Gravel-scatted hell &
we were blessed to be able
to hold on for even a heartbeat

It is the 70s. 1970s? 2570s? Who knows?
Audre and I have a penthouse in New York.

You’ve spent a lifetime training
for this.

Listen to me: I know
the winter gloom in
mid-summer…

my love is a glass shard, a knife made of madness and moonlight,
and there are already way too many fragments in this house

you know that
baby swallows make silver ripples
in wild rivers to court reeds?

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.

Now that the Israeli has left, it falls
on me to make the salad.

Empty vessels
make the most sound, I think,
as you rip the fairy lights off the handrail.

Long after midnight, we’re talking about our first time

and then her eyes fully opened — blazed through with strands of mud

I have an axe
with hearts gashed

my friends’ fathers are
dropping
I mean dying
like flies

Winter sat like a wolf
on the horizon.

Just starlight and some small scribbling across vinyl.