Senescence

I used to enjoy
the petting zoo,

but now

we live
in the disappearance

of the real
human hand.

The wind

expands into indigo

taking my skin

on a walk 

through the park. 

The squirrels 

are so close

I can smell them.

Even when 

the birds are nudging,

even when 

my spine pumps

the fertile crescent 

through my 

nervous system,

I can't 

touch anyone.

Crusoe

Quite clear now
of Water or Sand;

My eyes
have been cancelled.

I stand on the deck
and turn my vast array--

my darkful satellites
up towards where

I imagine
Earth would be.

I remember
a wolf-like creature,

its octopi appendages
hovering over the conifers.

I will call him "Legs"
because the spiraling

has burned great
cities into my cryptic thighs.

I can't feel anything
from the waist down.

Sometimes I think
I might be him,

attaching my permanence
to the constellations in the lake.

Clod

The jetty faces are tumbling out the orchid-head epicenter like caterpillars, cataplectic. The data-massing resembles a flowage-fold, a mudslide--faunal disassembly. The apelike, nacreous creatures are born, have sex and die when their bodies are exposed to oxygen. If a star leaps out from behind a smog bloom, their skin will tear open and slaughter the silent ether. It is fantastic, like the sound human babies used to make when they summoned their mothers for dinner.

General Studies

Stick
a bookmark
in me so you
can come
back where
you left off.

Lay me
down for
something
more inspiring.

Something
always
moves you
only halfway.

Nothing's
ever finished.

Curiosity
is always
on the surface.

Always somewhere
halfway.

Leaving

The sycamore
shivers in the cold

rain and its giant
leaves crack

from its gnarly
white bones.

Morning comes
and I chase

the leaves
around like a pissy

wet dog trying
to keep its world

from blowing away,
trying to howl

this world
in a photograph--

resisting what is.

The lie

Dear world
traveler who's eye

has banged
so many corners:

Thanks for showing me
that a tree is just a tree--

The roots have no past,
the trunk stands for nothing
and the branches reach to nowhere.

Don't even question
when the leaves begin to fall.

I won't be there to rake
them up this time.

It's just dead matter--
the corpses' playing dress-up again.

Framing

Beneath the spinal canopy
when deer spiral frightful.

One wish and we could
blow this bedroom out forever.