And heavy fog and many planes
circling, one fall day.
Many decades later, a mother,
a carved stone,
a son, a death in
symbolism,
Waves of faith swept along
fast currents, tanks and a terrible wall
none of us. all of us.
thank you, we must tear down, god bless.

We are fighting while the baby cries,
while the roof comes down
and the bathtub sinks through
4 floors to the ground.
Everything and the kitchen sink
loaded with stink and rot and
coffee grinds, the detritus of heady times
newspaper sheets to the wind, and
traders jumping out windows
like one used to for love.

colonized by this virus
i hear echos in the metros
strangers similarly occupied
we are stitched by our shared
static thorax, strains seeded
by eyes, by long tired bike rides in the rain
by exhaustion that sits in shoulder blades
sorrow in our foreheads
headaches at the ways things stay the same.

Tired like bees, thick with service and sweet
low and heavy to the street
bright striped to make ends meet.
On a stool on the sidewalk beneath large pink nudity,
knees crossed with stockings in the cold breeze
hair hard and high, watching over the honey
not quite queen, not quite making eye contact
just gate keeping.

play codes, soft white clothes
clamps and microbes, bitter endings
curled cordial on your rough tongue
and swiftly undone, slipping
needle nosed into wet wellsprings
of hope and other smells gone missing.

bulging thick blue blown glass, fat
like a father’s love gets in the way of things
with its quotes, parades and ceramonies.
this was a typical gift, a matching set
and one fell off your bike on the way home.
once the relationship is broke
we keep rebreaking – I broke your lover’s pottery,
even cried over spilt milk a decade ago
in fury at the stupid way things go
to the hard ground again and again,
but this is life and somewhere in surviving
the relentless breaking
we become friends.

Blood raw red curtains and a courderoy sea
‘this bed is our country.’* Even when I inhabit it alone,
loyalty is to our songs and the tops of churches and trees
even the arc of the ugly big O on the east side of town,
even the dust and spider webs, even the dry clicking heat,
feet hanging off the bed and both of us sick,
your poor clammy head, the static in my chest.
All I might ever lay my life down for, salute to, is this:
love and rest and a window with trees.

*Vonnegut, Kurt. Mother Night.

We crawled into the white bed,
white room,
white head, white breath.
We crawled inside the rasping machines
and morphine dreams
to hold her cold feet.
My cousin’s belly, round with Sophie inside,
met the odd swollen edges
of our cancerous grandmother,
met the slim sideways edges that are mine.

Calm, once we are on her ark at last,
calm to her nervous righteous polylingual past
fluttering in the milk of her eyes,
calm to her memory sea.
At the end she saw suddenly:
our aunt’s adultery,
our hidden dreams.
She named them one by one with no energy to judge
and would not say goodbye
but gripped my hands painfully
then sent me stumbling to the sunlit door.

The word spine is beautiful,
a slow descent with close-up,
steady soft skin incline
an elegant source of slant rhyme
a thread through the neck between body and books
frail armour for us both.
meanwhile i am losing the battle against mine
pushing through skull plate and shoulder blade
vertebrae play my organs to cacophony inside
a beautiful beautiful slide.

This is a fantasy: take me out that small backdoor
and I am unstitched long enough for you to push my skirts up
with the angry bassline in the bar against my spine.

In this you are not kind,
breaking thin glass capable of sharp sounds
sweeping it to the ground like I imagine
that table of bright blown vases
dozens of them
a hobby out of control and the artist said
“I either smash them or sell them every year.”

The sun falls in boxes, a gameboard
across the carpet, and the flag across the street
is waving like a tree, like it always has been.
Except that one day at half mast,
when I baked cookies,
and brought tea to the street,
and you saw me.
And that is added to the sunlit carpet and other
promises we keep, gently,

despite the shattered glass and fantasies.

wind in the trees out the window, huge waves, like crowds at a rally,
like species throwing up their arms in surrender,
like hearts fluttering with blood,
like neurons leaping for stories to tell our souls,
like children waving to us joyfully, lovingly,
good bye good bye.
like dunes in the desert eating roads.

rocking at my shows, you told me you hid
your autistic inadvertant reaction to sound waves
in the music till you fell in love with that avant garde girl
with the odd bird poetry and casio keyboard
and the bright catchy tunes that made you shake.

I knew a deaf five year old once who was like you are about love:
tormented by the weight of sound he couldn’t hear but felt in skating rinks,
delighted by the hum in his hands he felt yelling into plastic parking cones,
running at the poolside, chasing reflections blissfully unaware
of the whistles blowing warning.

this tree has branches like streamers
up the red fire escape with celebration
all it’s leaves want to fall and fill the white noise with yellow like coins
on your breast, on your birthmark,
on birds like small clams,
little hopping pockets of commentary,
they divy up the spoils and crumbs and the space around my ankles
their messages fit like cold wet leaves
all through my wool and fingers

Sixteen pannelled awnings,
clumps of disjointed spine,
poke through futon and flesh on either side.
The moss mold moves beneath us.
In this lovely apartment
splints in the moaning soggy wood grown ingrown and old
waiting for the landlord,
who is processing pharmaceuticals in the phillipines,
to care, it’s not holding its breath but holding
breezes, damp, and asian multi coloured beetles instead.
Somewhere in the roof they are
finding eachother. Hoarding, love making,
piling up for warmth and breeding.
Their spots and multi colors bleeding, seething
watching trees and you and me through cloudy eyes,
mimicing their change. Learning new seasons.

He stands fat and squat with one hand like a
melted fist, a trunk of wax
eyes dumb and mean
his frame filling the doorway where i’m stuck.
now the road spins with leaves behind me
we all move to find the sun, then find we cannot escape
the rain of leaves dying with pockmarks on their faces
cats and other animals gone missing
garage sales
frightened motes of plaster and memories hung between self and threat
which has brought down the walls,
and loosed their stacks of black underbellies, though he can’t hear them yet.
He’s wrapped himself thick in spider webs and cigarettes
but his slow menace is no match for this.

Fall by the seawall that walks you from Vedado to old Havana,
trees with giant brownred peapods clatter the breeze
small, unamerican cars
we were ignorant in love with the place,
following music to overpriced mojitos and prostitutes to rooms for rent
you and your tall son spoke with us in french,
polite but quietly fierce around the eyes, you’d been
stoned in a small cell for not fingerpointing with the rest,
unable to leave here for martinique for years,
refusing to work you take welfare instead
and walk the waterway, and put poems in each others heads.