Woe to the world, the sun is in a cloud,
And darksome mists do overrun the day;
In high conceit, is not content allowed;
Favour must die and fancies wear away.
O heavens, what hell! The bands of love are broken,
Nor must a thought of such a thing be spoken.
-Robert Devereaux

Goodbye, mockingbird -
I must leave you now.
I have often watched you
hash across the yard
from your holly station,
chop chop chop with such vim,
from the leaf to the post
to the high-lidded lamp
that surveys the night dispassionately.

In return, how ungrateful I have been -
what terrible things
I have offered your shining bead
of an eye. In your tenure
on the gray-green sill
you have listened to the sharp salt
of my many difficulties
with perfect equanimity.

But now I must go.
Perhaps you will find me,
across the living ruins
of this capital city,
in the raining triangle
that corners down to Dupont.
Or perhaps you will stay sentinel
over this nest, deep in the green.
I will miss you, little bird.
My two brightest years
passed under your wing.

I don't always know when
I'm being loved - early years come back
to bite. You make this easier -
second guesses die on the vine.

All that's left for me to
wonder is what to tell
you when I'm feeling this tinge
of melancholy.
Do I report from "the Century"
to tell you about the two bottles
of Dark Horse I've put down,
celebrating the wild Derby
where the winner was nixed?

Or do I broadcast the sea curl
& salted air that pass your
name dune to dune in the
wild grass, as night eats
my cigarette and flicks sand
into my hair?  

Neither -
instead I blush toward
the evergreen stoplights as we talk -  
smile the little shells
that break the walk.

I sigh, go inside,
have a little Turkish lesson -"su ve süt"
& maybe that is enough.

Under elm spread
a fistfight nearly
happens, but late-age
trolls are content
to roll trash through
the graves of their teeth.

Maybe it was the heat
that made you sign
my name to this spit;
maybe it was the heat
that pushed you into
this quiet bitterness.

Going home in
caustic steps, the
dead clouds fall
like ripe oranges
onto the street.

I can't stop sweating.
Instead of nursing
with black milk
we prepare a sky
with green stars that
came by mail,
untroubled by the
useless, wicked elms.

New Year's Eve dark at 4:30,
a dilation like a pleasured eye:
stray clouds pull themselves
across the clarity

& stars smudge unreasonably
across taffy-thin years of light,
long inviting blears.
I am peeling away from myself,

half-drunk on the absence of grief,
half-drunk on my lovely neighbor's wine:
it's funny how little moments
can pull together the murmuration

into a pattern you can hold:
I feel possibilities, sour morsels
of old dreams going loose
into the frozen nacre of street,

into the cubic alleyways,
rain smiles light as *****.
But moments don't hold,
something turns off -

the clouds are burning alive
in a songbird's oubliette.
The bastille falls
all the prisoners escape.

Afternoon's eclipse
a sea of eager eyeless
reborn to the shade.

The morning I met you
there was a yawn
set in the ground
on N street
where I once worked.

The cranes shifted
great hollows above.

I met you at the intersection,
where a contractor yelled
with the joy of living.

We both marveled at it
and laughed.
I wanted to talk to you,
& my thoughts
walked between us
like a third person.

In this city,
of course,
we opened
by trading
professions,
which felt
a little softer
than it sometimes can,
& things blossomed
very slightly.

We reached the corner
where I branched away,
& I impulsively introduced myself,
& I received your name
in reply.

It stayed in my teeth
for most the day,
& climbed
into my thoughts
where it wound
its way back
into the winter world
in this poem.

I am
a green
wing of
jealousy
cutting
Washington Circle
into arc
after arc.

The matchmaker
is sizing you
for a life,
and I am,
it seems,
not real.

Well,
this unreal
voice
is speaking,
launching
words towards
the burning tile
of sun,
hoping
they will fall
into your
cascades
of thought.

While her plane taxied,
I had already entered a sort

of personal sarcaphogus,
built to contain the click

click click of this radiation -
errant atoms in caustic traces

throughout the salted air.
It's a mechanism, keeping

me sane in the face of
this sorrow of her exit -

I walk in dazes, and joy
falls away in strips

like bark from a sickly tree.
So I count the minutes of the days...

We
laughed
& it was
nighttime.
That was
only
the first
part.

The
perfect
row
of your
hair
& your
easy
head-thrown
smile
was the
second
part.

The tour
through
the
house of
questions
& the
gilded
sea
was the
third
part.

