Fog, chance of showers

Dragon weather.
Returning to Nova Scotia
like rain to a valley.

Nova Scotia

It was all so innocent, you mistook
what passes for spring here as death
the breath of the gulls as a war cry
the play of the waves as a threat.

But your armor's just a puzzle for the rain to solve
your coat's a pennant for the wind
the fortress, your body's unsteady,
borrowed, dissolving in May.

It's raining here,
It's raining everywhere.
Surrender.

February

Lha!
Each good day
Begins with cold water.

"You look like a regular Phillip Petit up there"

I don't need this I live on
residual heat I live on
an acre of hardwood with
bruised hipbones. I live on
and sometimes I stretch this
wire of a body to the ceiling and
hang from the rafters.

I hang there, a knitted minaret,
with my wrists turned back with
my ribcage chiming my ribcage
hammered and chiming,
my equined tendons tracing crescents
in the floorboards or else kicked up
in wild unborn dances.
my eyes open,
my breath a swallow through low clouds;
cutting small circles for the sun.

Mothra

Don't worry little
Chard-eating caterpillar
Soon you will be a beautiful butterfly
Or else a monster
Who can destroy sections of Tokyo.

Murder Ballad for Whistlestop

This is part of a song I wrote for Alnis, Clay and Emily's excellent new band Whistlestop. The other part I can't remember the words to exactly. So you'll need to buy the EP.

Oh my dear and darling sister
You will make it through
take my knife up from the table
take my riding silks.

I've been fighting with McKenzie
Fighting for a name
Now there's no one to protect you
No laudanum for your pain

Read my blood out on the pavement
As my pauper's will
Find McKenzie with your vengence
Find him smiling still

Fill his poor heart with desire
Waltz him through the dew
Find his bare breast in the moonlight
To cut my name in to.

Nighttime Sun Camp Thundersorm

Torn, drowned light
Sharp edged Kalapa
Home.

Liquor Store Clerk

Each day he puts five two-ounce
bottles of vodka in his briefcase

I think that he has a problem but then
I think that maybe he has Jesus in his heart

and is just trying to take the edge off.

Urban Planner

Gaborone, Botswana

Some places were settled before they were zoned.
Some cities have intersections shaped like splayed men
with streets that twine as though
someone pressed their hand to your drafting table
and told you to trace out their veins.
So that it would be their heart pushing
you to work with your pores full of dew, their heart
drawing you lymphatically home.

Silly Common Meter

When you've measured out your poor, poor life

and distributed the blame

You'll find you've held the only knife;

you'll find yourself the same

And so you'll loose your poor torqued breath

and part a space of rain

And rest between your birth and death

with neither joy nor pain.

The sky itself will melt away

and fill a mirrored lake.

and you will finally learn to stay

and admit no mistake

That you are a lithe and free thing

with just your heart to break

while you can't tell when you're sleeping
you know when you're awake

Dust

I am waiting for the bats to rest

I am waiting for the sky to break

I am waiting to cool my blood

there've been no storms

nor even any mackerel to lead them

the world is dust

my skin is a dust skin and my hands

are friction conjurers drawing

a cloak of it over me.

I keep two fingers there

and one hand open to the sky

I am trying to keep track

I am trying to notice

the dust near liquid in my easy veins

my heart that pumps a splitting fist of it through.

Fine so fine now I breath it in.

Dust the velvet on my orphan lungs

dust held, dust cared for and

dust, the fire I spit to the sky

a carnival of dust rising and drawing attention

dust seeding the clouds

particles of dust raising their own armies against me

and falling, stripping the cloak from my back,

wearing my skin muddy to the ground

leaving me stretch-eyed and smiling

and clean

so clean.

Demineralized Bone Matrix Processor 2

They call me wicked here

with his words

on my breath

on your ear

but they're mine now and I can do as I want with them. 

