You know you can’t stay here.
Every heaven on earth has its fall from grace.
Every rhythm eventually breaks.
Someday, you too
will get that deployment call,
maybe in the night, when the kids are still sleeping.
You’ll pack your belongings, but not all of them.
You’ll leave behind memories and a history
and start off in some unknown land,
where no amount of explaining
will unveil your stranger’s cloak of invisibility…
On a quiet street of brick and oaks,
the mind of high summer:
a pale green notion of sound
cicadas, thinking with their wings —
possessing the treetops
in irridescent plunder
like the sacred scarabs of Egypt,
land of our bondage…
The strangest pain is too much joy—
I stagger under its weight.
Born too bright,
I crave shadow,
my face fading
in the burning light.
There is no skeleton,
only skin—
There is only pleasure,
never sin.
I levitate easily into the sun:
in dreams I float right in,
dissolving
atom by atom
in its permanent grin.
…Aeons.
Asleep in an amethyst cave
under a canopy of stars:
a struck geode, my skull’s soft cockle forms.
The shore evolves —
rhythm wet, slowed and cooled,
water — salt — moon —
shroud.
The pointillist smile of stars.
On the black shore,
bauxite — giant crystals,
opaque, white, and sandstone —
cacti of calculus,
tall mothers of the tide,
pale in the moonlight…
I have just learned
the dark secret
of the sun:
he only seems
to share his warmth
with everyone,
but this charity
is only illusion:
really he is seeking
the elusive moon—…
A tree falls dead at my feet.
In its wake, black wire serpents
flail. Their sparkler tails
burn and flare—
a sort of sati
portending missed voicemails
of suicide and love:
basement
trapped
the cords snap,
cell phone towers down
and I’m blank
as the matte-slate air—…
…If you played my heartbeat backwards,
would you hear subversive messages?
If I remain silent for long enough,
will flowers grow on my tongue?
Some would lament
the passing of time,
but I feel it more
like an elevator
that can move
in many directions,
or the slow lateral spread
of the banyan tree…
Dreamer,
new magician,
beware of wishes:
for they become living beings,
awaiting your coaxing touch.
Beware the ease with which
they fall into your unsuspecting arms
in basketless apple-bushels.
Beware the icy smoothness
with which they slip into your life
and snap the tense winter of waiting…
I’ve won.
All the fountains are lit up
and all the trials I’ve been tasked with
are done. I’ve traveled the underworld,
cakes in hand; kept my coin
for the ferryman. I wandered in the dark,
cards close to my chest
and when the lost souls cried to me,
they didn’t know my real name.
You wonder
if I’ve built
you a pedestal.
Actually,
it’s more of
a crucible—
we have all
the gold coins
at our disposal,
but I don’t want
you to be Midas
all the time…
There are so many rooms in the house of sleep,
and for too long,
I’ve been pacing the hallway
listening to things clatter from behind locked doors,
and I’ve been too tired to stop
and search my cluttered pockets
for the keys.
It’s easy to talk myself into
believing this isn’t necessary,
that I have everything I need
in this narrow corridor—
but last night sleep possessed me
on the couch, still in my coat.
There was no arguing with it…
for L.T. Rest in adventure, friend… you are cherished and remembered forever.
if you read between the lines
that striate my iris,
you’ll find a hidden reservoir of blue
with a name written on the other side
in invisible ink—
a poem written so long ago
and with such a young and heavy hand
that pen trespassed paper and broke into sky,
until I cried because no page could contain
the words that could describe him—
