so early so late
I am nothing, if not bursting with my own futures.
electrify electrify! and let me taste the sweat we made together.
no more swearing, just set us free from willing
into the broad swath of shadowless morning
come at me with your leaves,
your moonset branches and torrents of blue eyes

I want to swelter in your promises
evacuate me, stand me upon the brick walls of mystery,
the tinkered-with memories of your presence,
your warm body against me.

Swing with me into the rainbow wings

of desert birds, silver beaked and swelled with victory.

O lively songbird
O mouth hungry for my mouth though filled with copper

My love her skin a parade of ambulance men;
my love her voice the curve of fruit, bunches of black grapes refracted with dew
my love his hair a pattern of shadows on a line of cars upon the bridge
his hands bells of grass

rev. 9/2006

the pond is drained
yet just one duckling
proves he can fly

 

The smell of fall —
where did all these grown ducks come from?

 

I'm sorry, ducks
we didn't bring bread —
only this laughing baby

Setember, 2003

I'm working on this ongoing piece, which is being "organized" a variety of ways on my livejournal. I can't put my finger on it but it's an emerging work and we'll see. Epic poem? Novel in ecstatic form? Extended commentary and gloss on someone else's work? (Samuel R. Delany comes to mind I suppose) chapter? canto? one and two.

While I grew up, so much of the good stuff
I read or watched or played at in the yard
had a twenty in the year.

So every time I date a check at the grocery store,
I feel like I'm writing science fiction.

Which angers me a little as I walk outside
and despite my bagful of genetic fruits,
my engineered meals packed into a single square,
the sunset sky is empty of zeppelins.

And the parking lot is full of cars,
every one of them grounded--
all of us helplessly remembering
how once we'd never needed wheels.

(Originally published as "2004" in Tales of the Unanticipated, 2004)