Wide Beyond My Ears

Last Night

Thoughts from the Top of the Ferris Wheel 

Amateur Gardening

An Image of a Man 

Oh, Geez

Rocks: Episode 1

You in Your Boots

The Third Sunny Day in February

Purgatory Revisited

I washed ashore in purgatory once. White walls and white sands and white hands digging in the surf looking for my fucking necklace. There it is. No that’s not it. There it is. Just water. Shit. I eventually woke up back in Portugal with my hand down my pants and my hat over my eyes. Everyone was watching me. My wife, before she was my wife, was standing, pointing, laughing. So I laughed too and we wed and ran down the beach into the ocean. And I kissed her in the shallows and her necklace, which was my necklace, was hot like hell against my bare chest. Anyway, we died on the same day 200 years later in each other’s arms. It was a Saturday and we didn’t have work so we just hugged and died. It was so lovely.

The Life Cycle of Andrea del Sarto

The Old Receipts You’ve Kept

Your First Adult Dinner Party

Strangers’ Double-Pony Blood Oath

We’re All Very Saddened to Hear

June

Kissing on the Inside of the Back of Your Head

The Old Dishwasher

A Delegate from Next October

In the car you turned around 

in the passenger seat so you wouldn’t accidentally face me

Out of your mouth, a caterpillar

A child promise of flight, someday

Will flap around in the backseat. 

On your knees 

You paint me 

An untouchable thing

tight crosshatched shadows between long maroon pleasure 

You write a small declaration on the back of the painting 

I glance over at my name in rushed scribble

but you give it to the cocoon in the backseat. 

It will live 

You finally turn to me, then

Turning back around you kick the loose gear shift

The car becomes a cheap Hallmark card playing a broken song 

My shirt becomes a satchel filled with cartoon band aids 

Your pants are my pants and we’re fighting for leg room now

The steering wheel is a vandalized coloring book

The butterfly in the backseat is an author

Who picks you up like pollen or pen, and carries you away 

from the screeching hot wheels of the Hallmark card.

Inside the car bombs keep going off to keep me flying toward some unforgiving future

Outside the car, the same thing, both known and forgettable,

Just as I was once told.

I was once told

I am shy to say by whom,

That I am water

So I am now, and as this hell marked car crashes 

through the living room wall I push and pull destroy 

with the pure and elegant anger of oceans.

I revive you

As you leave 

my knuckles, turning white on the wheel like

sea foam 

Bend for a moment to separate my lips 

It will live

I finally say to you.

A Brand New Way of Looking Through my Windshield

There is a rotten smell somewhere in the sack your best friend carries 

It’s so tightly wound in strips of pleasant rituals that you may have missed it

It reflects no spoil– it’s like spinach between teeth or a rock in your shoe.

They feel unequipped to maintain moods of strange tension between fiction and slipping 

Getting closer weekly to intermission seeming to send handfuls of snacks back to concession, 

An obsession with quality control and color correction when they’re pocketing half each time!

Some theatrical offshore account of their own fantasy in which I rot sweetly in their sack 

With my toes drenched in butter and my body twisted in my husband’s sweater

And the actors or the financiers, whichever way you sell it, 

Wear cologne of sweet baguette and Polish cattle leather

And the rotten smell is found only by accident in the slippery feet of so many trips back and forth down the dimly lit aisle

The gentle memories of putting away whatever it was is tangled in the routine of love lasted past aroma

and you may have never known rot

It’s possible whatever was dented or molding turned to mighty dust before the flirting eyes of cilia caught fire 

It’s possible to move on now

It’s possible to ignore the ramblings of spell casting wish makers and take backyard bets instead

Throw dollars in the palms of neighbors like the old days 

And shout at shooting stars until you mistake sound for shape 

Spitting circles into the evening air

It’s possible to forgive me for calling rotten what was pleasant 

It’s possible to move through me

Throw grains and granite past my shoulders and between my bungled lungs 

Call good luck on salty boulders and roll them down my tongue 

It’s possible to laugh in the face of what is wrong

In spite of the error and in no way teasing it but to tap the water on the penny 

To break tension and fall relieving like a racehorse into bed with someone who needs not forgive you 

But does need to be pressed like a calculator all letters upside down

It’s possible to move on now 

It’s possible to be needed

And have that needing feel eating, all breakfast on your face 

And have that breakfast let the light through finger’s early morning lace

Oh, devour! See youth in fragile armor and shatter the mirror

Pace back and forth on the plank and decide at last to punch the prison guard 

And as he lays broken on Polly’s sorry body– I do mean sorry, Polly,

You leap anyway! 

