I don’t
know why
I’m in the garden
kneeling on dirt

here is the sky in stop motion, flickering,
a still shot in monochrome

Every so often, they add a tattoo
in honor of some long-forgotten love.

Just starlight and some small scribbling across vinyl.

I buy too much, for someone of my stature.
could pawn a skinny metaphor to purchase a plump skin.
its reputed in our lineage— to daydream a life that shreds our pockets.

You are strange, my mother said, dwelling on the past.

this is what I want you to to see:
leaves falling because it is too late for them not to

Winter sat like a wolf
on the horizon.

how does an afternoon turn
on its axis?

the man is stayed bent over the canvas
of my sofa. the man is me the man is him
self and I bring down the whip…

I tap at the alphabet while a single deer
taps at the dirt beyond the brush
on the far side of the tree line.

and apples, mackintosh mostly, but any kind left in The Pub
at the Assisted Living Place

We stop doing dishes while
a mile unwinds
from the tree outside.

the strands of your hair on the bathroom tiles aren’t sketching defeat. that’s you spitting disease in the face with another day you’ve woken up to.