I don't trust nobody

             but the land I said

I don't mean

present company

of course

you understand the grasses

hear me too always

present the grasses

confident grasses polite

command to shhhhh

shhh listen

However a light may come

through vaporative

glass pane or dry dermis

of hand winter bent

I follow that light

capacity that I have

cup-sized capture

snap-like seizure I

remember small

is less to forget

less to carry

tiny gears mini-

armature I gun

the spark light

I blink eye blink

at me to look

at me in

light eye

look twice

and I eye

alight

again.

I am this

salivating

mouth without

hands with-

out arms

bent down

shameless

face to plate to

some original

hunger aware

that I'm alone

and I alone am

the one -> pushing

the head

to eat

Bristling outward

his sadism roots him deepest.

Some will hurt whomever they choose.

God-headed and radiant

            but shimmering little to offer.

Don’t build your bed of crisis

            or lie on the down of his ire.

Aware that sudden fires,

like clouds come often at night,

I move to undo your thigh

and absent years dwindle

                                    like cinders above the water.

But small birds

slip from branches at the salvo,

                                    waiting for the sky to fall.

v. THE BLOODY HUSK-MAT BED

As a boy I created wounded men in fields behind the house,

dragging them to safety beneath the sumac mounds.

I made mud to set broken limbs and held bleeding hands.

And when I grew older, I found a mourning dove

fallen from its nest too early. Careful not to move it,

I forced worm’s meat inside its beak.
In the night I heard danger and walked barefoot to the yard,

searching sightless till I felt my own sick weight

displace that feathered vault of heaven.

And I fell to the grass – a doctor undone

sitting cross-legged in wretchedness.

Turn signals blink through ice in the skin.

Snake dreams uncoil,

                        burrow into the spine of books.

Night spills from cracked eggs.

Thin hands vein oars in a canyon bed.

We follow deer tracks back to the insertion of her tongue.

When the fire turns

I lotion my arms

The woman weaves a storm design

Smells rain in the canyon floor

The wind in winter sleeps between our fingers

During prayer

It is released and blows into town

A swarm of locusts with wings on fire

This house burns clumps of cumulus against its back.

Blisters in the core of a dime rubbed on my neck,

like rubbing the hood of a ’57 Chevy with a bar of soap.

Or turtle shells on powder-scented rocks in a tub of lemon juice.

Black pearls dipped in salt sink into my chest.

Teapot hisses.

            A cheetah has been pulled from its skin.