The First Three

1.
One lady lay
upon a bed of sails
waiting for the storm
to ebb
to disclose
the new way
of laying

2.
This man is a monster
with a mouth full of battles.

Everyone will leave him as
fast as they can.

He knows it, but he cannot
calm down. Not now.

3.
A boat is a body lost.

A lady sails silently.

A man will never stop
until he has to.

Los Inocentes

In the trek interior,
...I could no longer
feel her

In the grove of bone
.....trees, she was
everything

Untouched,
....unseen and
unmounted

Unflinching,
.. uncalled-for,
....unabashed

Sick of looking
....at seabirds,
she sleeps soundly

In Boredom,
....in bedrooms
the mainland

Imprisons the
...heartland
without asking

How dare we?

The Ants

The Ants are
.....here, no
one is leaving

Hungry,
....smelling
not seeing

Hurry, no
...one is
speaking

Dirty,
...we are
not cleaning

Bleeding, like
.....no one is
healing

The Ants are here
.....they come
while you're sleeping

The Walls are
.....sealed, no
one is leaving

We hate this poem
......more than
........the Ants
..........that wrote it.

The Ants are here,
......not even
bargaining,

We can carry
anything.

How It Went

It went like this:

A bird that was

....perched on

.......a rock

is now flying right
...........for us

like a feathered

missile

(It's that feeling
......of finding

what you'd hoped

....was lost

then just

asking disaster

to fly in

the window like

...a bird

who couldn't tell

it was not sky)

She said
....I am a woman
of feathers,
and
I am a woman
of beaks with
no teeth
and
of cilium songs

My nest is on fire.

(I am a human
airplane
I have emergency
exits, I will
....use them,
and soon)

I have a four-
chambered
...heart,
hollow bones,
I perch,
....and I preen

And now I have an inkling.

(There is language
...only useful
when landing

I am landing,
...........not
....speaking)

So now I am owl,
....I am osprey,
I am shoebill, I am
nightjar,
I am albatross.

I am white-eyes and
cockatoos and
...crescent-chests,

I am the New World Vulture.
I am the Disaster.
I am Loving This.

I don't know
that I'm not
........sky

My nest is no more
........than a scrape
on the ground

so I brought
......the fire
......to it

I am landing.

Like lightening.

I can't help it.

I have lost
.....what I'd hoped,

and I don't want it back.

The Slow Dignity of Worms

I will write what I have to. There are reasons. I will not write the reasons, because the reasons do not matter. I will write of what matters. Of waking without really sleeping and finding nothing is the same. Of the long fall; of the sudden stop. Of plummeting and of plumage on the way down. Of the real, hard texture of wood. Of what's really going on down in the dirt. Of sitting still and of spinning, spinning, spinning.

I have a message from the people: We are sick. I think it's the strip malls.

There is no such thing as authority, and power dissolves in an instant like pudding. We need to be okay with that. I am making breakfast out of the soft morning light. I am calling you over to share it. We can hold the light in us all day long, and we can share it. By evening, we are like peacocks, and we are glowing.

This is how we sleep: when the inhale runs out, we pretend it isn't so. We are falling.

Rhythm is imaginary, but it is the answer. When the ground shakes, I dance like a motherfucker, and I do not collapse. When the ground shakes again, and everything falls, I surrender. At the bottom, I share my breakfast with the worms. They will bring the light back to the surface.

Please listen: It takes time, but if you bear the wait, the birds will paint the sky with it.

The Ten

1. No roulette--slot machines. If it lands on three peyote buttons, I'll donate my brain to the next available coyote.
2. No collegiate stripper companionship. Only tumbleweeds marching in arm-n-arm chorus line to "Rhianna".
3. Shirt would be tucked in.
4. Would tip the casino roulette guy before rolling on the floor like a baby.
5. Would flush that toilet before vomiting.
6. Would flush toilet after.
7. Eddie Money
8. Life Is A Highway
9. Black Adder on the Bad Hand
10. Would yell into the open arms of desert, "Yogurt, a dollar fifty at the Pic-Pac on MacGallsey!"

I Am My Lunch

One meal, chewed
...slowly on the left
side of my mouth. If I could

......eat your words,
I would and I would
....tell you all about it.

The bottle cap says,
...."I am Grateful."
And I am, but I

...forgot, so
...I think sometimes objects
know more than I do.

.........This chant won't
leave my ears: Ong Sohung, or
..."I am thou." I am

and you are
...and we will let
the words remind us .

..while we chew
them slowly, with
......a sore and battered mouth.