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Fluent

I would love to live

Like a river flows,

Carried by the surprise

Of its own unfolding.

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Your arms are so long;

I can’t see where your hands should be.

Do your fingers point away or

back toward me?

Are your muscles taut or loose?

Supple or soft, sufficient to hold,

implying an embrace? Or is there sinister intent

in your outstretched arms?

What is in your eyes?

Do they look aside, avoiding my own

while mine nervously look elsewhere, too,

unsure of beginnings? Of the road ahead?

Your pavement lies cracked, unsure,

            like the radiator of an old truck;

                        built for much more but now holds little.

But the truck looks good.

The skylines too often block

            the yearning view of skies made black.

                        As black meets blue comes green,

the color of your gold.

Starched Mayflower collars,

            unbending to wind or laughing or failure,

                        press the god-filled soil from your boots,

on the necks of your serfs.

The voices loud, the words are tall,

            writ large across your branded skies,

                        the songs are sung by those with guns for fists,

and stripes of nettles on corral courtiers.

My own soul, distanced, but tempered by time,

            finds grace such temperance allows, to swallow

                        the seeds of discontent in the hearty bread

baked in twin kilns of need and desire.

So, stretch out your long arms.

Grab hold of one made larger, broader,

Arms made to embrace or crush are at least

around my shoulder.

And so there comes

a certain showering of

sparks flaring upward

like flakes of white hot snow.

The stars in rows

gather as unbidden memories

to cast their ghoulish glow

on the back, black walls –

hidden from view,

or at least cowering

among the older stars,

clumped and unbillowing. They do not

breathe anymore, but

still cast their

meddling shadows.

Their pathetic streams of

yellow light offer

neither warmth nor sight –

just scratching on

a chalkboard of a new

night, too full to care.

My pen bleeds it’s sickly sweet dewfall drawl.

Nothing inhabits this canister but dried up vowels

fit for lying salesmen and puffed up politicians.

The birds have picked clean the grain,

and the road is left clean enough

to walk on without sound.

The deer have stopped coming to taste

the salt lick that once bore the strident residue

of something that helped hold their water.

I’m feeding the fish with sawdust

one pinch at a time. They’re only fat

because they’ve had to eat each other.

Unbanish the bright and flowing nerves of pulsating ink.

Let breathe again the salacious, the rambunctious,

the florid and foul, the simple and bombastic,

that tickle, cajole, prance and pet

and set free the smallest fires.

life is not finished yet

this time between the times

the bones between the flesh

mute or stinking

another thought has come

crumpled but poised

crouching between the eyebrows

of have and had

slick and unyielding this

tricky business of friendship

of unposted letter-lives

hiding in lairs of uncertainty

where the dark and damp

find the warm and humble

sucking from the teet

of forgiveness breathing

toward a resolution

a day-night hour

pretends to see the unseen

tucked under a quivering branch

and just when the first bird

alights with song at the ready

the branch gives in and

dancing leaves meet waiting ground