(No) Sound of Breaking Heart

driving alone, talking to
walls and living among my own sounds
echoed in every movement, resonant
like glass underfoot; a crunch
ing sound would fit, but
silence: the quiet bed

my daughter's bird body
curled up, light as down, tucked
in the hollow of my broken heart
breast while the sun sets the sound
of sighing would fit, but
silence: the tortured dreaming

behind closed doors, a picking
over, combing through of a broken life
and other lives over and over again,
unbearable sequences shifted,
visited, revisited,
shifted. The sound of a wing
beat, frantic trapped
bird would fit, but
silence

is the sound of heartbreak

Twiceforty

eightydays in the desert
will burn your soul to purity
a vision quest, sudden
clarity

Phoenix

see how mythology tells
a human story: when the rhythm
of living is halted abruptly, when
human souls die and new lines
define sides of our lifetimes, we tell

of Rebirth.

(Art Cred: Merrill Mahaffey/Stolen from the interweb)

Penya-Sagats, 1926

their over-intellectualized analysis lacks for
I was there on the
rocks, the water chilled
as the sun sinks, slips
around the stone, tide scolding
a stray foot

Here. My figure fits among
the flattened faces, screens
that frame this moment as
he comes

find my skin prickled by wind,
the wet foot; I wear the whole sky
in fading light where the sea stretches out

accepting of our transgressions, swallowing
secrets, speaking only to clouds

Don't
uproot my body
and place me where I have not been--leas of green
or among the trees

for I may miss my lover
who seeks stone and sea
in search of me

Haiku for First Snowfall

a seed stirs; no one sees
the gesture of soft skin breaking, life
pushing gently out.

Telltale

your absense murmurs and
creaks over the floorboard
of my heart/my heart beats
buried under yous floor
boards

On a crisp fall morning
I try to lobotomize myself
with knitting needles, supine, wide
eyes staring past their protrusion
to the skylight but find in the
prodding and sweeping, the severing
of softest membrane, cleansing
of memory, experience--
that one can begin but
cannot finish a lobotomy
on oneself.

So I sit Slack-jawed and still
with needles hanging
from my eyes, singing some
fragment of lost song as the
leaves fall; I remember
nothing and no
one seems to notice.