Of Faith

A hand, now
bare in the winter and
the cold is touching

white rose pedals warming the red bricks wet and
near my feet –

lost, what is meant to –

never was it meant to.

Love.

Forgetting, the flowers of a wedding and
surely, will hands that held, but
what was picked up –

never.

The beholden.

The steps of a Greek church paused me
pedals and stopping
I picked one. And this,
this was a house I had never visited,
but for walking by, but never

are we just walking by.

For The Seemingly Sightless

More and more, I find that
I want to kiss all of you
closed eyelids,
people I have never met and
never opened

and often,
I find myself staring into faces,
wanting just to smash all that I am
into skin, into bone.

So if you don't know how,
then imagine knowing
what might it look like

when cheeks crinkle, when a smile is too hard
pulled back, that smile isn't really anymore a smile
at least, not really

because that's how badly I want,
just for you to see.

Obviously, that makes me the bastard son,
some animal the likes of which
you have yet even to discover.

Undoubtedly, you are the human cancer, shame
that which urges the eyes closed
when our species is consumed with self-pleasure,
pride

and adamantly, I will someday shake and ask you,
you of the same species -

Will you never know? Will you never know? Will you never know?

Lantern

I don't know if they ever happened,
the parts of me that I have squeezed down my throat and
nestled deep in my rib cage, secret
underneath my heart.

But I imagine a burning there,
where my insides must look like a lantern-something and
I imagine all glass
and at the right angle
all little light blossoms, all flapping wings.

They were much bigger then, the places today
that I am too scared to walk through,
which is why I swallowed
juice and gingerbread, sand and skin, dirt and flower
and underneath my heart, in my rib cage
is a place that still tastes wind.

Later, some breath will blow out in me
but now, before the no-air, is the brightest moment
the hottest –

The bluest of flame.

Starry

The train slept
at the time birds awoke and
I had one more cigarette
waiting for sleep, to speak
to tell me -
the sky is covering the stars.

All whispers.

Someday I will laugh
and when I tell you
then it will be years later,
many more nights, then
you will still keep me awake.

Her eyes.

The woman I marry.

At Twenty-Four

In the car
driving between the mangrove trees,
father and I.

Florida,

on the old dock lay
large nest of an osprey and

tide out -
pulling, the gravel road.

Slowly.

My father and I

and mother in the backseat
going crazy.

We will never die.

Let no bird
wake you out your window,
save for the one you love

- Las Angeles, July 13, 2009


Traffic and hot nights,
they’ve made me ready to leave, to say
‘Enough with this fucking place!’

but

for You my Friend.

We met at a Koreatown apartment, we met
where all of life breathed contentment
curtains, the breeze blowing through your open windows.

Why ever
had we hoped to go anywhere, to do anything

Talk.Laugh.Life.Drunk.

and you know,
I feel like a damn viking with you
or a knight

in some battle, certainly
where certainly we will never die
and where we are always taking place.

Now, zigging and zagging
on poorly lit streets, I know -

never do the happy think but of where they are

and just before running into the night I'll scream for us,

‘CHARGE!’

The Actors

Creating or

image destroyed

before –
be dam or
be jungle, wild

Something ate the stone.

Now –

The first sight,
an old saying

Obsession human. Quantifiable. Madness.

Crazy –
The damned before
God take them,

the actors I know.

We go to the ether.

When you went away
you took first your eyes.

No longer.

Yours,
falling

Yours,
canyon

Yours,
crater.

Carbon.

Cancer.