Passing

Into my bones,
All is quiet.
Except for little Stella chewing
on her antler.
Rosey huffing in the sun.

I have been conditioned
not to feel
my birdsong competing
with the lawnmower.

On the edge of the balcony
I jump from treetop to treetop.
Like I did as a kid.
Oak to palm to pine.
Sand to rock to boulder.
Crossing ice streams, careful
not to fall.

Paper Machete

The kitchen smelled of garlicky soup and sex.
I wanted both.
How much of me will burn inside the isolation,
I thought,
hanging up the phone.

I stare at the hardwood floors, ghost feet
running circles around the old cast iron stove.

A cinder on the precipice of love falls into the wind.
Into the aubergine sky,
I watch it float,

The past denies us.
Presence, mother said.
I love presents, mother said.
Glass clowns, paper machete, and frogs,
things like that, mementos
of someone, someone.

The ash of a cigarette falls,
into a gray storm.
I watch the past float away.

The Lord of the Ferris Wheel
On a microphone, is drumming out mice.
A snake charmer rolls in my belly.
I contort inside spandex pants.

He walked all night, he told me.
In a moonlight trance, retracing
fragments of emotion, the dampness
of his aversion swallows the fire.
A wet towel and a house filled
with smoke, too much to stomach.
Without an invite he will never know.

Empathy, the wild wind
that stokes the dying flames, has gone to bed
or left the building,
or got drunk while telling jokes like –

What did the human say to the other human?
There was nothing left to say.

I am ancient incense ready
to burn the cosmos to the quick.

Why can’t I be a bolt of lightening?
Why can’t I be expandable?
Why can’t I merge into you?

Through my eyes, mother says,
you are expendable.

Through mine, I am an ember falling
into the wild wind,
I float
away, powerless against the dream.

I float away and return,
stuck on repeat.
At the end of the rainbow.

Equilibrium

To rehearse in French
is to plow, over and over

The process of creation is a string
tied around a tooth
Now slam the door

The White Stones
build their confidence in exploration –
don’t let them squelch
the inflationary universe.

Pitch and catch
Pitch and catch
Pitch and catch, yourself.

You are an asymmetric moment,
a singularity, a black hole.

Your physics will evolve into poetry.