It’s possible for your body to be a ship

It’s possible for your ship to trust the seas

My friend feels unequipped to set sail for unknown nights and distance 

Washing salt off brand new shoes and wishing maps were different 

But my friend too reeks of pleasant rituals in which we repeat our apologies 

And it’s in precisely this funhouse, I’m realizing, that we start to stink 

It’s possible to leave without going back the way we came in

It’s possible to stop trusting the mirrors 

We’ll follow the nostrils of a rosy new nose

And set molding bread crumbs so neatly behind us, 

It’s possible to move on now.

Missing Memory

In a missing memory 

We sit together 

At breakfast 

Glued to each other

By the shoulder 

And to the TV 

By the pumping 

Growing pain aching 

Spaghetti pink brain 

And you tell me 

Eventually 

You’ll be different. I

Remember now

She said 

“When I slip 

Into womanhood 

Like Princess Reason

Will you count backwards 

On me to return 

To the dress up drawers

Of your bedroom?

And remember, 

when the

blue car blue car

splattered with mud

hit Sky

thud thud thud

and kept on going

in such a hurry

so fast

so many miles to go

it couldn’t even stop?”

Remember 

Growing up boys

Turning seance 

To straddling 

Lust leveraging 

Of course

With 

Of course not

Anywhere

But here, 

But where 

Did the time go?

Pulled away

In the sound

Dragged under

The waves take

Sands, sure, but

He was five.

Eventually

I am different 

And don’t miss him. 

He wonders

Where the time went

Spent waiting

Under overpass

Pointing early 

Camera phones

In the faces

Of growing up boys

Who think

Why is it perfect 

To make each other

cry?

Let us never 

Do that 

Without sleeping

Boy on boy

All night still 

Bleeding apology 

In silence. 

Let us never

Without waffles 

Okay and syrup 

In the shade

Of learning purple

Everything up 

in the birch tree

That we painted

For those 

First to be girls

impressed.

Yet there 

In lies 

of accepted sorries

Was a fist 

Held high above heads

And never coming down

That said 

Between fingers

Holding hands

No, do not bow.

The fist ignorant 

To the basement

Where thank you 

Sleeps and slips

Glances at ankles

With his finger

Tips up the windowsill 

Thank you 

Said the fist

Had he cared 

To listen 

To the steam 

Rising from winter cocoa 

In the open hand

Of soft and spoken

Sorry 

and there

With a turtle’s neck

Toughness won 

Legs still shook 

Looking for gems

In navy 

Dorm room sheets.

Now I’m pressing down 

on the ViewMaster 3000

getting a new image 

Every time

The time waits 

In patient photographs

Of moments 

I’ve been in before,

I’ve been there before 

Chasing your tail 

In that lecture hall

The unborn baby 

Whose only gift

Is rolling around 

With me 

Planted a picture 

In the basil

I bit through

And eventually

You saw blight 

Between my teeth. 

Ripped from my smile

The last piece of gum

The camera’s party trick

The past 

stuck 

where 

It should not be

In my now teeth,

Then teeth

Spat out 

Flipped and

fenced off

They would imagine

With my lips

The first kiss

Whose timer

Would reset

Every birthday,

In movies

No one ever asks

The month.

My now teeth

Just say horny

Months of spring

Dripping all over 

Summer’s fingers 

In Fall’s mouth 

Fuck me

I forgot it

Somewhere in there 

So maybe

When frames break

Paintings fall out

And bent wood 

Holds ideas

A shame 

Of lust 

Comes 

From somewhere deep

A shade 

Of rust 

Old feelings 

Before reading

Or during it

From fighting 

And knowing 

Or being told

The urge to squish

To fold and fracture

During or after

Was backwards

And you are 

Delicate 

Sedimentary 

New 

You are plastic gum 

On rubber sole shoes

Walked along 

Pressed into

Something that fits

Perfectly into where you are.

