shoes greet the dusty wooden porch
with a familiar creaking
to share in a moment of
fading yellow dusk
though the ground whispers in
the waterless language of dirt
a collapsing storm is
echoing from her eyelids
from one burnt out chest
to another you weep
with your spring-lips
touching like puddles of
rain draining away
with words swirled into drinks
she digests the answers of your
temper-mental poems only to
leave you cactus-dry
[Interior Portrait]
your death
flickers in my head
like the frenetic jostle
of tv commercials
your memory becomes in slow motion
something I can't save you with
any more than I can touch what is
inside our home movies
my bliss at hearing your voice
does not make you mine
born here and then there
we eventually met in the faint tenderness
of our blood and began
a detour upon detour
which led into the fresh smell
of rain so many times
yet now leads only
into your still-dead eyes
We re-write death scenes to make them more palatable, never able to escape the singularity of cessation...we see what's beneath the now-still body, a series of interludes, temporary truces, and good times that left before they ever arrived.
