bleach baby beach bones walking down the boygirl burial sand I step on a fury of roses thorns from the vine of casket-strength sea spines tail of tales of sting-ray die-off sun's rays sea's rays sting rays risibly risking sun and waves of denial anger grief the long spike spiked with shark tooth hunger red sun rising in a weather bloom off my foot rose madder and madder and madder still life blood nor pain are lightfast offshore seals moan what's my tune sharp scaled staccato of bones
TSM 113
beyond any reason's sky, it makes me angry – this beautiful Oxford garden of 100 years ago with two young girls dressed in baby blue eyes why would you send me light forever trapped between two plates of glass like a virus mounted and stained with the lives of saints on lab slides for cathedral windows if light bears witness to the past I want for war paint the distant, ancient stars – scars, galaxy blue across my face, novae, my catastrophe of sight
Atomic Dog w/ Whitman
every day, second or third hand, the dog gets a new name: "Bismarck" say, or "Windham", or whenever I peel a clementine – the skin fragrant and loose as a nom du plume – my lingering mind confuses the prerogatives of gods and poets right now she's "Walt" because someone said to sniff the grass and that is for sure her dominion, the adoration and open door of scent, and what she assumes I too will assume, breathing atoms of the restless and faceless tide then checking her for ticks and tocks, and time's re-reading of the leaves before they curl and fall and blow and I forget what I most needed to say, what was meant as song now more like the growl of a lawn-mower, the madness of wild seeds cut down to size
Rooted
You sniff and snuff for me next to your pillow like a sleepy truffle pig rooting for your prize even in dreams Maybe love grows best in darkness – loamy, unseen – a carrot say, or turnip tapping our longing In the morning, all we can eat is before us among vases of daylilies, begonias, the table set for two
TSM 112
waking again with hair sticking up like antlers, my COVID doo and don't, pillow wet where dreamwater leaked from the corner of my mouth now the grass-fed belly of clouds and thinking to gut them – slice them open with the knife edge of my palm, hang them to bleed out then salt and dry or better my hair is a field of antennae scanning for life, where Heaven plays its Top 10 hits on the radio telescope in my skull
Ode til Torsk
3AM lying in the bottom of our boat drunk as fishwives strung on hooks of Everclear we'd brewed with midnight sun brighter in our eyes than any moonshine, singing hymns to the cod in Norwegian Gunstig fisk! Utgaven av havet Eldste sønn av havet Flott fisk av havet! (Beneficent Fish! Issue of the Ocean Eldest son of the Ocean Great fish of the Ocean!) and the fish would rise to our voices, to our lures on ropes barely tied to the oarlocks Dde rolige og rene herlighetene Av havets dusør gitt Omrøring gjennom vår dødelige ramme Vend jorden selv til himmelen! (The calm and pure delights By ocean's bounty given Stirring through our mortal frame Turn Earth itself to Heaven!) Which we thought was hysterical as the fish would hammer the line 2-3 hits at a time and we'd haul them in I'd remove each hook pinched between thumb and forefinger laughing too at the blood from steel stuck in my palm I'm grateful to be the man Jesus taught to fish, grateful for the smell of fried cod with a pinch of salt and pepper
TSM 110
today I reconditioned my 6-ton bottle jack drained and replaced the hydraulic fluid scoured rust with WD40 before that I had planned to launch a rocket of words a fiery blast across the sky but instead I lifted the car 8 inches off the ground which is as close as I can get to flipping something over and lighting the fuse
The Sunday Muse
Quickly Now
a pair of egrets flies long and low up the estuary long and low up the water long, beckoning water, white and low to the grasses where they nest across from our window feeling like flight, feeling low, stepping out – my face hidden behind a white wing folded across longing, my legs as strung as reeds from a nest of crow tangle – copper and liquid crystals woven ever tighter by zooming in concentric circles, whirlpools draining silica from an hourglass like sand never up and out, never as white as those feathers with no song, swinging into the air ready to dive and slice into water, speed first
For Quickly
TSM 109
roses by the fence
have clawed their way
from thawed dirt
colors hungry
as if red and yellow had
hibernated underground
all winter
and now devour
the morning
it was you and I
hunkered along the path
between thickets
our eyes foraging
twigs and bristle
that left scars
down the bark
a sight too famished
for Spring
For The Sunday Muse
TSM 108
Aztec Two-Step
sometimes the old ways are the best ways
who needs vaccines, I say
let’s roll some heads tumblety-peg
into the volcano of contagion,
appease the lava god in our lungs,
intubate with obsidian knives
fellow free citizens –
you jaguar knights and eagle warriors –
a poet you must choose:
you will rip a heart from its ribs
and light a ceremonial hearth
in the hole in our chests
first paint me blue-starved O2
and surrender my body
to the cash pyramid and the priests
will you then all snake and feathers
dance with immunity
wearing my skin?
For The Sunday Muse
