In my new red high heels, a Rolex with a face of a hundred tiny diamonds, and my new black leather dress snuggled around my hips, I plan to smoke three cigarettes. First one I’ll light with a plastic Bic lighter, rough around the edges from opening too many beer tops, and inhale deeply.

The tulips never really hurt
As they rose up in the night
Thrashing over the bed

Fraudulent days, the surfaces collapse
When against them you press your finger
The beautiful brick suit
When you scrape it is only a tinsel clothing
The whole upper stories of the building
Touched, is a seagull’s back, revealed

Grackles, scatter like pieces
of a story. Sweethearts
of ash and butter, finger
squint-star light, draw
a spine down the highway.

 He can’t stop thinking about apricots
shriveling, paint belching, tiny frogs
dripping above matches. Outside
his secret fort, yellowing
sycamore leaves crackle.

Seems ages on the hill above the rocky point
I have kept my eyes on the horizon where sky
drops to sea. No sign of any ship I do not
recognize, just the ragtag wornout fishing fleet
about to sink. No single sail grabbing the wind
and fifty men at oars to tell us you are back.

On a high plateau where the earth rounds off
the edge of nothing and the sky pours down
like hail so heavy that the pickup squats
on its springs and groans toward the horizon,
you think of Andy, all those years long gone.

that there is a great power within us, that when used in purity,
unselfishness and immaculate thought,
cures, heals and causes miracles
and now assists me in my journey–

And the convicts themselves, at the mummy’s
feet, blood-splattered leather, at this one’s feet,
they become cobras sucking life out of their brothers,
they fight for rings and money and drugs,
in this pit of pain their teeth bare fangs,
to fight for what morsels they can. . . .

Its so hard to remember in the world – –   Weren’t you there?        Dead so you
think of ports – – Couldn’t reach flesh – –       Might have to reach flesh from
anybody – – 

my ice skates on a wall
lustre of stumps washes his lavender horizon
he’s got a handsome face of a lousy kid
rooming-houses dirty fingers
whistled in the shadow
“Wait for me at the detour.”

After years of secret glances,
I knew it well – a cage of slanted
wires arranged on a Doric column
in my grandparents’ living room.

Spring cleaning in Baltimore always involved
a yellow bucket sloshing with soapy water
and a rag recognized as the tattered remains
of my father’s bowling shirt, circa 1973.

Receding hairline, your rented room
in the wooded hills beyond light
pollution and suburbia, your penchant
for slender women with large eyes
and small breasts, talent for language