And you can judge me by the way I come apart in your hands,

and by the treasures inside

by the pearl seeds I've held cupped in my tongue

by the nerves which stretch and melt spun sugared against your skin

by the revelries you coax from my thigh bone trumpets

and by the taps

you can circle my cramped untidy hands

and soften them with a season of clutches. 

However sharp
my chisel mind
can only cut its width.

Your open hearts
so brave and kind
remind me what I've missed

and how at night when you sing

I'm just like all the rest

as your out breath drags a moth's wing

against my uncooked flesh.

Survivalist 3

They are below you

minding what's pressed 

from one wet flank to another.

And you with no dogs. 

If you want their blood's attention

you are going to have to do better

you are going to have to realize

that they are not that sort of animal

that they only note the cough and cry

that circles like prairie smoke

and leaves no worldly exit. 

They will note you

and the pitch fire that drips

from your outstretched hands

the sounds you make

as it raises blisters

along the seams 

of your wrists

They will note you

running downhill with the wind,

the storm and the mackerel that leads it,

burning out your star for the unfired

Meteorologist

The snow's been cut to lace
while you lay, tawny tawny,
half asleep through every dawn.

Which I count unlucky
because unbuoyed is unwell
and I can't trust the spring.

Not here.
Not in in this land of better fogs
that clots me sometimes even until June

Not now.
Not after a winter ruined
by rotted rinks on January lawns.

I need you to throw the windows
and declare it no false breath
upon your shoulders

I need you
to smooth my pillowed hair
and talk of something less sinister.

I need you to stretch your hands
against the raw-born sun 

and strike into it,
Never turning.

Occupational Epidemiologist

For instance I know

that rose pickers are less

fertile than uranium miners. 

But take this one and

maybe our baby

will have blonde hair. 

Train Operator

Well when you put it that way,

maybe the arteries of empire

were actually running on the bodies

of the dead.

But look at it from our perspective

they planted mummies through three kingdoms

and hydrocarbons

are hydrocarbons. 

Shock and Awe

Somebody is walking their bicycle through a thunderstorm. 

Someone forgot (or never knew) that you walk these cloudy plains

with one eye on heaven and one on your holloway. 

I am in mine counting seconds. 

I am counting the seconds between and it is getting closer. 

They measure everything with light and the cesium atom and

I measure the height of my peeking boots and the seconds between. 

I think that I am safe and well to ground, 

but I can't breathe well in the seconds between. 

Now there are trees exploding and there are no seconds between.

There is nothing but flesh, nothing at all

between the flash and the thunder. The shock and the awe. 

The man with the bicycle is now screaming and now quiet. 

I count nothing but the flocks above

retreating in formation. 

Odd Jobs: Cemetery Groundskeeper

The sun is past its piety

and climbs higher up

on them each noon,

ignorant, childlike;

decoration days

  * * *

We go together, piano piano, 

picking wilted flowers 

from the graves. 

"Angel Duty" you call it

but don't talk much as

we walk two paces and a row

of dead between us,

the bowl of your arms

filling with cellophane. 

I've never been deadly

these are just stones

just myths beneath,

just dropped virgin guns

filled breach and barrel

with useless shot. 

I've never stood and stared

at the names which 

ring round like warding signs

and when I walk through the rows

with my head turned, I am not

searching for my own cleared patch

I am only watching you and watching

the fans of headstones

ceaselessly close. 

In Utah

"Chad Hudgens volunteered for a "team building exercise," went outside and laid down on his back with his head downhill. Then co-workers pinned him down while their supervisor poured water on his nose and mouth."

-The Dallas Morning News, April 14th, 2008

In Utah, 

they held him

head down and told us

to fight for sales like

Chad there fought for air.

A rag over it, his body

a dog at his own throat. 

I steer mine

like a riveted miracle

of my own design

and never feel its tyranny,

never  feel it root

for a scrap of sleep, or breath or rest

from any of the soft measures

which crack the hardest stones

and leave me untroubled

here somewhere

in Utah.