strolling several steps behind the most beautiful pair of legs in omaha

when I take few steps slower & eventually

things get vivid. The wanton flash of the moon

amid your radiance tonight is almost

something worth writing about.

I can't sleep without them.

the stars, I mean, not your legs

not the chill of another set of skin

to stretch myself over & let vapor

the heat of friction between want & need,

between around and not so much.

Your ankles match your sweater, can I touch

your nether continents? Kiss me stupid

or awake, or to bed, let me suckle

your heart valves. Our footsteps in unison

practically worth a manuscript. A sonnet

without a volta, sort of unchanging,

my want for you like the steadiness

of my irregular pulse when you get just close

enough to inhale. My want like this moonlight,

not illuminating enough down here to show you

how I would sing to the peach fuzz

down south beyond your navel

between where my hands

read your pulse by your quivering,

would make jazz of your thighs & the glory

lying somewhere in your middle, my tongue

gracing or maybe with a Z

the outskirts of your tautest skin

where I once imagined a blue

silk dress & loving your way out of it.

cornerstone

si vous




blood blends in with pools
of liquid; the thickness
of it all is meaningless.
when it comes to drowning
there are only a few pairs
of hands i want wringing.
the peal of heaven, the plunge
of freefall: crystal cuts deeper
than our roots. the family tree
smells like nooses. it hurts
looking up with all the crinks
in these skeletons of ours.
i felt the penny dust on my tongue
before the red even hued
but no one said anything
about the blood on my collar.
some dogs have turned up
missing. by turned up
i mean face down in drainage
ditches & i told you already
blood doesn't matter anymore.
someone is someone no matter
how thick their divots. even monks
tend to jump from their dome stones
to see whether or not they were wrong.
don't get me wrong, i say this
with love and an entire zoo
of tempests, of quiet loathing
i say this that the diamonds
in my teeth do not care
whether or not your blood mingles
with mine in any way: if someone
deserves to have my jaw
snaked around their neck,
i am already wide open
hissing on the river banks.
you would be surprised
how strong the scent of
weak links has become.
i do not think it's the weather.

up

& out on the prowl
the sky is like poop
but the sky is something
i would actually hold
by choice inside me

up & at them
the whites of nebula
no eyes or voices in black.
what about faster than light?
it took twelve years to find
the space between energies
& the fraction of negation betwixt.

up & around, i have
been. i have been
like layers of rock
and will be like
the outer reaches unpaved
with the laser pointer of
god's eyes. don't you
ever wonder what he
looks like when he sleeps?

up & down the rabbit
hole, a bridge through
the apple. if my hands
were gods hands
i would never stop
landscaping. the gardens
of stars tethered to
other heavens heave
without anyone to see.

it would take all of infinity,
both circles and all the orbits
of our galaxy to spin
up & around again. why stop
now when we have
come so far? look
at how much light
we have yet to receive.

certain degrees of want,
the smallest circle around
everchanging numbers like 40
or 136 depending on your hips
on how happy you are to
watch me wander in

not wandering, i know
where we ought to end up:
the glum dumb atlantic
the monster fucking whirling
animal that blacks the shores
with acute departure. not really
lusting either at the end,
it just seems sort of
sad when you think about it.

if you ever think about it &
i want to ask you
while you sleep, where does
the universe end & will you
hurl me off the edge?
i would very much like to see
if fall can find me faster
than i undoubtedly can find
the fall & it isn’t even april.

On Your Porch

Weathered and here
I am, mining your sea floors
for farther parts

of wings and kidneys:
vestigial parts when
all I need are arms,

the coif of your neck.
A freefall into bedlam,
I swear I am inside it.

Ready or not I swear you
won’t writhe away from me.
You are no overblown wolf.

Like I said, been mining
for emeralds or your eyes,

a way to make you tremble.

The lawn feels damp

these few days, I been collecting
dew, building a better cocoon.

caved like Chile
I am, trying the back door,
 here where vultures wait

for men like me to fall
in love with breakers
like you, icebergs

that ruin the biggest boats,
the unsinkable nature
of promise & regardless

I’m outside, now, caving.

