Psalm for sleeping fishes

Splinter your knees on these planks--you command on the misted dock, the sun not risen on a sky like bruised star apple--callous your hands in prayer, or I'll cut them to the quick of your tiny hammer wrists, and you will never press your palm to your heart again, and feel your heart press back. Hear my story or you will not be loved--But you command that I do not hide my human heart, and even if I slip beneath the pilings wearing my concrete sneakers and slide my lumbar along the algae furred rocks, and I never see the goddamn sun show, I do as you command. I look away from you to the water, and my heart is like bruised star apple.

Hiding places

I was no kitchen knife wielding knight
with checkered table cape boy
I will say
just a naked coward.
I want never
to grow up
I
an old man
will say
and pull the blanket up
above my head
in gleeful terror
close my eyelids
and die.

Toy rocket astronauts

We came close to exit speed,
before the gravity well brought us back down
children
like all children fallen down
wells, gloves open-palm to retracting
light
helmet visors
reflecting a pinpoint sun,
below us
still water waits
and our descent
thick with stratosphere
seems to whisper
cool against our cheeks
what it is to grow old
in stages.

Stages of separation

Wash wash my hands and face
There seems nothing to say
In the breeze
Of rocket plumes
Skin blacked
Launchpad dirt blown
Out in the night

Dance for rain so
With rocket burning
Burning above our heads
Clouds soon make us
Doubt sweet
Sweet doubt
And we can drink
The rain
And wash away the damned
Light

Value

A cow said Moo and another cow said unto her are you not afraid, sister? And the first cow, lame with splintered legs bent out like the roots of a great tree, sliding along the industrial conveyor belt, said I am not afraid, for my God will deliver me.