Road

I move on a road long past regret

the horizon flat against the sky.

My tires fly unencumbered;

I bend to each curve without slowing.

I have paid my tolls:

the last exit miles behind

some sad gravely past I came through

rolling on;

the engine lulls dully in the back of my ear;

the light unnoticed

until the flick of the automatic headlights.

I nod,

my legs thick from inaction,

the creeping heat of the radiator;

My heavy chest,

the trees a dark blur in the window—

the longest blink—

I nod,

a soft remembrance in my throat.

My road lies forth, my exit long gone

I wonder where I wake.

Holy Man

I ran up the river to the lake
I flew down the chimney to fire.
My hair is smoke:
My boots slush with weeds when I remove my feet.

You who have lived all your life with feathers in your eyes,
come sit by my side.
I will talk to you turning left while moving right,
as has become my tale.
I have spent it all, spent it all, liquid in and fluid out
filled my lantern up with nothing.
When I am gone, lay my ashes gently in my wake.

Rust

At times I do not recognize

the steel that slinks under my skin.

My extremities grow lax;

my teeth gnash and dull;

and I cannot find anywhere the monster

that lurks caged within my heart.

All I am softens beneath her.

I bleed fabric to embrace her skin to mine;

my dreams, already, render themselves

dosed in her summer coloured eyes.

But the world does not dye itself with her seasons,

does not cradle me like her gaze.

For these days I do not mesmerize

For these mornings

Rust creeps from my fingernails.

Window

Somehow you have gotten in the habit of watching him,

twisting and heaving in the sun.

Your hands always feel a little colourless when his

burn bright with sweat, moisture dripping down

his skinny arms, making trails in the dust.

His eyes, when you can see them gazing mournfully

at the sky, glint of fatigue

but in what quantity you can never put in words.

Your office manager has never known moderation;

your pale skin ripples with goose bumps

in the unnatural air, blowing from the walls.

You try to hide your sniffles whenever

she walks past.

Your own eyes you do not know;

the streetlamps always muddy your reflection

in the window, in the heavy, warm nights you leave

for home in.

Some nights, thinking idly of the afternoon heat,

you wonder if the windowsill you sit on is not the

edge peering into happiness, and if it is you

that is waiting, looking in.

Flex

When I was young

I would flex my heart.

We would compete, match the depth and

range of the emotions we contain,

our grand capacities to live and love

and live again.

With age, the muscle has waned,

grown all out of shape.

In my atrophy,

every small affection

finds me aching the following day.

I enclose now little but taciturn distance,

and though these pains never

even break through the skin,

I am left racing,

gasping for air.

Speak

I wish I could speak with my hands

And have you touch this life I have wrapped in my feeling.

Meaning, always, seems like a struggle with my tongue;

my sincerity all gets lost in that distance

lingering between my mind and my voice.

Somewhere along this heartache of life,

somewhere between all the pointless signs,

this sadness and the next—

there was someone I wanted,

lost by the wayside.

And to her,

There is so much I would have said.

I wanted to say

There is no winter that dampens life

as when something covers your smile.

There is no mountain that carries its burdens

the way you lift your world.

I wanted you to know

that there is no space so vast

to be wider than the expanse you opened in my heart

for you.

And when I look at my hands, shy and unspeaking,

and I think about all the people who

I never reach and have forgotten,

I worry that one day

after all these words my mouth could not create

I might forget you as well.