Concentration Camp (I dont know why it's called this, it just came to me...an overpresiding feeling?)

Like a stifled sneeze, I feel uninhabited

at times--waking from dreams

in which I have been blinded by chemicals

and pitted against stranger-adversaries,

and while a faceless bloodied, ravenous

onslaught powers toward me

a sudden wave rushes through my body

pushing it all back--waking dizzy--

waking later than I wanted to--

slugging my hands through the day--

a miracle is tea and lemon, a miracle

is ginger and quiet noises of fires

and the shifting plaid and flannel

of autumn, to walk and see reddened

oaks, then to fall away from the world

at night. And in this am I ever awake?

St. Patrick Duck

Now is when I climb trees,

cerulean sky and oaks and others

of red ochre (once love was

red ochre). Shaded underneath

these feet like roots

are timely footprints meshed into cement--

these are names these are rowboats

twisting around lakes

in Maine and Manitoba

where I am eating chuck steak

repeating again and again solitude,

solitude, solitude, fire, duck

and then am happy in certain

moments of spring.

Curtal Sonnet

My eyes closed and my shoulder hunched
like bejeweled solitude,
a pen run out of ink and the cold slip of a missed-placed s,

hard as lust, a violin tremolo,

a clicking wound round my ear the massive growl
tight against my jaw--how the undead

measure God stackable as glass

how room for both whisper and hiss

a clicking, wound--this terrible lust

to know what it is to crave, to roam

searching.

This glass is alone underneath

my table, my checkerboard where

once or many times I played with

my great-uncle that never was old

until he died. Whether it is heat

or something else that forms it,

an immensely chip-able object,

had I strength and a towel

I would think, later, to break it
as if the hand were street and glass an echo,

clink of song bringing itself back

hard bits and pieces, immense sleepless sound.

As I Have Said Over and Over Again, Love is an Ocher-Red Leaf

Let me remind you of my hands, which have not felt love

in so long they ache of tendinitis

that strengthening will not help

whose ligaments are not dancing

little finger that once spliced over

a body that moved in time Tell me

time, track backwards an old

twist of words--what is motion,
something foolish, a wrist

so half-heartedly broken

and sprained in five places
while ash bristles the side of the chimney.

Love, I am underneath you, I am

as if blessed by you. Tell me
time, what roundness must
I feel in order to be like

water, clear and settled in the glass, how

tenderly it wobbles and nuzzles

toward the edge, tipping, undulating

being shaped by the hard edges

of a terribly breakable thing.

no title just yet, and a very rough draft...inspired by a line by Major Jackson

Look, I don't want the lions ripped

apart. The mere thought of harshness

garnered from what faces receive

me through the doors and hallways

is old, unused milk I can't open or

throw away just yet. Milk was

once something I loved, it rhapsodied

the four solid eyes of each hour

of the afternoon, it piled, it was snow.

I can't tell now if milk means, moon
or enough; if careful means,

Come and ride bicycles with me, share

my hand as we walk. It is uncertainty

like a claw in the face of much more than that.

Teshuva (brace yrself, it's a long one)

1.

What we've never had is a song

and what we've had is a song.

2.

When I was biking down 16th street,

thinking how to run a half-baked workshop

about forgiveness, I was more wrapped

in thoughts of reproach--blaming myself for

the misdeed of not thinking about this workshop

not putting the time into it, not reading enough,

providing contemporary examples. In the meantime

friends at my apartment drowned in cookie bliss

and, though the wind was thick and pleasant--

a warm towel thrown repeatedly by my face

and bare hands--there was very little calm.

We came to talking about forgiveness,

at the end, at the workshop, lasting and lingering on each one person's

tongue, a salted, unwondrous lick.

3.

Pencils sharpened, I am in

front of everyone

this feels as if a sail wrapped around

I have just tripped on a banana

peel backward falling

feeling and the floating

moment before ripping up the

silence of a silent moment

with an awkward guffaw

as if seeing someone slip

on his own words. Then we

begin to think about forgiveness.

4.

Teshuva, from what I understand, means turning, and not repentance. To repent seems too Christian and overwhelming and doesn't do justice, I feel, to the feelings we feel when we examine ourselves and the mistakes we have made so that we may finally ask for forgiveness. Turning, on the other hand, in which way, into which wind, into whose arms, into what broad field, into whose alliance, into what hand, into which direction. To turn, perhaps, as a wheel, or a chair or table, as a pencil or piece of fruit in the milken sun. Apples dipped in honey, apples dipped and honey, then we wait and turn to forgiveness.

