Ivor and Leslov

Ivor and Leslov

Ivor and Leslov face each other

over hot coffee.

They talk with urgency

and no little substance.

Ivor says, “No, no!  It wasn’t like that at all!

There was snow that year

and the roads closed. 

We had to sleep in

the railyard.  Don’t you

remember?”

Leslov shakes his head. “No, no!

You are wrong.  It was the year

before,

the year Marika began coughing blood

and poor little Istvan was lost

in the North Woods.

Anyway, you were deep in the vodka then,

how could you

remember

any of this.”

A slide of disgust.

A glance of mistrust.

And finally, the slight twitch that says,

“Yes, yes.  We know each other

 far too well.”

Silence.

The raising of mugs.

Sometimes,

  you have to forget.

Sometimes,

  it’s best to let go.

Dearest Isabel

Dearest Isabel,

I am in the tarnish of cloud we sought.

I am walking in the graveyard

along the sea.  I wander only the edge

where the questionable are buried,

their bones crumbling at the same rate as

the nuns resting higher up;  Sisters

cradled together in encouraged sisterhood,

seeking to define viewpoint even in death.

There are no postcards to send from here,

no tiny stones to pick up and send to you, my

Dearest Isabel, only this small vial of soil for

  your art

    your life

      your breath.

Though you disappear for years at a time,

there is no one who knows me

in the hidden ways you do

in my tarnish of cloud,

Dearest Isabel.

Heavily Doctored

Heavily Doctored

Line 1 please,

            holding –

MY god did you see

THAT?

last week there were

three in here like

THAT.

That’s the real

shit…

Line 2 please,

            one moment –

 internal dialogue

SNAPS

mousetrap mouth

shut

perform

ORAL sur-jury

on the

weighting room

(he’s your brOTHER?)

Line 3 please,

            dropped that call –

Are you sleeping on the

Job?

patients reclined

credit declined

they were just

chequeing IN

GOD help her

check OUT

(It’s all in the eyes, see?)

Line 1 please,    

            still holding –

someone cut him off

got enough tablets

(tabula rasa)

erase – erase

no messages accepted on this number…

Line 2 please,

infinite silence –

Fuck…

air(craft)

air(craft)

the interval of country
seen high and in obscurity
while standing unsupported
over the portal of
an arctic kiss

each frozen detail
drawn as small crevasses
into your skin

and the carbon patrons
are awake, pensive
tips of fingers pressing
against sight
laying aside clear damage
of sky

the wingtip tragedy
slices turbulence
and disintegrates time

Something Like Cimmerian Darkness


You plead me give you
the membrane,
and are surprised at our
fleshless, orgiastic
communion.

We are bathing in muddy rivers
which run upstream.

Do you dare change yourself
into a molting form?
Will you reply to the wind of
otherways?
It calls you to feed on your own
threshold heart.

To answer is perilous.

Come! Make love to your
dark creature self, caress
the inner salt and kiss
your coiled deceiver .

Embrace it all!

In changing day to night
In living counterclockwise
In stepping through the mirror
In changing night to day

You have set fire to your
self-constructed soul
and nothing in you will abide
this brute ladder of longing.

You are an inherited abomination
and too intoxicated to look away.

You plead me tear away
the membrane,
and are dismayed at our
individuated, simplistic
postmortem.

Antidote

Antidote

Water snake, you slide between my thighs
and the driftwood fork of you
beds splinters in my flesh;
there is no recourse to this action.

I trace the pattern of these dead things,
pleasant punctures of serpentine grace,
sharp arrows of self-righteousness.
Quilled, I slip down, spine to stone,
send my hands trailing
liquid fingers to the riverside.

All winter you slept under me,
coiling, uncoiling,
torpor ridden and ice burning.
When the green shoots split your sides
you woke hungry for the river,
and twisting out, thread your sinew
through the stones.

Water snake, you sprout legs,
slowly they emerge,
unfolding like waking spiders;
each a jointed complaint to your belly,
and you scuttle sideways
rolling hardboiled eyes
at the drowning moon.

I, touching the current,
take up the water line,
gather it to my breast and swallow
this hot pebble left on my tongue.
I watch you flounder in the rippling;
spider twigs scrabbling against
the red scales of your demise.

Under patient moon, I pull out
each peculiar fragment;
plant them on the shore where they bud
their own skitterish legs
and weep themselves
into the mossy night.

I touch my fingertips to these
raised welts on my thighs,
perfect points of release,
and cover them in spruce pitch and ashes.
This life blood smoldering,
I exhale, and cup the open sky.

Trouble in Paradise

Trouble in Paradise

There is gunfire
       in the garden;
             a single shot
                   ringing out
                         to mark the passage

of some delicate temptation.

There is gunfire
       in the garden;
             and he licks the salt
                   from lips wrapped

tightly about the barrel.

There is gunfire
       in the garden;
             tart splattering passion,

two unclothed and innocent.

There is gunfire
       in the garden;
             one walking away
                   covered in satisfaction

considering himself             God.