up up down down

Kleptomaniacal Tuesday stole me, took me
piece by piece to uptown parties
long on sentence and short on structure.
.
She was every which one of my favorite people,
long on sentience, and short.
I wrote of her in past tense always,
lent her my books,
looked over her shoulder,
left crumpled grey notes
regretting her absence.
.
Whatever the sun saw fit to dispense,
we needed.
She sat backwards on the lawn
looking for words in the trees and
wanting nothing
repeatedly.
.
.
Carefully doctored Tuesday
took her, left me
little but her sense of motion,
rocking on the backwards lawn,
.
long on nothing,
and wanting.
.
.
.

nine seconds

Every lonely person walks
from supermarket to bridge to stare
at apathetic currents
tracing rusted grass.
Land approaches water slowly,
creeping down to kiss and be torn
away from unearned comfort.
.
You also stand too close, and too long,
dismantled by careful mosquitoes
who carry your flesh to the river,
and to currents far beneath you.
.
Clearly,
you will be reconstructed,
fall and scrape your knee again
on this bridge,
as a child,
eyelids so carefully lowered...
.
Contrasts of stillness and water
breed vertigo,
displacing the indolent dream.
Still you will stand
too close to high ledges,
leaning,
just waiting to fall.
.
.
.

coldfusion

Was that
the last
combustible,
or
did you
just need to
regroup?
.
There is caffeine
on the table, an airplane
caught quite high above it,
and little black spots
gathered like teeth
around the quick tongue of your eye.
.
I would be wary,
believing
in nothing
so close to conceit.
If I were you,
I would watch
and be wary,
dancing far clear
of the forest at midday.
.
(In those woods are
careful scars lost, and
early caffeine carries its cadence
onlysofar into dawn.)
.
I am defused.
Alone at the table are
scented disconceptions
carefully wrapped and alive
in the grey-blue space behind windows.
.
If you were I,
you would watch and be wary
lest light
begin to
slip through.
.
.
.