5.

Tell that old man

on Rosh Hashanah to tremble

only on the inside.

Everyone is waiting

for them to matter

though isn't this our day to do it.

He cried while leading--

who by fire, who by water.

I have been singing this

all day long--for what?

A call, forgiveness.

6.

It is difficult to pinpoint

the song in a city

I am familiar with and love--

surprised as I am by these buildings on Porter Street

that were finished

and all that space

like blown glass--I am in love

with the fire set inside a glassblower's

I don't know what it's called, rod,

so incessantly orange

what glows like that on this earth,

not even dark or amber honey has that

distinct glow--

it sings as if it never had a song

to sing. Yet. At this point of the new year,

I am only hoping to be like glass--

there is always an ember

in it, it is still, lit--

just look at its stars

and speckles as it glows.

Eyes

I am afraid to flex my muscles.
Though the wing span
of my arms outstreches my height
I am not gliding on the saddles
of northerly winds
much anymore. In the stable,
the horses sing wheat songs
and nuzzle each other
while memories of
their corralling
lingers as collective memory:
this once, the moon may ride
over the lakes again,
the one with waves that feel oceanic
and belittle the statures of
the men that come to marry in these parts.
I am of course talking of the city,
paper and folded lie lines
above book titles,
the creases of the pillow when your head is rested,
when your breathing becomes
softer--these are the nights like tin.

Golem Event

(1)

With hands awash in the sap of a palm or spruce, or, with the bark of a cyprus, clap over a heavy tin, the many pairs of eyes follow from above.

(2)
Using a ladle and a heavy wooden spoon, gather water and place it upon the front steps of a newborn fruit tree. Wait until the water evaporates.

(3)
Along with millet or the husks of wheat, grind earth into a mortar, spilling some onto the table. The crows outside waiting in anticipation, will add wings to each crumble. Write the truth onto the table.

(4)
The fingers flex and contract over a book of stones.

(5)
Golem, whisper.

Candle Lighting

I lifted a match and we all
started singing, and meant exactly
what it was we said.
There is a candidness here like
a permanent stitch of crochet,
and I am befuddled by it.
I don't mean to say I can't recognize
the need for sincerity, of
passing by geese and giving a nod
to the presence of God's tongue
lapping up the spray of wind
behind their tail feathers landed
so slightly on August grass.
What I am saying is that when I put on my t-shirt
it was for some sense of recognition
a smile, a hand hold, truth
like a key and a lock.

Grass Texts

Last night, I laid down in the parking lot looking up for something that'd fallen. Today it was grass, toes dug in, clouds like pelican wings, a line, and birds in the likeness of a line. Slowly yellowing, walking. Sometimes I think I must have stepped on so much unwanted sidewalk. The gnats create walls. I hate to break them; my mouth is always open.

Chance Composition #1

The bird is in the likeness of a line
where books rescue our purpose.
One, thereby, point:
other vast is dwelling.
Nature is named speaking SPanish,
grass texts,
pelican wings like venom
solidity like wretched expression--
thorn and thistles
exalted sleep--
they know this.

Waking Up Early (The Not Being the Difficulty of Sleep)

At one point I was dreaming,
my eyes turned upward
and inward, so I like to think that
in my dream of hotels
when we rubbed each other's arms and
we were crickets, puttering
about old tunes that rhyme or don't,
we stood still
though the hotel had moved,
painfully aware of itself and blushing,
so then disappearing awkwardly
and I, bereft of touch--
then to wake with longing
in the mouth and eyes and therefore
mustering energy to
keep awake in this goddamn lovely
morning, the not being
the difficulty of sleep.

In Which I Compare Love To

It was a revelation to know that there are different kinds of honey,
that clover is our most common

and that the taste of darker honey rolls in my mouth, slides
like two coats drifting off a crooked table--

twine like trees, like a trunk within five others,
an atlas.

In the evening, please post this on the board:
The marriage of two fingers is new and blows soft winds, eventually,

in the calmest sea--let there be an understanding that, originally, the table is set
without anyone ever having thought to organize it,

as if merely the clinging sound of fork against spoon were sound enough.

The Circulating Roots of the Cyprus Trees by the Pool Astound Me

This is why I'm naming my poem

after the flies:

the umbrellas, with their plastic covers,

could manifest

so gracefully into flowers. They refuse,

like so many bugs that love

to crawl up into my leg,

suckle my thigh hairs

and gather nutrients

that will tie them over

by the poolside

where they stop to drink,

already steadied by the day's fruit--

lithe and endless fruit that

basks and languishes

intertwining and complex as a nervous system,

as a series of small trunks set into the earth--

to avoid being eaten, to

gather energy, to fly.