The Unremarkable Sins of Those Just Trying to Get By

There’s this city block kind of off kilter like foot in the cookie jar

Where fences split sweet and sour sorel into grass clubs with on-call bouncers 

And spades lie rusty next to weed filled beds and a twenty four year old sleeps under overgrown shrubs.

don’t worry, he’s a soccer ball or 

Volleyball

it’s hard to tell. the dog chewed him up 

And the dog has been dead for years 

And the twenty four year old is shedding plastic skin into the dirt

Which is fucked up for the soil but probably karmically fine 

Considering everything else,

All the other stuff that’s fucked up

And considering the mealworms that might make his sins unremarkable

Which is really the best any of us can hope for.

Anyway

There’s this city block kind of off kilter like milk and money 

Like I mean it makes sense but that’s the worst part

ideally I would barely understand it. 

In my youth

Or perhaps my old age

It confused me to pay for what we share

Say, to dole our park between property managers

And then sit back and glare at the wall with 5 minutes left of class and 40 or so left of life

The thing is

There’s this city block kind of off kilter like a bicycle stool

Generally fine but wobbly and brutish

Or clever at hiding the nearest by pool 

So the knowers keep knowing in delicate solitude beside heat stroke veterans on their fifth century summer all begging the question as their skin starts to sag that

Maybe if our aptitude for nudity was a bit more high brow 

We could break down the dams and swim in the bag

Or the buff since we’re strong now from putting up fences but our cardios shot from walking amidst them 

We’ve girbled ourselves and named us all fluffy

And forgotten to feed us 

since we only eat money 

the only thing we don’t have enough of 

There’s this city block that’s kind of off kilter like everyones’ back

From years of dying grandmas and childhood spats that tend to go endless until the home is all broke 

And the children who are brothers forget when they last spoke 

So everything inside the house goes into the yard

And the inside gets flattened and the winners are far

Away gremlins eating shitty poké bowls and saying under their breath that they need a day off knowing somewhere in their fourth big bite that they ruined this city block 

And they look around them and see all these people who they think are unalike 

But they have a block too and it too has died 

When they put it through a potato cutter while they all lost their wives.

Swinging too High on the Popsicle Bench

The day’s only shadow fell at my feet just after the sun set 

The gel eyes of the lion beginning to melt.

My eyes too falling to the floor 

More like marbles 

Something I can catch and put back 

The shadow clung to my legs like a toddler 

Version of both of us 

Clay twins who hand over hand over heart built each other

And it’s clear now we put some pieces in wrong

We were just kids

Doing our best to shatter lego people and playmobil people

To see where the tendons go

And where the arms connect 

Pulling the cat to see what pops off– 

Nothing, thankfully

So we learned to put things together tight

We learned about bearings and screws

Tearing healing coming loose

With the brave intention of commanding our change

Pliers twisting dna and scissors all over the place

The planning the drawing the drafting table

The scale of love 

What a special fish

I mean what a special wish

For you and I to be just like us

Engineering a shimmer 

Breaking glass as research 

Poisonous metal as research

Being nervous as research

A shimmer

Most glaring to the architects

Brightest to the architects 

Proudest are the architects

Even if they got it all a little bit wrong

amd*

leaving is wrapped in the styrofoam that squeaks 

when you scratch it

that keeps the fish so cold

so looked after and safe 

and I clench my teeth when I hear it 

Feeling cold as river fresh 

amd scrunch my nose 

Because the end is stinky 

and goodbye always makes me think my blueberry kisses are bruises on my shoulders 

The Porch Light

The porch light was on

So I stood there for hours

Until it turned off

And I knocked

Knowing exactly where you were

How Berry Your Grin

Oh great weaver of feeling how berry your grin 

How slender your breathing 

Your voice getting thin.

