Last one and the last

You’ll curl in a circle

Your Stockholm syndrome showing

The back of your arm warmless

Iced inside a sheet

Kept empty these months

Now pulled back to arrange

Your absence

Not that part

The softest part of my body = the top of my right foot

Pale skin arc working bones names I forget

It’s the only section of the only organ I bear

Does not age God knows why

It receives the most severe angle of my concern

Lives beneath horrible shoes I force upon it

Does nothing to protest a shame I duty deliver

I touch it every night to remind me of its faith

To remember what I felt like when I was young

Sure

I’ve been seeking winter

But I think she’s avoiding me

It’s OK, I understand

She has a lot of things to do

Tell her she can come by anytime

I’ll wait for her dark entrance

Melting under melted earth

Toe Jam

In a corner of my life

I am with you

Not the corner

I am in

The other corner

In the corner

Afterwards

 

I drive the late road to a kind of home

Black and noise enough

The Chicago freight line rolls in at the same time

We trace the river together in

Acetaminophen lights

With thoughts of other places

Laundered

I am the end

Of your end

Turn around

Unrepeat

Your damn recessions

I was shot twelve years
With my enemy
It proved nothing
Last accounting
I left acred blood
On your winter steps
I promise
This all keeps going
Until it doesn't

Phrases this week

Outrage industry

Fever swamp

Hot surface

Skin hunger

The ruin of an unbuilt building

Acquiring more and more sorrows

No work of art can ever really testify to the scale of its own impossibility

So then that happened

I met this woman

Something is not right

About her

She keeps pointing at parts of her body

Expecting

I understand what that means

This means

The whole undercarriage

Derived from a different set of principles

I didn’t expect

To speak that language yet

Instead

I wake up

Under warm weight

Being lost

I need a booth

Staffed with an explanation

A currency that converts

Something in a place

Where someone

Tells me things

I understand

It's Late

Here’s where those inventories

Make themselves known

Deep debt on the fence

Waiting for the night call

Whome

This is the wrong house

You brought me to the wrong house

Didn’t you know

Where you were going

I thought you knew

where you were going

You always told me

You had this part covered

I was supposed to cover

Another part

What was that part?

Listen, this place will be fine

Fine enough

Tell everyone goodnight

I am going to bed

The bed I thought was another bed

I thought it was another bed

I thought this was another house

I thought this was another place

I thought you had this part covered

I have been walking

Through the same land

In the same boots

I am what kind of fool
Thinking I

Would be

In another place

Bullshit Anniversaries

When a whale
washes dead
on your bathroom floor
let me tell you
you're going to need help
Think about who you call
carefully
You only have a minute
Then the windows
blow wide open
A march of investigation
People with jobs
you've only heard about
in your driveway
in your hall
up and down
notepads and stares
All night long
while you hide on the floor
in the farthest room
hurdled against
everything

This spring sure beats last spring

I am nowhere
going nowhere
this machine
obeys to none
Its tendency
is toward water
where it washes
what I won

I am tired
growing tired
radish black
bitter thin
I want you warm
inside my hand
you grow away
clean and dim

Known Discoveries

Quantum physics

some queer science

It says some thing

can be two things

at once

In two places

at once

Entangled

Here

and there

Not a problem

 

Stranger yet

when this thing moves

its lover particle

located in another universe

or in the room next door

moves

against its will

or with it

doesn't matter

 

Like all discoveries

this has always been true

just recently known

Frankly, it explains so much

In the quantum universe

the one you

and I

may choose to believe in

this poem 

is also being written

by a hand 

of mine

it ends

the same

and different

with you

absent

and present

 

Liberty

I helped make that place

I disgraced that place

I see it empty

and I lay waste

its taste

is lost in mine

I unwrap your spine

in the light

I forget

what time

was mine

 

St Thomas

Had his first miracle
sneaking bread
under his cape
a sly night mission
to the poor
caught
opened
roses
fell out
or so they say.

No Exit

I am eleven doors
all empty
to the same chamber
everyone lingers
fingers
conversation
turns to nothing
but you

Covered

I would go to the smallest places with you
tiny, before they get big
we'd hide in their crevices and
wait out
the rain of our lives

Poems about other people

I’ll write about the same people

in different places

the places of people

I have wandered to

Truth told

I have not worn home

for ages

An afternoon alone

tastes just fine

until a single word

ruptures through

broken news

of other people

in other places

 

Once Upon

The white knight
is at the gate
knocking again
right on schedule
But at this point in the tale
I think it's important to point out
I am the hinge
on the door
I am the ointment infected
in the handmaidens vanity
I am the ghost
haunting the hall
I am the rot
beneath the cellar
I am the breath
wasted white into night
I am the stone
the beam
the fire
the smoke
I am the castle
ever after