Winter Skein (Poems)
NIGHT SNOW
Sudden hallowing brightness.
No one needs to be a person
in this.
HOW IT HAPPENS
We meet in a room all air.
You mutated into me. I you.
We went home missing each other
and ourselves.
JANUARY
Ghost cat scratching
at a frosted (forested) blue door
without a house
SIT
Sit wilderness in your heart
listening to goodbye
in a quiet room.
The trees lean towards the windows
to listen too, blindly see
all that you are
by your peculiar silence.
GREY DAYS
the men like bees in their bodies
the friction of hands cards of wings
useless winter coats cowls scowls
innocent words sheathing men
in cubicles hostile yawns
between their faces
phones where no queen buzzes
spring yet
WHAT’S WHAT
The soft things are mother,
we say, obtuse.
The hard things are father.
We hammer and sink
into our lovers,
stupidly blind.
CEREMONY
Visit the fire
of your parents burning;
be ash, Rise up
in the snow as sparks
saying the only wise thing
in this sky
JANUARY’S END
the morning writes
sing-notes in its bones
in cold marrow
of trees reaching
in graves
in dreams just before waking
as you do
I KEEP
my dead mother’s jewelry
my dead father’s dentures
yet laughably say
I’m irreligious
FAWN
New wet narrow face slides out
onto leaf-mould and moonlight
crush of snow on forest floor
without houses we dream
ourselves you but wake up
monstrously us
motherless
FAUST
I sold my winter soul
to the hot water in pipes,
death by morphine candy
VACANCY
Nobody has been home here for sixty years.
I stand before the foyer anyway,
ask about Christmas cards.
Then I stand by the triplicate windows
of the grand dining room
until the answer comes
as a strange invitation.
EXCHANGE
I ask you with my meat face
and you don’t reply.
I rephrase it with luminous visage,
my beehive of lies,
and you spark to life.
NIGHT FACTORY
Vender of astral noises
of dreams unmanacled
of stupid bodies
you cast my horoscope
in the river’s tea
of drowned swimmers.
FOR THE BIRDS
I throw water at the hawk.
He flies the air.
I am lessened and magnified,
a mother.
WANTING
Wanting the darkness in you
most of all, strangled crocus
unsaid all winter
YES
Wet the face
Wet the beginning
Wet the end
CARNEGIE
Let us go to the lonely places
that are unlonely regal dark
abandoned highway tunnels
where moss climbs mountains
of the basis of us changes its mind
constantly goes somewhere else ambulance
embrace some peace or war amour
no matter but please the thrill
of tunnelling forever
HEY MOON
You float in color gradients
behind the house opposite dawn
noctisynthesis pink
to mauve my brain
wiped down with antiseptic
antiwords void Betadine
just before
I count backwards
VALENTINE’S DAY
Blood droplets in snow
the rabbit you don’t see
something else’s joy
