Should have found a job by now; should have slept in the night;
should have boiled old coffee before noon.

my father holds
his favorite drink

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

Winter sat like a wolf
on the horizon.

I would always rather be happy than
dignified. Rather held than held
in awe.

Lights on the dashboard spell out
“You still can’t kiss me”

You let the yellow glow
from eye sockets. The building up the street
is burning faster and faster.

Any still figure at mid-late evening, when the long shadows make even crumbs appear arranged like furniture.

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 said it was okay to blame
what goes wrong on the planet

I want to roll in this moment until I become its vocabulary
until I smell like the bones
until I am its echo…

how does an afternoon turn
on its axis?

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

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

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

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

In my universe, my arm carries a heart and flowers,
my back a misguided quote

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