Take a page out of my book 

but don’t read it a bit

Take another, and another, take a chapter, grab and rip

Oh simple leaver of my living room how berry your grin 

How tender your greeting how flowy within

Take your tempo like a temperature 

Scream hot and fast

Into the old parking lots and hot dusty grass

The quiet frantic places where we scribbled out the past

Oh sweet heckler of breakfast how berry your grin

How gentle your skirt on your bike pedal shins

With no blame on your knuckles 

And all fear to admit

You’ll punch in my belly and laugh in my pits

That Randy Freak in Charge of the Chore Chart

The bathroom is dirty down to the screw that keeps the drain grate secure

So I’ve rolled up my jeans and I’m kneeling on the desperately-caulked landlord-special gray tile

Pouring heaps of elbow grease and bon ami into all the nooks and crannies

And I lock eyes with the back of the shower head 

Who looks at me in his nakedness and shouts and implores 

UNLEARN WHAT YOU’VE LEARNED IN FEAR

HE IS NOT A TEACHER. 

YOU ARE REQUIRED AS A LOVER 

A DESIRED RANDY FREAK.

Of course, I laugh at randy but am interrupted 

VOMIT RIGHT HERE IN THIS SHOWER

SHOW ME YOU ARE LISTENING 

SHOW ME YOU ARE REALLY CLEANING.

EVERY BOY YOUR AGE HAS CANCER

HIS CELLS ARE KILLING THEMSELVES AND ATTACKING EACH OTHER

AND HE IS ALONE IN HIS SHOWER

I look away from whoever this is yelling 

Of course I look away 

But words still bounce between the narrow and dripping walls 

Loudly, even over my tinnitus from listening to headphones too loud 

HE IS BUCKLED OVER WITH HIS PHONE IN HIS HAND

HE WASTED ALL HIS YEARNING 

ONLINE 

EVERY BOY YOUR AGE. 

WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

HE CANNOT HEAR OVER THE NOISE OF THE SHOWER 

BUT A BOY ONLY JUST LONELIER THAN HIM DROPPED OFF GROCERIES AT HIS DOOR

AND THOUGH THEIR EYES NEVER MET 

THEY BOTH COULD FEEL SOMEONE WAS CLOSE

BUT BLACKROCK BANGED THE OIL DRUM,

THE FILTHIEST DINNER BELL

I KNOW YOU HEARD IT 

AND THEY BOTH SCRAMMED–

NO MUCKING AROUND!

I look back into the clean and shining shower head

And turn it on, spraying the wall

Every boy my age shoots out onto the tile I had just cleaned

It looks so pink now, scrubbed tender and thin 

One boy grabs my thumb like a baby 

I AM LOVE PLEASE 

I AM HOT AND UNTOUCHED SAND

I AM SICK AND I AM DYING AND I AM ON MY WAY HEADFIRST INTO THIS TILE

I AM THE ERODED FLESH OF REVOLUTION 

THE BODILESS UNMAKING OF THE FUTURE

I AM MORE HUNGRY THAN THE WARHUNGRY

I HAVE NEVER WINED OR DINED WITH THE BARONS

MY HANDS ARE CLEAN WITH BABYFISTS OF DIRT 

I HAVE BEEN UNMADE AND RELEASED 

I HAVE TIED MYSELF RED WRIST TO MY HOPE

I HAVE FREED MYSELF

His wet hand slipped from my thumb and I watched as he shot into the wall

slid smoothly down the slick pink face 

Into the drain with every boy my age

And I went running damp and weeping

To find out where the drain went

The plumber said the sewer 

The sewer said the river

The river said the sea

And it put my hair down over my eyes

And carried me like a hundred hands

Of every boy my age

who asked me no questions and took me away

Spat me into the ocean who immediately had concern

YOU ARE FREEZING

ALL THOSE HANDS DO NOT KEEP YOU WARM 

AND I HAVE NO TIME TO HEAT YOU 

I HAVE HOMES TO DESTROY.

The Old Animation Style Before it All Went to Shit

I remember

Watching you 

Into your mother’s van

I remember 

Because I molded it 

To fit you in your absence

I remember carrying you

In circles down brier lane

And you cooing 

In my ear

About being old 

As change, and 

Sliding into diner booths

And flipping coins

To see who pays

For all the time 

We spent apart. 

