Up from the horizon line waves the body oblique 

to a buoyed cadence with a vermillion-soaked sun.

Fever ripples salt along our tongues and I want 

to taste a warmth brimming with the sapor of brine.

A collection of favorite words can’t make a poem

be anymore than I can be a poem myself. 

I write on my arm the torrid air a salve

for the wounds any pleasure soothes

and makes known again.

Why is it important that we remember

the metrics of marking time? All I ever am 

haunted by the naming of things, 

the finality of definition 

of anything being anything

more than what is known. 

Fascinated by turning toward, becoming

light haloed from a moving silhouette— 

I write nonsense, vague and unspecific,

defensive mechanisms from being known.

Next to me, someone is talking (to me?)

of love. They say we make it

specific to our language of need.