You swim under my blood
like my parents saying my name
in earshot, before 

I was born.

 — — — — — — — — — — — — — — –

Dementia

Her living cats
wear masks of dead cats
to fool her.

Every day is Halloween.

______________________________

We are riddled with dumb holidays.
But not one “Open a Cage for Something Day”
anywhere in this stupid world.

________________________________________

The butterfly’s amazing book
opens. My eyes go left
then right. I’m baffled.
Which page is the original,
and which the translation?

____________________________________

Yes, that is me
who puts the COMPLAINTS boxes
besides old weathered tombstones
in a cemetery near you

__________________________________________

The mailman stopped feeding
the street’s empty house.
Nights, I sneak over there.
Crouching on the porch,
I slip junk mail through the mouth
of its front door.

_______________________________

IT

depends who you ask.

I ask the darkness.

____________________________________

October

O clobber
the lover
who is anon
and not a moon

__________________________

the marrow
of objectified bones
drinks the rain

______________________________

Lying Down

I lie
in darkness
and lie
to darkness
that lies
escorts me
to me
constantly

_______________________________

listen to the rain

burying something
the soft way
a child does

 — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — 

A fieldprick of sparrows
deposits the bush of your life
close as corpuscles in the blood
of someone sitting quiet and dark
thinking one
and disappearing.

_______________________________________

Moon Sleight

All the light
I give you
is just a trick.

I plagiarize 
the sun and never pay
a penny.

___________________________

The Ex’s Story

sue
a
side
blonde

__________________________

art form
art farm
antfarm

_____________________________________________

The size of the universe
when I was asleep
just now, impossibly
a child, mother winding thread
around her hands.

 *

He lies in bed
with his eyes closed,
clouds.

*

My fingerprints
on a milky windowpane
trapped between two others

For years, the sunlight
comes through me
a crime scene

*

Where the galaxy ends,
my cat asleep

*

Moonlight 
is secondhand sunlight.

Some poor souls
are forced to wear this

too many years
to recover.

•  

We arrange 
a series of stones
in a competition in the park

The beautiful stone wins

 — — — — — -

It takes him 3 tries
to swallow a swig of water

She looks away
and finds herself
growing horns in moonlight

_______________

No one ever asks if the snow is on time

 — — — — — — — — — — — — –

You tell me you met this girl
in an old graveyard
that lay deep in snow
where she trudged in boots,
cleaning the ears
of statues with Q-tips.

________________________