Expression

In the beauty of being
I find that the water flows more fluidly
as if to babble
more discreetly
maybe simply being bashful
about babbling

and I, sitting quietly
in a rippling sea of gibberish
close my book
and leave it to float away
and I watch the words wash soundlessly
off the constraint of the page
and into the rush of the rapids
as if finally giving the waves
something to say

When you were

You bite your tongue
like it’s another thing you can take away
another piece of something you used to hate
another mark on the back of your pillowcase
don’t tell yourself you’re making a mystery out of all of it
you’re just a winter dream settled on your brother’s chest
and if you believed in something other than breathing
maybe there would be another reason for you to love me

Trip

If we watched
the dots behind our eyes
maybe we’d turn out fine

In my alleyway I lay back and listen
to you sing about finding time
I’ve written around a thousand lines
just to find a place for mine

Every moment of wondering
has been just another step sideways
into finally making a picture
out of the puzzle piece
that’s been cut from my life

When we walk together
we talk about the things we used to remember
I worry about whispering
and not knowing who I really know
and when we get up
I can’t remember how to stand straight
or how to turn to you and say
that your face has always reminded me
of how I used to be

Being

As the dust of a generation
floated softly from the mouths
of its own wonderful children
the world still wrote madly on

We waited, wondering when
these wounds would be fixed for us

The bowstrings were pulled taut
and the arrows shot into the sky
and we gazed after them
until somewhere, each of them died

And while our spines burned
as if we were on fire
the grass around us bent only slightly
with the breeze of our breathing

We let the sweat fall from our foreheads
to mix with the dust on our lips
and we remembered our birth
drawn from the dew
that we drank all our lives
we look at what’s left around us
and remember that we never
really cared at all

Identity

[from Dictionary note] “…in a mixture, the combined elements lose their individual identities and are fused, blended, or compounded in the result; in a mix, the elements, though combined, retain their individual identities”

That wasn’t me
or you really
that was the two of us
and how we aren’t
when we’re apart

Epitaph

You whispered
here is my heaven
it is the place
I escaped to
when we died

I asked you
where is our rhythm?
written in whispers?
heard of other days
and in other lines?

I said There is the place
where we used to lie
and here is the place
we lie now
I feel the roots tickle my insides
and you taste of the earth in my mouth

I love you beneath all the bedrock
as I loved you every day of our lives
and while we sleep the world turns around us
as a thousand suns set and then rise

Endogeny

I with my own ivory ashes
float from the window
where you’ve been carving
that block of marble
since before we both remember

and you, making indentions
for every word you find
written within the rock
almost surprised to hear
your hidden wishes
resounding beneath the curves
and dips of the ashen face
that just began to stare out from the stone

and as I rise from the grass
I see you, pushing as hard as you can
at the heart of the thing
until you fall through
and together, the two of you collapse

Later I’ll move you to an upright position
and leave you at the window
where I think you’d want to be
and occasionally, as I look into the eyes
of your life’s work
I hear the echo of something
that used to be incomplete
body wrapped in rock
skin steeped in stone
the beauty you used to hide
seething in the veins
of your newest marble home

Window

I wrote the raindrops
into this one
so that today
you might stay
inside

Unveiling

You stand on the porch
and watch the weather roll in
as I wait in the window
hoping for the moment when
your white dress will billow
like a cloud rising from the ground
to twist around your waist
in an attempt to undress you

I leave the wind to its business
and go out into the garden
where the newest raindrops
have painted your favorite flowers
in other shades of orange

I look out beyond our little yard
into the plains that have surrounded us
since the day we woke up here

and I wonder if you

are thinking the same thing

as you take your first steps
into the tall grass

that

those clouds

come from

somewhere

And when I return to the porch
I see something white
tangled in the grass
and I leave your last marigolds
stuck in the screen door
as I turn to ring the bell
that used to bring you back

October

If I wrote
a thousand shipwrecked poems
and let the pages float
to someplace that needed rain,
let the sky rip itself from the seams
we’ve never been quite able to see,
and if the people we dreamed about
met us in other countries
in other times and other lives
we might realize ourselves
for once