Dusk unfolds its slanting light

blazing yellow fall, plucked and clean-shaven

–

Her low race down into the soil
Most things on that body can be braided
pulling roughly at the roots
grown wrong, ancient slanting sun

A braided path tightens over the field
it splits the ground into what grows and what grows tight
Your neck unfolding
someone follows in your footsteps straightening out
She’s the one who wets my freckles
that’s her, in my face
mother, sweetness

The stars are large tonight, shining greedy and greasy
a scent of God
They forgot the harvest
our faces    peeled almonds
slowly turn    in the wind

We do this for the mother, the dividing and cutting
we do it for the bitter, sharp
we make it tight.
Every tiny bulge, every
black and blue tuft of grass we pull and tighten and
braid into the dirt.

When the stars fall they’re grey from space and longing
pounding bodies crash into hordes
drifts of what no longer twinkle:
mass communication, the speech act

Inside the fallen a word revolts
before the crash, before the skin, o God

The child brings home her hordes

–

Return to the curtains that are drawn, opening
A young man enters the low stage, wearing
a black leather miniskirt, a minimal tank top, moves his hips,
not quite dancing.
He’s as undressed as you can be.
Balancing his nudity between his hip’s narrow, almost
imperceptible moves. There. Hold fast.
Keep that tension, the observer’s gaze.
The stage is red, the folds in the curtains even redder.
The young man is so beautiful
I cry
His hips are moving slightly, he is dead serious
A concentrated toss of the head

I realize they have to be slim    this is 1986
I realize 1986 that it’s desire for another man
My glittering gray fixation

give in to it, spit it back, give in and

I spell out: a dark inscription.
like restraint. This is us.

–

She divides the dark into darkness and what comes from the mouth
she divides the dark into what’s beaten and what’s felled
In a ward of grass and wheat girls lie in straight lines
Yellow shines from beneath the letter e
I present my finest letter to thee
Winding it roughly around the neck

It has to be yellower
it has to be like madness to seem so very yellow

it has to be yellower
it has to be like decay to seem so very yellow

The waves must be yellow and the foam
the foam of the sea must be shot through with yellow

Your autumns smell like almonds, drag them out
The sky, of course

The 6th  of October 09
Even metaphors are just another way of getting laid

–

So close to the sea I cut the waves
so close to the roof I cut the treetops
so close to the ditch I cut the sky
so close to the road I cut the sidewalk
so close to the stem I cut the petals
so close to the window I cut the view
so close to the glass I cut the light
so close to the cloud I cut the sun
so close to the voice I cut the song
so close to the rock I cut the root
so close to the dirt I cut the root

so close to the speech I cut the tone
so close to the writing I cut the speech
so close to the speech I cut the writing

I cut the speech with the writing and
the writing with the speech
Down where the red begins