​morning lines #149
The arms of forgetting pile up
around me in a jumble of
fusiforming phantoms. As each
dream from the night turns to vapor,
another arm is thrown on the heap.
The arms are smooth and
fleshy beige, like tubers or
dead fruit on the vine.
 
morning lines #148
Every morning, I stare at the desert mountain
in my living room, the painting I can’t finish.
Finishing it would take me too far from the sand,
rock, ocotillo, and honey mesquite that allow me
to breathe, that blow me up like a balloon and
release me into the secular cerulean, across the
only landscape that loves me back.
 
morning lines #147
maybe I want to get
out of bed and
read this with coffee
as the dog sneezes
and we both listen
in the queer quiet
to the plastic green fan
I set up not to cool
the already cool room
but to make noise and
obliterate any
nascent noise and
my thoughts
in their sleepless
wandering
 
morning lines #146
red swept through her
not like blood
not for the sake of Christ
not because she raged, slapped, and swore;
red was her transmission fluid
red was all she said
 
morning lines #145
leave the love and laughter to the dead man,
like a surgeon in the night, he holds each
with hush-steady hands and the confidence
of death itself 

​morning lines #144
I brought out parchment to bake the scones on.
Instead I wrapped myself in it and waited
for the UPS man to come with string
and a gentle hand.
 
morning lines #143
I won’t waste the season’s last
raspberries on you, pink-red pouches,
so sweet I could weep.
They ache to be tongue-fucked.
Instead, I’ll kiss their eyelashes and lick
their tears before dropping them,
one by one, deep into my mouth,
past bitter and fear.

​morning lines #142
In the poem, his dog was named Blue.
That was the colorful part
because the poem was basically
black and brown, close to the bare,
broken ground and about what
most poems are about:
death and love drained of life.
 
morning lines #141
How can the days go any faster,
the feathered feet, 
mucous running from all the running,
tangled vines mangling heavily dangling
from the ceiling till you can't see the floor
and you’re inevitably shown the door?

An army of tiny Mr. Creosotes, clutching umbrellas, falls from the sky,
in a rare as rummy California summer rain that smells of dogs feet and
typewriter manuscript. I feel brief belligerent shocks of lightning
between my ears.

She threads her teeth, like buttons,
one by one, in slow consternation,
onto a length of floss, thinking herself
clever for choosing floss over the
solid imaginary line that goes from
her comfortable bed to the
​blue-yellow moon.

morning lines #136
Wisdom is knowing how near the end is.
How soon the blackbird comes crashing
against the window pane.
 
morning lines #135
“Here is a souvenir of me.”
It’s not my ear.
It’s not the rusty condom ring of my anus.
It’s not my whisper-soft eraser-colored nipples.
I don’t know what it is.
But keep it as you would your precious tongue
against the straight white of your teeth.
Because it’s worthless.

morning lines #134
mary ann
They gave her red grapes every day in the late afternoon.
She spat out like a bored sniper the dark leathery skins, random shots
that made contact with her lap, the floor, my amused and grateful heart.
 
I see her now in a melon-shaped hat, cherries the color of dried blood swinging
from her ears. She wears a vest made of mandarins and roses, and sits as judge
(with a wink and a shrug), holding, like an egg, the germ of her droll whole mind,
while the plum in my chest heaves and bleeds at the loss and gloss of her.