Made

What's lost in the preparation of any act
hobbles around like dust motes
that whisper tinnitus in your ear drum:
when making a peanut butter sandwich,
eventually your hair will fall out;
to make love is a waterfall of sharks.

So many foods are rich and dense, yet
there it is like an unexplained
place setting on the table: thinning.
There are times when I wonder what an elegy
would smell like--burning of orange leaves,
a favorite book, the longest extension between
the letter O and empty breath thereafter?

This is the dizziness I've felt.
When I blink several times, yet the world still moves.

In Which I Compare Love To

It is like the skin of a cucumber,
the odd breeze I feel when I say cascara
when I only mean orange peel.

A blonde hair left on the floor--
this will hopefully be a flower
and, on the off-chance, a wire tap,
a means to read the bumps on my head.

On the table: two apples, a small juice box, and a thick spread
of soft, longing smiles.

The reach of dogs is immense--
running, creaming the hell out of
the frisbee, the jump not known
to human fingers and heels. Swamps
gardened and lingering in the backyard,
this is Florida, this is probably
the bayou, this is an immense mess of
bugs and frogs and a thickness
I can taste. The soup-smell of density;
the incongruousness of walking beside
pretty places, a hand to hold and the
feeling of walking upwards. Once
my heart fluttered and those thoughts
attached to it were you, dancing
in a dress that wore you, that clung to
your hips, melted the floor. Once,
when the water across the river had
risen, you dreamed about its length,
the wonderful words of the sun
and the row boat that looked like a wing
hanging on the lower lip of the drifting earth.

i think i'm making a series...called In Which I Compare Love To

Rolling honey between our fingers, when will this somber walking turn
into what salad greens feel like at their last possible moment--a hook around the corner of your body, and mine?

It sounds as if love were wearing us like untied crocodile shoes, singing
about the ocean, checking its blood pressure with its right, big toe.

Donna Lee (for my brother)

This is a drop of the past, this
strum, so fast
how it rides my brother's solid
fingers that sped as strongly
as they clenched, how they ride
his hair, his cool, tireless jaw
how cross his eyes looked
till that quick caress, how fast
it took to turn notes, licks
how cross how untired
that mouth that cawed
his sweet dat dweets, songful, each.

No longer mourning those blues,
brother how cross those notes
turned how fast they ride
behind you now crooning
lonely, lonely to new tunes
blues of the past no longer
this is rock this is elegy
no longer, this music, like water
how fast it rides, how past
it must feel, lonely drop
in your eye, how cross it must be
how cross your face gets how
it rides into your fingers like
the insides of flames when you reach
out for your six string case.

Heat

The only thing I do to keep myself
cool is open the bedroom window
and turn high the ceiling fan.
The rest of the apartment swells,
slightly, on the precipice of summer,
as in the sluggish way the mint
creeps over to the window. It
is growing flowers (the mint), which
I've never seen before, since
I'm new to gardening, planting,
most things wild. They are
white and huddling inside a pod
(each) and hinting at something
though I can't really tell what--
green turning into green; a lilac,
if only just to say the word and hope
that is what it is, something white
like forgiveness ought to be
when colored inside someone's face,
inked around the edges, a depth of frame,
a finish of red, the sunburn after
standing outside for so, so long,
wallowing and sublime, like plant life,
like a perpetual blues song on play.

Untitled, After Reginald Shephard

Petrarch likes my moves. He likes my use

of legs, desire of legs, smooth like moons

pinned to ceilings of little boys' rooms
(though the air wasn't on, the birds on

the wallpaper flitted about at around two

when he was awake and aware

of the viscosity of summer--how

it dove-tailed a bit then banked left

into a September known as birch tree,

ash and hush).

My bike's wheels rush like the music

of dolphins, clatter to the ground and wish

(I wish) to call out to my lost love (the

almandine shape of Spring--he is fifteen

and holds her hand as a tea bowl,

as a glass)(he is fifteen and begins to blow

his nose and think of marijuana). Petrarch

knows how to find my love, my hand.

He likes this,
this music where I give and give, then take a little back.

