World of Floods
Driving on the curb cured of swamplands and horizontals
my atmosphere dear takes wholesome bites of water
outed are the undersides of bridge smudged chasms
birdy hellcalls and undone song
he knows only fire pursues the winged
torn letters three years gone of the antediluvian
disintegrated into charm and clarity and the promise
of a moment in time that springs everlastingly
will be flooded
and the pulmonary one ways dripping varied shades of moving cars
in fresh killed greys keeping time with the hacks of self against love
while our hands are crossed in universes pleading
with the dying that cannot slow down but winds and winds around
the pulsed city of language tying the sacred grammar to plurals
another and another
until they grow into the flicking tongue that time will harness
to toss rogue prophets into the pockets of New Jersey
where in being shelved we meet among starships
will be flooded
and the candles that when burning exhale signatures into the air
distinct enough to merge
into the piney and nuclear silhouette of one jacket hung on two shoulders
strong enough to fold the page
of the cosmic fairytale of a lonely planet spinning gone
blue enough to germinate
the thousand seeded blanknesses that for a sacred miracle have
ego enough to tumble down
and resting softly on the lower back of some sweet polygonal
concave enough to hold them
come to agree on one straight line of thought both concise and
true enough to love forever
will be flooded
Heartmind
We lost electricity on the night you left me
and I spent the night curled up against the rain,
drinking in the slack of damp green winds
in our treasured driftwood home of mist.
I had to come to think of time
as a medium and my thoughts as
imperfect and cursive. It was a wrinkled medium,
a mediocrity of sunken breath: words condensing
into droplets that so contorted my teary lenses
that I couldn’t tell that you were turning towards me
with a sound, the sound a book makes
when its leaves are rustled against the grain.
Tonight my body lingers on the edge of the ocean
like a gasp; New Jersey’s throaty highways
bear my rosefelt thoughts and I can’t miss them
like I miss the cradle of the river,
like I miss the firm grip of the circular,
like I miss the existential faith we had in nature
and her artistic lover to take us home.