At the seashore

I burst open there. 

I am only air. 

But I don't forget him my

curled caterpillar on our bed 

in heavy sleep since Monday, 

barely a twitch, his body so slowed.

The radiant blues splash and feed me. 

I'm a hatchling with beak open snapping 

at the sea, it drops into my throat--

that foam and the songs about foam. 

But he, he is motionless on the bed.

I wonder what images flash 

under those lids while  I gorge 

on miles and miles of wet and living blue 

with two narrow clouds hovering 

like eyebrows and the sea all around 

splashing me damp and the moon 

silver and quiet rising over my brows, 

its bright light pouring into my veins 

like crack.  

But I can't forget him 

who lays curled on our bed. 

Wander

Maybe his kidneys will spout roots 

and grow anew.

Succulents do.

Maybe my weak parts

can refresh too.

I like to think souls wander

all day but float back at night

when we need them most, here

in the dark one needs a hand, 

even one made of air, 

to guide the way

to silence

without tears.

Blood everywhere

Suddenly the beast leaps out of my man. 

I see molars, I see deep down inside 

his mouth. I see his tongue. 

His jaws hang loose. 

He curses me. 

His eyes double in size,

they have no lids.  

I don't know the wolf in the bed. 

No, I will not argue with it.

I will not engage with madness. 

My darling is buried alive inside 
this howling thing. 

My gentle music lover cannot get out, 

cannot give me his hand. 

So I will bite down on my tongue 

before it can spit, 

my teeth will drop down

to form a cage around my tongue,

I will bite down hard until

my blood is everywhere. 

What I just found out

I've known it from day one:

jazz is his guiding light and tonight,

after weeks of bang and blare

in that rehab center,

he’s home playing big band CDs. 

The trumpets, all those horns

return to him his past, spread 

it out on the table,  each tune 

a mound of delicious memory.

The skin around his eyes folds 

with pleasure, a flare in the left eye 

and then the right.

A man can think he wants to die

and no melody will change his mind

but a certain swing, a few favorite notes

can overshadow his resolve,

can make him want to stall his

demise by at least one more hour.

I just found that out.

Tiny

One day you, I--all things--must 
merge into one tiny thing 
and then .....poof ..... 
all things become no thing
but only for an instant,
only until the advent of a new
tiny thing from which a spark 
spreads color deeply, widely--a new deluge
of things--water, diamonds, acorns, 
someone's happiest moments--
and who knows what else in our eternal 
drama of passing time and death approaching.
I don't know what else to say when he tells me 
he is crushed and wants to die 
so I ramble on and on to fend off, 
to dissolve, my pity, his fear, my fear, 
by sublimating this dead end he /we face. 
It's cruel that life contains the seed 
of its own destruction
but somehow it is a thought that lulls 
us both into a contemplative stupor 
and we can finally close our eyes 
and sleep.

You can see right though that dress.

A filmy peach like candle wax, but 

loose, but shiny, like a glazed donut. 

And everything behind the dress 

appears just as pale also with a gleam. 

I have had the dress a very long time 

but have only worn it once. The occasion

now forgotten because in that dress I am 

absorbed with me and with the dress. Distracted 

completely by the feeling of being hidden but also 

being visible--but softly visible. Pencilled in.

If I crossed my leg, you might have thought 

something under the dress was winged 

and had just fluttered. 

Everyday movements all seemed grander,

evoked a desert wind. 

In the dress, I became a phantom, a past self

climbing steps to a platform to accept 

a crown or an award or something else 

extraordinary. 

Memorial day

Crumpled. Their young bodies

so taken by force.

Damp like at birth. 

Soft flesh gleams from womb water then,

from melted metal now where

here they lie in a field of grass 

         on the backs of wild celery.

Here no questions.

But say it, they were murdered 

though we who murder them call it other things.

We call it "fallen".

No matter, they are our very own fallen dead

and we who sent them to Iraq want them back.

We want them back and in the center 

of each caved chest we place a rose, 

one stem in each

of our fallen boys and girls.

And then look.  The whole field glows 

a pious red.

As if there were only one rose,

only one dead.

Only one dead.