Once Out of Love

--
Exactly thirty-one years
later, overripe Summer turns
its nose up this tangled memory
node, this pretzel of half-baked insight
I call my self--

Am I smelling the past here, there?

The seasoned seasonal mockery
of eternal cycling return?

Nature the measured excess
cracks the paved grid

Trips me once, twice, three times
--

Bloody Late Valentine

--
I drift & I skip
I stumble & fall
roll down bounce & knock about
from excentric loop-the-loop
to another circle of weird

all Hallows' have come to roost
by the blood signal saint's
message bending cell bars

writing in a second language
so that talking to oneself
multiplies the mirrored who-ha
over & across hurdling borders
--

Put Away Monkish Things

--
in your heart of hearts
--liver of synaptic spark
in my gutter of gut instinct--

who among us has not lost
their thread at first light
or twilight's last gleaming?

never sated, never filled by gorging
or cleansed by the purge:
compulsion held in check
only by stalemate habits

burn the fat clean off
in naked incident

scrape the smug smirk off
your gratitude, please?
--

Candelaria & Other Losses

  (In Memoriam-- PSH, Luis Raúl, Dax Díaz...)
--
jumble of dreams, tangled & dim
ground slipping under me all the while
time ticktocks gale-force above

need needs a kiss to gather oil
assemble & prime the tools

to repair hardened disconnect in broken links
between bleak everymorn hall path slogs
with shadow matrix stars beyond
reflected gleam streaming underground

beyond smoke & hand signals
arguing out the mirrors
beyond alarm bells, flashing lights
anxious mistrust & bittersweet oblivion

beyond the hanging struggle to know
free-falling lessons to forget

beyond roadkill claims in the snowdrift
feeding on dressed-up carrion
beyond the pale
that goes with territory flows

beyond a narrative arc-in-heaven
beyond smoky hopes in these dark rooms

some makeshift peace?
an uncomfortable if convenient truce
settled into shelf-life permanence
nestling out of touch yet not beyond
--