Knuckle

I had very extravagant things
to say about the bones in my feet
when I realized I couldn't feel
the pinky toed under steps bearing me home.
Scientists insist the whole continent
is moving East and I know
the motivation across the liquid
is my splitting hooves
at war speed and
the snap and crushed apple flesh
wound tight in threads of cotton nerve
insist there are little fingers beyond
the rock disjointed from the cement
like howl jarred calcium come
down in Blue Ridge caves
to the beat cut and gashed
at muscle tips and 'tronomic fists.

I had very extravagant things to say
about the heat winding through
the fibers of my fingers and back
down my sides like forty lashes
to cure frost bite and the trickle
little licks of it that faded
through my calves and
the knot of achilles
before I realized I could not
possibly be the electrode
touching her insides and making her
so magnetic and easy
to press.

I had very extravagant things to say
about the bones in my feet.
They are harder than they've ever been.
And the part of you left in me
would be proud of the deformity and
the places where my soles
are tearing and the path
is searing through
me and the slag that holds me still and
more than giving up
or not
you would be proud to see my
heels and broken toes
on the face of this.
Tired and full and together.

Smoker 13

The rings, they are
little achievements and
the only "i"s I've been dotting
that make smiles
on the insides
where the air is dead
and if I look
like a wall eyed samurai
through the finish
I can see you
a little more clearly.

Friends Don't Let Friends

You said something about how
disappointment is just aspiration
leaving the body

but I'm pretty sure
that was just an idle sigh
asking you if my yawn
said where it planned on being an hour from now.
I really am excited to be here
if you are.

You mentioned tomorrow is another day,

but that's alright.  I forgot
tonight is Saturday too.

Put It Back to Pieces

In this halfway weather

and bad company, mapped out

with aluminum cans like push pins

left as equal parts warning

signs and forensic chalk,

it's easy to mislay 

the markers where

tiny ambitions wait

to die and wheeze still like

rats ankle deep in glue and cardboard,

but tuning an imagined acoustic guitar

and halfway tucked with

pen and paper lurking like

stop signs on a downhill blind sweep

along the head first 

uphill road to sleep,

there is a quiet 

to the air wrestling through the space heater

and a pleasure to the unrealized

cramps and rages of

navigating so many

parts and pieces

with hands already whipped 

and fumbling and labor sore

and any single one

a crystalline choking hazard

waiting for the touch of tongue and gum

to come painfully undone.

I'm Sorry You're Gone

I'm sorry you're gone and

I'm sorry I can't pay you a decent tribute

without sounding

selfish and small and

misguided.

You were better than that

as far as I know

as far as I've been able to see

from the center of my self destroying radius

through the distance I've kept up toward most

out of necessity

and unaware that you were probably made

out of tougher, lighter, stuff

that wouldn't mind a perpetual meltdown's heat.

I'm sorry you're gone and

I'm sorry I can't pay you a decent tribute

without sounding

selfish and small and

misguided.

I am selfish and small and

bent and the times we didn't have are

screaming in my ears and 

I hate you

for leaving so soon and

I hate me

for not knowing

if I should have come closer or

if I was, to your nearest friends, more than close enough

I Guess

All this time I have been looking for
something Shel said I would find
if I kept on rolling
but really I just want
someone who will go out
at the stupidest hours
to see if the lump in the street
I spied two minutes ago
is a dead raccoon
or a dead possum



and then poke it with a stick.

Furnace (I Loved You)

...and somewhere inside
behind the tongue and cheek
beneath the eyes caked and staring
above the wretch and tumble rough
between the bars and aluminum cladding
amongst the hells and palisades
before the glass and animals caged
hung from star points and butcher nails
floating the chum on oar and skin sail
fuller than an honest birth's hips and
torn in more twos than the same
apart from the ash and the iron poker
separate from the destroying ember and
more than the flame
beyond the guile and less than the rage
toward the hymn and
under the quiet water
inside the blood wet threads pulled tight
divorced from the passage of
time into night
riding the whorls and ruing the day and
touching the edges of blue and yellow fire
the blade resting ready
in the tented pyre.

There is beating the heart
of a mother.