Goodnight

Come to bed,
and whisper word thoughts--
let them staccato against my skin,
let me breathe them,
liquored in sleep.

Many nights are finished
here, in this borrowed
house. And you, infinite
miles from here, but still
hinting at heaven, a clever
riddle for the rest
of my life.

Am I a visitor in your
quiet place? Amongst the
scattered cards and books?
Do I curl into your laundry
like an tiny animal seeking a nest?
Or slide into your mirror, as if
stepping into the stillness of a winter lake?
Will you eat my memory,
when you haven't any food
in the house?

And do you hear me,
fizzled in the ether,
dissolved into celestial dust-
asking you to please,
Please come to bed?

word conversion

My mind is a great expanse

And I wander within

it, this place.

Sometimes it is a jungle,

wet and dream-breathing.

A house with many rooms.

Sometimes, it is an ice river,

cold and whipped turbid,

thick with mountain.

Sometimes,

it is a drained pan of a planet,

stone-stolen and lonely,

seared by the rip sun:

wasted. All, wasted.

And it has also been a salt-flat:

miles of sticky mire,

my footsteps immortalized

like a moving fossil. 

I sometimes

want to lay down in it,

the mystery

of it.

My body often becomes tired.

I have wondered before

about ruination.

I become a child with her hand in her mouth,

and paralyzed.

But always, always

words are birthed

in the soft murk of the bottom

edge of a world.

It has been like this for us.

From a frightening rot,

we emerge into a treasure funk,

speaking. 

I translate myself, again. 

Poem

the perfect “O” of the mouth

making a well into which

I fall,

my body eaten by gravity,

the swallowing of sound.

Into an abyss

I fall into myself,

falling forever in

the cylindrical darkness

like a piece of ash,
remembered from
the fire.