Once blue big flame find here tired now true coals spewing flecks scalding latent lanes of my brain trained sidewalks patient while toddling legs and bouncing clean tongues pounce with white curls on them begin and not will I find where they end on me there is no front or back no start no finish with us odd minutes supply infrequent quiet the fray connects melody in warm ash stored up shores start to speak never this coast want I to walk without this ship built built of blonde curls without the curls I paint fruit made of wax and plastic

I couldn’t find a word to say
to tell you
but it is sediment laid
so many fractured
bits splayed then
compacted
we are
by accreted heat
and particle
non-erasure of
all this time
we build our bed
I see our contiguous
days—the spread
of us
it settles and
I know
I know it stays

our lines
are made firmer
by years and steady mess
turn us into sturdy mass
nothing
nobody
just you and me
and our basin of
that word which
is never all I mean
billions of worlds will
come here and
we will remain all
our layers my love
you are
you are only
we are
we are
we are
Once blue big flame
find here tired now true
coals spewing flecks
scalding latent
lanes of my brain trained
sidewalks patient while
toddling legs and bouncing
clean tongues pounce with
white curls on them begin
and not will I find
where they end
on me there is no front or back
no start no finish with us
odd minutes supply infrequent
quiet
the fray
connects
melody in warm
ash stored up shores start to
speak
never this coast
want I to walk without
this ship built
built of blonde curls
without the curls I paint fruit
made of wax and plastic
There is always dust on the floorboards
every day there is more and though
the task never weakens my effort
does wane, and I worry I can’t
sustain the courage each morning
ahead to dust it again and away.
Dawn is supposed to be new
but mine seem the same. I heard
manna was given— but one day
at a time— so the children would linger
and stay nearby. I heard the ground
remains cursed, not for His, but for ours.
So the dust is consistent, the
weed always sprouts, the work
is unceasing, our time is spent
pleading for dust and weeds and
unmade beds to relent. Maybe
this is the manna: reliable toil—
Capitulating lambs will
succumb till greener dust
we become.
A kind of word a kind of
love we barely know cause we
we can’t hear it said or
sung cause it tills below
shoal and shell the
unabated mining doesn’t always feel
so swell but this form
of love comes in and plans
plans to stay
in all who will
all who will
they may
may ingest the fleshy alm
swill then swallow from the
red iron flavored cup belonging to
One certain
Author and Finisher of love songs
while the gift
first implanted will probably just sit
totally unawares of what
what was given but
soon eventually it begins
it starts to simmer til’
a concentrate is made down
down into One
and you pause surprised
cause you didn’t just drink
something new
you drank and swallowed and
are bound to something big and
you couldn’t do this before but
now you can you
can rise and take
up the bed you’ve been stuck in
and walk
Giants came down hiding
behind the clouds
they thought were the reason
for the overcast land
they took the blessed innards
of the happy youth in the
vacant space laughing left
a horrible festering
beetle who fed on the remnants of
the stuff in the queue for defecation
and the new guest would have
fed on the leftovers of a heart if
there had been any
but there wasn’t
any crumbly
bits left in the place where the
heart would have been the
head of an expanding crusty
creature sat in it and the foreigner
wore the body of the youth
a body still that spoke and walked
and the body ate but none
of these bore the sameness
folks who knew his pallor
and gait took two glances
at first a smile the second squinted
confusion at a trail of
milk in contiguous shlep from
a spoon of deft cheerios
not her milk once she gave
this a new sidekick
and the other arm
occupied something swiped
swiping over and swiping
again sometimes pausing to click
and click then swipe
and though many had missed
it a few of the folk noticed where
the holes of ears should
have been were shiny white
pearls perpetually stored
in the round space
they held a village
counsel to confirm the oddities
they voted and found the youth
responsible some suspected
stranger noise at play
but didn’t raise what—
most continued to pelt the
youth in curious inquiry
the lad seemed to not hear
the clogged ears
more than many days even
years later the grubby
visitor after he’d
collected all
he had been
after even helped itself
to a bit more the gluttonous
hoarder after there wasn’t
any more to take
the antenna
on the head of the
putrid thing sent a memo
for the giants to to come back
and retrieve it home and they
did come back holding the
somehow preserved
insides of the youth
surprising he was not to
their fleshy liking and the giants pulled
out
the fat squirming termite and
replanted all the entrails
of the youth
a sec to find where
each piece had been eventually
to get it right
hearing their own
stomachs grumbling they
broke their retrieved insect the
plump squatter they had just taken
out of the older now body of the boy
they popped it
straight in their mouths
they broke it into
into equal parts of course
the lad is returned
the valley assuaged
the lad is now running as his
way but running
away
away

I COULDN'T FIND A WORD {TO E}

WHITE CURLS

ALWAYS DUST

HESED

TRAIL OF MILK