You sit
dormant,
pressed to the foundation
the cool floorboards,
above the hard earth
You do not feel the planet
spinning light years around
your little head,
do you?
Do you know some things
that I do not?
Come down from your
noble horse
small tiger
tender life
You are not pondering
the essence or
other important things, no.
You are watching the sparrows
duck
and levitate
through the incandescent dawn.

In the sanctuary of this house
dont say a word
i dont know why
there is pause
between thought a speech
couldn’t say
perhaps the weight of humidity
the pressing potential of night
the bounty of youth in summer
assumed eternal
fleeting, unaware
i don’t know why
we leave this place behind
for another

coloring fields
as God
I shake my can
test the nozzle down wind
the first pass is blue
figures topple over
next red
they die quickly
blanketed, overtaken
wilting amidst the fumes
I lean back
surveying the handiwork
saturated
bugs providing
pockmarks in the layers
which are otherwise
pristine

Life
persists.
forcing its way
to the surface
bobbing to the top
of this
-barrel of blood-
cluster of sentience

the
opportunity to
continue: livingbreathingpumping
fluids against
the artery wall,

makes a kind of
celtic serpent knot
through
ventricle ventricle
atrium atrium

this biology
perennial,
and I,
grasping, relying.
just as one
reaches into the darkness
for a pull switch
to illuminate a room
knowing
that it will be there
ready,
to submit to the tug.

it’s Sugar I crave castles of
sugar with moats of sugar
oozing red sweetness onto my
lips not chopped veggies not La
Victoria all vinegar and spice
(i want it quick i want it now)
not meaningless gibulations
involving me and the psyche
a saga taking the pulse
out of me, the head honcho,
the meat man. Not abscess
of heart or the timing of two
or five or twenty as they arrive
some dancing some clapping their
hands some standing still. Hoos that
at my door I don’t want you
I want
Sugar.

From far away L.A. became an eye,
a riddle a grid but never blinking.
It stayed in my sight until I was
so far up that the brim of earth
gave way to the far off dawn.
No need to flap my wings and
no need for air. For I was
apart from life, so removed from
the rock and the water that I closed
my eyes leaning back against
the void lifting me higher, higher.
I was far from the need of history,
far from reminders and whistles
and bells. Far from the babies
and bombs and tourist erosion.
A transmission crackled through, faintly.
I adjusted a valve, wiped
debris from the glass.

This house has remained
quite the same. Was it ever
ours? The reddish floorboards, the white paint,
the ghosts standing on the basement
stairs, looking up at the door.
Grab me a can of corn, oh, ancient
love of this home. The same trees
in the yard, they’ll outlive our kids.
Where else do we end up?
Something on the roof,
scurries, chasing its nut. These
friends of ours, indifferent.
All these things, collected,
give away the kids and the dog.
Let’s move back to the cold, cold
city and be alone, together. Let’s
forget everyone and forgive ourselves
for the mistake. Cancel the insurance,
scuba dive in February. (In Boca, maybe,
but this latitude, death is cheap.)