1

Before earth sea sky

there was Nature
what we call chaos: raw confused inert
discordant atoms of things
confused
There was no Titan
or Phoebe
or the earth
Though there was land, sea, air, it was unstable, unswimmable, dark,
shapeless, obstructed.
cold against heat, moist against dry, soft against hard, weight against the weightless

2
"Patterns," you say
you'll pray for me.
Horizons are expanding
beyond the pull of the
sun.
Yet, gravity firmly plants
me here where evolution is
a timepiece.
My one grey hair turns slyly into
three.
Laughing at my vanity
you've moved past my
quantum mechanical grip.
I'm left...
orbiting...
You were right...
releasing me...
To a desert sandstorm deserted unknown planet or
moon on a distant star.
My extra-terrestrial prayers answered!
I have all the time in the universe to remember,
the speed of which I will forget it.

3
If sunsets weren't real,
they were but colors flashing behind
our eyelids after
some flood of light
sends sparks dancing across
the darkness,
would the days still begin and end the same?
Would we be content
closing our eyes,
slightly smiling,
marveling at the energy our
own vision created?

4
It was hot,
though shudders split the earth
in two
tumbling terraspheres.
One was rough and igneous.
Saturn burned billowing below.
The other, smooth as sediment
sent sailing southward.
A translucent mandala biote.
And then, they rotated around
the sun.
Only, in opposite directions,
crashing into one
lonely planet.
A collapse
inside a rapture
inside seizure
inside a bow.

5
I went hunting the other day,
with no metal in my pack,
I carried arrows,
a bow cut from the
thick of a tree.
One strand from the head
of a tragic love
completes my quiver.

Crunched low among the grasses

I wait humbly;
the sky is so vast I
feel compelled
to roll my back against the ground
and curl tobacco
under my tongue.

Like this, I am found;

A tomahawk grounds me,
the blunt edge contacting my brow,
twine binds and cuts my
wrists, my hair balled up in your fists
gives me some pleasure until
our yellowed eyes meet
in recognition.

Still holding me, you

reach for your missing strand
of blond, tuck it back into your mane,
fastened with a feather band,
you kiss me death
and cut my scalp,
take one strand from the conquest and
string my bow.
Watching this, I am miraculously
bloodless.
But, red tears stream from your eyes,
pulling my weapon taught
and your gums are bleeding
and a shrill constant
buzz fills the plain,
the arrowhead placed coolly against my chest.

I reach to wipe your

bleeding nose;
the snap, its a lie,
and cannot pierce my heart.
Defeated you collapse onto me,
and we bleed into one each-other
and we disintegrate into the grassland
until we are a pool of blood and piles of hair.

And bows
and arrows
and two little...

6
They caught us laughing
but we stopped ourselves
before the shame of our
madness sunk in.

My face found your chest

and anchored there,
waiting for the waves
of hysteria to pass.

7
Houses built in the air
smashed to smithereens:
I remember climbing high,
higher than you or him.
This time I can barely reach the first branch.
I am aware of raven's wings
pulsating above my head,
thicker and more solid
than the feathers of my memory.

I wasn't sleeping
until I fell onto your fitted sheet.
You rouse me:
my fingers, like inverted fuses,
stuck in my ears,
so then I'll
la-la-la.
You say, "The future used to be easier."
I say, "Our fathers tried too hard."

These words hit me straight as

a crow flies, yet,
Curious... our hearts only break
in one direction:
as a river, the pain flows everywhere.
Indistinguishable as your looking forward,
and my looking inward,
here nor there,
somehow we are neither.

"Half pound of cherries"

On the Southeast, I find relief

in bouquets of daisies (Gerber)
in the pineapple you put in your coffee
in cemetery train stops.

I need to find three more buttons

I need to trim my hair
I need to mend my paper
I need to buy stamps
I need to send your letter
I need to find the good
I need more than prospects

I have found my dream home

I have met my childhood idol
I have given my heart away