I want to pay for the drink and help him to understand that the warmth of the whiskey is the warmest he'll get from me or from her.

I am your bespoken;
perhaps.
Your estivated cabin
where a quiet sun shines
through breeze
touched curtains
into the room.
The twang of strings
crying out
to the sun
brings clouds and
gray winters in the West.
The pogonip settling
into the seams of
your mountain-scape
where imagination
runs limitlessly
to all matter of
places.
Your mind's divagation
from the trouble
and right back to it.
Resarciation is our
finest art
and we have not yet
painted the masterpiece.

Bore Into A Man Unshorn

As our history
is increasingly
disinterred,
the dirt piled
and the bodies
laid out and
catalogued,
we learn that
the bandages
were only
wrapped so
thin, to keep
moisture out,
but all they have
done in time
is soaked
everything up
and kept it off
the skin of our
deceased language,
dangling by a tissue
the meaning we
ascribe to each
inflection, each
word we carelessly
toss at each other.
It is so dried up
and brittle.

When those bandages
finally meet the air
again, we tremble,
we drown
and we beg for
the mercy of a
god we've never
seen. We beg
because god
makes sense in
situations like that
and because we
have such little
dignity,
such a putrid
sense of
propriety.

Put me back
in the ground.
Burn me up.
Send me away
for a fucking life
sentence.

You cannot
understand what
I'm talking to you
because my lungs
do not breathe air
like yours do.
My eyes do not
see color.
All I have is a
walking stick
to tick and tick
and poke around with
so I don't run
into anything else,
so I can swing
at the bastards who
come along trying
to steal the only food I've got.

Only prophets
walk these roads anymore.
Men who haven't
a clue why they
can't see anymore.
Men waiting for
the end.
I will dig you
another grave, if you'll
put me in it too.

Integumentary

Two in form,
the moment is.
And perhaps not.
Suspended.
Breathe in
the shampoo
and sweat
from her hair.
Skin
covered in rain
and I drag the
blistered burn
on my hand
across,
a cigarette
sparking one thousand
pieces as
the lungs
draw its flue,
it goes
down
inside us.
It is searing.
Everything should
be
as this is.

Party Like It's 1999

We wander forward

just moving

away from

what's behind

us. All that's

behind us

so very

afraid

of sleeping

in the 

dark.

Hungry.

Vultures

we are,

whatever we can

find on the 

ground

in the dirt

bloated

and rotten,

full of a stench

the death

we did not

see

but taste 

so succulently,

and we'll 

laugh,

giggling at how

we used to only 

eat vegetables

and how we thought

we could save the 

world from this,

and that

looking around

at what isn't 

anymore,

everything

we knew,

a whole new place

full of so
few people
mostly those
who wouldn't

have a 

care 

about tasting

your flesh

while you watch

them do it;

and we will walk 

with blood on our 

faces

from impossible animals that

made it

until they didn't,

found by us,

cooked on our fire

and we will never 

guess what's across 

the sea

because we 

will not

have understood yet

that when it

comes down 

to it

you and me

are all we've got.

So to answer your 

question;

am I sorry?

You have no idea 

how sorry

I am.

Until the day I

can't hold

steady,

your stride by mine

when the ash

is falling and

we are breathing it

in like we need it,

like it doesn't matter

the sun behind 

eternal clouds

and we can't walk 

from 

the blisters,

when my

very breath

leaves,

trying to 

hold the shape

of a word

on my 

lips,

I am 

so

so sorry.

Come Find Me Louise.

Our weather shrunken hearts
are such thin pieces of meat
stretched out on rotisseries
over a fire, fueled by coals
forged from trouble
a year or more passed.
The sum of our parts.
We count.
And add up to the decimal point.

So I ask,
what is it that keeps us
going
in this landscape,
this ash,
this gray dawn and
early night,
this day and age.
the many images meaning
more and less than anything
before them.

I love to watch you
when you think I do
not see.
I do.

We enter the Christmas
season
and wish well for
our families,
respectively.
Trees and sights
and sounds,
ferris wheels and children,
the screams of
laughter cut the night
like the smile of a moon.

You say you see me
and you know my heart
when I think it is all
hidden up,
tucked away,
and that you see me,
you love me.

Are we good for
anything but warfare?

If you are here,
we must be.

The fire still roasts
our two hearts
on a spit,
turning ever slow,
the skin of them tightening
and drying out,
only a matter of time
before they decide
that we smell done,
pull us off,
and eat us both.

Dripping off their lips
into the dust.

We return.

I love watching you from here.