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.

imagine every other stanza is tabbed over a tad...also the prompt was "Who are you?"

Walking down the hallways

of Longmeadow Street

mythologies of autumn

and scarves like time around my neck

winter is passing and

there is another six inches.

Wind and violins

orchestras stoke that

flue inside the living room:

empty save constellations

of fires unused or

passed--where is the

synaptic drive
where are we going?

Ancient myths like

stars like finding, telling:

this is an island this

hand holding mine, this,

mine. Winter again

and another six inches

fill the coffee cup.

Open city, love. Open

city holding mine

though when it breaks, it

breaks holding cities

holding mine: warm

full like quick cups

of coffee

Once, though, we were soft.
And terrible was the thought
of hindrances and winter
though I loved the idea of snow
covering our sweaters--
we, hiding inside our belts, our waistcoats
tough, which once we were.
The country, the wine,
and indelible the company,
when suddenly swiftly they go
out the door and out to
the country yet again.

Terrible that thought of
yesterday. Bits of salt
transformed into pieces
of cork floating in the
waves of wine. Soft, love.
Hold hands and sway slowly.
Take your temples in your
hands and sway.

Walking In My Own Country (old, but revised)

I suppose the reason the snout
and upper jaw is missing from
my old plastic Tyrannosaurs Rex is time.

It's an old device to evoke the clock,
my own wall a quick museum
of successes and failure.

I got rid of so many books.
A favorite, still here, dog-eared
and coffee-stained. No, it
must've been torn off by me
or chewed by one of the dogs.

There's another dinosaur
with its horn filed down halfway.

What do you even begin to say to the morning,
as if the pillow were yanked
and shoes suddenly put on your feet.

See, babe, the waters not so high.
It is autumn, we let things go.
We are Quebec, we are sauntering forward.
Like water above the knees like dresses
above the knees. Like rivers, like
oil, like frying pans we understand.
I hope. Bike around the city--
see the boys on Second and Florida
practicing kung fu or tai chi
at ten at night in the alley.
And how they move--so slowly
with staff and position after
carefully wrought position. Like water.
Like water, like breath taking in
sweet jams or the beasts inside frying onions.

Lovely that autumn peeks on the vines
against the walls separating wood from concrete.
Tree and highway and everywhere we go is bumper to bumper.
This is a median: yellow
dumpsters filled with sand and water,
concentric circles like concentric
squares like leaves and cars
we are meeting in the middle.
Autumn, you exist only in hills.
We knoww you, highway, only exist
in hills. Travelers, pick your middle,
pick where you ride. Lastly,
speed, go slow, and as our
ribboned car doors pass by this season
let us know by letting us know.

Joyce

Joyce loves things that are green.
Sweatshirts wrap her head to feet. I want Joyce.
Joyce says that Spring is oranges
and she meanns day lilies
though she loves things green and makes her
choices based on that. That
and that Joyce holds vegetables
in high regard, though, Joyce, you
cut them so carelessly and slow-cook
the sting out of lemongrass and my cheek.
Joyce: I want her and when sweat
wraps her head, sweatshirts
fall across the floor like garden parts,
and vegetable-getting implements
and in the park she lies and oh
Joyce, my Joyce can you tell us
what else is orange and never,
honestly, green.