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.

And then there was light

And then all the bears were heroes, those from the Baluchistan and Kermode armies who fought with great honor, until their heft fell butchered upon a forest clearing of morning glories, in the breeze of an autumn dawn which stirred the flowers open like purple fists holding stars in their palms. And the Baluchistans wore great white doves across their black breasts, and the Kermodes' white fur had been washed pink by the claws of their enemies. But the morning glories knew nothing of the fire of dusk, or the carnivorous night, could not distinguish this brevity, this brittleness, from their own. They knew only that the blood seeping into the soil was theirs, and they drank of it, and it was good.

Embryonic rock ballad

Let me be the rock
star who steps off
stage who sits
on your laps
spills your vodkas
glasses roll shatter
on the sticky floor
the cigarette fog
obscuring our faces
as I beg you to hold
me fetal.

Let me show
you a network of
my veins, like a fiber
optic toy glowing
red cigarette tips
and let me be the joke
you remove from the deck place
before you on the table
examine discard
 "No wilds boys no wilds"
force your tongues
between the cracks of my painted
grin in dark auditorium stage
light igniting nothing just a feedbacking
guitar dropped against hollow shoe-
worn wood.

Let me inhale the
nicotine exhaust plié
from your throats into the back of my
throat
Let me swallow
your spit
what you give
when you say confiding knowing "What a wreck what a wretch what a mess what a fuck what a slob what a hippie what a cunt what a hack what a has been what a one hit always taking hits more tracks on his arms than his records"
and let me be destroyed
by your consonant
the way infant skulls fractal
kaleidoscopic against mothers' fists
shaking with milk
Let me be the joke
you tell confiding knowing
like I am a whore in which you know and confide by
bruising my imperfect shape
like I am the moment
in your lives
you ripped clothes from
a mannequin displayed
to the street because your money
was good
because your credit
was good sirs
you know your credit is always good
here sirs
and I am the moment
in your lives
you paid to nude
a mannequin
to the street because you thought
I want I want I want
and you could have so you
took because the mannequin had been molded
without face.

Let me be the puddle
reflecting the nude mannequin
and from which
like your smoke laughter
knowing confiding
blackbirds scatter
trembling
my skin.