Now I have your foot

Cut and dried

Around my neck 

Tied windsor 

Or fancier 

Not nearly as lucky 

As the real you 

Who poured lemon,

Sour blood,

All over the breakfast

We laughed about.

We drug each other 

So swiftly through the fields

The soil so perfectly tilled,

The corn far above us

Long before november 

So we hid 

From memory 

And prediction 

In the stalking 

Of young green legs.

That’s the lucky you 

The mold me you 

The rest of me

Cooing still 

flipping stale coins

All coming up heads

Paying out of pocket

Every single time. 

This Little Piggy Bank

Then it was

Again, like before

greedy cans of tender 

All of us laughing 

With the door open 

To the warmest yard

Dimpled with toes 

Somehow between cherries.

It was spoken there,

muscles are mice 

That the cat grabbed 

Just to play with 

However the hoops land 

Somehow between pools

In the tidal flats. 

That was the green of what was spoken, 

Kids over shoulders like salt 

In their hair 

Seaweed dresses spinning

Stumbling home drunk 

On midnight sun.

It was spoken there, 

Running laps around babysitters

We’ll always be sat

Under bushes just our size

Through broken fences

Church parking lots 

Praying promises in 

Long loves 

Typed in the precise thumb

Of a slide keyboard.

It was spoken there, 

studied by the dense hum of a mormon lamp

Old bastard light

Let darkness be,

I will not share these

Greedy cans

This piggy bank is for summer

For all of us laughing.

When There’s Something to Eat and Something to Scream 

There’s a boiling pot of water on the stove top

it’s a green pot turning gold with anger 

and who’s to really say if it’s boiling yet but it’s on its way 

and anger is heat and also water and also anger is chopped up 

on a wooden cutting board next to the stove on the countertop 

anger is the meal— or, it’s on its way 

and there’s a shivering toweled chef standing in the kitchen 

his hair is dripping wet and he doesn’t know what to do 

with his hand carved wooden spoon 

does he check the pot? does he lift the lid? does he put on clothes? 

Instead he picks up a second wooden spoon, 

boy does he look busy! and the hand that held his towel is full now and his towel falls to the wooden ground. 

Here there’s a bubbling green pot of golden angry hungry water and a toiling naked chef wet with old shower all crammed in the kitchen needing something to happen. 

They’re all objects or they’re all things.

They’re all witnesses of  each other.

They’re all imploring history to stop for just one second and gather itself before moving forward.

But the chef is worried it’s too late to put the anger in. 

and the pot and the water just get hotter 

and more golden 

and more angry.

On Eating Sand

The eons folding 

over on themselves

Find me wedged 

Between forgotten crime

And unimaginable future

The blank battle of writing

And crossing out 

All over Professor’s blackboard

Leaves me scratching 

Hundred year old itches

Into rocks smoothed over

By a million or so tiny feet

Of hammer carrying 

Tender toed lovers 

Of the leaves and 

The veins of autumn’s arm

Dragged through valleys 

Through cold winters 

Where bodies lay

Tucked between each other

Sharing medicine born in bones

And remembering in song

Where love has taken us

And where we’re going

Whether that’s far away

Or just to bed together.

And our hearts are breaking 

Over and over 

Because when our neighbor or boss says that it’s hard

With “all this” going on 

And in the space between his raised hands 

Sits shaking unsaid

War and famine and cages around the world 

And in the backyard 

Holding children 

And peace loving fathers whose tears have dried in saltless stained lines down their dusty cheeks

And in holding each other 

Through these heartbreaks 

Survives the sibling joy 

Who is not painless

She is what happens when we press ever tighter

Into each other

Beside and between the heartbreak– 

the space between those hands,

Because sorrow

And the gravel hands of loss

Need no carrying.

They slink inevitably by

But if we scoop them up 

We may be able to crush them between our bellies

Never fully

Never for long

Never with ease

But we could make something warm there

To keep us moving along 

To not let ourselves be robbed 

Of the tangled mess of joy.