*note: the short, short lines should be indented all the way to the right most part of the stanzas...

waxing poetic, and some thoughts on the recent completed workshop

so i recently finished a couple-months-long workshop hosted by the poet in residence at gdubs. i went there with great expectations: finding a community of writers, enjoying the benefits of shared poetry (i.e., commenting on each other's stuff, offering serious praise and serious criticism and receiving some of that for myself), and lastly being provoked to write in a serious and more productive manner. i think, after all's said and done, i got a tiny bit of column a, a tiny bit of column b, and not a lot of column c.

i really don't feel i've improved over the past few months. i think i've started to adjust to a different type of experimenting with my poetry, but improving? i don't know. i didn't feel like the tidbits this poet offered us were too worthwhile, and it didn't seem like he was always up for conversation afterwards. i have some pretty serious thoughts on poetry, and i feel the need to keep myself entrenched in it; i have burning questions and asked him plenty, but didn't really get too much of an answer from him.

i think one of the things that i encountered in this class is the type of reader of poetry that goes for the content of the poem, trying to get its meaning instead of what i usually see my writing as: an act. most of the time, i have an over-presiding idea or feeling--sometimes just a line or a word that triggers the rest of the poem. i don't always know what the message is behind it, but it always seems to want to go somewhere and then trail off to another place, kind of like that robert frost quote that i learned a while back: that a poem should be like ice on a hotplate--it goes one place, then off to another, it wanders. i like that about poetry, and i strive for that in my poems. but a lot of what i work with, and a lot of what i like to do and just happen to be doing is sensory things. the poem should sound for me, should cohere in a different sense that may not necessarily make sense, or apparent sense. i think that's the benefit of having a reader read things: there's meaning to be made within the reader's mind, and there shouldn't be any idea that there's a real message that the poet always wants to get out. images should be a manipulative inside the reader's mind: they're clay things and get molded by whatever the reader is intent on seeing.

now, is this me being lazy and saying, "i'm not going to revise?" i don't know, i don't think so. i'm going to revise...but perhaps maybe leave abstract things in? is that good or bad in terms of coherence of poetry, in terms of keeping a clear vision of what the poem wants? i don't know. i suppose when people say "i don't get it" there are two ways to see it: one, they aren't allowing themselves to read the poem in a way that leaves "sense" at the door; or, they don't get it because there's something too obscure that's blocking the image. perhaps it's a little bit of both.

like, take my poem "In Which I Compare Love To." I had this first draft, and it's completely obscure--to me, it's a lost-love poem, but is that line "Any longer and our smiles will refuse to point", etc. actually saying something? Is it too obscure, or is the poem allowed to actually stay that way and be fine? I don't know. Now, it's in partial rhyming tercets, Abb, Cdd, kinda thing. it's also expanded. that increases the "readability," but really, is it what i wanted? is the act of the poem that i originally had in mind, that i originally felt and wanted others to feel gone because i've expanded it? sometimes it seems that way. so who should i be? the one who follows his own rules, or the one who follows others rules? or, should i be the one that follows his own rules while taking others' into account? what did i do before, when i was in college, that made these poems i wrote different? was it the challenge of the class, the amount of talent and pure want to improve inside the room?

for now, i'm pretty sure of one thing: poetry is an act. it should be felt. it may be a dance, and a refined one at that, but at its core, poetry's got to be something that hits you in the gut somewhere.

i am having a bummer moment, so i wrote this to get it off my chest

It seems as though the job or

the heart is to weigh heavy

on the footstools of the knees.

They knock and are unsteady,

kind of, because they're somehow pointing

in opposite directions, duckfooted.

The heart is a too-heavy dumbwaiter

and swears clumsily because it just drops.

To sigh means the branches of the day

are finally streching, but to which end--

when orange juice filled the morning's glass

or the blue paisly bed spread?

To beat hard against the chest is the heart's dream,

though the body buckles like an unlikely rickshaw.

a moment of poetic philosophy

i wrote this on a fellow poet's poem as critique, but i think it's more about me than anything else:

"Sometimes, in my own poems I wonder if the shorter and concise-r I get, the more wallop I can achieve. To what end that is successful depends, I think, on the rest of the poem that precedes the ending, where I want that wallop. I think to (re)consider the ending would be to think, Did I say everything, or include everything in the rest of the poem?"

i clearly have a lot on my mind.

Whale Song (this is long and loose and I'll work on it later)

Who's to say I can't let
the hippopotamus that follows me
daily swallow me whole,
who's going to challenge my want
of a spinster to hold hands with
chat with over cold tea?
If it's the prerogative of poetry
to save a life why not cry into the night
and grab someone's attention
enough for them to put a gun
to the uttered words and scream, I dare you.
That windowshade wouldn't
even shudder in the wind if it weren't
for the violence of the breeze whispering
cruelties into its ear.

