Because I say I do. Yah… There are wolves, for sure, and loons up late. They hoot, black charcoal shadow cartoon fools whose gloom assumes we, too, mourn loss of bright fiery blaze; patent days. There are none, though, walking ways of cratered, corduroy, rolling, dust-grey hills and basins. Peaks and vales like battlefields of grim grenades and silent, sentient cosmic chum. None but me. And I say, “Pay!” You lovers on my white-glow leaning; you hunters creeping, deer-spoor seeking; you childr...

Near dusk, the separate sea and sky die. Blue-green-grey and violet-black stand back-to-back and her blood swirls in his hair, merged in heavy, deep, same sleep. So drab, this two-in-one. So flat. No moon, no sun ring chords from separate spheres. No tension in the place between, no force seen. We won’t hear steam hiss from the space where depths touch heights. So bland, this cuddled mass. So similar. So tight. But lightning shows the edge again. The off-shore storm that rips and kills the bl...

She dangles grapes the way they do in corny movies wet and cool drags them across my lips and chin jerks them up won't let them in my mouth. I snap and bite and drag a few down south. She dangles words the way they do in sloppy stories "pet," and "fool" drags them across my ears and mind "forever," "tender," "prick," "unkind," "please... no." I snap and bite and drag a few down slow. ___________________________________________________________________________ TaleWeaver the author’s storytelli...

Abandon, Miranda, the visible rhythm. Leave elbows and neon, vodka and plastic to women who walk in sure placement. Deaf to music that breathes, blind to wind in the grass, afraid to go barefoot at night. The darkness that lies at your lips calls to me when you're asleep. It demands that I watch and watch still as you turn, turn towards the wall, watch the slide of your neck, watch the catch of your throat. Can you live in this sleep, in this shadow that laughs at my words and not know how yo...

(In dorm rooms the students smoke their pot, Blogging of T.S. Eliot) + + I have abandoned cotton, relinquished wool, packed all comfort tight in giant, Ziploc bags so full that oxygen can’t wriggle in. No warmth possible down inside where memories of soft and tender sleep now lie. All must be angle, memory and light. Diamond cut and water cooled. I circle, ever wider, mind on horizons, focused outward. I shove aside all coverings, all sheets of conscience. Freakish, ending-blind, beginnings –...

Let’s take a basket down by the river, down to the place where the willows bow low. Push past their branches, brush through their curtain, out to the flat rock that juts out below. Dragonfly dances, butterfly rambles, blackbird with redwings takes flight at your laugh. One finger touching, one finger tracing. Sun warms the flat rock while daylight slips past. Jam from the garden, bread from the oven. Pickles and grapes from the store on the way. Bottles of water, water slides by us. Plenty en...

it feels like a cylinder (it being I) with the child scooped out and replaced by a light- bulb, the three-way kind but force fed into a standard one-way reverse threaded socket that’s hanging instead upside down from a thread pulled up, ever up, by centripetal force so it’s swinging (I’m swinging) we’re swinging, I guess, which accounts for the mess I’ve made of the blessing it’s my turn to say how thankful we are for the food and the day but I’ve left out the parts about giblets and lungs (w...

The sounds of the playground are comfort in winter no children, no laughter, no shouts here outside just the iron ring cry of a swing on a eye hook the wind in the monkey bars sleet on a slide Grey snow all but banishes yellow paint hopscotch and ice jams the joints of the merry-go-round Nobody lingers here just a few blackbirds and me and it’s noon so my shadow is gone All alone with the crows and the sounds of the playground so useless so empty so peaceful so cold + + *TaleWeaver* the autho...

If I could change color would you love me forever? Would you love me like a god who once was just your man? Not "color" as in "skin tone" like Caucasian, Asian, African… Not color like a tattoo, or a sunburn or a tan. But like an octopus or chameleon a magic paint-job from within me washing outward like a wave of purple, green or gold? If I was a mountain would you love me forever? If I was a mountain would you love me like the land? A racial memory, family history, roots incarnate. Rock and ...

The sounds of the playground are comfort in winter no children, no laughter, no shouts here outside just the iron ring cry of a swing on a eye hook the wind in the monkey bars sleet on a slide Grey snow all but banishes yellow paint hopscotch and ice jams the joints of the merry-go-round Nobody lingers here just a few blackbirds and me and it’s noon so my shadow is gone All alone with the crows and the sounds of the playground so useless so empty so peaceful so cold + + *TaleWeaver* the autho...