preacher 1

the unalloyed joy we want to surgically unthread from our childhood past is impossible
it's not that our ability to rest our worried mind or open our hearts like
a hungry mouth, has weakened the way our joints and eyes will
we haven't rusted inside the pipes or anything
its that the system of caring has gotten even more complex
that we have grown even more bones for deep love
so that when we get close to what we love, when our dreams
begin to crystalize, our hearts simultaneously begin to break.
because now, as adults, with 10,000 meticulous veins for love,
we know how precious our love is. we've seen enough to know
how miraculous a moment of luminaria heart is,
and there comes a terror for the moment it will go out or harden.
the crackling of worry and the paralysis of terror
is the spirit's biology signaling to us, that indeed
our joy and our hearts are working.

myth 2

each citizen will turn ill
their self laws heaped inside of them like meat into a drawer
clouding their air with brown heat
they sit waiting for the sky to wash them out
the rain to run the muck into the borders of the country
so their dreams will grow fins
and swim out of their ovens

so they can again have eyes full of fish scales
paper layered pennies
mouths a bundle of lime
waving open like sea grass
with their sour fresh limbs
so they can have hands like glass
which can only catch for a moment
the dry toothed light

in church and buoyant with prayer
the towns people can see
the devil's texture of their earth
finally run their minds over the impossible ridges
of their wood, their eggs
and can imagine how many hooves
rattle the mind of the universe
the shabby animals eyes open in birth

when they can join spirits and sing
the wrestling under the grass is known
the land moves the way water does
pulsing and spreading out
the bits that hold their children together are turned loose
and everything breathes and can be moved through
with a hand.
the unbalance of change is no longer a scare for them
because there is no pause no one to grip to
they welcome all weather
and feel pleasure in the bleed

myth series

grape tomatoes are floating in the puddle garden
all the women are baring their muscles
crystal deamoned and chewing
every bright bite of high water
cutting through our skin of earth
a peach; slobbered sunset gut.

if the earth were smooth, our brains
would be spoons
could be licked clean of its stink
our memories sliding keys
all music echoes in whales
and we could lay the tin things out like maps
make better decisions and color in
the lawns

fish mouthed, we screamed in
the homes of our lives
our guts filled with red clay
grasses and shoes
tables and spotted animals
digested or cremated into every cell
floating inside their lakes
are ten thousand birds
and families holding down their lies
their flying directions.

the fathers give like water
rising slowly and then carrying everything inside it
bones become pulp
our ribs are rainbows over their shoulders
our feet inside their hands like coins
everything is held in fiction

he caught a ladybug in his beard
and then everything set forth automatically
each heart he grew mutated into a sun capsule
a glass bead which made it hard for his feet to stick

blue blurred field

whips a ship without shape

when it catches me

I believe

I can talk to ghosts

drift away from town

further west into the  forest by the sea

a flute for the wind

playing the sea  through

its glass throat

and when I’m there

a knife inside my heart

where all things that can’t be said

are known

will glint its bouquet light

onto our feet