Looking Out Below and About

Standing high in the willow with your hand making shade on your eyes

On where the branches have wriggled sunlight through warm on your face

Searching you, searching back and forth across the distance you 

Drawing breaths all over the in between 

Following your sighing through the leaves around above trees

Watching the unseeable things dart float among the sky 

As beneath you, just beneath you, an event unshapes 

The wood folding under your weight inviting you down

Splinters simply sounds since your eyes pinned so desperately uncurious up still

Space unfull of tree and encouraging grip and grit and bringing away skin you

Split mind you stay looking out stuttering on a blanket idea

Tap dancing impatience on, well, nothing now, and on your tiptoes

What was so noisy is finished undone all beautiful way down there

Indoors of yourself you are safe up here of course unfalling

Two hands up against the sun who maybe could be telling something you 

Thinking ow bright right in my idea! move wish you wax or wane

Rise or set no mind but you stopped the world you

Waving your arms air marshall landed the sun on a cloud 

Called it names, it being the space between your hands it

everything going on around you in there outside you 

And the sun sank

Then looking up at the swift blanket you had stood on 

Your head all wrapped in strands of broken willow green finally breathing again you

Think ricochet around your head ‘ah there it is’ straight above you 

What a splendid thing to look for and to notice and to see

What a special thing to fall from and to know so fleetingly.

A Random Paragraph from the Bar Hooking Up with the Epitaph

Bare voices wiping cloth from their brows

Naked as table salt 

Against the task/backdrop of staying barely apart.

Between them sits,

As much as tiny blue flowers can sit

Without swaying,

In a field shared by spiraling hot rods,

Two tiny, blue, unswaying forget me nots

Rigid even as the cars spit on their necks

Their bare necks

Their forgiving blanket backs. 

Until, the paragraph shoots every petal 

she loves me, she loves me not

Right in the foot

And knees, cowardly behind pants

Press on either side of their throats

And a forget me breath squeaks out of mouths

As lucky as table salt 

To say something about ghosts

But the cars are too loud 

Carving rubber flowers in the summer dirt

She loves me, she loves me hot

But she’s grit–

Between, again,

Something stuck there–

The velvet rope of certain knocking

Swaying finally, 

A slight mockery of the plants

Begging me 

Either to cut someone 

Or jump someone

Just

Get 

Into the club–

Sorry for calling the bouncer ugly,

the marked mind

Turning to look at the red hand on the crosswalk light

For a moment 

Blinks fists into barred eyes

Wishing only for green chest hair 

Right above the heart

And cereal that tastes like task

Or backdrop.

You Goofball Saying Burgers

You goofball saying burgers 

Burgers remind you of spring

Every fall they do 

Every bite and there’s blood on your lips

Is that yours or?

I mean, you goofball saying burgers

You’re talking about you!

Drop your hands 

Let me see your eyes

Now you let me in!

You mean all of us

Falling from the top of the ferris wheel

Into the water still in the bathtub even in autumn 

And we will splash around in here

Me and you goofball saying burgers

And whoever is lucky enough to watch you splash 

Happy Birthday

Can you hold this? It’s your birthday present. But I’ll need it back. Because, honestly, it’s a ruse. Its hues are a reference to its irony. Maybe you’re not smart enough to see. I shouldn’t say smart, but it sneaks out as all bad habits do. I am going to say two things that I have thought on separate occasions and I want you to be here with me as I test them out in tandem for the first time. Okay the first is this: You are only a good poet because I love you. Okay? The second is this: any poet is only a good poet because they are loved. What are we feeling? I feel like the first one feels mean. But the second one feels nice. Oh, the stage directions say I should push your hair behind your ear. Like this I think. Maybe you couldn’t tell but yesterday was the furthest into your eyes I’ve ever been. And when I spun around in the sludge of your iris and could finally see the way you saw, that’s when I realized that you were only a good poet because I loved you. And I am curious to see where you go from here. I’ll take this back now. Happy birthday.

