That Day

You stood haloed in sunlight.
My skin split open and I rained fishes
into your hands and you caught me
raised me like communion to your lips.

Sheets

Sheets wear the handwriting of bodies.
The unseen knows itself.
I film the taste of darkness.
I touch myself in your eyes.

Thoughts ride thermals and become words.
I wonder at the emptiness of this fire;
this love that can eat holes in space
to become something as strange
as day and night.

I awake listening to you
the way you set my heart alight
like the dawn each morning.
I get up and walk away
with no burns visible.

State of the Poet

I step raw onto soil, feel the rain
sluice to mud on bare feet.

Flowers tease with the tastes of color.
My skin burns for the sun’s heat.

I sweat words and poems gather
like flies at a feast.

My hair is matted with nightmares
while my eyes leak light.

I am too shaggy to sit silent
in the bliss of herons at dawn.


image: Brian Fitzgerald
http://pbase.com/talkingrag

Undertaste

I wake with hands on keys
dripping words from my face.
I know nothing, just this quiver
of a cell in a momentary breeze.

Bombs break the silence.
Screams fill the air as
bodies carpet the land.
Radio waves tear holes in space.

I sip the morning, this undertaste
of death that binds to every joy
like the hint of bitterness in
the flesh of a peach.

Beasts

I have pebbles
in my shoes
and a long walk
over Kalahari sands.

Scorpions leer
and sidewinders
show interest.

Of course, I am
still in my room
fielding the beasts
in my mind.

As Ghosts

I stride back into the ancestor's cave,
this place of darkness and heart-milk.
I slide my tongue down rock walls
soothed by the roughness and
growl with a ferocity that
shivers music from stones.

I need to eat myself anew
perfumed with spices born of the day,
pull words from the feet of bats
and lie down in poem webs.

Your taste is branded in me,
your blood flows in mine yet I walk
on shoeless feet and listen
as the mountain calls to me.

We are ever as ghosts in our silence
caught in night music.

Snakeskin

I feel my skin rip against rock,
not a clean slice but ragged
as if the day had teeth,
had lain in wait for my tiring scales,
for these sky poems
incised on reptile skin.

My muscles torch the moment,
contract in this dance to realign,
my body powerful as if
mountains moved within me
spitting earthquakes
like syllables in mud.

I cannot eat in this changing time
when even leaves feel sharp.
I’m hungry for dawn light
for the way clouds roll over trees
scudding divinity ahead of them.

Watermelon Prayers

There are too many whispers
too many prayers
to fit in a July morning.

Light flows through
watermelon quarters
onto an oak table.

Purple grapes strut
their richness
like wanton saints.

Orioles flood the air
till we are song-dizzy while
duck calls tease our ears.

And the air, the air touches us
with the imagined silk
of butterfly wings.

Joy walks under our skin
till we become
smiles with feet.

The Curve of Your Flight

You come to me feathered at dawn
your great wings dipped in light.

I listen to the curve of your flight
and swallow your song.

You walk in me as if I were a field
of wildflowers, pollen kissed and dew wet.

You steal my breath and
I fall into the sky.



image: Brian Fitzgerald
http://pbase.com/talkingrag

Lens

I change lenses again and
the day splays open before me.

Wildflowers riot in a ditch and
invite me to their petalled dance.

Wasps smirk pollen-covered
and pity my clumsy limbs.

A basketball hoop on its side
in a field sings of loss.

I step among subtle movements of air
as if I were a spider in a webbed universe.

I borrow the shirt of the Divine
and for an hour I set bushes aflame.

webs

it is a long process
this pounding of silver
into the face of a soul

I watch the cardinal
feed his baby seed by seed
his song slithered to exhaustion

I mine words in tunnels within -
hunt poems in the dark spaces
that taste of sun-dust

leaves sing whale songs
caught in the sound webs
woven by trade winds

dusk swallows the day
we turn on the lights
to avoid the questions

thursday

rain wraps the day
in ocean darkness
blind jellies feel at home

I buy two new books
step into unread poems
and find tigers in the lines

birds fight on the feeder
toddlers squabble like stones
loose in riverbeds

we feast tonight
share the communion
of flesh becoming Light

her garden is simple and planned
not a wild tangle of lemongrass
overtaking tropical dreams

life takes itself seriously here
as if it doesn't taste the edges
of a coming dissolution

a solitary bird cracks seeds
in the rain even as I drop
poem shells to a page.

wednesday

we'll touch pythons at 10
amazement in the library
four small boys and me

tastes remind me of you
like mail on the tongue -
you move with chili heat

the full moon fell in the window
and we danced for hours
till we melted into dawn

40 birds commute to the feeder
I sit in the ruckus
trying to read feathers

families build mirrored pyramids
to meet each other wearing
the stories of years

I smile in the sunlight and feel
the twisted trunks of trees
storm bent, both trees and I

tuesday

currents have their own flow
as a visiting fish you are
only accidentally within them

pieces of myself flake off as if
memory were a kind of dandruff
on the shoulders of the day

you move in my soul and
I speak to you the way
elephants remember

we've sewn words to our own cloth
I lick the stones we've walked on
trying to turn water into wine

monday

the sky's a brilliant lavender
as if the dreams of roses
had migrated like birds

I travel through a camera lens
hunting light
and it bites me

I scatter rabbits and birds
as I enter the woods and
find grottoes of leaf prayers

we are elephantine and slow
next to birds scattering light
with the abandon of god

we must be tender with our
veined and thinning petals
bruised by the divine fire

morning spills with ecstasy
as if our desiring
had milked the sky

I could not have imagined
the beauty of a goldfinch
or the wonder of your eyes

Crumbs

people litter the airport
like the crumb trails
of army ants

cardinals and goldfinch
throw color in my eyes
till my ears bleed

I sit in an ocean of sound
breathing birdsong till
I am buttered with feathers

why do I feel unborn in an airplane
as if I would exit as
some new creature I haven't met yet

I am toasted under the afternoon sun
like a meditation muffin
filled with ripening fruit

moss runs down tree trunks
like a love stain
the color of morning leaves

a nutthatch at the feeder
hangs upside down and
bumps head with a chickadee

I swallow the delight of birds
and my body aches for transparency
to be a rainbow in sunlight

my mind is reamed with pleasure
and you flower within me
as I feed you sun kisses

the cat at sixteen is too old
to chase birds
he itches from their energy

a robin overwhelms me
I am dust under the memories
of a lifetime of robins

Rain

We wake inside
each other’s dreams
drunk on night rain

our bodies spread
like salted butter
in a sandwich

between here
and there.

Unplanned

I walked into the waves at dawn
and the ocean ran dry,
plunged down a drain in the day.

I am left here with salted feet
and dead herring watching words
fly away on the backs of gulls.