One
call
& 3,379
miles
were
rescinded,
their
power
extinguished
by the
eyes in
cameras.

Your
heart,
beautiful
heart,
was the
final
act of
magic.

Red choir,
brave
& vulnerable
ache,
apple
of grace,
lilac
shadow -
draw
me in
& hold me.

Out with my ex wife
almost in the old haunts
like the bar where we saw
the Hungarian jazz band
with the wild accordion man,
the same bar where she first said
it was over, all cards were dealt
& it was a losing hand.

Bringing her there,
more angry now
but less burdened,
clearer in that way,
as she coaxes me out
from the silent shell
I wear as habitually
as the old houndstooth coat.

Drink after drink -
coffee, coffee-flavored beer,
just beer by the end -
felt like old times.
Walking the miles,
the benighted embassies,
trying to guess them by flag.
Seeing us, you might almost
believe the night didn't come
& chill us to the bone.

My heart casts
a shadow
that takes
your form:
How can I
resist?

I talk to myself
as the night arrives
in little caskets
slipping over
yellow rooftops.
Winter slithers
& rattles back
under the doors,
while spring slews in
on orange cloud.
I say your name
& a luster throbs
across the walls.
Late hours are
breach born,
full of bent bays
of lamp light,
I plead into the ceiling
until I fill
with sharp shapes
draped raw,
& my little speeches
perish in gloves of air.
Out of the window,
black ribbons streak
the riverbank face
to the moon etchings.
High tides blot me:
I still feel as I did
when I met you.
You're a heart shaker,
you wrest the lid
from the world,
your joy fills
my naked mouth.
But something
has gone wrong,
hasn't it?
Disordered,
melancholy -
you, too, see
the night-caskets,
don't you?  
Dublin facades
vanish beneath
rain scissor arms.
But it needn't be so -
come and lean on me.
I will remind you
that spring is come
with green armies
of blithe devotion,
trees flick
with leaf,
& you are loved.
I know you don't even
like me to call you babe,
not anymore, but
I'll live with that -
I'll tell the floorboards,
the starlings and magpies,
the unsealed horizontals
that report at dawn:
it will be alright,
it will be alright.

Embers stinging the clouds,
soot settling on a line -

black flake rain
is stirring.

Here is a new sleep,
where I find myself.

Laying in the cascade,
the phone's young flood

assembles your hair -
I'm reminded of my flight

across the salt,
to the place where you are.

This city's graved flecks
are forgotten; I've left them

for a green kingdom
in another pattern.

When my date
stood me up
for late coffee,
the sky poured cloud
& my heart turned
over some blood
with anxious moves.

I was
"as hollow
& empty
as the spaces
between the stars,"
as I sat
& watched
from a hired car.

The street lurched,
& the stoplights
had coins
over their eyes,
twinkling.
If this was
the final ferry
over Styx,
I could hardly
feel more prepared.

The driver
said nothing
as the passing world
degraded down
into some blots
on the backs
of my eyelids.

Sheets of fog
scarve the trees
& within
the rain hiss
the dawn
moves ahead.
Apartment buildings
wake on
Connecticut Ave,
& in the valley
an apparition
drapes the forks.

I'm alone after
another breakup
& it's starting
to weigh.
I tell myself
that it's all
in the trying,
but we all
know that lie.

******* it,
just let the fog collapse
back into the grass,
it's tried long enough
to be a cloud.

You are somewhere between
my coffee eye and
the toffee thighs of
the earth, bunching
into mountains,
scaffold to rivers.

You are something between
the wide words of Andric and
the wide words of your own,
a caravel in
the high tide
of my chest.

Don't pull away,
my lovely dear.
It's Valentine's today,
so don't pull away,
but come and stay, say
you won't disappear.
Don't pull away,
my lovely dear.

I speak
& dice
roll on
my tongue.

I move
to kiss
you
& my
mouth
is filled
with
sevens,
sevens,
sevens.

The blood is true
in what it needs,
& what it needs is you.

My blood was blue,
but red it bleeds
if blood is true.

"Please come through,"
my heart's pleads -
what it needs is you.

"Xoxo," your preview.
I don't mislead,
the blood is true.  

My heart's subdued
without you, I concede -
what it needs is you.

We both know what to do,
& soon we will be freed -
The blood is true,
& what it needs is you.

