sky – other animals

light blue dark blue sky peppered stars
the dog lingers sniffs a neighbor’s
pumpkin and music from somewhere
far or near I once loved the feel
of night on my body wanders
under what little light comes through
though I still haven’t found it

sometimes there’s nothing human you can do

the white sky mo(u)rning a single bird across
the courtyard bricks for a new pyramid

so where can you go how can you

think after they refuse to be
born it

won’t help
steer this weary ox from

the prized flowers won’t re
construct the squirrel’s bones

the poem of night

waiting for the

right weight to

fall and make a

sigh don’t look

at me but

at the sky

silence in
the dark green
leaves brewed a
dozen times
still tasty
unlike the
resin like
the past I
need to clean
off my shoe
so why not
go into
the grey sky
grab cloudfulls
of what you
want and stay

Having darkened my hand with dark ink in
an age when close and
distant are cloudy unaided having
made so much that no

body wants to eat I wait for the latest
historic storm and the
scrape and salt that wakes us too early
or too late

model mountains pen in
sugared cars I try to

lift the snow with a wave
of homemade rhythm into
sky like berries almost black

but do I fracture some rule with
this spell how many feet do I have

to long for long-lasting mud
and the birds who

visit though we won’t learn
their names this year

either but the tracks lead
to a curve turning

back on itself with a smile
the breath leaves

green leaves shake

so let’s finish off the crackers
and call them
cookies we can watch
a movie through the neighbor’s
window just
balance on this skull

it then sails over that hill like hot oil down your leg but you need to get dressed for the evening execution though since all the cat food is gone perhaps first a stroll to the river past the perimeter guards and through the rubble hole in the southwest corner and hopefully no one else has found this place with its improbable stashes of obscene poetry journals good to eat for 1,000

beers we drank in rooms so completely similar to this dusty light we may have been poor but by God we can still be now where was I going with this nearly full shopping cart the sky is getting dark the bushes full of feet

rabbits in the parking lot obscured by the halo of the horned moon

and though I’ve made so many plans
when I look in the mirror by accident

before a shower a small bird tumbles
down the stair forgetting about wings and so

we come to this moment when momentous
things may be mouthed into the shabby mirror

of the sky and from the neighbor’s apartment
something like a snort or sigh

splinter

as you try to catch a glimpse of the burnt remains it crawls under your skin where the bright sky of the north holds sovereignty over the too-short winter

all this time hoping a bit of silver would slip out unnoticed as one may before the sky grows dark the card game is over

white sky early in the year a small dog creeps inside