Beginning

Once ungrounded,
rootless, filled with
helium, tendons unhinged,
doubts sprouting in tendril-clumps
I rooted down during my black earth days,
letting the universe spread,
emanating from my center
like panels of a fan,
mandalic panels
on which coming is going
going is coming
where every thing
shimmers and
changing currents is
as simple as selecting a paradise
as free as earth working through you
as basic as turning your cheek to the dirt
laying down the grass
signaling the clouds
and walking through aboriginal strands of time.

On The Eve of Turning Thirty-Three

Thighs churning, pistons pushing torso
across hillsides bruised brown and it's only
by looking left,
looking right that you finally see
the wheat of your childhood has been threshed,
that your soles slap
against soft earth,
the echo rippling across the plains.
an invocation against the creator yet
these rolling mounds
hold only you
and to point an accusatory finger
at them is flat useless,
for these waves of ground yawn to the horizon
and now, on the eve of turning
thirty-three, it is clear:
this land, this nothingless
betrays its own solitude
by birthing up force so salient
that your vision buckles, you blink your eyes,
and you swear each step carries you
to an oasis. Then gravity pulls,
yanks knees downward, buries
them in earth, your hands cup,
pooling water, you throw back your hands,
oasis water made real,
the liquid washing your skin like baptism,
one you only know enough about to cry for, the salt
tears rivering down
your face and mingling with the earth
which was, once, outside of you.

Love In Its Bare-Knuckled Beauty

Sounds snap, eyes cut, words clip, neck aches, exhale -
just a squall late Saturday night
as the walls buckle and foundation stiffens
in a house that has seen countless viral fights
in its a hundred-odd years.

The lovers, this time, are pugilists
held up by more than simple pride:
held up by imaginary ropes woven
from words that spin like disco globes.

Now they retreat, take precious seconds
to rest in corners before stalking anew

to uncover echoes of negotiations past -
perhaps from fathers, friends, and mothers -
yet these first blurs are in their own heads
the way sunsets and car crash linger and
juxtapose with
quick-pumping lungs and
flinching of lips that neither anticipated.

Passed-on scripts and well-wishes
dissipate the minute they hit the air,
a dreamscape abandoned at its peak.
I wonder if these dreamers know the alarm
will sound
before it does.

bring down heaven, bring up hell

via negativa
the sonorous ah
rises from earth
through foot-bound
soles upward, vocal
cords go vibrato
as arms extend
like a weather vane
for energy and
charged neurons
drip from fingertips
as the ecstasy grips,
holds, a cry to
bring to heaven
to release the
(im)purities into velvet
air that will dissipate
them the way the heavens
once broke
into ten thousand
fiery stars

barnes v. cinncinnati

the docket, hidden in manila,
reads Barnes v. Cincinnati,
a file thick with paper-cut
edges, results in a one-hundred
fifty thousand dollar judgement,
immediately appealed,
and I wonder whether the
two sides, this entity Barnes
and that entity Cincinnati,
could have saved an armada
of legal motions and five
dollar per diems by sitting
on the stone steps of the court
house, this Barnes and that
Cincinnati, buying each other
polish dogs from a street vendor,
and coming to agreement
about the perfect orange
of the leaves in late fall

In My Dream

Wolves flecked with gray lie in wait amidst birch trees
that are on their side, trees that will not betray their brethern
but I feel the molecules exhale from lupine mouths
into mine, and am afraid.

I go clutch a book from the library but diagnosis is impossible,
I am not flying, or crashing, or being tangibly chased yet
dark eyes follow my footsteps, noting how I wear
grooves into my chosen spots loam, just around nightfall.

Now and then, I can
hear branches crushed underfoot and, somewhere
between the snaps of wood, a sound,

a low sound, rumbling from the earth's guts,
a sound that twitches my thighs. I picture ears upped
bodies unhaunch, creeping nearer as they time my gait,
preparing to spring as mountains
blot the sun, their trigger my feet
pressing into the same worn earth

then I leap over one such spot
and break into a dead run
alone
weaving in and out of trees

A Philosopher Misses His Creator

Eye sockets pulsing
and eye hollows darkened
the philosopher kills the backlight,
feels the years fill his marrow with
goo that slimes and oozes
out in the form of eye
boogers that cling to old skin
the way a thirty-eight year old man
still needs flannel sheets tucked in
by his frame-hunched mother.

And the philosopher moans

while outside the wind blows
from down to up, lifting
snowflakes by its dint of touch,
each flake unique and
each one a created gift
as a higher order - the one
looking down at you right now -
does whatever can to prevent this
old man from peering
into the mirror

at his own eyes