They are wild things
Sometimes, I swear
I need a shotgun
but so as not –
to hurt the words

I hack them out of weeds
Break the ice to drag them out
Throw rocks at them in trees

Turn around three times fast
and collapse
Sometimes I catch one
still spinning dizzy
floating circle-words in breeze

I command nothing

The poems always have their way

I command nothing!

Not love –  Not time –  Nor hate
Nor sun –  
but the moon-rise –  
maybe

...in dream-light

For a long time
I've been dreaming
of being the younger me
my heart leaning
into those dangerous places
like the wheels on a road grader

Nights to remember
seeing big lips in the moon
blowing its black and bad sax

Dreams of night sweats
and my lost loves
dancing in the fields
where the moon, a white cow
goes to chew her cudd

Dreams deep in other cities
and towns where photographs
all signed love are slipping
out of the frames of many mirrors

Dreams of an old soured pillow
waiting for its case to be called
shanghaied by the cold sea
a long ways from the mountains
where I once found young love

Dreams of a storm coming
still many miles away
hearing the wind in the trees

The thunder wakes me
like a backfire on a moonshine
run with two trembling fingers
finding me riding shotgun.

I made
a beautiful space
in the corner
of my shade,

turned venom
into lace
and raced away
from your hate,

swirled quicksand
with my tired hands,

petted pretty vipers
that hissed,
slithering
to where I stand,

chased fireballs
that were ready
to consume me.

I pursued
my own agony,
bit my tongue
to taste
my own blood,
then spit it out
not in spite
but to watch
the red grow.

I wept in
the spider’s den
embedded in
a cloud of webbing.

I slept in
the sinking ship
that fell into
the cold underwater
abyss.

I lay afraid
to move
and died in
the infinite
eternal
black
that was once
beautiful,
until
it collapsed
and took
all the warmth
I ever had
back.