The Snare

He's waiting for me
just inside my chest,
the blacksnake aiming for
a frightened animal.
He's waiting for me,
he doesn't know. The Dark
can't recognize itself,
a molecule of water never
acknowledges the ocean.
Like some poisonous, beautiful
spider who is not aware
how savagely it kills,
he waits for me.

When Death Comes Calling

We haven't met. How did
you find me? Why are you
holding a weed wacker,
I heard you carried a scythe?
Well, its understandable
in this economy.

I'd invite you in
but you see, I have
a 5 o'clock hair appointment.
You can leave your card;
I'll text you.

The Cross

There is a painted blue cross
in the sky tonight where
bullet-holed stars bolster it up.
I smell like blood tonight,
as if I've killed someone;
the sinner, alive, the victim
nailed to wood. This is the hour
for earnest prayer. Here is
the stone handed to me, the first
to wield it. As for my soul,
it has no hands, it has no weight,
it has no immunity.
.

He Slept

When he died, they said
"He had a sense of humour.
He enjoyed the holidays."

So do insects.

I wanted them to say
"We won't survive this.
The world will end today."

And so he slept
and slept, no matter
what they said.

Loathing

No one knew that I had died,
the dead are not so obvious.
I may have left my heart in Eden,
my body cast onto the stones.
For you, I've searched and wasted
grief like serpents do, writhing
through the ash. Such a creature
surely coils, turns against itself,
all bite and venom.

Motormouth

A man who uses too many words
is like a vapor in strong wind,
every molecule dissipates into
a whole lot of nothing.

Writer's Block

I write to forget.
With an ink-colored mask,
I camouflage the flesh
unable to hear, or see
or feel. When words
escape me, suddenly the sky
is falling heavily, dismally
on its wounded author.

Linnaeus's Butterfly

The butterfly so
frilly, nervous. Is it
capable of worry or
are its frenzied
fleeting joy?

An Alternate Ending

Were you just looking
for a good time? Like
the trojan horse but set on fire;
I destroyed you first.

A Full Heart

After years of knowing,
what is left? What do we
know? Everything we can.
As for me, what I have-
one small wing, this pebble
for a heart, a burning
house, a particular star
I look for every night,
a blueprint of the sky-
fills me up completely.

Summer Torpor

Green bones. Silver sunlight
spitting blue. Cattle lazy
in their pasture, brown and tawny
horses standing still. Now, the world
is nothing but a flower,
simple, colorful and pure.
Even shadows in their hideout
close their eyes, rest until
evening brings its frosty cure.

Sentinel

When I say, the cruel are flawed,
I mean the needle is honed but often
misses its mark. The eyes of sheep
recognize the wolf waiting in darkness;
huddling together, only one of them
will die.

We search for safety everywhere,
into the woods, behind a door,
the deepest grotto of our hearts,
keeping the predator always in
the scabbard of our sentient nerve
with one clear goal- to stay alive.

Shifting

Because we think the spirit
cannot dream, we keep it hidden.

The body, helpless in its sleep
allows the soul to stretch its wings

like adolescent birds will trial
and totter in their fetid nest

eventually leap into the nothingness,
leaves the body cold and stupid in

its wooden bed surrounded by the tree
and flower, dreaming futilely.

The Book of Wolves

Somewhere a blizzard
of single-filed wolves.
You can make out their eyes
yellow, snake-like. Wind,
a motherless child howls
around their nervous ears.
That, in an instant, the tundra
blank and white as wordless pages
closes her book.

Are You There?

Star, the heart
bent towards
the light, dead
before the wish
was made. Small
shafts of brightness
traveled through
the dark and someone
saw it.

Fear of Heights

Our affinity
was like a circus;
monkeys to the gaudy
leader. Imagine if
there were no one
to tell the dancers
when it's time to dance.
We were young like every
early morning, tents go up,
the warlike lions sleeping,
clowns serious and wretched
without their foolish costumes.
My fear of heights, trapeze act
when hand to hand the fingers
freeze and slip, one of us
fell harder than the other,
completely missed the net.

Give Back the Night

Today, the ground on which I walk
stranger, quaking, damaged. Last night,
the bed on which I lay, my sleep- a slow
half-finished suicide. How false the world
appears extruding from shadows of the dark
its fabric ripped and pulled like veins
detached from muscle. And so I tire of
sunlight, singing birds, uncoiling flowers,
the ordinary streets that twist and turn
one into the other.

Never Winter

Here I am. Often, how
I miss you. It never snows
in southern california.
And this is how we yearn
for what we've never known.

To My Only Desire

The light was
not enough.

However briefly,
love was not enough.

What delights
my soul, sometimes

for no reason,
is the sleeping wolf.

When Death so Beautifully Clothes

If silently, all tenderly
the roses open,despite the choke
of wispy vines, then perfectly
its spiral thorny arm, its sheath
safeguards imponderable beauty.

Most absolutely, as rapidly
the petals blacken, crumbling so
like feather-dust of moths, then blows
its salmon colored specks, its cloth
onto the nakedness of autumn fields.

The House Within

When no one is watching
we become what we are.
See how the heart winds
down, the blind spot in
the eyes widen? Don't
worry, the house within,
where you live your life
will teach you discipline.

The Message

Does night have a heart?
Is there an epistle in
blood-red stars? Are we all
alone in this life; are we
worth saving? Whose reverberating
message says we are?

Bone Collector

Because the face betrays
the body's dread, no shadow
dark enough to veil the flesh.
O child! death comes surely
even to those who refuse it.

How long will your ephemeral
room surround you, defend you,
a disintegrating shell?

Who will gather your bones
like fallen flowers and
lay them in the earth?

When fog comes heavily
on grey-white feet, obliterates
carvings on the man-made stones;
now, my heart, your secrets are
eternally your own.

What the Wolves Leave

The birds will eat. Even in full sun
among hyenas. There are some things
in life, so small, they are overlooked.

Fear of God

Grey morning, rain held
in blankets, the cliff
I stand on, above the ocean,
wounded as a raging beast.

So here is where my God is hiding;
steel blue-eyed, teeth, jagged rock,
breathing in and out the clouds,
His body silver, gorgeous, large.

Does He see me small and random
some wild blossom clinging to
the ribs of mountain? Or does my spirit
lit and glowing remind Him of

His favorite star? The rains break
loose from heaven's pores, the sound
a million liquid singing voices.
A red-backed hawk plummets through

crackling skies, searches for a place
to light. Lands beside me fastens to
a boulder shrub, majestic as a king,
more in fear of God than me.