I’ll tear down the damn fence
now olly olly oxen free.

Learning

write about bad things,
the fucking devil in everything.
a serpent beguiling, crooning
on high untouched cedar branches.

write about fake ancient creation then,
my ribs maybe ate a fruit first
but dammit if my wrists aren’t emptier still.
or write about the dangling of halos

crooked on crags where manna blossomed
& some glimmering history got carved
in blood all wrong. the bears could glare me
into ghost if i go know their woods a while.

write the luck out of things & coil
tiny problems all tensely:  this one
or that one; write of tending all the flowers

in Eden forever & how bad the snake problems getting.

Honest Answers

you asked over waffles how far

the farthest was I ever gone for pussy.

well once i ended up in Texas to taste
a girl with dick sucking lips, i said,
but she never proved the namesake.
you however should definitely know
that i would much rather make love
most mornings to the most intimate corner
of your throat, but that sounds slipping

and who would I be to surge too fresh,

forgetting who tucks in the corner of the beds.

there’s already a frown now forming so

i can put this a little prettier:
O my papillion my thornless rose tree

i am arctic should you drift, melting over shoulders.
your body is a museum impregnable,
i am breaking in, flittering through your masterpieces.
you are the quick graze of comets, an eclipse

that i will stare at wide-eyed,
but settle for brushing sides of walls
if it means you are the last O angel you
sight to be seen, among everything.

i pick you over the sea grasses,
the baobab and the ghosts of horses
whinnying about weather within you,
the orange hue of London dusk
and all the hope waiting quietly
at the deep dark bottom of the Trevi.

 ⁂

if it is like a kite string
and way up there then most likely must
be painted yellow, tight tied with lightbulbs
flashing morse code & swinging.

whether the wind means to or not
it will likely fray fast  and the holes strung through

the forests will undoubtedly wither, we will need to perform
repairs & the occasional rain dance to maintain
the quiet line floating high that keeps us hooked.
something like a bridge between one river and another
 ripe with maybe seven states in the middle.
young bear cubs in the woods will paw at the sky
to try and tear the line in the winds but by
the grace of elevation, persistence & a little duct tape
things that are bound to succumb to falling

hold up a fist that isnt really there & flick off
the nagging throat of distance.
if it is so high that sometimes we lose track,

throw snowballs skyward to see what catches
then we might remember the importance of stringing

along things & bursts that aren’t really there but touching

ever slightly

The Doppler Effect of Leaving

You used to watch the pendulum swing.
Now, edges of planetarium universes are daring
to be encroached upon & the metamorphosis
of upward in winter isn’t important when alone.
Still can’t hear everything even like that even
with all my windows down.
I am circling the city backwards
memorizing train schedules at bloodying dusk,
listening for things hurling to collapse, across me.
Sometimes I stop outside buildings where
I’ve been inside of you & try to forecast
how wet you might get around another
neck of someone else’s wood.
I watch the stupid doves.
Some of them taunt me with pinecones,
love songs, others with death lulls & I can’t
hear so well with doors slamming. Your breeze

rolling left to right, a wrecking ball abandoned.
There are sirens, sure, it comes with going broke,
with forgetting Chicago & all that slush melting.

Not that we weren’t icicles at sunrise, but
it’s just something about sorrow circling.

Something about the sun coming up.

I check my watch & walk wide turns,
swooping like dark flocks do
from seasons that show up
the very same but sharper.
I must have missed you by at least a mile last night.

Found myself in a mess of noise before I lost you
like the path of an ambulance when someone

You love is inside. Maybe I uncrossed my fingers.

There’s something about unannounced leveling

that merits the scouring for a black box.

