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After a long sleep

I named the black glaciers,

stretched my stride onward

toward Ursa Minor,

seeking the sylph who woke me.

I remembered the blood dust

of Martian canyons,

the thick folds of nitrogen

in the eidolon shades of Titan,

where I trekked in dreamscapes,

swelling as Ganymede through approach. 

The sylph smiled once before 

vanishing into her bed,

where she lay Nymphaea lotus petals

for her skin, for her lover,

before becoming wind.

And I woke from this dream

no closer to the stars,

but moving once again.

(Originally published in Sand Hills, Vol. 46, Sept 2022.)

8-26-2021

I watched a movie about a man

who knew faces, bodies through touch,

who tripped in both the dark and the light

to fumble and discover;

and I thought about your legs,

your stomach, your cheek bones

your hidden ears, and your laugh,

how I'd love for us not to fuck

our first night alone, but talk

and touch so I could lay with your curves

and hear mellow sadness drip from your mouth,

learn you with my hands while you tell stories

of how you longed to be loved

in some way that made you feel whole,

and I would tell you I broke so many rules

just to find you, so my eyes could know

the right darkness. My ears, your laugh,

my hands, your body—

you, the woman who walked, explored, 

loved, guarded, fell, and succeeded

for thirty-five years

so I could touch you to know you

the way a blind man shows 

he's in love.

A Morning Ferry

Clinical speak detailed the science 

of her death at 6:02AM EDT

in a cold-linen hospital bed, fourth floor,

lights traversing a sole aperture of declination;

I imagined her spirit on a morning ferry

crossing thick currents in liquid luster

where the cresting sun poured out

reflection after reflection,

scattered rays birthed and rejoined 

as islands of flowing fire, 

cast in abundance toward a land 

supine in its day-to-day.

Doctors of a steady bearing warred,

minds ablaze by blade and vow,

while the prosaic calmly tossed pills

behind a mask of plain and distilled humanity;

I felt small in my chest

as she was languid in sterile hands,

when they folded her clothed and naked body,

pulling and bending as the clock slowed,

then stretching her anew

like black robes of the bronze age

preparing their offering 

to a burning salt lake.

She once told me she would paint a new earth,

dip brushes wildly, soak canvas at the ecliptic

because gravity left long ago;

she said she could love in totality,

melt the old worlds, distantly resplendent

as the chaos of an O-type star appears 

like serene sparkle light years away;

she showed mathematically and

through collimation, a life after death,

and diminished the parallax of our perception

when we watched the way orbed fire 

sank gently into the transpose.

At dawn she slept in the truest way,

a tallowed hull, gliding on a glass ocean 

blooming with citrine at the horizon,

while Mnemosyne and Ourania composed notes rising

from the tide-pulled seas, upward and onward,

her spirit destined to pass the skies

and the dark expanses and through

star after star after star,

beyond dimensional boundaries

where all is coded and quantified and known,

and where the eternal light from her body

returned peacefully to the source.

Four Minutes

The fine gentlemen at the clock shop

don't take credit cards—

ironic, as their clocks know the time.

I bought a weight from them

that doesn't quite match the other two.

But I know no one will notice

as long as time passes by.

I adjusted the escapement

a fraction of a millimeter;

the grandfather clock stops

after no more than four minutes.

It's the clock my father built

when I was just a child

before I understood

what it meant to build,

what broken means,

or the relief and curse

of time standing still.

(Originally published in Hive Avenue, Vol. 5, May 2022.)

The Architects

I know you as well hear the refrain

of maple limbs stretched beyond resolve,

in an old forest with bonfires in its lungs—

a madrigal cracking of branch and bone,

where we waded time savagely,

filled with music at solstice, and at equinox

listening for a remnant of past footsteps

when we used to roam delicious and wild.

 

We soaked in sunlight before wisdom,

summoning memory of elk, their majestic crowns,

calling fountains of forest song

as we made wine amid a reckoning of eyes.

The rock gardens cut our skin, bled our bodies

into offerings full of flowers, hidden desires,

before a denouement of hands gripping steel

forged in our quiet moments.

 

Remember that woodland builder,

a terrestrial architect, deliberate in his ways,

an understudy of the river, but mute of the sky.

He kept our faces moving till twilight;

you burned the black roses,

while I tasted honey between rises,

lost in constellations and elations, searching

for sentients of the bright.

 

We forgot our destination was somewhere else,

far beyond borders where we laid,

as season shifts blended dreamscapes with salt

and smoke rising from winter fire to sparkled seas;

and when our legs gave to the day’s burn,

we could only melt solemnly in the night—

two celestial architects,

sketching stars and new worlds as we slept.

Wheelbarrow

I remember

hammer, wrench, and bones

pulling a pneumatic wheel

from a cavernous metal shell

 

as Superman and I stood

on a wooden plate of sunlight—

he died a dozen years later;

took me a year to hear

 

my own voice

as it gushed rainbows

until The Ripe

complained about color saturation.

 

"We want cold truth," they said.

"Why must it be cold?" I asked.

"Entropy, young one," they said.

They told the divine to fuck off.

 

Now Superman, who I once saw

dive over a badminton net,

sketches memory in reverence

of old Georgia and Appalachia

 

while I blend a warm brew

with cream and ice

and color just enough

to show I'm not dead.