As Jack wipes blade against
Black butcher's bib,
Calm as clouds, London lies,
Dark sloe.
Extracted so easily, her heart’s
Firm in its new wax paper square,
Growing cooler by gradients,
Hardly weighing a pound, nestled
Inside his pocket as carefully as a wallet.
Jostled in courtyard, just
Knowing what they brush gives him
Little fevers that don’t stop burning.
Mary, Black Mary,
Nothing could have stopped him
Once he turned his mind to you, your
Painted paper skin, black pulp mouth
Quiet, and ***** hair rustling,
Rusting ginger to burned blond.
Saucy Jack sends his cards,
Then goes out and larks
Under a moon greasy as a kidney;
Violence foams from his lips
Where no one saw it before or
eXpected it. Imagine calming
Yourself as he does: surgical
Zeal transformed into the most banal hello.

All things
are equal
in length
& distance
from you -
the shyness
of tea steeping,
breezes
drawn off
Maryland's
green-armed
mountain,
night's gin
spill of
light on
the pane -
& don't forget
that I too
am in your
sphere,
more than
shadow,
less than
touch.

In the legend of the lovers Tristan and Iseult, there is a small, magical, immortal dog named Petitcrieu who "ate half the sadness of everyone he met." He didn't gift any type of forgetfulness, but instead bestowed the ability to bear the sorrow easily.


Bells are ringing wet and pink
on a muscled shoreline of skin,

lining me with their tolling.
Their knell is so heavy in the ear,

it sinks into the sand chokes
trapped on my frozen tongue.

Someone great has vanished again.
The clang and clatter escapes

out of this red chest oven,
bangs around the wild world.

Grief is announced, by way
of cacophony. Where are the dogs?

The ones who eat our sadness
with their bellish barking?

Who look into our brief eyes
& remove the worst of the sting?

Who serve the moon, defy the sun?
They have gone missing.

Sorrow rushes through the waters
a blued frigate with a headwind,

overtaking the heart, the head,
the curried spine...

In this age, sadness is the magazine
that all of us are reading.

Exit Tchaikovsky into the smoking mirror,
humid masks of the night servants
stalking down the water-walk.

Ash falls from a high tongue
all across the face of the moon embassy
like a bony comb through snow's hair.

Fade to brass: the cars sneer across the street,
interrupting blonde melodies held rapt
in plastic by cigarette Rapunzels.

I sit by the flower dress.
Bare legs slip across the old eye trellis
that masses by the death-green park,

muffling the memories that break free
from the black seance. I'm a braid of regret.
A bird is dead on the cement.

I met you here,
in this nowhere.

Between us was
a world made
of a single
held breath
& we unfolded
it so carefully.

Then we
exported
hundreds of
pages, fragile
& subtle,
& my poems
released their
grip on sorrow.

Blue gardens
in your smile,

sun's epochs
in your laugh.

There are no
sane words to
describe you.

Ropes of
champagne,

thickets of joy,
moon-pure,

hazeled Pisces,
canyon of
ravishment.

Our cheeks
ached
with bliss.

The world only
makes sense
through you.

Your hand-cut
bangs and
slender neck...
Something knocks
over in the night -
it's my soul.

little birds swerve
into green chandeliers
in the park hexagram
with a seethe and a sigh -

hungry angels fill the air,
the sun gripes with marthambles,
melancholy fills a larynx
& light-shells spree across the walk.

I spent six hours at the bar,
wet talk and high song,
but the bier-bed at night's end
beckoned with red vacancy.

The aloe flowers are dying, drying
to flat little coral-colored bell-shapes;
hungry angels and little birds
peck at the windows just before noon.

Join me, in this tumbledown
brick palazzo ruled by the bones
of a queen singing and swearing
that we'll never walk alone.

We can read in the oak pocket,
order ale from the cellars,
watch as the hanged man
steams with oily nostalgia,

well-waxed stories blossoming
& shrugging from his trolley tongue,
tales of silver-roaded loves he's had,
back in a lawless youth.

Love is a game you can't win,
insists the hanged man,
but if you're oh so careful
you can lose very slowly.

I arrived at six for an early start,
only to find that a cloud had coughed,

spat, or birthed a fog onto the lawn,
midwifed by polearms of corn

under silver doctor's eyes
of cooling car. Beer tabs snicked

away as a giant cheerful beast
slouched and stalked us

with candy heart and whetted tooth,
snapping at pipe smoke enemies,

patrolling our hands with hope.
Lives roll along, we all find:

men and women having a hard go
of it in hornet houses, or exes

who tent us with doubt even now.
The fog has burned away and the lawless

calligraphy of insects weaves and wreathes
the rising air into which exits are engraved.

