there is a bird outside the window
making a thin call
sounding exactly like
a slight intake of breath
from your nose as you sleep

i wonder
if this is the bird's own reedy tongue
or if instead it listened to you, too
in the grey of mornings
and learned to imitate
with excruciating accuracy
that lovely noise

 I love listening to you sleep
The honesty of breath
swelling and sighing
within your two lungs
I love it because its the only time
I can be sure you're not lying to me

Protector of Bad Poetry,
Do not let it die like this
Do not let some creature let me go unanswered
Let your most marvelous creation pick up the goddamn phone now and then
Let the beauty of man not be such a jackass
And let him love better than he has been doing

I learned not to trust you when all our clocks turned blue from waiting
and the phone hummed all weekend with diligent panic
filling the house with such obsessive anxiety that I had to answer
just to keep the milk from curdling

And now before you flit away
I memorize your words and find the cracks between them
and then imagine some dark witchcraft like ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

without adverb lovely enough

the shirt fell from the shoulder

the blade of which cut every thought

to its sudden wick

the shadow splayed across your back

a thin elk briefly

in a flex of sunlight

I stood as a hair on end

as the pool received your arc

and you swam the length and back

some dead wet leaves

a mottled ( Read more... )

The thermostat broke and it's about a hundred degrees in my apartment. My roommate is out of town, so I'm here alone, sweltering in my underwear. It's a very white Christmas.

I realized the last time I updated, I don't remember doing so: some time when I must have woken up in the night and forgotten.

I have lived my life like a wounded creature
who would lift his head occasionally
and notice the beauty in the fire
as it burns the woods around him

you drank fully
deeply
like a church drinks the sooty perspiration of prayer
and from its lips wipes the afterthought of sin
and hides it in a verse
where the onion skin blooms and blots with love

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In other news, the bottom fell out of L.A.