I am too clothed in feeling. 

Strip me naked. 

Eat roses from my body. 

Tell me yes. 

Call me back. 

Say “hey, I see that you called.” 

See me, dance with me. Ask me with your eyes. Touch my hair. Yank on my scalp a little. Trace me, into the earth. First with fingers, then with dirt

First with bird wings, then with ash

First with echo, then with eyes

Archive me and put me on a pedestal in the future. Remix me. Add a bass beat, some Annie Lennox, a Prince riff, some Marvin Gaye, and the line from the Villagers that says What were we hoping to get out of this?

 

Dear sweet nothing, let’s start again.

 

Strip me of roses. Find me 

on the third door to the left. Your prize money, your best review, your board complaint. your Madonna, your woman in the shell, your man in pants, your blazer, your Obama, your applause, your mic drop. Your recession after the wave. Echo me. Plant me like a tree. I’m your courage to speak, your rose water, your quiet to think, your beech wood pulp, your Amazon Prime without the atrocities.

 

I’m your finest robes, your throne, your forgotten hour, your lost brick. The one that fells the wall. the hole that’s a prophecy. the way for every migrant child to crawl home. I’m your Ragnarok, your machine gun, your Krishna and Arjuna, your yes, your no. 

Your field beyond fields with Rumi. Your creepy Teletubby sun, your brain on ecstasy. Your thoughts on societal inflammation. Your thoughts on capitalism. I want to touch you. I imagined it all last night. How I would lift your chin to kiss you, 

you with a towel on your shoulder humming in the kitchen.

How I would run my fingers through your hair and trace the small of your back.

 

You’re a part of something, like rain. You anchor something in a world that wants to know me. 

And the other you—the you whoever you are, when you take your socks off at night—

​

It’s all the same heartbreak isn’t it? It’s all the same chariot ride to nowhere,

too close to the sun,

 

somewhere in the details, a melted wing

a hinge undone

a swung open door

I see you there, fresh in daylight

looking good in linen. carrying roses

Or is that a baby?

 

every small stone

remembers mama mountain

archives of wind, water, tumble, glass,

moss, that time a thousand years ago when a 

lizard claw tapped rock just so.

 

I’m the lost song that went to the moon

the moon who caught it

the world, robbed of your voice

and the robber

and the word

 

swallowed like arsenic treasure, rose gold

in the dragon’s womb

careful, you’ll explode without a Joan of Arc! Her sword can point the way between this and that    

and the place where they meet.

 

In another universe, you see me

 

we’re naked together, it’s impossible to hide

 

In another universe, my throat falls off and becomes a seed. A century later, someone will eat this fruit, have a déjà vu.

walk into the cloud. Wear roses.

 

Don’t come back until you’ve harvested all the intangibles

taken off your glasses

and seen the eyes of god

A bird on the wire

Flight

take off your glasses, peel off your socks

place your heavy head on the hardfloor

sigh     roll slowly the way the world turns, the

way a new corpse would fall down a mild hill

Hear symphonies

waiting for your prescience, your 

Arms,

            I am your Armageddon, your rose gold

your lost words and last thoughts

the space between each bardo

footstep

where digital traces crackle like dying fire

in a long cold night. 

Hand over dark ash, a forest leaning in with new unfamiliar 

Fruit from an old tree, these sounds.

 

a hand-picked lock,

a door ajar. I see you, fresh in embers.

you wear life well you laughing beggar,

you crown prince, king of glory

and death. I see you are a woman too.

You falling grace, you majesty, you lost throne, you overnight horse 

There there

waves subside            we feel the foam at our

ankles.

I tear the hyoid bone from my throat to feed the 

fishes. She rides as a ship

bangles of letters and sores

the night the skeletons come to dance

coyote vision.

Night princess. kept  sleeping. kept  sleeping

Sleep is so suburban until the quiet learns to 

talk.

You come running

You come laughing.

     You call me back, no expectations

you want to hear my voice. There’s space,

like landing after a reincarnation.