Time enough to slide the highways
back into the busy hours

of porcelain hearts - easily chipped
but good enough still for daily use.

The olive dusk tents overheard,
pleated, wavering, starless,

ghostly, embossed with moon,
scratched with street light.

Cars hunt across a new ice blanket,
casting tambourine shakes

onto the pavement as they brake
in cherry arrays. Tonight I watch

my neighbors in their curious coves,
each jaundiced room a flat Argus eye,

as they bed down, break off
the lamp network, pull blinds down

over myriad invisible couplings.
I have hesitations in the dark.

I see the neon-breasted giants
towering towards midnight

in this aching pavilion.
Like prisoners we send messages

with our mirrors.
At the Christmas market,

an etched man sells fake Egyptian
canoptic jars. "Viscera," he says,

"it holds your heart after you die."
The jar looks like it was carved

last week by a bored child.
Even if our hearts shrunk

to apricot pits, abandoned,
betrayed, disappointed, this jar

couldn't hold even one.
Still, I consider it for a moment.

But the olive tent is waving to me:
no sale, no sale, no sale.

I was a thin child
playing in the backyard
in February of 1989,
when I was called inside
& readied for the funeral
of my first cousin, once removed.

For many years
I remembered it
being a cicada year.
but my memory was wrong:
1987 was the year
I put my hand to a tree
& accepted a sleeve
of placid red eyes.
I also thought
there were leaves falling,
but that too was wrong:
by February, they were
fine brown powder.

The family gathered at Arlington,
I stood stiff in my good clothes
& remembered him
as best as I could,
alarmed by how sober everyone was,
& by the unending white teeth
of the earth, breaking through
all around me.

After, in the car,
my mother told me
about the accident in 1958
that took 31 years to **** him.
He "lived a kind
of private hell," she said.
At nine, I barely understood,
was terribly shaken.
I thought about it
alone in my room
for decades.

After that funeral
it took years for a death
to move me more than
the cold day when I was driven
to my cousin's body
and his unmoving blood,
which was lowered to a place
where I could not see it.

Oksana said
"Love is not linear,"
and she was right.
It rises and it dips,
O how it dips...

Ebb and recede,
the quiet moments
vanish between
stars, doubt settles
in the ribs, thoughts
drift and drift away.

But trust in me:
anxiety and sorrow
cannot shake me
from your side;
just as I lean
to you in my own
times of worry.

My
white
jag
of
heartbeat
on the
panorama
wall,

scrawled
like
a stock
market,
or
lightning.

Strange
thoughts
moved
through
me in
that
swerving
jetty of
blood
slip:

I kept
saying
your
name,
as if
the air
would
part
at the
seams
& reveal
you,

& when
I went
outside
my
pulse
splayed
itself
across
the lawn.

I read
a tedious
novel
of sun,
while
around
me
families
carouseled
with
lovers.

I felt
like my
heartbeat
remained
visible
to all
of them,
that they
all
saw it
taken
from
the
museum
wall
by
careful
curators
and
presented
to you.

My voice
enters
the air
as I speak
to her,
delves
there
in purrs
of wind.

If I am
silent,
and she
is sleeping,
the air
stutters
a little
as it speaks
its own name.

In the
language
that sails
the lung,
it whispers
about her.

In the
night,
the air
grasps
at cigarette
smoke
with
fingers
small
as a
hush.

It lurches
toward
the branch
of moon.
My father's
grave
is hidden
in the air.

The air,
the air
hangs
between us,
lithe and
endless,
almost
invisible.

When she
pauses for
breath,
the air
offers itself
in sweet
bursts.

In mist
and fog,
it learns
to kiss.

When she
speaks,
the air
is filigree,
like the
small laces
of a tree
in bloom.

Two marriages
lay like stones
in the desert
behind me

& yet

I'll be sizing
rings with her
this weekend,
this new bond.

The heart
is so irrepressible,
so unregenerate,
so sincere,

even as it risks
everything.
I hold my breath
for years.

This is
a blank
diary
day, a
day to
refuse
history,
a day
to buy
the sun
on credit.

There is
a vagrant
flower
in the
fragrant
bower
below
a dappled
maple
that
reminds
me of
you -
a traveler,
beautiful
wherever
it posts
its blossom.

