insistent

insistent

a bite after a kiss.
pink knowledge.

"I lick my bloodied lip."

desperate grace.
A suitcase by the door.

a child's face
stares through the window

to a mirror
without a reflection
a promise of a life with less winter.

                             O the gaze of other mornings.

Tired.

Horns play from the other
side of a rising moon-

a deep baritone
rises out of the wetlands.

A dead heron in the reeds.
Is that why the music has stopped?

There are cornucopia painted
on plastic dishes left at the table

a pile of eaten ribs, smeared
napkin on the floor, leaning
against a table leg-


like the tiny tent I love in.


Something far away rises.
The orchestra is silent
Is sudden silent.
I hear an audience
of timepieces.

She brings me flowers.
I am not there to receive them.

I give up, move down the hall
to another room.

A blind barber lets me read
his correspondence, has me read
the labels on the side of cans,
"Read, Read!"

A stag moans from a field
A doe goes into estrus.

So is love.

Where did my lover go?
                        Don't ever let them leave

without a compass and
a map. 

Never

Later, her panties over the head-
board, naked in the bathroom
in a disturbing posture.

Walking from her bedroom

His small eyes are 
accusing me,

              gentle boy.

Even later
while drinking coffee
I notice a bumble bee pushing
against a window. 

Where does
it want to go?

Soggy clover field.


JOURNAL ENTRY

" She tastes good, but I am not hungry,
- I am still licking clean the bones of another
situation."


Ms. Jonas 4th grade class presents the Tempest
Opening night is canceled because of rain.


Channel 5 news,
newscast, children crying

                         and he's crying for her.

And she has been dealt a good hand
and she writes her mother a letter all about
it, then folds the Las Vegas place mat into

an origami frog.

On blue plate
an egg wobbles
around the edges

                   of your steps.

Like that time
at a bus stop
a long time ago

-that one patch of grass
soft asphalt like cake-

remember,
the pink desperadoes
the blue tax collectors
and the pearly confectioneries?

Or the branding iron
left in the tall grass,

forsaken,
and the whole world

seemed to shift,