crow

I am finally standing

In a place I can be still

My feet are roots

They are buried

Warm soil and the wheat

There are trees

There is fire

But no wind to kiss me

I stand above the thicket

I stand above

I stand firmly

I am alone

I remember your song on the radio

Sitting in your pickup truck

Only red

in the wood

But I saw you last night

In the crowd behind me

Guitarist on the stage

Only one

He was dancing

Then I wonder

If he felt alone too

Everyone dances

when he’s not in the room

Lewis Keseberg

imprisoned by snow

he is a victim

of the hungry mountains.

prayers, punctured by pines

fall back to sender.

smoke stopped in a bottle.

a howling stomach

moans–

take communion

misses donner, come closer

i'd like to warm your hands.

your hands, misses donner

your hands

a pair of sleeping pigeons

crushed by clenched teeth

swallowing fingernails and feathers 

savage hands, beat the earth

more steadily than heart.

VII Amendment

my name is a vessel

and you fill it

i empty

my sore locket

a letter finds a fulcrum

held by a counsel

of lassoed voice.

awaiting my mark

my fingers crinkle like paper

tucked in my pocket.

i hear all souls must pass

through god's needle

before they reach heaven

lucky me

i have a handful of eyes

for my thread to catch.

Housebreaker

When I can’t find the floor inside my head

A floorless room becomes a vapor

Soil so hollow, where is my bed?

Vacant palm, holds time to taper.

 

There is no moon, no fallen birch

The tide is come and chills the halls

What once was eave is now perch

Bubbling bare, behind the walls…

 

Fog cranes her neck and parts her lips

I draw the covers to my chin

Wallpaper begins to bow in strips

Sea foam, so long, the tide is in

 

Thunder breaks across my brow

My eyes swallow what space is left

Her face is mine, and she is now

Twisted loan, stretched air–bereft

 

How comes it so– we are the same?

Her eyes lay flat as lead

Her hatchet grin, my breath to claim–

Pours flour through my sieve instead

 

Powder dear, powder vast

The house’s hand is folded

Repose is come an avalanche

One corpse is lain where two were molded. 

White Buffalo, a Poem for Rob

a cover to keep

the cusp

a humming coil of static

tucked behind an ear

the last words are clipped

they cling, they stir

they choke

within a cloud who cannot adjust

to soak up the volume

of anything else but the weight

of an object held in awkwardness

 

when a burst of crickets breaks behind the mast

a lonely white buffalo

haunts the space between each breath–

a space we’ve always carried

but somehow never open.

 

and above our heads

there hangs a love

that has yet to be decoded

a pair of pearls

rattles inside

a tin can telephone. 

everyone has an affair in the pictures

cracker crumbs

and salt licked thumbs

grimy games smolder inside

a glass of champagne

from a dream i had

worn leather toes hugged by damp earth 

she leans to peer beyond the smoke caught in water

three white dragons; cataracts from the fourth dimension

pass like zeppelins...