Every day I offer the mandala of my body twice.
I wipe the grains of rice from the mound of my head.
I gesture signs for every element, thinking someone
Could stretch out in me, breathe, swim, be warmed, fed.
I offer myself as a great wheel, make of my hands
Eight mountain peaks of every met need reaching out
Infinitely. When I snap my fingers, I disappear.

I may not mean it.

I also dream of consuming you, of offering up the trumpet
Of my old thighbone to blow. I’m not 16. I didn’t die
By accident as is required by such a morbid instrument.
Still, I’d make that awful drone if it meant your lips,
Your breath through me. And while I’d offer my own skull
For half a damaru, I’d want mine joined crown to crown
With that summit of you, skins stretched over cavities

Where rhyme once lived with assonance.

We could ring bass emptiness, echo space where foreheads
Slow-merged, tongues full of words, dumb for long hours
In each other’s mouths. Surely, fine buddhas and khandros
Have lent us the endless white and red feasts of their bodies.
Last night, wild wind blew through my bony dream. All my dead
And every dog swooped in. I’m scrapped, spread out in countless
Bellies, every me-filet hungry. I eat someone new every day.

You swallow my tail; this is how I pray.

2013

4/8/13 4/8/13

Aubade of Hildegard

First, the cat requires only surfaces—
My dangling, flaccid hand, asleep.

Her face slicks the shell of my palm.
Ears and temples find my pure edges.

I take her offered silk in languor
Then the quick, needle teeth:

I have shown you what I want,
How we fit, the morning purrs

Like a god,
Touch me.

2013

4/7/13 4/7/13

Materials Engineer

A company
Specializing
In ceramic matrix
Composites—

Heat shields
To protect space crafts
Upon reentry—

Wants
Someone bigger
Than the work.

He must write
Himself
In 150 characters
Or less.

Space
And punctuation
Count.

He
Understands
Compression,

Writes a poem.
Structure comes
In ten minutes.
A barista assists.

Not enough
Characters for a title,
A paradigm tilts:

Curiosity—
When unchecked, killed the cat
When cloaked, Schrodinger cannot say
But, when cradled, took this boy and flew over the moon.

How could he know
They would call him
Right away?

With thanks to Chad Williams for his story, his poem
Golden, CO
7 April 2013

4/6/13 4/6/13

DAM: Departure

Art museum doors
Hemorrhage parents with kids
On free day, not free.

2013

4/5/13 4/5/13

Shy Gnosis

I gladly mine
The eye of your eyes,
Share the wordy burden
Of too much sight.

In my flesh world
Sight is every pore.
Let’s pipe the joyful load
Into our quarks

Where every move
Is a moving eye
Mistaken for a heart,
A heart for shy,

A priori.

2013

4/4/13 4/4/13

Homeless

I. Displaced, I space.
I Escalante raven crevice.
I Pawnee Butte and pistol Livermore.
I Sangamon River wood and Elkhart Hill.
I Platte and prairie desert bore.
I Shavano mountain break and race.
I black-stone sea and Shelter Cove.
I Whidbey Island and Hyde Park.
I Denver concrete dance and door.
I Paris alley piss and shit.
I sky high dry or wet and low.
I sprig of sage on hotel sill.
I Crestone rainbow thunderstorm.
I muddy grave in basement bottles.
I bloody torma Roaring Fork.

II. Underground
I can’t throw out
The poster I stole
From the London Underground—
Its rainbow routes
Laid out in squeezed oils
Where I was reborn
Epiphanic Tube
Before a beer advert where
All the metaphors
Of my Midwestern birth,
All the revelations
Of Palmyra’s prophet,
All my fatherless prayers
Lost their words.

III. Lost Tribes
I’ve looked for my people
In lichen foothills, found
Brothers lost in camo and conspiracy,
Lovers lost in polyamory’s woods,
Sisters lost in men, meth, mother-books.

I’ve looked for my people
Clapping for every poem
Ever under- or over-performed,
Cried out fine poets’ names
Driving off like dust
And windshield rain.

I’ve looked for my people
In the dark Morrigan
And triple Brighid—
Found them khandros
In red-robed men
Speaking Tibetan,
Wrestling English
In distant cities while I sit
Staring at a screen, giggling
At every mispronunciation
We will ever make, reading
Each other’s word-pained lips
Looking for our people.

2013