naptime
august 9th, 2000

we stand outside the living as if we were wireless
these conversations dangle with frayed edges and
cotton planes where the
end of the world is wished for in
hushed whispers that never escape the rim of your
bottle of jack daniels consumed with
soft eyelashes and dark brown
irises that embed pupils like
programming code, like an animated cursor
blinking on and off
off and on

* * *


our feet cascade over the edge and
it's a long way down but our toes ignore
all forms of agoraphobia and fear of heights when
one shoe drops, and it takes seventeen seconds before
you can hear the crash of the pavement meets sole
and we are silent for a while, sipping our glasses
the moon carries itself over the mountain and
carries you on her shoulders and there is
laughter on the horizon that echoes across this
precipice but neither your
nor mine lips
are producing
sounds
at all

* * *


i take a lens, it cuts deep
no one could ever know this blood is the same
in the blue background, we create a table to hold
ourselves in and i myself am waiting for a better image
the words reflect, a mirror site
i try on a name, but nothing fits
in this seamstress frame, i'm sewing on buttons
yet undone, and unfastened, the sea
swallows me whole

* * *


a bit of the wing got shut in the door
the tinest bone - broken
a wrench thrown in the machine
helter-skelter
out of kilter
we spin and control is lost
and hope is lost
and we cling to the only thing we have left
which is the sound
of two
beating
hearts

* * *


my house is full of insects
these are the kinds of spiders my mother always warned me about
there is danger in being barefoot
i catalogue their murders -
a drowning, a doorstop, a shoe -
is this what i get for sparing the riddance of corner cobwebs?
harvesting arachnids
the large brown jumping sort
piece by piece
to keep my daughter safe from sleep

* * *


he wears a tolkien aura about him
something screams jethro tull and renaissance fairs
he was the sort of boy who hid flashlights
beneath blankets
to read
past his bedtime
he is the sort of man
i dreamed my father might be
when i filled in the blank spaces in my
pre-adolescent youth
(and ignorance)
there is something blinding about his intelligence
and comforting in his wisdom
and if i were drowning
in dark water
he'd be the sort of person
i'd trust
with a lifeboat.