Two words, unique in thirty turns on Earth
Round-housed me like a kick ten years delayed.
I died; I rose; I contemplated birth.
She ordered me to dance, and I obeyed.
She was my first reciprocal commission,
a poem for a poem, word for word,
a spirit for a form, the definition
of quid pro quo, with interest deferred,
but her words tipped the balance, and I reeled.
How could her offer shine but weigh like lead?
Her showroom was deceptively well heeled.
She was authentic, yet I cringed with dread.
What is the price of one, young, naive song?
The singer can’t stay innocent for long.

To the Cat God:

There’s one last sour drag left on this rollie,
and, though you wouldn’t hit it, it’s for you.
Tumescent lungs, I offer to you wholly,
but who could save the Devil from his due?
There’s one good finger, left out to decant.
It’s yours to save or sip or shoot it down,
an off’ring to the dead, a pitcher plant,
an ointment jar in which I’ll lastly drown.
I’d leave to you the remnant; claim your right.
My squinting eyes cannot discern the source,
but I can hear the roar, consumed by light.
I tremble and anticipate the force.
I’ll write a hundred coffin nails to drive.
Each one I burn reminds me we’re alive.

From a dead buck

There soon will come a point of no return

for this defective canister of nuts.

My options will be eat the loss or burn

the grocer’s house—and I don’t have the guts.

There’s nothing to convince me that the voice

that sings inside the nut jar is my own.

The songs make too much sense! I’ve made my choice.

If filberts cannot sing, I’ll be alone

til someone else decides to eat the things,

for, now, I cannot eat, I cannot sleep,

I cannot answer when the nut jar rings.

She’s trying now to call me, and I weep.

I would not recognize—I can’t pretend—

the voice that’d tremble at the other end.

Out past the heights where hopefuls can respire,

on some exalted cliff that all can see,

to which all teenage martyrdom aspires,

but no adult will look, “There ‘go-eth’ he…”

A seventeen year climb it’s been, and I

have yet to reach the point of no return,

your silence screams. Each footfall says, “Goodbye!”

Goodbye, each sacrificial doll I burn!

Farewell, my children—languish in the void.

I can’t annex the nearest earthly womb

to give you birth, and I am overjoyed

that you might never have to build my tomb.

Hold on a moment longer, child; be brave!

I will not raise my children in a grave!

What is this virgin sacrament you seek

to eat, to drink, to drown in? Is this “love”?

But “true” love, perfect, timeless, and unique…

She fits his empty center like a glove.

Though, no less hollow is an empty fuck.

Good job—for now she must admit your worth.

You conquered her. The ground shook. Lightning struck.

She even called you “Greatest on the Earth!”

My love is not a holy mystery

nor change cast in the street to see a trick.

Your fate fulfilled is not my destiny

nor is your lust a match to burn and flick.

We sit, with arms entwined. Our shadows grow.

You ask, “What do you mean?” I do not know.

I’d like to think the Bogeyman is dead,

that age has turned me like a noble grape

into a richer wine to match the bread,

so long-matúred, a snoot fit for a crepe,

that I might be the one one true in faith

might pick to bless and drink in Someone’s name,

and, fortified, no monster, creep, or wraith

could fast uncork the years to taste my shame

and let my notes of apple dribble out.

I’ve learned I’m still the toddler told a lie

to make me “good”—no ice cream if I pout—

but bullies won’t be scolded if I cry.

I went to school for decades, as did you,

and learned we grown-ups fear the Boo-gey, too.

The landscape has a sharp and jagged slope,

and I stand on the high ground; I defer

to you to best slip from the noose from rope

you give a man. (I can not envy her.)

But when I saw the gander flock to you,

and her, and her, and peck, and flap, and squawk,

and I balled up a page of verse and threw

it in your lap, and shrugged, and turned to walk…

At times, it’s feel a pang or grow a fang,

a glance rocked aft to turn my heart to salt,

the fearful expectation of a “bang!”

or gorges cleaving at the seismic fault.

The birds, as well, believe in poetry.

I honk, and flail, and raise my neck to thee.

The antidote to shame is, welcome shame.

Heap boulders on your chest—endure the pain—

until, to breathe, you’d sacrifice your name,

but something takes a breath inside your brain,

and pauses at the height, as if to speak,

and says, “There’s nothing for it, now, at all?”

“‘Salvation’ is the death cry of the weak.”

“We are not wrong to cry it—still we fall.”

“And, if it does not matter, live for you.”

“What would you do? These minutes are for you.”

I’d heard what “freedom” meant, but never knew.

“What would you do? These moments are for you.”

I cried; I laughed; at last I found relief

with seven billion gods and one belief.

I will not love you like Neruda’s verse.

I can’t; I always watched a goddess go.

Her ghost will be the last to quit my hearse.

My love is like an empty coffin, though,

cremated in Her stead, kept in an urn

I buried prematurely, in my haste

to have another vanity to burn.

My love is countless eulogies in waste,

a bitter sip to cure what feels like health.

Although, to Her, whom frankness might disarm,

perhaps my love could be a tarnished wealth

of copper liberties and silver charms.

My love is not a furnace or a rod;

my love’s the honesty most save for God.

The ill adjust to sickness, madness, death

that they are taught they cannot overcome—

no One can overcome, that draws One breath,

but this One is my god, alike in sum.

When did We look the cancer in the face

and lay before it all Our pre- and post-

and present tense of Endless Holy Space

within an Honest, Kindly Ghost—at most,

imperfect spinning wheels and grinding gears,

a cuckoo springing twenty past the ‘our,

that knows by sense of Beauty, right it hears

is right if Kindness is the highest pow’r.

The doctor, of Us All, felt most relieved—

we said She had a cure, and She believed.