fingertips

I
dont
really
know
what
your
face feels like
because tonight
was
in
my
head.
Fingertips and
knuckles
trace
the
life-lines
back
around
frontwards backwards and upside down.

chandelier chords

the silence breaths inward like a flame-
flick'ring dancer,
pirouetting ember,
your
throat is full of heated coils,
a radiating hum - not softly heard-
nor is there ever sound
in evening gowns.

when letters leave the city

when a book is being set to type,
ink drips out of forest vats,
bombing pages with blots of black-

stories are the stolen seas where letters use their dripping breath
to float through pages rough and secret,
blowing by one at a time
until they settle down and build their fires.
they build their fires and chop down trees,
they tie their horses and plant their seeds,
they run their baths and wait for rain,
they make their love and harvest grain.

letters like their eggs poached.

living below the bootheels

leaves fall, trodden soil fades,
for soon a snow will come
and dust the mess was made.
with ice below and bud above,
the green will grow and heal my love.

softest skin

i am a homeless milton bradley,
plastic telephones inside and out
step over borderlines,
as red suns speak of flames and distant shouts of
softest skin sending their sounds
around my pressed
white shirt.
i am a silk-tied train station,
cases of drivel chain-linked in the light,
the fluorescent hum shoots blue invisible
as uptown and queens trains tiptoe under streets
that support displays in windows incased where
softest skin presses against
top models.
i am a lincoln log donation,
no real grain or rings or dust,
true blooms don't sit next to five and dime
boots or bottles or envelope openers
as children pass by and in the wake of their wind,
softest skin touches buttons on a
gameboy.
i am a cold concrete dance routine,
making ends meet around a chalk line,
synchronous feet stomp babies in air
as central park wrinkles by and adds to the collection
of fatherless fathers who can barely watch
softest skin fold money into a
bucket.
i am a rainbow-stained puddle,
painting the curbs of carpeted streets,
and hiding the wrappers of cancer-lined paper
where i can see everyone in their horse power stride
as the clank of a turnstile ripples my face
where softest skin once reflected
desire.
i am a tombstone flower,
petals of white are actually yellow,
and creased crinkled edges add to my allure
but no one will see me, in fact, in my
death.
if only the hands of the ones below
would reach through the earth and the roots and the leaves
and pluck me to smell me, i could map landscapes of
the deadliest skin, so soft to the
touch.

sunburned & sober & such

a promenade of ceiling fans
casting a gale, brown shutters stale
orange light climbs in
slowly
with a sudden, instant leap
on blood-splattered faces, wait
that's just blood.
you searchlight, you
with your 50 watt hair and you 1,000 watt stare,
pulling a man unwilling to fare
eternal halloweens as a grizzly bear.
cool-musty-settle-dust
on your body sunburned and sober and such.

a hotel blanket

calling upon elastic removal
to hide what others never see
fusing; charming screen and label
change the route of history
a hotel blanket, pink and fake
wrapped around a body worn
stumbling out of time to take
away from love yet to be born
water creeps under my chin
and ends up washing down with sorrow
spiralling toward drains to blend
with a broken promise of tomorrow