And then, at last, the only question

that contains all the others:

Where are you?

Oh, my life.

What a thing to finally say aloud

when the light is already dimmed,

when the window holds its own cold.

All night I work him against that taut expanse,

pigment opening like a mouth,

the wood-pressed departure of each stroke

leaving its ghost in the surface —

evidence of arrival and leave-taking

in the same gesture.

I am not waiting for it.

I have already walked into the pellucid distance

and become indistinguishable from it—

wide,

ungoverned,

finished with grief.

It seems

people have a worse time of it.

Honesty—

a losing move

Who cares she thought —

running among

the hedges of shapes,

the green of youth,

the wrestling of brocade —

A country with two right feet

cannot keep its balance.

Goodbye California with shackled ring like impending doom,

then New Mexico opened its mouth under the wide motel night—

and his hands decided the rules and the border.

In a tilting room the future went dim,

and my name was a light he could shut off.

Walk the Fire

Walk with me through cinder—

or don’t come.

On nights like this

heat runs to the blood

and it doesn’t blanch.

In love and horny,

I know, it’s corny

But:

the leaves and the trees,

the birds and the bees,

the flora and the fauna,

the heat in a sauna,

I used to party impossible summers—
white-faced cliffs with money whispering,
harbors tucked behind unmarked stones,
no clicking cameras over cheap florals—
and sea-light turning rich boats into diamonds.

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Do your eyes wake heavy—

do some mornings find them so?

Mine see a wound I did not make alone—

the wound isn’t me, or even all the world,

but hands that hide the light beneath a fate

not ours.

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to see doesn’t end

the mystery

or some desire —

it transforms it.

The Quiet

I’ve leaned my white faces to a wall:

Now they keep their mouths closed—

color has been too eager to confess.

The brushes lie rinsed and sunned—

their bristles call out to my wrists

and my hands that once moved un-trembling.

Carrying It