I feel the need to exonerate light
to then diminish its importance
and, like deer in a wintery suburb,
flock toward it again and again...
It's like an untethered shadow, the confused
child running circles in the mall, lost.
I've been beached too long.
Someone rubs me gently with sponges
but it won't keep. I tangle
with squid and yet have not looked
the grizzly's fangs of asphalt and violence in the eye
boldly enough to say I love you, will you
please reach out to my hand.
If it is poetry's prerogative to save
and make differences, where is
the whale song reaching toward--
what community will the water droplets
reach once that gargantuan tail splashes.
Two clicks, a long mournful whine
deep within the ocean and the loam.

A Riddle

I am low to the ground. I live in
the loam yet click and whirr beneath
layers of ocean. My life is long, and longer still
with my eyes closed. Short to me
is the breaths which fog on my surfaces.
What is the difference between my eyes
and the sound of walnuts cracking,
or else the stirrings of love. Differentiate
me from the stalks and strings
of plants: I grow and yet know no answer
to the question of altitude.
I have heard the knockings of wood
though trace my lineage in the asphalt.
There are things that separate
under the light. I am one of them.

In Which I Compare Love To

Will you be my alerce tree and caulk the ship--blankets line the floors
and I am not a dog lying on the ground any more, I will not be a flower.

Any longer and our smiles will refuse to point, like a desert cactus with it a somnolescent k.

***

He is a lake; moves
as if time compelled him to write
sonnets every hour and
therefore openly scratches
the surfaces of dressers
so as to ask questions of
the wood. He does not close his eyes.

In a rainstorm, he is the warm
blanket around frantic loss, he is
the fingers that stroke his beloved's hair,
the first pair of glasses
that wave a flag of victory
in the face of lost sight.

He is night, late, and reaches
out at birch tree branches
and calls them winter.
He is a call. He is winter.
He is winter. He is winter.

Sonnet for Zaidi on his 85th Birthday

The process of apple eating:
a chuckle, your impressed laughter
as juice of every first bite--
deep red, a speckled gecko Gala.
Working away the outer edges

is the crisp sound of your smile, your
blue & white-striped pajamas
old reels of mom, Bobi, aunt, uncle
and invisible you--
though if anything you've taught,
invisibility is perceived; you are always here.

*** (revised sonnet)

Death is soup spilled all over,
coloring the floor, the walls,
walking down your leg
zipping down your fly.

It leads you into the room
and asks, What is darkness,
expects you to respond with a question.

It leads you into the room
and pulls out the yearbook, points
at the autographs, the
wish-you-wells, at
every picture and laughs:
soup through bones.

It leaves like a leaking faucet.

Sonnet With a Line by Lorca (it's 11 lines, but that still doesn't mean it's not a sonnet!)

O balding head, O sheathing night,
tattered remains of toast and jam,
O unfinished business, sleepless light:
Napping the daytime, drawing maps
on a clenching hand, tight
for more reasons than love or art,
O dog in the heart, O Labrador of my bones,
I wear you as gift wrap, as a solid warmth
through my body. Lapping up
the water in the soup leftover, the
thirst is great and I find it satisfying.

Sonnet

Call this night visible. A hat:
a feature

a side of afternoon's rouged cheek.

This dizziness may only be felt in two instances:
Now, as when you are sick, or now
as when you are in love. Sleepiness,
that gaudy purple
or simply that which matches night.

Regarding the seas we wade through
it is not surprising that the floor is coated in starfish,
hardening.

Part One:

approach her hands like the light balanced
delicately on her tongue

Funeral (Love or Any Other Sorrow) (next revision!)

Here you are, epitaphs:

Once there was a world

And the world was gone

Sleep, then, and tell us of birth:

Long ride down slopes

Of January's leaves,

Magnesium-colored world.

If a wolf were to hunt me,

And I, fearful submission,

Our eyes would lock

Tearing forever at the question, When.

Love is carved in so many places.

Hands like parchment.

Eyes like parchment.

300 Years

A man's heart only breaks when it cannot.
He hears but only shortly
after his mouth has closed like a buttoned-up fish:
Here are the sewing stitches, flood songs.
It is the job of a man to know what comes,
what he should do, so that he may hide.
Otherwise it's up to him; it's upon himself
to deflect all hatred. Men are elk.

