The cold nights on the town,

nose running once inside,

experimenting whose place will

feel like home the fastest.

Let’s not rake those coals.

But “let’s not,” as it happens,

is our summons—where we count

of the crows and eat it.

---

The slow unfurling,

shaking of wings,

refusal of flight as we fall.

Our laughter shucks the trees

smooth as fingers

reaching for God’s beard.

Such pretensions rise

from shifting tectonics,

shaking us,

shaking always,

with lust, longing and unread intuition—

shaking out old memories

like coats from a cedar chest,

smelling of Russian kings and hammered hope,

in sweet reversion to childish things

as if we might undo our changing

from river clay to kilned ceramic

and unforesee the shards.

The confession of my singing,

my sadness,

my belly unsucked-in;

the excitement of sincerity after coy remarks,

and the pinkness going coarse and laughable—

my reinventions, in the glare of your sunglasses,

tired.

We weren’t the settlers of paradise.

Others have come here, and run.

It’s not the sun that shines upon us,

but the sword.

---

Gone will be temperate days,

fried eggs in bed and tolerable zeugma.

Zeugmae? Who cares. The silence

crackles, and dogs whine.

The shower curls the wallpaper

and the runoff burns the tops of your feet.

It won’t clean you of the fight that keeps coming,

in various mutations,

to serrate every kindness with a motive:

tuning you to suit my needs

grooming me to fit your pride—

I projected my vanity

between your beautiful shoulders,

and then what remains?

Lavender dust and iron rust,

and some words eking out

a meager immortality, since we

can’t see them to the end.

And where lives our story, in your castle of books?

When fade the dreams

and dispels the waking when I mistake

the old pipe for your cooking? Let’s not talk

of love without illusion.