i wade into the deep

inflexible melancholy

a wildflower grief

at the passage of time

because i am older now 

(if only just)

but nothing

is the same

You dream the tinkle of piano keys
will come, will come
to save you from
me, pointing the gun.  

Will come to you in a major chord
with a woke heart
and a great big smile.
You’re all losers.  

Republican leaders have joined my gang,
Once you’re in, you can’t get out
except in a coffin
and, also, I shoot the witnesses.  

You’re all contained
in my reptilian brain.
Stomp and kill is the only thrill
standing on two feet on Blueberry Hill        

Approaching the full moon
tonight had a different hue
our third lunation somehow less charged
    rose-colored film replacing the spotlight white.
You were tired, but softly vibrant
you were complimentary
but real.
We sat close
sharing the space
in a quieter and yet more full way
than our usual. 

Full moons are about manifesting
what’s already begun.
Out of our control
it’s looming huge 
    and breathtakingly commanding.
You’re my luminary
I’m following you down path after path
each strikingly mercurial
as if I’ve somehow forgotten
how the subtle waxing and waning always ends up
creating a whole.

what our bodies choose to remember,   
the circling, the backtracking
of a mind in reel, 
a narrative turning in your guts,  
a hissing and grunting  
vocabulary of wounds  
that collapse in on themselves.  

The heart refuses to  
linger on  
what you lug around  
tucked and folded,  
a language of gaps  
rolled between thumb and index finger
like a bead of unsayable plosives,
both lament and howl.

Take me to the edge of  
the night thick with grief,
through the door of noise,
echoes of lives passing through
a constellation of absence.
In the silvery, mutinous light of loss,
I am fed best by what is left behind.

Sometimes against one’s will,  
a oneness of meaning creeps in—
roots tendril inside a body
to hold the weight of your own frame,
a sequence of continuation  
inscribing new divinations of being.

The body pushes out deep splinters,
the tender and violent untangling,
a birth born out of wonder into wonder,  
a worn place ready to receive  
her back into herself.  

Dig into the moment,  
charged and layered,  
the blue flame of an egg,
a whisper of a nest,
the cool mossy relief.  

~  A cento created from lines and phrases of Felicia Zamora’s poetry collection, Interstitial Archeology, and Lia Purpura’s essay collection, Rough Likeness

Cradled by boat, I
float along the Rhine River
gaze upon cities
haunted by war; they see a
privileged pig on water.

The Duke of Earl Grey Tea:

looking back, I’m grateful
for the years in the 
tobacco field

we all had a role,
from setting, topping,
cutting, hanging, and,
finally, taking to sell–
praying for a good price

in all those years, I never
heard my Papaw complain,
even though he listened to
the rest of us, all day long

it was his money on the line–
his farm–and
Mother Nature struck his crop
every year–drought, or flood, 
or hail

Papaw didn’t blame or make excuses,
he simply got in the field and did
whatever could be done

I never spoke with Papaw about this–
I was just a stupid kid–and it took
a few knocks on my head 
before I learned to reflect,
to recognize, to
appreciate, to
simply do the work

Big squash blooms need pollination–

That was my thought tonight
as the tree outside the chapel
beat against the clerestory window
and blue gave way to gray.

I live where I can see 
the edges of the bowl of sky
all the way to the Manzano
range miles away south.
Here clouds show off their stature
and pantomime myths for us
across a stage set with sage
and lit with rose gels at sunset
when the Sandias earn their name.

And even if wind and cumulus giants
threaten, then pass us by,
I am happy I can see
where the weather goes
and where it’s raining somewhere.