Her Little Head

I put a sweatshirt on my dog 

That helped quite a bit 

With quite a few things 

Particular fragments of joy 

and cracked windows 

That blew a gentle and precise breeze 

and kissed her little head 

saying glad you’ve got this sweatshirt on 

big silly sweatshirt silly dog.

she shook because she gets the wiggles when anyone, even the wind, blows in her ear 

her sweatshirt slid off her shoulder 

and I happily put it back on

Private Party in Progress

It was one of those pleasant accidents

finding myself getting off the night’s last train

walking in the cold too cold to stand in

the fifteen minutes under gum trees and devils trumpet

and all I could think about

was how lovely it was to be walking home

in the cold too cold to stand in

under ironwoods and magnolia flowers

for fifteen minutes 

and how quietly I’ll take the steps

and the front door

so your eyes all stay closed and your dreams keep spinning in your head

how well rested and beautiful you’ll be in the morning

if I take the steps quiet 

and the front door

in about ten minutes now 

out of the cold just right for walking

just past the London pines and cobra lilies

through this simple pleasant accident.

The Boss

I spat in the mouth of a beetle early this morning. To let it know who was boss. I peeled up its labrum and hucked between its lips. All the bugs around my bedroom clapped, leaning to whoever was closest to consider each other impressed. What a performance. What a way to marry yourself to dominance. What a way to start the day. They laughed a bit. Theater is theater. 

When they all carry me to bed tonight, I’m sure they will have questions. How did I prepare? How do I know when it’s over? Am I performing now? “Can you spit in my mouth?” one will ask quietly, and I will pretend not to hear. They all will giggle. 

The Farm Feeding Expo

Give grace for missing poems 

Lost to the sands of overflowing life 

To the stop and go of mass crop feed 

Stuck in our teeth at the farming expo

to the pause and breathe on the rocky beaches home 

to the wonder 

As we grow 

older towards the sun 

our bodies around the world turning 

around the pole called dancing 

called spinning 

called passing 

on or passing time or days

that pass anyway

whether the poem is missing or present  

but here the poem marks 

grace 

for time extending 

out in all ways 

at the elbow bends of summer 

to the hairy arm of autumn 

shaking off august lake water 

and finally feeling heavy enough in the body 

to feel grounded 

every step moves that jaw 

to speak in earth tones

which are not so gentle ringing

around in rippling puddles of clay 

forming greens and blues and browns 

On the inside of homes and wooden planes 

The patchwork shoulders of history 

worrying so much has become hospital white

yet the brown couch in our arms 

twists somehow through the front door 

and lands between plants in the living room of us 

animals for each other 

boys and lovers 

and playtime 

is around the corner 

as soon as we slip from the teeth 

of the corn meal machine 

At the feeding time farming expo.

My Soccer Ball was Stolen from Rumrill

and again something has been taken from me 

from under my nose 

when I stood in the floodlights stuck in Stillwater pose 

When I wept for myself, wetting ribbons and bows 

just to have something taken 

from right under my nose 

Poem #216

Sturdy bottle conscience 

reinforced its loins with wordy gurgled afterthoughts on 

looking where you point

And conflict resolution brought around the hairpin turn 

gave routes to earning trust back from all the younger men we’ve been before boys 

looked out the window as the wheels spun 

undoing dust that settled on the road like rusty unjumped springs

And the things that they were noticing were the things that passed them by and what stood still beside them they just wrapped and kept inside 

Like geodes

Until the car turned over as the hairpin came and went

And the floor became the ceiling and the door became a

Dented version of its younger self in summer looking at jewel fairies in the garden blushing and looking away and the wheels all forgot that they were meant to stay attached 

The four of them went freedom seeking down the cliffs from sunset lodge

How we used to slide on slate faces in the rain laughing as loose shale drew raspberry maps on our palms as to where the treasure landed when it left our mouths. 

Now the classic glass that cannot break just got a little stronger in the wake of losing regulations on how we can and cannot dip our gather, so 

Up the raw and uncooked wishes of a visionary child who says you’re doing so much wrong 

Even I can tell you that a gun is a song to sing 

not a wish to make 

So with the child in mind I’ll take ten paces in the desert 

Into the dried up lake

Well, in theory there’s a button to make those voices heard and

I’ve got a knack for vern but I lack a word

To call the children out to breaking 

sturdy glass along the street

If a rose by any other name would smell as sweet

Then reward the name with jacquerie.