Midwinter Ghosts
A midwinter dustbowl
the dry-ice lake.
I’ve gotten up to ghosts
that walk waters
in a toga-grand conference
as if to solve
the conundrum of the cold
the cruel cold
after
a late-night listening
to Sibelius’s
Second Symphony
its northern lights
shudder
in the first measures
remote
as a homeland
as an early memory
lulling.
My recollection
screen had gone to snow
and too swiftly
passed
was the burning bush
of vibrant
starstrokes.
The morning
lapping of skull and shoulder
shapes processes
delicately like some exodus
from death.
In the freeze
I coax evidence from those
who are cores
of clothing
that they hope to be
as much at home
as the softspoken snow.
Mandate
The neighborhood voted
to paint all doors black, reason being black’s
easy uniform, the old blue prone
to slant rhyme:
chemical suit for St. Louis,
swimming pool for steel,
shark for Seurat,
presidential for heartbreak hotel.
Now I come home to a rectangle in need,
an Elizabeth Taylor holdout.
I am charged each day I don’t darken, each day I wonder
when the shrouds shall sprout
like poems in a class
on the verse-forms of death:
burnt trout for graduation gown,
interview shoes for new tires,
eyelid back for closet Malbec,
fossil for fleeing octopi.
I hope our doors forever fail to comply.
Middle of October IV
I am the only one in the outdoor café.
The leaves rush across the stones like birds.
It is cold here where I am in shadow,
warm in the corner where light drapes the tables.
God, there is always one waiter, one more thing to do.
Night, Spring V
I want to talk to you, directly.
Who knows what to say?
My face floats like a mask
on the creek that courses under the houses.
The roaches are big as dogs, almost, and hiss.
Landscape & Car
A contract between light and the junked orange cars.
The earliest, tv moon past dusk, my dear.
A covenant between first sex and dark love afterward.
Dew oils the woods. We gulp each other.
Unfortunately, it may be always like this.
I am sorry, it is possible. No one knows who owns this place.
Creatures come and go, freely. The roof riddled with stars and bullets.
