For the Body

I've crossed two iron arms
thought the air by my heart.
It's not a cross to crucify
or to ward off forces old and low.
It's to feel the mineral moan
in the throat of the iron
when it brings it own bones together.

I've broken my bones over each other
and my throat told no stories but this:
grass stains on the bent parts
of the body, that body badly
shaped for the slatted light inside.,
the ghost holding on in long bags
hanging out of the fracture....

A part of you has seen
the daylight now; the sun
has been inside your darkest parts.
You are sutured-up, scarred, and full of stars

Sitting Outside at Night

I welcome the air into my clothes. The pleasure moves
through my hair like bats through the body of a tree.

You infested me like the air churning with bats.
We were a cave breathing wing-beaten air.

The cave spills bats like ink into the moon-glow
of the clouds from its countless chambers and veins.

Here’s a red stone from one of those chambers.
It balances on my pulse and dances faster

as I remember the shining blind eyes, the air
between us, and sound still echoing from the cave.

Giving Up on My Eyes

I’ll let myself go blind by decades.
My eyes are a little less awake each year.
But I won’t get the new pair of glass
every time the driving frightens me.
I’ll bear down harder on my eyes
and bend the world in to sensible shape.
I’ll press them like marbles in my pocket
until they become two oval stones
with hazel-blue jewels floating
in their cracked-glazed halos
By then the light in my eyes will come
from their own molten cores.
I’ll have the visions of prophets
and the world of darkness w
will feed me its dreams through
the thirsty soil of my body.

Love Poem

I like the last breath of candle smoke
after the flame is snuffed.

I prefer the embers blushing with black
patches to the waving flames above.

I love the prayer that’s spoken
over the grave of a God.

I love you like a heart that’s given up
every idea its ever had about loving.

I love you like there’s no love
left in the world to lie down on.

I’m blessed with the neglect of God
and the gifts of creation to inhabit.

I’ve toppled the pillars of heaven
and the whole thing came down on top of me.

Highway Trees

The wind breaks planted along the highway look
like the front porch of a forest full of sunlight.
There’s always a hawk dropping down, talons out,
onto a limb in the crown of one of those trees.
You could be flowing down a trench, cut smooth
through the wooded swells of the Ozarks,
but look out the side window and the empty fields
show behind the shallow blind, breathing in the heat.

God is growing along the roadside. The loneliness
of old lovers grows here too. This is a dark
forest made of long twin rails of trees. There are
no hawks standing in the dust on the fields;
they’re all landing in the trees right in view.
Each one reminds you a bit of a tree you climbed.
Each has a wide nest, and every nest contains
an egg already rocking itself awake.

Lament

This is a season of death but my heart
won’t darken. Oh, Lord let me turn
black and damp with blood. Give me
a handful of nights coiled on the floor
hammered numb with sadness.
Don’t let my heart turn hard and green
like an unripe tomato where the worms
have already begun to bore.
I want the desert and the water.
I need the cave and me eyes
burning with sunlight.
I need my body turned inside out
and the spirit to weep out in the night.
I want to walk back in among my people
with the light orbiting around me
and the power of death turned back on itself.

Prayer

Empty my heart of dreams.
Lower me slowly into the pool
so the surface doesn’t ripple.
Put me alone in an empty room
where the only light is yours.

May the only sound be my song
and the only words be my prayers.
When I’ve no words left
and my prayers become a clean wind
wordlessly moaning from my throat,

fill me again with dreams;
let passion redden my blood.
Let me out in the darkness again
with eyes that shine and a tongue
like a candle flame burning with new words.