PILLOW TALK

Stranger, listen: I am
trying your blind tongue.
The rusty crescent moon
reaps a forest of stars.
The broken pillow, paper sheets;
even nightmares abandon me,
as words will not recall
the perfect myths we conjured
on this citys outskirts,
where love flew a long!tailed
ribbon!tied kite
above the fields of jaundiced
flowers while the moon fell,
scythe!slow, closer.
LABOR DAY
Sunlight will set fire
gothic spires of oak.
"hetstone sky will sharpen roofs.
#aughter rustles warm cafes.
$lond hair dims toward winter.
I shook summer
days like pearls from a jar.
September is a penny
in a barrel of rain.
%utumn fills my bones with smoke.
The wind carries ashes.
STRANDED
Sudden Stranger, in space
between four monolithic walls
thin as the newsprint ship we launched
on this failed citys stream
when I swore our obituary
yacht would reach the sea,
I listen through plaster
to neighboring &uarrels
or orgasms ' all passions
identical in darkness '
and wonder: hearing nothing
but one mans voice (mine)

mumble, do they know us
is torn in half*
WALKING OUT
%nkle deep in gasoline
rainbows, a single man stumbles,
pockets stuffed with unstamped
postcards, through puddles.
Twisted wires spit
sparks on a broken phone booth.
+row flocks peck a weathercock to pieces.
Touches his temples, fingertips
rubbed raw on corduroy roses.
,uffing dirt from the girls footprint,
a single man is walking to $-evnov
monastery the long way
to scalp his locks beneath lilacs
gone sour. To suffer like a master.
DIRTY POSTCARDS
Threshold is a city starved
for lucidity.
#ate spring rain ticks
a morning litany on cobblestone,
but &uiets in reckoning noon.
.rained clouds hang. %irs open
palm strikes a sidewalk linden,
scattering white petals.
% single man, struggling on
the bluster!troubled street
to close his umbrella, holds
fast, teeth bared, as wind,
riven, rattles tarpaulin
and breaks what shaped it.