crime, I ask you,
a civil war inside me,
or you?

My innocence is like this!

Your guilt is a private loss,
but the way you droop confidence
downward, as if the ground
will forgive you,
shows my victory,

and in my voice, forgiveness,
but my gut smirks.
I am a temple of construction.

Earthquakes And Eruptions

I live with a turtle
in cold corn field rows. He is hard.

Last time we visited a moon together,
he took my pen, his tricky art,
pliable concern caked dirty under
turtle nails.

He has not always been
a beast. Once, he had wings.
He hovered above sandstone.
I thought of his death. Afraid.
He would be ghost treasure feeding
corn field soil.

He was a well-made horse. Gallant.
Reinforced.
I bridled him. Caged him.
The Big Blue Marble called to him
with a voice
of adventure,
of freedom.

But, he was kept.
Trained.

I nailed his shoes to the dirt. One day,
I felt the Earth crumble beneath my
dainty feet.
Earthquakes and Eruptions.
The horse ran free!

I cried for a year,
spent one more in guilt,
then another in admission..

until, one firewater night brought him
back to me. He stood like a horse.
He spoke like a horse.
He drank like a horse.

But, he was not a horse.
His eyes had become chicken neck yellow.
Shifty.
He tried to stand as a horse,
but he startled
and ducked,
tucked himself inside.

A turtle. With a shell.
In a field.
Cold.
Hard.
Taking my pen because he hasn’t any thumbs.