A day
where
Lorca's spell
unfurls:
"Green, I want you green,
green wind, green branch”

The sky is
casually
tossed
into a
patch
of wild
spearmint -
this is
a day
where
we join
the high
things.

This is
a day
for a
child's
lace
dress,
a day
when
the bricks
sigh with
their
architecture.

This,
this is
a day
for coins
of clouds
to pay our
admission
fee to
heaven.

My heart's exploding
like a thundercloud -
No, my heart's eroding,

my tongue corroding,
iron-bound, rain-ploughed,
no heart's exploding.
  
But the moon's unloading
a tide that's pain-proud,
& I feel my heart's eroding.

I hear it all, try decoding
her art. Play it loud -
until my heart's exploding.

Yet something's foreboding,
these sheets are shrouds -
under them, my heart's eroding.

Her eyes are goading
until I've vowed
to her my heart's exploding -
But my heart's eroding.

The mulberry tree is night-ripe,
its fruit fermenting almost before dripping
down the branch to the gray-saddled sidewalk,
where birds refuse it; the sharpened tang
slips and spreads into the green closeness.
Char-wings spread out above me,
interrupted by static bursts of cloud
that stream from a southern vagueness;
the waxed crescent moon-blossom
spits a little of its milkish shine
towards me in the black heat.
The lance-lights of the streetlamps
snap on, lidless and yellowed,
venting that yellow down
into the wet cut yards.
Everything is quiet, empty;
in a cardboard box by my side
is her sketchbook, our locket,
her old phone. I look through the glass
at the blue cape that drapes
the sandy castle across the street,
watching as sleep comes for me,
mincing through hillside pines.

I see what I am
& what I was
in the surging hazel
mirror of your eye.

The dragon looks
into the froth
of the waterfall
& remembers
the carp that
spent a hundred
years leaping.

The sky refused to break all at once -
rain crumbled over in stubborn little halts

as we stood there, simpletons and gods alike
under the wet and ashen hem that hovered

as if reluctant to descend into our phalanx
of grief. Suits and ties our inadequate shields

against the cold clench at the throat
as the mourning file piled pale flowers

in lieu of words because words, too,
had halted in the air. Trees drew

bruises across the young afternoon,
& the white water tower rose like a giant

trying to understand our forms of death:
how we ringed round the opened earth

& fed our memories to each other
because it salved the worst of the hewn

wounds raw-carved into brains by loss,
& reminded us of what's left, of who we were.

You draw the world
in front of you.
Hand's careful curl,
you draw the world
with eyes unfurled,
coffee like morning dew,
you draw the world
in front of you.

You
try on
the white
dress
with the
blossoms
across
your
*******,
the pink
dress
with the
cherries
stamped
on your
body,
purple
stockings
peeking
from
the hem
held
bashfully
in hand.

When
I saw
you
my
multiple
heart
could
crush
angels.

This
cloth,
cut close
with
the lust
of spring,
given
to your
dizzy
shape,
carries
me.

My
heart, a
palanquin
for yours.

Your echoes
swim inside
me for hours.
Every shallow
shadow is forced
to eat your light.

Still, these cruel
miles stretch
like tendons.

For you,
I will fill the
catacombs of
night with
peaches
& music,
I will recklessly
drink a kick
of sun as it pours.

But to touch you...
It hurts to see
a sunset dying,
last gasps
of little coral,
and feel air
in the palm
of my hand.

Still: April denies
what May will grant.

Drunk in the Hirschhorn garden,
it seems  the sculptures rise
and take to air, bronze on bronze.
Swear as sweat drops in the corner
of the eye, squint against mounting glint
of the polished windows that gaze
so blankly over the glossy green estate.
Drunk again at noon, and hardened
by hurt against the friend who surprises
with criticism: she must realize it spawns
first inside the soul? First mourner
at my living funeral. O Jennie, swimming
through the garden with your cotton grace,
tolerate my dazed smile, amid the statuary.

Salt pulpit,
streeted sand,
brass and tar,
bell broken
by the new wave.
Evening splinter
stuck in riprap,
memory hurled
into sharp relief.
Pilings grow,
dead teeth
from rushing
gum of surf.
Night's tide
parks on
blue sand,
dies as foam.
Boardwalk
lights never
seem to waver.

Night-hinted marriage
& old story ******* -
then another mono morning,
my mind a mountainside.
When I almost make you late,
your face so serious,
my polished misericorde
slips between the shining
plates, it knows with such
precision where to cut.
It's a proving hour,
long ices of thought,
before I pull it out. You
rest your head against me
& I imagine dropping
the blade into a scabbard
of blue hydrangeas.
I ask of you, if I lay down
beneath your troubles,
empty my unhappy hand.

