The stars fade in. On pounding breasts we bear
their werewolf winks and watch them feast upon
the twilight in our hearts. But body scares
much easier than mind. Remember dawn

and let night thump and squeek and clatter. We
need not fully explain each noise within
its dark embrace, demanding certainty
with fish-eyed terror. Far beyond your skin

such monsters lurk in tales – with rigid shapes
cast badly. Yet hair clambers up your spine
before you feel their breath upon your nape.
Flickering gasps escape your lips. From mine

“Ah” turns to “Ha” and for a moment I
forget my fear you’ll someday say goodbye.

You cherish petals and the stems and all
the soil that clings between the roots. You care
for every bud and green aphid that crawls
beneath its leaves. Your love is plenty. Life

is plenty – good enough to fill the world
with winds that sing cool and sting like a knife
upon the skin. What flowerpot would shake
fists at a breeze that bears the seeds the curled

lip of an empty vase rejected? Break
this terracotta shell. Its shards first burst
upon the potter’s wheel. But do not tear
your heart out with the same fingers. They’re cursed

to love and love and love as dark moons pry
in vain and stars dance clockwise in the sky.

Your fields are full. And I’m no more than one
obedient unemptiness upon
a curveless row – hands rising with the sun
and falling with the earth. My heart has gone

someplace the rolling present cannot reach.
Here I am: hear me, see me, touch me. I
am here so you can measure who will breach
your rules the most. But deeper urgings try

to part the raging seas cresting within
a sloshing bucket – waves that will thwart the arch
supported balance of your stride like ten
columns of chariots against the march

of vengeful waters. Here raging before
the calm, my heart will want, will seek, will more.

The I -  me – arching ε – the archery
Zeno’s arrow and elbow drawn to go
wherever never afterglowing she
wanted me wanting her to know, “Tiptoe

slow past the god-father figure it out
for yourself-righteous indignation.” Wide
eyed, Mister Hideandseekanddestroy spouts
smoke signalled shouts from moustachebristlingpride

of lionsmane. Horizons strain the star
acrossted love entangled in a brain
unangled by the harhar manglescars
so far so goodygoodygumdropped plane-

same as the monkeystones we fit to be
to gather up an arch He thought was me.

They’re dancing now in the dark ballroom. Are
you almost ready? Let us gather night
around us and depart. I’ll draw the far
entangling darkness closer that you might

adorn yourself in gleaming stars. The moon
and planets will not say a word. For they
are too enraptured in the spin to swoon
about your beauty…so am I. The way

a dew-dropped flower clasps the dawn is no
more good than bad. No, I said no, it’s just
an urge. It dances. Yes. It dances, go
no further with your lips unless they lust

to dance with mine. Silently kiss, we kiss
again we kiss in utter speechlessness.

The dawn illuminates a dark, potbell-
ied votive sputtering benedictions through
its transubstantiating throat. As el-
ements hiss, steaming liquid flows into

the holy vessel. Cracks transverse the rim -
a perfect match for his imperfect smile.
He sips. The lords and crown ruled realms are trem-
bling, lost like shifts of silt that can’t defile

his constant sea of ritual. Without
the sacred smell of coffee, would suns rise?
Would fate listen to what a frothing spout
of milk and bobbing sugar might advise?

Foolish intent is all man has to charm
uncompassed awe an inch beyond his arms.

You credit not your father’s heros, nor
the scavenged skins they wore. Re-taled pursuits
like theirs don’t interest daughters that adore
winking talismans from the cult of cute.

Yours are relevant relics – dangling for
a moment from your ear. But they were charged
by speed-ball expletives your father swore
in his kinetic fields of youth. Enlarged

commitments may have overwhelmed the rage
of boyhood dreams, but they remain within
that phantom zone behind your need to cage
limitless worlds in brittle plastic. When

the numbers fade, when Earth’s four corners bend
whose wrath will fund your appetite to spend?

A face finds form in points of chin or through
a single sweep of nose. Symmetries rise
to frame an arcing brow. And two by two
unjungled beasts stagger aboard. The eyes

pursue a flatt’ring bulge. The ears ensnare
a fate. The lips dissect what’s not quite round
about an unspun plate. We climb our stares
desperately searching for familiar mounds

of flesh and mold imposing figures from
our widely rooted dreams. Hope reconciles
itself as every oblong need becomes
another shadow twin. For those rough piles

aren’t vast enough to hide the self we say
we see in every hungry lump of clay.

With lead feet I slide into fortune, cast
in poses of bronze. Zipper straight, I right
myself by trusting only in the fast
assurance of a smooth, endless delight.

Faith loses me. Between the meshing teeth
of fate, all that I am is jagged bends
of knee bowing above the ground, beneath
the sky. I am an up that must descend

to follow more familiar downs. Some place
beyond the reach of cosmic janitors
who wink white-whiskered at the fallen, grace
will find me in a clumsy heap that stirs

where no horizons hold their timid thread
to bind the stars that orbit overhead.

Hit your nemeses. Hit your cages. Hit
illusions you can push against to lift
your smallerrelativemass high. Submit
your mind to measure every minor shift

of thought and flesh – each consequence that comes
from challenging the ruler-headed gods.
How can you warp a word to fit a sum
of endless terms? How can you know a nod

that can’t consent? Creations spawned like jars
of lightning from mans quaking thighs may pull
your vision tree to page. But how the stars
or mitochondria see you swells full

of acts for which there are unequal
and unopposite pleas, wheedles and demands.