Adore.

The noise of the motor is running.
My car sits in the driveway, humming.
I don’t fear what isn’t there.

When things get in the way of-
Shattered stained glass windows.
Flowers stain the glass walls.
My eyes stare up at cornflower skies.

I look up at you.
I adore you.
Your face is marred with stars.
Time is etched in your memories.
Whispers speak to me from dusk-
Your words are peeled back on old clocks.
The clock looks at me, you protest laughingly.

You stare at me from across the room.
Your heart is beating against the floorboards.

You are my poetry.
The water is fluid in motion.
Water is motion.
Water is fluid.
Scientists sit in old chairs in ancient
Buildings called buildings or maybe they’re
Called something else,
Like decimal points or campuses.
I took an Essay writing class at the local
Community college.

I don’t talk about anything.
I write things and shadows open their mouths
Wide, wider-the words are not mine. They are
Someone else’s.
You are kind. Your hurt is showing.
I am sorry, sorry-
Words cannot express how the church bell
Chimes,
In the midnight of the dark and you look back at me
And we’re here, here-
Tomorrow is clear. Rings clearer than any doorbell.
The ringing is ancient.
Ancient as anything.

Mammals in the Driveway.

I fear the porpoise on the lake will
melt into oblivion and the day will not come open
like shadows stardust withers in plain sight
I move my garbage
can to the
middle of the driveway
Momma comes up the drive and
asks Where? Where?
Her eyes like stars

sometimes I rush into things I am not ready for
and I feel like taking the time to look at different
web sites on the Internet like myspace
and sometimes I stare out
the classroom window and dream of walking
hand in hand with a perfect stranger
but the words never come out right

Another Day.

Tomorrow a new day will come and I will
not be ready.
Ready for what, I don’t know.

Ready for who, I cannot say. I used to write
mysteries on the backs of used napkins
and then I spread them into the wind like
leaves in summer.

Tomorrow the world will be ready for me,
and I will sing to the moon and kiss the stars

my hands open and embracing the world
I have come to know as myself.
The date is marked on my calendar. The night
is of shooting stars.
I avoid broken windows and messed-up
bicycles.
Sometimes, I wish to reach
out my arms.

Stars and a Pendulum.

I fling myself to the stars.
In the night, the stars shine down.
The universe goes around and around like
a pendulum-

my mind is in constant rotation.
Darkness enters my heart. I am nothing,
compared to the vastness of space
that is cold as my ego.

I am an iceberg.

I crash against the shore of a stormy sea.
I am a bird. I fly through the air and land
on a lone island, inhabited by men named
Darwin and Washington.

This is my story. I retell it to old men in
coffee shops and bookstores.

The Night wears down.

I am distant.