thoughts about existing forever

in this house.
with the fawn-colored couch and its fawn-colored hair
that stick to my clothes and ingrain themselves in my socks
and the boards that creak like an old woman
in her sleep
in the nighttime,
when the owls lurk outside and the wasp hive stuck
to my window is quiet.

these girls and these boys with no fingers and no god
who needs god anyway, when we’ve got time travel- we
are the lords of our bodies, but
somehow we always, in the end, at the finish line, end up
handing ourselves over to others
that poke and prod and shrink us to
itty. bitty.prunes.
before expanding us into balloon.s.

but if there was no end, we would stay alone, windows shut
against the cold and the buzzing of the wasps in their stripes
of gold and antimatter – they have good defenses against
the ones who would enslave them – and my socks are pressed
into the crevices in the couch
searching for a warmth that will only come
when the end does.

Come Hell or High Water

Had the snow come down in such a turmoil
as to shield you from me, then blind I would have walked,
with nothing for warmth but my rags and bones and
blank stares into my eyelids.

The ground is hot beneath us, so brace yourself
against the envy of the under-places, their fingers caught
in their mouths while they watch us perform tricks
they’ve never seen in their fire pits or iron chambers.

I was never much of a singer, but for you I’ll steal
the chords of a nightingale and make you pine for me,
sitting high in the trees and eager to fall into your arms
if only you were there and hadn’t been stuck at the crossing

of the rivers, which seem to mourn for us already as they
blunder blindly away from this mountain I’ve been placed on.
And maybe they’ll find some siren to pass through them
and maybe she’ll carry some message from you to me,

but darling, come hell and high water, I’ll find my way back
so we can kick the stars away and make our own little nest
in the dark folds of each other’s legs.  I promise it, so take
this bone from my chest and expose me to you.

If the devil came to take you from me, it’d be no surprise
that I’d toss my soul at him to cover his eyes while we stole
away.  It’s no surprise that when we cross again, I’ll stroke
the water to calm it so you can be safe in your walking,

and on the other side, come hell and high water, I’ll strip
your clothes off and sing to you again, just to feel your chest
rise in response, quicker now, like a metronome counting off
the seconds until I kiss you back to this world.

Metronome and Ouroboros

I.
There’s lace hanging across the trees, and
(It’s in the air, he said.)
black fog creeps in with the sunlight
‘til the golden wheat dripped Midas blood
into the rivers.

Locusts came and took our air,
their wings batting the webs from our throats,
but the spiders stayed and stayed the lungs
from taking in the bird song, (It smells
like rain, he said.)

So skipped along the chartered grass,
with golden means strung through our hair,
but as the green gave out to gray the grit
of blood ran through our toes, and I saw woody butterflies
(I see white, he said.)

II.
The corner of the house was painted moss.
It clung to my fingers as I rounded, toes outstretched
to reach for hallow ground, and the trees bent in,
stuttered their breaths with a sound of drums,
measured all like metronomes.

In the far-off fields, Ouroboros beat his head
against a rock in madness.  His eyes frothed pink.
The ground shook my knees.  Through his chest,
ivory pierced the overlay of yellow skin, an arrow
tipped with bluish black and poppy ribbons.

(I feel pity, he said.)

III.
Ouroboros, don’t you know
to stay yourself within the earth, writhe only
in the heated seas?  What water
have you come from?  Ah, the river, it runs with
gold.

IV.
He called for cigarettes.  I can feel another heartbeat
against my bosom.  Maybe the butterflies
have come to seek shelter
from this thunder-wrath.
Maybe tomorrow Ouroboros will be a myth again.  Oh,
mud, cease your knocking of my legs,
and help me to my feet.

For Sparrow

Oh Sparrow, with grain clinging to the soft edges of your wings,
how is it that you stare so wide-eyed at tree bark, with your beak a-
singing to the worms in the knot holes, as they squish around their lazy pink sundays-
how is it that you tempt yourself with young ones to catch the coasting
wind lines under your feathers and soar so high that even man wished to follow
you, but, how is it you return to your bed of sticks and love the fuzz-tuff darlings
in their casing?
Oh Sparrow, had I been born your sister, if the twisted whorls of life had somehow
brought my consciousness to yours in a kaleidoscope of blue-toothed id, I would have stolen
your wings just to fly twice as high.  My breath might have left me and taken to gravity’s heed,
but not I, for I would reach up with my soggy beak to skim the clouds and race the planes
and cry for all the baby birds who would never see a sight as this.
Oh Sparrow, do not ruffle your sides at me, for I mean no harm in telling you
of my disloyalties, of my irreversible brain-harm, and there would be no way for me to take
your brown wings to this body.  But, Sparrow, if I could only speak to you, I would say
all the dreams I have of space and sparrow-feathers, and maybe you would cock your head
for a piece of bread in my palm, and maybe you would hear the chords of my voice
in your song-time, and maybe you would look at the air with a new set of eyes, my eyes,
and take to the oceans in the skies with a new pair of wings, and maybe I would feel you soaring,
Sparrow.

Title Song

A boy blazing on the cobblestones, a-click-clack.
An old pancake hat is snatched by the fingers of a dying
tree, reaching out to the corners of the earth, winding its way through
pillars and lovers’ beds and ivy boughs dusted with
ash.
There’s a woman with a broken ankle on the side of the road
in the shadow of a butcher, his cleaver wiped on his fat stomach
that glistens with passion (erotic) for his lady-dove.  The woman
has sprouted wings from between the rips in her bodice,
on the wrong side of her chest, on the decay of her marriage

and no one can claim the boy’s body.
Patriarchy collapses and the remnants of the female bones
become heirlooms in attic rooms, snowing ash
in airwaves the flit to and fro in a sky that’s turned red and drips
slowly in pools
feeding birds
burning boys under bridges.

Intrepid

I once dove into the sharp-fanged waves and collapsed
in the fur of a suckling wolf, cheeks pressed to a belly
heaving and sighing with hurt, and I told her that if she just
held it in, held it away, then slithering on it would go, returning
to the sea and its creatures of lore-

in the big-fish ponds, there are monsters on fins

on nursing mud that rises up to the clouds and expels
its last breath in the fire, crackling still in a hearth damp
with renaissance paint.  I am retired in the hairline
moors, when the wolves are rotten with rust and iron
and there’s no one to defend the motherland but I.

When the waves come clutching for marriage, mother wolf
will stand to her last shattered bone and I will defend
this home I have bound to my breast.

Picaresque I

I nurse the lashings on my palms
into forest fires
that smolder silently in waking hours
when the wind is quiet and creeps
along the matted grass of rolling hills

and I might set them racing tonight,
for fear I’ll catch them and set them blazing
like beacons calling crows to feast
upon the bounty of a thousand joyous human bonds-
only the crows are to be open.

With ragged palms I’ll induce each twirling girl
to slumber in sheets of gold,
and with callous palms I’ll have her weave
straw-bent tears from scavenged bones
caught on the trailing hem of her sleepless nights;

where are the stars tonight, where are
the rainstorms that come wading in to drown out
wallowing footsteps against soft mud, sucking the soles
with each breath, and where are the wagers I bet
that said every mountain of raised flesh on my hands

would be cured by the spittle of smog from the vagabonds
as the sun struggled to clench the sky in his fists.