A man's heart only breaks when it cannot.
Because he said, How dare you,
and because he said, my people suffered
for three hundred years
and you're complaining he said, about a long day.
It rocks back and forth scratching itself as if never hearing.

You can't eat the heart, though that is a man's job.
In those four dark
chambers where a man can be kept years.

Stray (it's a weird one...here we go!)

Beautiful snow and
babies, about old enough to stand with help
and curious, shocked at newness enough
to walk; Don't stray too far from mommy.

These are winter. Ordering tea
at lunchtime, or some time
between then and dinner, weighing
snow between fingers, like
a different way of doodling
though wanting--more profusely now--
to snap photos, to hear dogs smiling
at the snow, to scoop up a handful
of coats and set them down
next to love, which is a deer
wisping at the sight of man.

It is like figuring out the hardest thing
about almonds. Spreading seeds
around the ground and trusting
nature to go about its business.
Music is a more modern way to
peruse a street at night, or
grasp some figure close and bundle up.
Soon, a letter to the editor will read:
the most difficult thing about almonds is that
time won't let them weighed inside your hands.
People walk away from my snow-dusted street
like laughing potatoes rolling down hills.

***

Death is chicken soup, ladled
repeatedly coloring the floor, the walls
walking down your leg
zipping down your fly.

It leads you into the room
and asks, What is darkness,
expects you to respond with a question.

It leads you into the room
and pulls out its yearbook, autographs
and wish-you-wells. It points

and laughs out loud at the jokers,
the jocks and nerds. Words, soup
through bones, I'm over them.
Walks away like a leaking faucet.

Contact Improv

Games, that's all it is--
Are you moving towards light
Are you touching, tight
Round the insides
Edges, un-trodden feet
Hair, muscular, even
Body, angular hooks struck, stricken
Rows of moving teeth,
Bridges we walk toward
Trees we push absently aside
Limbs that bend as time
Socks strewn casually on the floor
Jackets on the hooks inside
Limbs that bend as time.

A Phone Call I Haven't Yet Made

When I realize that the light is brief;
When I realize that water burns and trembles;
When I realize, suddenly, that the salt of the earth is the same that I collect in my hands;

When the opening door won't let me in;
When the herbs of your voice don't come out the way they used to;
When the wine I heat weighs down like the armor of a glance;

When I'm heading out and I trip constantly, unendingly;
When the table breaks like an invisible bubble;
When black pepper and balsamic vinegar aren't enough;
When the fish tells me what the sun already told;

When I consider that I'm afraid, that I rip out the roots,
Fog the window with mouths and mouths;
When I consider that I'm afraid of
When time inundates itself in time.

Una llamada que todavia no he hecho (soneto)

Cuando me doy cuenta de que la luz es fugaz;
Cuando me doy cuenta de que el agua arde y tiembla;
Cuando de pronto me doy cuenta que la sal de la tierra es la misma que recojo en mis manos;

Cuando la puerta que abre no me da permiso;
Cuando las hierbas de tu voz no me salen lo mismo;
Cuando el vino que caliento pesa como la armadura de una mirada;

Cuando me voy saliendo y me tropiezo constatemente, interminablemente;
Cuando la mesa rompe como una burbuja invisible;
Cuando pimiento negro y aceto no bastan;
Cuando el pez me dice lo que ya me dijo el sol;

Cuando considero que temo, que arranco los raices,
Que empano el vidrio con bocas y bocas;
Cuando considero que temo
Cuando el tiempo se hunde en tiempo.

Funeral (or, Love or any other sorrow) (a sonnet!)

Here you are, epitaphs:
Once there was a world
And the world was gone.
Sleep, then, and tell us of birth:

Long ride down slopes
Of January's leaves,
Magnesium-colored world.

If a wolf were to hunt me,
And I, fearful submission,
Then my eyes that day would blare
Just as loudly as these tears.
Love is carved in so many places.
Hands like parchment.
Eyes like parchment.

A Guide

Dangerous waters inside
this bed: paisley
changed like the roaming wheels when
this bed bucks.
Our guide book tells us hotels,
amicable food stuffs
and our future of childhood dreams:
sweater-vests I could not rock
if you paid me
and torrentialy loving you: time-
tables, maps, clutter
like a crown you dance with
around a maypole.
Stay diligent, stay the course:
the forests, admire the pampas
and remember it is only
a double, so please stay close.
Do not stray. We will brave
this sea together, these
alien greens. This is the path
we've chosen: cloudy,
with a chance.