The season gives up
its last gifts under hushed moon
light and sworn in whispers,
sealed with stars, new
alliances are made. The moon aches
for earth and orbits
her curves, disturbing her
waters from afar from under
a shadow veil.

You are here with me, a silent
presence hangs between us while
the fields give forth final grain
and gourd

to lay down in waiting for the death
of winter's hard hand to brush
their eyelids closed and turn their bounty
back into earth.

And moon, a dark stone
whose borrowed splendor hides
a hollow song, glides
over, never closer,
his eternal dance of solitude
illuminating some night threshing

and our still hands never touching

It's a Motherfucker.

Memory Man you make yourself
comfortable in the darkness beside me
your weight and scent unwelcome
and you reach--

stretch to my side while I read, slithering
your greedy arms around me searching
and defiling my respite,

your creeping fingers play
upon my neck as I pull the bow searching for song,
I find only hollowness and wanting
as they slip
softly around and constrict.

I curse you and excise your spirit
but you return in the dead quiet
with gin on your breath and sigh
into my ear, silencing my call

Running a rake through sand--

swirling furrows and circles the point

is not to revelate but to be found

In getting lost. The movement, a repetition

Impresses memory on the sinews,

a comfort new and old like first and last

breath and the wind of living

Sun bleaches the grain, leaves

pollute the media.  I stoop to finger each,

And fold into pockets filled with debris.

40dysnthdsrt
wllmkychs
mrages&ls
yrwy

Flood

Slipping off into the fortieth night of sleep(less)

off-balance bed. A world of empty

over which I am the queen. The moon sees

as I warm to my own heat; the nights pass

and days follow--a silent spending off

of days, like water on stone, boring a hole.

Perfect with no edges, smooth, defiant of expectation:

a refinement. but the madness!

of the wearing remains unbearable.

my fingers quiver with the heartquake

that comes at sunrise

and at sunset-- the dripping rain

upon my heart; a flood. Forty

days and forty nights. The sea swells.

Drunkish origami: hard to
line up clean,
predictable, symmetrical folds
and creases: intentions and
results. The white shows.
Sometimes the white of the inside
shows! and destroys
a pristine presentation.

Gripes and sighs into the Darkness.
Folded. (Not) neatly
tucked up and filed off
with 32 living and ten-
thousand buried.

You may be among them.
But you are not. Dead.