(no title) (i think this is unfinished, and could be added on to) (inspired by Arda Collins "Over No Hills")

And in the deepest

sense, I am looking

for companionship, which for days

and, perhaps, all of March til May,

I had rationalized or

imagined as the recollected

amalgamations of the hands of

two old lovers--

I'm a bit of a cat-burglar in that sense

and freely admit

this at a coffee shop next to

an opened computer

finished latter and two strips of paper

curling around and over themselves--

I read through

so many of my old college papers

looking for something scholarly--

thinking of language and love,

now and then

thinking of the inconceivable

facebook status (wintry,

porcupine-esque, desired, fulfilled,

scared, rounded out,

proud and reasonable, pencil-

thin, as a mollusk

climbing on thin blades of

grass, looking at pretty

girls) but punctuated--

I think I should not eat my words

anymore, I think

I should be putty on the wall:

don't you use it to hang

things, to maneuver and tear

into use for the pleasure

of making your

house a home?

The Unknown Bird (I saw this phrase in an Elizabeth Bishop poem)

The unknown bird sits atop leaves

and leaves of green--jays, pigeons

scooting up against the windows

the swooping, leaving

imprints indicating: birds, birds

this is the oven of us all,

four hundred degrees we simmer

in juices savory with lemon and dill.

Summer bakes us and will never treat us well.

~

Beneath the daytime, people pass each other

on the street. "No one smiles back at you,"

my friend complained. "No one says hi." We

watch as the ladies and gentlemen in

seersucker and fashionable period-dress

cycle by--we snap photos, imprint our

eyes on each gaunt hat and they are

changes as wood drifting down the river changes,

becomes the last sign of life, entering the ocean.

~

If I can swing it, my next lecture

will be titled: For My Next Trick: Residual

Patterns like Electricity Buried beneath the Wood.

Each word will contain sequences,

like bath and both and bother,

path, pith, patter, late, loath, lover.

Judge whether the path in the woods

with broken branches that are stormy weather,

leads out or simply further. The way

gets dark. It is an unabashed lover.

~

The most extreme weather I can think of

is a tornado. When I was young, I looked

out at the tail of Hurricane Emily wagging

darkness and almost filling up the drain pipes.

To have ripped off the roof of a school, to

gauge out the lungs, veins, of trees makes

nature seem overlordish, though it is not, though

we are making it be this way, us, caressing

as two pieces of used uranium nestled in their bed of shale

forgetting, later, that they never had known other than this.