Upstream Proclamations

Cream
slides
into
coffee
in
a
milky
way,
and
perhaps
maybe
swell
if
you'll
sit
and
watch
with
me (
I've
lain
a
sandy
towel
here.)
A
cold
breeze
from
Puerto Juárez
comes
under
your
hair
and
up
it
rises
electric.
Oh,
esposa
palms
pressed
with
shells
gathered
palms
pressed,
esposa
to
my
shoulders
when
we
press
into
mouths
warm
like
coffee
cream
slipping
past
in
darkness
do
you
think
we
could
sit
and
watch
and
pray
and
will
you
wear
rings
here
where
a
cold
breeze
from
Puerto Juárez
comes
under
your
hair
and
up
it
rises.

Framed Images

Follow an image with a staggered gaze--a bird in flight, refracted from panes of a glasswork clock hung above the piano with the framed picture of the dead sister, if you like; a silhouette against a white cloudless expanse of air, refracted from the panes of a glasswork clock hung above the dead sister, if you can concede your preference for exactness. You should take time for this decision, though. Should consider heavily the differences (take time within the reach of the clock's metal arms): Flight, on the one hand, as linear. Bird, as sharpness preceding fragility, as an arrow, or an idealist. Silhouette, on the other, as grieving, irrevocable understanding, of the absence of the flight, the bird, the sister.

Pack Animals

Finding you hiding in the brush, so near. Yet it is dark, is it not my friend? I felt you brush past and you were gone. Our enemies are many. Certainly we agree on this point. Where are you tonight, are you well? Unseen? We're small, are we not, my brother? Our enemies are many. I've left the door open, so that maybe; she and I sleep in the hot flies in our eardrums rattling our foundations. My sleep is like a fit of shaking, I hear a ghost howling among the crickets for a way back. Somewhere in the back of our small heads we hear their voices, our enemies: You can't go back. Wish you could hear my voice calling your name, pitching my tone to reveal, "The fuck you can't." Finding you hiding in the brush, so near. We wait for your drawing near, from our enemies who are many.

Summer Without Forwarding Address

Sweeping motions made with fingernails on dark street glass windows glowing warm cast candle fire on one cheek, the other wind-striken and free to wander as it will. Albeit a little harder, a little tougher, a little less sensitive to the touch of a strange gloved hand when a Boston Christmas shopper might reach with indefinite and thoughtless emotion, or actually imagines this touch behind his eyelids for a moment as he passes. But these sidewalks do not cross, they are parallel lines into a snow storm the likes of which loneliness had not known some many years. And she wonders and he wonders if anyone wondered when the goddamn summer planned its slow burning crawl across the sweaty streets. Yet the stars carve sharp little penknife points into a letter not bothered to be read because it would be much too boring to remove it from its envelope with the pretty looping letters and postage. And who cares who it's from, who can tell with fingernails on dark street glass windows glowing warm cast candle fire on one cheek, the other indifferent to the stars and the things they may carve.

A Fox as Autumn Ends

Pressure in the head, pushing out ideas like chocolate pudding running down the sideburns like dark tears, can't remember anything that way. Crippled with sickness dragging on in the night the most positive thing anyone's said in years. Winter's on, coming on like a fleeing of lovers into shadows into the crooks of trees nestled like foxes which one will not find at midnight dragging on past sidewalks, the wind has moved in and pushed lovers to the fringes, beneath the trees. Roots dragging from the cuffs of our jeans, scraping down past sidewalks. Lovers nestle beneath us, we are unrooted, through our bark up moves the pressure to our heads, and we forget. If we could be lovers, we could flee into shadows. Foxes digging for warmth in dirty lovers' holes. Oh what a sight if one could see foxes in shadows, nestled in dirty holes one could not stop talking on about it. Chocolate pudding pushed from the ears, running down the whiskers to forget like dark tears. Find me, oh find me if you can. Don't give up so easy it makes me sad if you give up I can see you dragging past sidewalks at midnight and there is a pressure in my head, and I see now the night builds pressure in the wind and it is us, this winter that is coming.

Just

A picture is worth at least a word, or maybe lighting a cigarette is enough. I remember photographically when father's cigarette burned the flesh of my hand at the race track infield in the dewy morning with a black coffee in my hand. Funny thing black rooms and burns. Funny thing the way memory presents itself in a library elevator in the aftermath of a loss the proportion of which will burn for some time to come. I would like to go back there but it is complicated and I cannot leave, I cannot leave and I do not want to leave what she has given me. I am grateful of the life we have on dirty carpets with dogs and cats. I am glad of the dances we have oh dance with me my darling if we could take a picture of this it would not be enough but it would be something to later burn with some difficulty. Underhanded in its musical score a minor chord, captures our anger in a mirror oh a mirror and we are weary of looking at ourselves. None of that maybe stuff, timid boys and shy girls are lonely types and we despise them because they are or were us and who are we kidding they are us and after such a tremendous loss we despise them very much. eramos algo. Si eramos algo, just once. Christmas lights and a doggie running wish we could run why we can't run I don't know honey please lets run and plug in those Christmas lights Christ how in the fuck are we gonna find our way back home without the Christmas lights and how could we ever know what's out there in the dark tie a bow on top of your tree not even a real tree but as long as the electricity is still on the home can't break your heart so keep it that way in your heart or you will break oh we might be broken but I don't want that kind of painkiller let's feel this pain out. Please let it touch me, let it scratch I've had worse I'm lying but if I don't bleed out now I may never get the chance. Only the lonely don't know when to shut up mostly because of the scarring which is irreversible. Desert wanderin yeah. Desert wanderin Bethlehem boy invents nuclear warhead of bored frustration. Wants to express his anger, obliterate a people scatter particles like fire crackers among a spreading circle of boys. I see why you drink, brother. The anger is epic. And it is spreading.

Eramos algo. Si eramos algo, just once.

Linguistics

Chalk marks pock the side of the wooden cupboard with one wishful streak between the specks of white and the gray morning wind wipes away the imperfections with a bite that brings warm things closer together. Fogged windshield hides a crack under its skin, from a highway rock some time past. But the engine tinkers and cools from a state of perpetual heat, oh let's throw that rock into the water at the docks as the gray morning wind wipes away the imperfections and then lets go sit by the cupboard and have breakfast.