Cold skin

I don't want to think about it.
Stop this thinking
about the chill on my skin
after cold swells on this stinky
beach tonight.

I have touched cold skin four times.
There is nothing like it. Nothing
like the touch of windless death
against your warm finger.

A trick, you think.
Something flows below
that cold skin.
There's movement
and where there's movement,
there is      an engine.
And what is the soul,
if not an engine?

Mad dog barking

My dog barks...then again.
Then crazy barking and again.
She barks with the pops, the bodies
rolling onto streets.

It drives my dog mad, those shots
repeating on TV,
the pop, pop, and pop,
it just doesn't stop.

A man voice warns, viewers
will feel unsettled and then
more pops and more short, sharp
mad dog cries.

The TV neutral in all its telling
of biology, of flesh bursting from
the bones above the dog's sharp
short mad cries.

And overhead crows swarm nonstop,
and dog barks, barks, and barks
and I climb up the olive tree,
to the very top and flap my arms
like small, white flags
to the enemy.

Not like this

I don’t want to go like this.

When I see my loved ones' fluids leak

like the garden's rotting fruit.

What misery in that slow retreat.

I pray for speed, for quick.

My mass, my final moment

freed freed freed

in a single sudden trick

To the bay

Blue, cobalt bay with your secret bottom,

I stand before you in the golden hay,

upright and awed,

looking without thought, without choice,

with only one this: love

at your blue dome,

at the clean gurgle of your perfect

blueness splashing

every part of me in the motion

of wind and I gulping light of gold

and feeling sorrows sinking

all of me bowing

to that healing unknown.
.

The body shines

The body shines on the table.
Pure as a figure carved atop a tomb.

Not a tremor, not a twitch, no stirring,
eyes stay gummed shut.

Bloodless, still as stone, my husband now.

The table raised and bathed, scents
burned for sacrifice

and  a lone chair for me.

All for one purpose: to look.
The looking--and the being looked at--
this is the ceremony.

I look as would a lit candle,
the earth's wick burning down inside me,

still inside him, too, but only hot in me.

finally

finally! there's a beach
in sight

finally! against my back
a panting wind

finally! from my palms
the sand now bleeds

finally! a world of swells rush
toward me

finally! a bridge of bluffs rust
in sundown glow

finally! foam whirls
like candy floss

finally! in the glorious wake
fear floats belly up

Stray cat

Ok enough about the impermanence
we hate.

I will tell you about my cat.

The stray lost himself
one summer.

What a pushover.
Morning kibble, some stroking
and he's here for good

With gratitude that’s ferocious--
razor teeth and claws, meaning
to be playful but draws my blood.

Yet it's a comfort to be followed
by his tender eyes and eager paws.

A bounty to have my death-bound skin
licked and purred on, even if it bleeds a bit.

To know another pair of ears perk up
when there's that banging of the wind at night.

And sweet, sweet comfort to rise
from my chair in twos.