Sleep

1 was like
she was in a coma

1 was like 

mom was sick

chances were like 5 in 7

it was the flu

my dad stayed up with her

said it was like waking up from a nap

it was a fungus

laid dormant 

and so did we

watching movies like

googley eyes

i haven't slept since

no i never really

no one else got it

not even for a minute

making good enough

we forget first how to speak

then that speaking exists

making good enough with touch feeling smell

wind sewn with cinnamon leaf

the seagulls harbingers of salt

the way a forget-me-not and a

think-of-me-so brush against

places forgotten

shins

sternums

heels

our wrists of gooseflesh

our pockets of gooseberries

and two geese downed by angel wing

shadow the forms veering southward

ground swell, mirror sky

condense rage into steel buckets

stir with 3 parts molasses

and halter a speckled pony for the momentary joy

of being paired

clank the brass back unto the hook

there, that's better

side by side in a meadow

a parallelogram socked in by facts

when we make mistakes

(and we will)

when we are human

(and we try)

we will know what it is to feel good

in an eyes shut tongue test

we'd still come up honey

not hard to taste what isn't running

Inside a well
I heard god makes mistakes
A clumsy direct translation
At best
Walking is goodness
Curtains are saintly
We make the holy
With our water

Night Hawks

The sky turned pink

       the sky turned pink

the sky turned pink

just before the office 

block began to shine

its gap teeth or its

Tetris hell

three friends are swallowed in;

a fast fashion 

pleather wad in the tunnel before

the sky gives out,

dressed the same in tribute,

in intention

as pure as in wherever the

landing page takes you

in devotion to each other

and on to the next

thing and the things

after that.

Don't ever change,

now change.

Alert

If the only things you have practiced 
are busyness and worry, 
you will not die peacefully.* 

If the only way your body knows 
is to do and do more, 
you will die hands tied 
by your own delusions of importance.

Death will hollow out your cheeks 
and you will be the fool getting botox. 

Death will design a scavenger hunt of your very last memories, 
and you will refuse to play. 

Death will stride up your driveway, jangling your keys on a rusted chain  
and you will draw the curtains, pretending you’re not home.


*Except in the not-so-rare event that you develop one of mankind’s many demented diseases, 

in which case it’s a toss up whether you die, as they say, “pleasantly confused” or in holistic desperation. 

Prayer 2: Void and Compensation

In my imagined barrenness,

I held my tummy in prayer and asked 

God’s spirit for new creation in my womb. 

To dismantle you as an imaginary being 

and find created matter:

to never be compensated for prayer; 

to just press my hands over and around my navel 

praying for something new and soft. 

A rock in my belly,

I throw myself on it,

activating my imagined matter as 

an absolute-still thing

without otherwise possibility, 

in debt to gravity and deeper waters,

frigid cold and descending.

Holding on to that sinking stomach feeling

praying, and asking all the wrong questions

of matter like: 

“Why are you this way?” 

“Why are you upset?” 

“Where did you come from?”

"What are we?"