river stones

River stones
Long run dry
Flatten the path
Breath grasped
Into a saddle
Of the moon
Every step
Grinding dirt
Between rubber
And earth
This need
Disappeared among boulders
Picked apart
By snout and beak
Still following the sun
Longed for one
Rest
I can't stop

leavings of man

Her silent thought
An ocean buoy

She's swept
In cold blue
Freezing between
Jaw and stone
Hanged by lefting fingers
Her mermaid
Surfaces spout
As she takes in
Night-dark air
Dawn is naught
She slips again
Again
Every twisted flash
To blind mariners
Every deep blink
Thinker's dissatisfaction
She's still here
In the whites of his eyes
Looking through
A ghost of herself
She wants to float
On the sea
Salted buoyancy
Drift in what's left
Of love and romance
Slipping
To silted shoal
The most beautiful blue
She ever saw
She feels mud
Between her toes
Under her nails
In her lungs

on starting over

On housed freedom
Elementally protected
She snailed away

On peeling paint
Cried off rotted wood
She looks new

On rusted pipes run
Orange tears on board
She ran from the rabbets

On skyed trees
Sheered for warmth
She took longer to die

On last breaths
Nourishing the green
She's buried beneath

she

Aloneness
She chose
She
Destiny felt steel
Wool again

She knew
She
With smooth skin
And arms
That reached miles

Longing
The length
Of six feet
She wanted
She

Skinned undercurrent
Eddied lust
She secreted away
She
Wanting that same skin

She moved
She
Forward toward
The lonely
Clouded daylight

Closing her eyes
She dreamt
She
Lay in blackness hoping
She

Felt too much
Pain
To ever tell
She loved
She

crush

Crush
Of rose petals
Stain
The nooks and crannies
Of clean
Gray cement
•
Crush
Of a ripe
Yellow lemon
Breaking juice
Into droplets
And seed
•
Crush
Of hot apples
And strawberries
Sucking the sugar
Right
From the meat
•
Crush
Of soft skin
On broken glass
Splitting
And separating
Finding the tainted ichor
•
Love
The crush
Of spent knowings
Abbreviated
Into the space
Of these letters