Dune

Love lasts by not lasting. 

Isaiah said each man walks in his own fire

 for his sins. Love allows us to walk 

in the sweet music of our particular heart.

-Jack Gilbert

memory has been on my mind

the past couple months

but I keep forgetting why

Sometimes it doesn't require evidence to know the truth

and sometimes even as you lay alongside the evidence

in the darkening hours

it doesn't hurt to look again

All Those Not Dying Are Dead

 Sand hints at something

older than itself

like how cobwebs give age

to what they hang over

thin evidence of the disappeared;

beaches mistaken for deserts

stones and statues dusted

into bland oneness

***

we are much the same as

all that has crumbled

turning ourselves barren

in the face of time

creating sediment out of

mountains

crushing pop-songs

and parade confetti 

evenly sifting them

into forgetfulness

becoming the post-apocalyptic

wanderer of our own skin

growing these dunes

without edges

***

nothing can feed on sand

but my... we try.

Your lover says to you, "You're skin and bones."

What your lover means seems transparent:

You're a kind of death's head
that ought to have the sense
to hide itself from sight.

But you look in the mirror and the mirror says:

"Wayward, trusting amiable flesh, flesh
lending itself to other flesh,
how can you help but be seduced by another's body?" 
-Tom Sleigh

Gram of mania, animated pepper,

shadow-monger dressed in panic,

monitor of  ghostly footfalls,

it concentrates in its essential tic

the frog leg dropped into oil

and the human shock at the verge.

If  it would stop and let me look,

I might imagine the tropic

where it hangs in a hammock

between two popsicle sticks

admiring the iguana’s stealth,

but it does not stop. Hawk-

dodger, crow-pretzel, gallows’

twitch. Spider-shark. Porter

of  readiness, miller of  the

steady shudder, peripatetic

rectitude, run by the power

of   the sunlit rock, it fortifies

Darwin and the idea of   being late

and the missed appointment.

With its blue tail, it reminds us:

it will go on. It will not stop.

-Rodney Jones

Neglect Effect

There isn’t a word for walking out of the grocery store
with a gallon jug of milk in a plastic sack
that should have been bagged in double layers

—so that before you are even out the door
you feel the weight of the jug dragging
the bag down, stretching the thin

plastic handles longer and longer
and you know it’s only a matter of time until
bottom suddenly splits.

There is no single, unimpeachable word
for that vague sensation of something
moving away from you

as it exceeds its elastic capacity
—which is too bad, because that is the word
I would like to use to describe standing on the street

chatting with an old friend
as the awareness grows in me that he is
no longer a friend, but only an acquaintance,

a person with whom I never made the effort—
until this moment, when as we say goodbye
I think we share a feeling of relief,

a recognition that we have reached
the end of a pretense,
though to tell the truth

what I already am thinking about
is my gratitude for language—
how it will stretch just so much and no farther;

how there are some holes it will not cover up;
how it will move, if not inside, then
around the circumference of almost anything—

how, over the years, it has given me
back all the hours and days, all the
plodding love and faith, all the

misunderstandings and secrets
I have willingly poured into it.

-Tony Hoagland

I spot myself while glancing outside, the window echoing its interior in

a translucent revolt of purpose. 

In this pane of dual places unaligned, cars pass through my hollow hand and disappear across the wall.

 I cannot break the gauntness of the rooms reflection, I cannot look away without being haunted by the place I stand.

We peer through glass to see the world, and sometimes the glass tricks us into thinking we are apart of it.

The moth the moon and the midnight goon

Reverse Everything

 New Rooms
the mind must
set itself up
wherever it goes
and it would be
most convenient
to impose its
old rooms--just
tack them up
like an interior
tent. Oh but
the new holes
aren't where
the windows
went.
-Kay Ryan 

(Stolen from William Carlos Williams)
so much depends

upon

the red pill

capsules

seized with shaking

hands

beside the brown

bottles

There is a time and a place for everything and I am in neither right now. The days are moving, my hair is growing but I am staying the same. I wonder where the moon goes when all the lights make it dizzy.