I know better
there are no questions to be asked  nor
answers to be sought  what if   I often posit

to wake on this Monday  say
or even Sunday
listen to this song of songs that never ceases  though
always changes  cadence  timing  volume  rhythm  performer
audience 
what if I  one human  went about calling up the sun  singing down the moon  holding my wings out to the warmth   brightening into the day 
no listening for the world    no asking is it right   worth it   fair  fare
fair

a clearer attuning  a brighter resonance  a stronger vibrano 
truth
as the birds begin  as I lift my throat to the day

Blue/Orange striped tee shirt.
Cutoff jean shorts. Sears.
Hand swimming out the window, humming.
Hamstrings sweat stuck
to the vinyl bench seat
of a ’67 Ford Falcon with no AC.  

Summer-
The warmed steering wheel of another time’s
mediocre American apocalypse.

My grandson
wants to be Hulk Maui
with his Poly hair a riptide
of waves, twisting and surfing,
an undertow of the Universe
below his shoulder blade.

His sturdy legs pound across the floor,
a path of lava behind him, still steaming
in his wake, doesn’t know his own strength.

Hide everything that looks like a stick.
Hide the dog in the other room.
Put everything dangerous on the top shelf,
until he sleeps, on the floor, under the table,
In his mama’s arms, hands and feet still,
round cheeks soft, and hair like a waterfall.

there are gulls in the courtyard
tourists from the tyrrhenian sea
echoing and honking
honking on holiday
like the americans
who crowd these roman streets
and honk at each other
believing
like the gulls
they’re the only ones here

No Word For Time

Do as you please, but today we mustn’t look for time,
or for the birds to join cages we may have made,
or for what I want to forget top the parapet at sunset—
Are you tired of being a woman yet?

I’m tired of being of man.
Shaving, clipping away at a wiry, peppery sand.
Suspected—the older I become, if I flash a girl a grin.
The worst thing—when people rob me of my usefulness.

With no words for time, except the lack of molars in my mouth,
with no words to pass the hours, except I want you to want me again,
is it a crime to be so tired I barely know how to make a move?

The lie of afternoon winds blew fattened grasses into a creek
below my feet, and I’ve spent the last two years trying to score
with you.  No doubt a lifetime wondering what the hell for.

As soon as I pull the splinter from my palm the little wound calms down

knowing it finally has my attention

it doesn’t have to shout anymore

I interrogate the dark- sharp sliver of wood pinned to a tweezer with my skin cells and dirt

looking exactly like the broken tip of lead from a mechanical pencil

I let it fall to the kitchen table like a tear

What was a tiny enemy

now small

and frail

pitiable

I decide not to punish it anymore.

It didn’t want to hurt me

after all

but we come into contact with the world as it is

The time for keeping has come to an end.

It rolls off the table

glides to the floor

disappeared

All that’s left on my palm is a small red mark

that will likely be gone in the morning.

I decide not to punish you anymore

either.

I should have tended to my own wounds

before

damning

yours

beneath a camouflage of summer-
leafed trees, stanchion parking meters
hold rigid their lines, ticking off
minutes until  cardinal-colored semaphores
flash    one     after     the     other

above       the pale night-clock    rolls on
rearranging weightless shadows

that barely skim the silver
tributary threading its way 
past vertical terrains of glass and block
as bullfrog-bellows wheeze out
splashes    one     after     the    other
 

The whole place smelt like pig slaughter.
It got worse the longer we stayed.
Dirt and fear and dark night that laid
in our chests in ways that felt
violent; ways that violated.
You kept asking if I was okay 
as if to say my not being so
got in the way. You’re embarrassed
and I’m trying to be brave—
Remember names, stop smiling late.

I want all the pigs to be okay.

Knowing it’s far too late
What we taste now is a haunting
It sits between us in the dead
of night. Blood in the streets like
it’s normal to breathe in such pain.
Some things you can’t take back and
they sit inside your interactions like a hazard.

Who cleans after the slaughter? I imagine
Red tinged cement that foreshadows to
innocent hooves unexpected permanence.
Tonight a blood moon hovers patiently 
While I corner a stranger for something 
worth killing to eat
worth dying to love. 

is awake early because the light is too stubborn
to stay behind blinds, birds already so loud
I’m squinting, June is buzz, whirr, the window AC unit
full blast but still, June tosses and turns, awake again

and June smells like swamp, like sweat, like little bits of armpit
hair stuck to the razor, the sink, the elbow, June spits
dry shampoo but nothing can swallow the grease, June
reminds me of my younger years in the minutes before

work calls, June wipes the makeup off my glazed forehead,
bathroom mirror glare, water cooler stream, June sun
shines through my office window like a greenhouse, June tells
the coworkers get out it’s too hot I can’t think and June

walks me home past the gas station, stomps 
styrofoam slushies into fresh grass cuttings, haunts
my stovetop, slips through the brita and ice tray,
stalks, showers, salts, and whisper pricks my skin
until all I feel is slick behind my knees.