five

​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