something

dusty lamps flicker
outside.
old ruth gregson sits behind the greasy register,
half-asleep.
shelves of bottled beans,
peanut butter and
grey mayonaise.

aha. tomato sauce.

kaching, ding.
"seventy-six cents."

beef jerky twitches on the counter.
a dollar bill unfolds,
extends its vehicle and
crawls into waiting hand.

kaching.
one-half smile.
nod.
blink twice.

door hinges grouse,
greaseless.

cold nose,
no moon and
a man in checkered red.

"wha chu lookin et, bich?"
sore eyes-
eyes like a waterfall sounds.

"nothin? you sayin im nothin?"
eyes like dead mice.

here

i would lean down
and say to her

how bout here

and she would snort
shifting her weight left

ide slide off
cold and tired
rolling my bag out on the ground

waking

the hawk arrived in a dream,
asking for that magic which
would bind the mountains where
they stood.

but the mountains gave way to meadows.
meadows became a sea.

and the sea would not stay put.

waking, she stood on the balcony and
smiled even as she wept.

there, in the street,
a dove.

homeward

“i am finished with knowing,”
he says,
and sets sail for home.

cities give way to indecipherable sea.
heading south,
he comes to a country of unfenced
pastures.

then night comes.
the nile flows backwards and
all the floatsam slips back upstream.

lamps flicker in windows
along shore-

vela,
carina,
puppis,

and pyxis.

hesychia

the rose chimes,
reverberates,
strikes,
and shudders.

hard orange sound,
fragrant,
unlocked,
and bouyant.

sunshine-
a tingling through eye to
fingertip and through again
-moonshine

the cup,
chalice,

the clarinet.

angle

those lips, (cuniform
at edge) reddened, (prosaic
melancholy) puckering, (symmetrical
enough) spending themselves
in himalayan uplift,
sunken,

tear framed.

and change begins with a grimace-
the smell of stale air
exhaling

she heads north in stead of south,
in ward in stead of out,
with subtle grace (oh
the most subtle) of
recovering clumsy,

inside out.

from one angle,
obscuring darkness,
another,
jumping shadow,
and another,

smiling shade.

singing

cody enters the cave
in early morning.

temple stones lay
at the mouth,
mossy,
broken.

looking into the dark waters
within
he sees himself as many-

here the warrior,
there the thinker,
the labourer,
lover and

the poet.

there is a table there,
round
and overflowing with food
over which some
argue and fight.

the poet begins to move.

he dives to a cave within
himself, and drawing water from
its pools, he washes
the dust from each of his
friends’ feet.

he sings as he does this,
deeply,
softly.

cody begins to weep at this sound
arising from within,
and as his tears fall,
the many grow silent,
stunned.

each hears the poet’s song
echoing. something stirs within them.
calmed,
they dive inwardly in search of voice.

and there,
in the cool cave of their broken temples,
a poet begins to work,

singing.

night voice

cody awoke in the night.
breath bloomed above a pillow.
the moon howled.

“who is this?”
he thought
and arose.

he put on shoes but not a shirt-
walked down to tinker’s creek across
the hay field.

there, under the mountain ash,
josh looked up and smiled.

cody slipped off the shoes and
waded in waste-deep.

“you cant wash your past off
that way,”
said the watcher.

“how then?”

“bathe everything,”
he said,
“starting with me.”

the stars shone.