I should have heard the sky scheming & shit
who can hear anything since you cherrybombed the exit?
The sky is the color of perdition & sometimes

now in the park the barreling of your evening train
gets stuck in my breeze. I’m the aftermath

 of Gare Montparnasse. You are riding home

surely & my feet swing slow like pendulums;

 I try to tell which direction
the sound goes & guess to whom.

measurements

The space between simple straining & seeming
struck still by a miscue from Olympus won't
span a gap grown graceful over some summers now.
the difference isn't much, the want of an acorn to give up
the good fight & fluster. Burrow all the Mediterranean
in the rest of me. If God still throws lightning bolst,
my arms are open. An ocean is an ocean no matter
how bothered by storms. Still, the space between
being seen streaming & some strumming of a heartstring
in an empty room is more than all the oceans.
The space between Sisyphus smiling
& an ice-plighted peak; je juste voudrais tomber.
Where will you be when it really starts,
the worst snow falls? I'm around, buried
between drained harbors and birdnests tucked up
under half-lit streetlights. Expanding, sure I am.
Shrinking only if you see lightning
on the same Florida horizon as forever
electric & take shelter, leave me to gape.

Dropping C4 Charges Just Beneath Lake Superior & Waiting

I hear something like a blue light, but synesthetics have not been

A skill set much developed & I don’t think that even foaming horses

Into glue will stick us stuck. Love notes lost somewhere in the backwoods

Of Alabama, another Midwest, another Chicago, where I might be next-

Door, borrowing your sugar & not just sweet powder but

Your lips in a cup, my heart under your welcome mat for safe keeps,

Your window half open so the bigger things won’t get in.

I’ve shrunk a whole lot this year, I fit snug, I roll

In and around your bear rug to soak in what I can

From the crackling base of the chimney, the wood breaking

Beautifully, your legs crossed and the shadow is dancing my face off.

I let things go & smolder. The sentences just run on for miles or never come.

Blank pages are the best friends I have seen since June; mostly voices

Are where the ghosts of my butterfly wings flutter to.

The line is often quiet on your end & what stories are there

To tell that allow a beetle permission into the castle? No one

Wants to see anything that rolls in shit for a living &

I have been laying in the same bed I forget to make

& it is mine to froth within; nightmares like mating dances

For boogie men, like the line to snap already.

I heard the green go, and the snow melt all the way from here.

I know how hard it is to want a chunk of something gold

But the Earth is not keen on blowing itself to bits just to get lost

In a couple years, maybe end up in a small box sitting inside a small room

Behind vault doors hooked aside the tiniest financial institution

East of Shreveport, but your illumination turns the mountains kamikaze

And me along with it so put the fuse in, light it one last time.

It will catch and fizz unrelenting. You won’t be still much longer -

The whole of the planet might collapse under the ricochet

And together everyone’s enemies and our warheads will plummet

Like bees into satellites or prayers onto ears deafened by a series

Of plagues and disappointing data from experiments that took a wrong turn.

It took made me three lefts to get back to you the right way.

Maybe you won’t keep my pages white much longer. Technicolor my

Whole week, bubble up my weekend, tourniquet what ghosts are left

And usher a breath from the north directly into the bloodstream by

Any means necessary; I need you to tell me what it will take

To keep me from failing you anymore. I will start rhyming,

Sing out in iambs: to you a lullaby, a black arrow

To soar Chicago the whole way through red, my scent stuck on

So all the dogs will know I am coming when I am coming.

And I am coming just as soon as you put the damn fuse in & fizz.

Keep me unquiet, hurl me out of windows, pull my socks off with both hands

Before bed so I don’t lose them between clean sheets but

Most importantly, above all else: I have been hearing colors for two months

Like the color of angels sounds awful, & the color of your space

Is symphonic but quiet, it’s the wind around corners, the snowbank

No one saw coming (but I heard it alright, I heard it). Sounded

A whole lot like the fizz of a fuse you finally found fit to blast,

You my little hunk of gold, somewhere in the snow, why will

I never find you? Glimmer for me. I do not know where to put

You if you decide to shine; I don’t know if anything I have is bright enough.