this is not the white page
this is my life unraveling slowly
this is the sound of energy swimming
these are words doing their broad sounds.
a period is not the mass communication.
i am going to smoke a cigarette
and contract cancer;;
why is poetry so evaporating
why do i love my parents
there is something i want to say
in this unsaying of it
there is some continuity in the
patternless routine of my
orthodox hierarchy

little failures

i dream of hair.
like a line i have tied
to your hands,
all over, everywhere,
this is my kind
of love, the unabridged version,
an excursion of the mind,
a subway line
take to where you are
underground, warm.

Lovers

The moon on a Monday is placid,
a dog silently gnawing the bone
then waiting in the corner to be told.
On Friday, it exposes a white throat
veins pulsing thirstily
against a darkness that chokes.

There is no poetry in a rock
on a shelf
examined with twelve eyes
scraped to powder
while the craftsman works tirelessly
ignoring the murmurs
in her own chest.

Sinking flower
sinking like my heart
do you laugh at the wind
that lodges in your petals?
Do you hang upside down
invert your pretty head
relinquish its white crown?
Do you betray love’s light
by splitting yourself,
do you beg for the
release of your little shelf?
Have you danced with
death’s mirrors, planting
nuggets of wisdom
like shy crystals in my
withered ears? Does your
scent drift in like a mother
tending injury or fear?
Are you correct in assuming
that life gets rich off you
and you alone—do you
drop, drop drop
your curtains to the floor?