do you remember
the pause
between words?

do they remember
the place on spine
where water dropped.

bone.

From the earth's beginning
of life, and night,
It has been a companion,
to all with sight.

A controller of nature,
and oceans tides.
Showing only one side
the other it hides

Cycling from lighted face,
to smiling away.
It taught humans a span,
longer than a day.

Floating above in white
florescent grace,
A symbol of Romance, and
  a slower pace.

Realizing that everyone,
each and all.
Have looked up with wonder
of earth's reflective ball.

Espantajo,

I kissed you
but my lips knew no remedy
for you, standing cruciform
  in a desert wind.

Espantajo,

wrapped in
  cornhusk feathers,
no sky knows you.

Espantajo,

I could not move you
from your place in the night.
   For you,
all things rise in the west
sleep in the west
make love in the west
and die in the west.
   You married a northern woman
like un espirito muerto
   appearing in a photograph.

Espantajo,

Face away from my house now.
I have blue glass
   bottles sleeping
in the branches all night
   to snare spirits.

Espantajo,

The same old wind
rattles you
   and you call it talking.
Silencio, ****** scarecrow.
If you can't love,
can't move,
can't hold a woman,
   what good are you?

That week was so hot,
every shotgun house gasped,
windows flung,
porch doors unlatched like unbuttoned shirts.

Touching skin felt like punishment
at first,
then penance,
then prayer.

We were thin, androgynous,
switching cut-off jeans,
sharing tank tops,
slick with sweat and shaved ice.

Strays ourselves,
barefoot thieves,
pirates of the quarter.

Hibiscus syrup stained our mouths
outside the Prytania,
where The Abyss flickered
and you cried like a boy
pretending he didn’t.

Inside your walk-up,
we dipped into quiet love
like bread in stew.

A dusty radio murmured The Ink Spots,
which I recognized but couldn’t name.
You mouthed every note like a secret
you wanted me to guess.

Faint smiling lines near your eyes
from knowing,
like you'd seen me
long before we met,
and were waiting
for the world to catch up.

Not woman,
not man,
just two bodies
leaning toward the same heat.

I wouldn't see your fall or your winter.
When the seasons change,
I’ll be gone,
back home,
watching rain from a train window,
each drop undoing what we were.

That last night,
you placed your key by the door.
I saw it,
watched it glint,
and said nothing.

The snails were climbing.
The air was too sweet.
You slept through goodbye.
I left the key where it lay.

“perhaps the sun is a teacup, spilled by a girl in a skyhouse who laughs in polka dots–”

You wrote like someone
who had been listening
long before speaking,
each poem a hush,
each repost a gentle offering.

This space once held you,
your words, your calm curation,
a gentle steadiness
in a shifting field of voices.

take this small goodbye
not as an end,
but as a door left open,
just in case
you return with your light.

Until then,
may strength find you
in soft moments,
and peace arrive
never needing to be earned.

dreamy breeze
to make you fall asleep
like a bird in its nest,
I’ll hold all the
summer rains in my
arms
just for you
I’ll carry all
summer rains, I will
carry them in
my
arms,
like a heart on fire

All seems different,
like a blurry landscape
with vanishing maps.
The distance from the past
keeps growing.
I slice through space and time,
on the chosen path,
along a trajectory of circumstances.
Against the denial of access,
against the gate closing,
just to hold together what was apart.