last saturday

Four corners no matter how small still can create an island. 

You can look up and around but here beside the             opening

is a horrifying step to            stake out the campsite and tarp the corners down

because the storm is blowing             in from the place where I have been             before.

But as for me and my house, we will stay amongst the            lightning strikes

and the crowd gathers gloriously beneath the gladiolus            hanging

but of course there isn’t room for an island

beneath those trumpets of tropical             varietals.

Two clicks to the left to illuminate a space of            dust

or mud-cloud             showing what was left after the downpour.

The birch bones shone like an X-ray of             crooked,

speckled pieces of disaster that night on                         the island

never knew this was                        coming

up and around like the comet that sat            burning

a hole            in the backyard between the trampoline and the house

that was built on the edge of the             sea.

You saw it when you descended the stairs.

The house from amongst the lightning strikes that once                        stood

on the island              now makes its way               floating

circling like the red light in the sirens you could hear approach in the distance.

how to write a poem

Sleep in a room that’s door opens to the outside and have your feet facing the wall. You might slip out or you might be pulled out but there’d be a fight first. There’s always a fight first, he told me. Just like in elementary when the popular girl made you fall in front of the boy you liked so you cried in the last stall on the right of the second floor gymnasium bathroom.  “God loves you” and sketches of crosses on a hillside watching you weep because graffiti at that age meant evangelism not conversion. It was in the moment when you cut the snowflakes out of printer paper and pasted them on the window this winter. Something changed that winter that caused the tenants of building to stop sleeping.  A steeping-feeling fell over the brick building on the edge of the city that told them it wasn’t time to go just yet but it wasn’t their decision anyway. There was more to be extracted no matter how painful the squeezing, tamping, smashing.  Try king cobras, love affairs, or the comet that sat glowing and burning a hole in the backyard between the trampoline and your house. You saw it when you descended the stairs. Try the stuff of your dreams. The red-head with a cleft lip told me the pile of carrots were the his treasure trove and he slept next to the outside door to guard them so I started with that.

digital jesus:

master sifter with his sieve

an augury

the causation of

dry mouth

like a mausoleum

an infrastructure

a certain fragile fiber of the foil

gold in the round circumnavigates the sun                   not down here

the seeds that permeated never planted

the distance long became the distance high

the rain that fell didn’t fall for growth

but out of fear                                    now it freezes

and the cold cuts clearer

I collect you

I said

as the building where we stood                                    burned