-- old poem, working towards the next chapbook --



Living in a Disarranged Home

I fold what remains
of today into Ella’s voice
and Satch’s brass; arrange it
in a drawer of alleys,
where weak lights are turned on
by weary tradesmen
and doors, set in mortar,
in stone and bricks, lack
any sense of definition
or destination.

I dress a statue
of Christ in a French maid’s
black and white uniform,
place Him by the window
where He can’t watch frail
boats on steel water, where
He can’t feel the desert
in this city swept with snow
and intermittent rain. I trust
that He will know
how to sweep up and make sense
of the ashes clinging
to everything in my mind.
Without grace, I pray for this.

In this dusk,
my mind is a motorcycle,
my hands are the curves
in gravel roads, my hair
is the wind courting barbed
wire fences which stretch
between one thought and the next,
which are the crowns worn
by those who desire.
Oh, I lust to suckle on Ella’s voice,
to flow into a room from a horn,
to smell the oiled rags
of long dead relationships,
to stare at a clear sun riding
the wings of crows strafing
cold fields and not
this drop of blood leaking
from the sky like dust,
like a tear.