Des champs de caramel dans vos yeux
la vapeur de la beauté tout autour de vous.
Le foulard de nuit vous enveloppe,
les manches du jour sur le sol.
Ville froide, ville chaude
ville du cœur
vous êtes un citoyen universel.
Je suis votre cartographe,
votre biographe,
votre poète de nuit.
Je présente votre chanson au piano.
Femme caramel
quand ton cœur s’ouvre
c’est moi qui suis là
avec une bouteille de vin
et un cierge.


"Caramel fields in your eyes
the steam of beauty all around you.
The night scarf envelops you,
the sleeves of the day on the ground.
Cold city, hot city
city of the heart
you are a universal citizen.
I am your cartographer,
your biographer,
your poet of the night.
I present your song to the piano.
Caramel woman
when your heart opens
it's me who stands
with a bottle of wine
& a candle."

The earth moves
according to its natural principles -
I love you according to mine.

Youth has left us so quickly -
the sun was once
a sweet saffron bolus
we swallowed so eagerly
fat day after day.

Now it's a quiet yellow *****,
that chokes on its own easting and
goes down like a horse pill in the west.

Instead, we are with moon -
I pull you close sometimes in tide,
then you're away waning, waning -
doldrums, tantrums.

If only I could swing low over you,
in your green rain town,
& not be pushed away.

It's no longer easy
to share the days with you.
I fill with ulcers
that bleed all into me,
the body the echo of the mind.

But I love you on natural principles -
you have touched my life all over.
Where I go, I bring you;
you are still the voyage home,
even when your replies come
so terse and lacking invitation.

Dear H-----,

Everything then
is now, too,

memory
is plural.

In law school
I mentored you

& let you ******
me after I broke

up with the art
deco girl who

kept turning the
blade in my side as

if it were a key.  
It was a scandal -

I felt my name
crawling lip to lip,

caught library looks,
but didn't care.

Your sister taught me
the moon game

at your kitchen table
& then spread my blood

with her song.
Do you remember it?

When I drank
my acetylene pain,

you were so quick
to forgive. It left

an impression.
We came home late,

laughing so hard
we were *******,  

with the moon
tangled in the ivy.

But I was still hanging
from the blade of

the art deco girl,
& it wasn't fair to you,

dying like that.
And then when

my grandmother
died, I needed you

but it was too much
& you fled. It was the end.

You moved, and married.
I let the art deco girl

saw me apart
a few more times.

But I never forgot
how alive we were,

or the strange sound
of the lullaby I wrote you.

This path
from Petworth
to the drowsy metro
is a bite of sun
across cherry branch
into the water head.

Greenleaf ways
& the grass throw
of the hum rails
cross the lefting
memory of a ride
in a salt shadow.

Saturday's breath
is sold to the hill
& in return
I get to keep
the sweet javelin
of her thought.

The statues are eyeless in Iveagh,
ruins under leafed eaves,

effaced, pitted, blotted,
benighted green and wet:

they have heard far more love
than mine and hers, witnessed

others filled with beer, wine,
& whiskey. Forbidden fruit

rots on the branch. Magpies gather
by blue knees, curious and hopeful.

Crimes of the heart were committed
on that night. The sound of the river

sinewed through the cracked window.
The past was father of the present,

the sheets were stained sails.
Coffee was brewing in the evening,

corks rolled into corners,
whiskey emptied the memory.

Now it's years, years later:
I just walked on water,

the river would not collapse beneath me.
A friend sent me neon letters,

rain is due tomorrow,
and the kittens are restless.

I open a bottle. My lovely neighbor
is building a mirror before dinner,

she borrows a screwdriver.
I am guilty of everything you said.

I am guilty: but there is no jury
who would ever convict.

You were
long asleep
when I was
walking into
the beer garden.

I drank long
and deep
from a plastic
cup. The highest
alcohol content
I could find.
My blood was
a choir -
hallelujah.

I thought
of you
constantly.
My blood was
a mountain.
My blood was
a red crescent,
a ruby falling.

You sober up
with a mix of
alkaseltzer
& bread.
I don't make
any efforts,
letting the
blood drift
away on its
own accord.

I'm on your
page. Fifteen
year plans
& we want
the same
things. My
blood is
singing to
you, aria
after aria.