there is magic in concrete
        if you believe

when you work the surface
        flat, in circles,
the float tool buoyant
        on a gray puddle
here’s the enchantment:
with fingertips on the handle you can
        sense the wet concrete, the mojo
        like a sleeping wet bear
solid in mass yet grudgingly liquid
        sort of bouncy
        as you stroke

pebbles disappear, embedded
the tool is ******* cement
        a final thin film, a pretty coat
        over guts of gravel and sand

now hose the mixer, shovels, tools,
        hose your hands and boots
as the water disappears, so shall you
        unless you scratch a name

honor the skilled arms,
        the corded legs and vertebral backs
        the labor that shaped
this odd stone
        sculpted, engineered
        implanted with bolts
forgotten
half-buried in dirt
bearing our lives

There are many days
when I wish
that like Joshua,
I too could make the sun stand still,
and there are many nights
when I wish to do the same
with the moon
to allow us subtle darkness
just a little while longer,
and there are many times
when my voice
is only its own echo....

You say,
that like a fossil
which went through its changes
at an earlier time,
that now
I too am changing.
I am no longer like wet cement
where the things
which I'm to remember
are inscribed
like someone's initials
upon the wet surface,
but that I am more like the things
I've forgotten
those things
which distress me---
crabgrass and weeds
growing up through the cracks
in the face of my soul.

I find no comfort in simple words,
I’ve heard too many lies for that.
Even actions I always question
For ulterior motives always act.
Say you love me, let me feel it;
It’s a challenge, I understand.
But let me know I’m worth it
For real love should withstand
All obstacles—wipe my tears,
Heal my pain, make me whole
When I’m incomplete—yet
With you, my hungry soul
Is empty, parched, in need
Of something genuine at last.
Please, I can’t help but believe
Our future’s in my past.
I fear we may have turned,
In our hesitation, obsolete,
What will it take for you
To feed me something concrete?

Bay Street Bus Terminal at 2:23 PM

A small bird travels between the feet, one joyful hop at a time. It's accustomed to the careless giants that move about,
and it knows nothing but doors and trick glass and steel and cement. I doubt
it's ever seen a natural, unabashed forest in its lifetime. Nor have I, but I belong to
the rapists of land, molesting everything natural that should ever cross our paths. I'm not an exception, I type poems
on my smartphone and wear nothing but name brands, I travel by burning oil and I consume everything from plastic cases and my protein comes from animals
that sit in cages, their feet crushing old food and new ****, but I don't like to think about it. So I won't,

and I'll keep on enjoying the company of a small bird that can't even conceptualize a forest.

When you wrote his name in wet cement
did you think your love would be permanent?

Did you write his name and, he yours,
when you slipped away from your daily chores?

When you come back, will he have your hand
will you still be helping each other to stand?

Or will it just be you alone someday,
and see those words, scratch them away?

Every morning plays over like a silent black-and-white film.
You wake up and somehow you’ve forgotten how to speak.
Your throat feels raw and congested from the disuse of night.
The sunlight strikes your eyelids,
affecting an obliterating blindness,
forcing them apart,
drawing you from the velvety embrace of a dream.

Your feet sink into dirt-smudged sneakers;
they drag across tiles and floors and grains of cement,
across blackened splotches of gum tacked to the streets,
pressing them ever deeper into earth,
into tar.

A young woman in a fitted red pea coat stands near you,
leaning against the steel column by the edge of the tracks.
She is tiny,
her olive skin stretches tight across her bulging cheekbones,
her eyes are pools of grey,
her shoulder-length hair is the color of molasses.

It happens slowly:
the woman in the red pea coat leans further over the ledge,
tilting her head to the side,
searching for life in the roaring darkness.

It happens briefly:
a low rumble beneath your feet,
a glint of light,
a yellow-white rectangle splays across the tracks.
It widens and expands,
oppressing you,
swallowing the woman in the red pea coat,
as she looks up and stares back at the brightness.

The train does not strike her –
it consumes her,
it ***** her up like a vacuum through its sharp metal teeth,
and she vanishes,
or she becomes a refractory beam of light,
or she explodes.

A screech hovers above the crowd,
shrill, high and clear – the rawness of terror.

You cannot help it – you peer into the gap
between the platform and the subway,
absorbing the darkness.

You wonder what moment, precisely,
her life left her body,
or her flailing limbs surrendered to their inevitable consumption.

The paper bag she had been carrying survives,
strayed on the platform,
an afterthought.

a crunch
a wet thud & then the slap of skin against pavement
broken cartilage
fractured bones
a valley opens
a dam bursts
thick black blood pools on the cement

My thoughts are rubber

My words are cement


My thoughts grip me

and snap back

into my head full force

each time they try to escape


My words are concrete and imposing

I can't seem to take them back

no matter how hard I try

I knew that loving you was like willingly jumping into a lake with cement blocks tied to my feet,

but I had always wondered what it felt like to drown.