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.