.

Selection from The Only Thing that Matters (forthcoming, Syracuse University Press, 2013)

I had always planned to live
on the run, now I’m a stranger
running to you alone—
the last great expert
standing, red.
You who argues for nothing and bows
to nothing and wears energy and feathers—
such fountains of light
--and who finds the hidden surprises
between home and heaven.

Your name in my mouth
feels cold
and ordinary—like inhaling
something frozen
through the phone.
Go—
now that you have a job.
Anyway, I aspire
to be poor, living
in seedy quarters and to forget
my place
the way a mast might
mid-sea    you’ll have years to be alone.

A mirror held up to your homeland
reveals otherness—a hardened people
with a taste for bread
and a taste—for freedom. Some lay their faith
in the sacred. Others exchange
faith for fever—for the right
to bear arms is intrinsic
to that space between test
and success—between take back
or wait—

A child was born to us—
all mouth, small hands, and now
my will is like rain—
the secret design of the sea.
I’ll forget hardships, the worm inside
and concentrate on kindness
because she’ll be afraid sometimes
of that dark place with no name.

The consensus is: life is magic
or a panic of interpretation. The gist’s in a spin.
Ordinary speech seems like a sin
and so does certainty—
since earth’s own emotions
aren’t complete.
A child once offered this:
Home is where the secret is. Then she disappeared
into god’s dark woods.

Now that your skin
is out of reach, the distance
is hell and bliss—
a siesta in a wide blue mist.
So far, I’ve had too much faith
to make a scandal or be gone. So far
everything’s been you.
Some may argue the logic of father
the poetry of exile. Causality. Penalties.
The mathematics of…But I know better
than to go on speaking.
A buzzard circles there
taking stock.

Time to recognize we’re all mutants
a million miles from Eden
and now the phone’s out. Obsolete
as it is—morality is the only hold on home—
the one place where someone
has patience    walls are considered good
company for a recluse, just as gravity
is for killers and politicians: brothers
finessing each other.
Leave your innocence at the threshold.
Unfasten your facts and make the connection—
if we were all created equal
why is someone always trying to get even?

Since never and forever, thunder
showers bring a hunger for good
stories—like the one about the Resurrection
or an underground crossing to The North.
In that play of burning
space, expression is an estimate
of heaven, and realism means
the listener is greedy
for seconds.
A pin drops at the part
where day breaks and the listener
is overcome—you are
the listener, waiting to be lifted.

No structure to summer
the wild feelings, a rush of freedom.
So far I’ve passed
as half a person—
a mermaid in a vase.
Time to let appearances
fly, escape. Night clouds
court the tops of trees. Ozone
becomes a shower of blue stones
tapping in my chest
soft as rain. Awake.