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I’ve never looked this way before
toward the omnipresent cliff
and plumbed its
scintillating depths,
but like moth and flame
it dances to my tune
as I char slowly
in ever-growing circles
all aglow,
I am almost
certain I
should push.

As these moments bend like wicker
in your gale and open door,
we have come from flame to flicker,
and from tabletop to floor

where a cool evening descending
sets the images. We freeze
in the lightning, in the ending,
as we settle by degrees.

Reminisce just for a minute
with the wisping smoke and sigh,
with the kiss we left unfinished
for a swiftly falling sky.

Let the moment sift like ashes,
with its passing trapped in wax.
We can smile at the passion.
We can wrap its form in black.

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.
His love endures forever.

In the deepest of evenings, I will bless his name:
His love endures forever.

He alone cares for the restless, and comforts the heartbroken.
His love endures forever.

In the brightest mornings, I will praise the Creator:
His love endures forever.

He is my foundation in a world of broken buildings.
His love endures forever.

When I am tired of life, and longing for something to change,
His love endures forever.

When I look at where I’ve come from I understand
His love endures forever.

When I learn where I’m going, it’s beyond my imagination.
His love endures forever.

Before I was born he drew the schematic -
His love endures forever.

Before I took a breath, he planned my footsteps -
His love endures forever.

Before I knew my mother, he wrote my story
(His love endures forever),

and his tears stain the pages streaked with pain.
His love endures forever.

Before the world was, he made you
(His love endures forever),

and plotted our lines to intersect.
His love endures forever.

The Lord is good, even in this sudden twilight.
His love endures forever.

Our God is good, trust that above anything.
His love endures forever.

Give thanks to the God of heaven
for things past and things to come,
and all that lies inbetween.
His love endures forever.

So long without this
scar burning its song like
ringing in my ears
and suddenly the sky splits
open, gashed pink and red at
the setting of this day
and once again
it’s back to the wall -
there you are smiling
to keep from trailing tears
to be followed,
to keep others from knowing
for sure what they already know
for sure -
your finger white,
trembling,
wrapped around the trigger,
lining up the sights -
and if I wasn’t in its headlights
I might ask you
why you’re smiling
with me in the targets.

Arms creaking and straining
at the oars I am
moving over the small
of this evening’s back,
finally getting somewhere,
finally seeing the fruit of a
long night’s labour;
you prowl where water
parts like the spine of a book,
mist glowing on your forehead
like beads of sweat,
here where you watch
the motion of these fabulous muscles,
where I am bursting at
the seams and gritting teeth
and spitting breath
into the air like fresh snow;
you watch the motion from the
ribs and hull, reclining,
only leaning forward to
whisper, “Now, love,
now I feel
beautiful.”

On Carling Street there’s
a carboard box
interred in a grave
and its attendant water,
where the levies are
broken
and the sea has
broken
in, where the
broken
bodies float at
awkward angles
as if tearing at the seams;
on Carling Street
the homeless finally
come home.

I’m worried sick about
you and it feels like a punch to
the gut.
You’ll tell me how odd
that is that instead
of being rabidly selfish
I’m trembling
a tad to see you kicking
at the goads, bleeding.
But you don’t understand
because you weren’t made that
way:
you are what you are.
That, of course, it just another
cause for worry
like lead in the belly.

You’ll tell me to take it easy and to chill out and to
sit down and have a beer,
but I won’t drink for lack
of gravity
in my stomach, oddly,
suddenly.

You’ll fall more in love
with my over my concern,
oddly, strangely,
morbidly.

Moth to a black hole.
I’ll mix my metaphors and
you’ll come running for a swig.
I’ll be here,
fretting over something
till you do.

I collapsed long ago
into probabilities preceding me
and ordained before
my youth:

thing entangled in
the fabric of my being
like we are entangled
and mixed up
in eachother:

this place is cool and
ready to burst
into song,
harmonics and strings
all bent to form
a song:

I will sing somewhere
of wells and
gravity
and how I am
building a ship
to

traverse the sum
of everything from the
smallest to the
larger tomorrow:

I am building a ship
slowly and surely
as you
measure my movements,
and in that
act

change me
forever.

There are times when
an ocean seems between
this thing and that,
the way of were and are,
the place come and gone again;
a current reverses every
time I turn around,
no not now, but now,
but not this time again;
the simplest things
seem to
tangle themselves around
our feet and
poison the bloodstream;
I am a puzzle, you
are a conundrum,
we are a thing not quite
a thing;
not the way of were,
not the way of are,
far from something
and close to everything,
above water and below and
lungs and gills and
feet and fins and
always not sure
where we’ve
landed.

Hungry men hold out
hands broken in the gale
force winter
barely just passed:
these are feelers of
weather in the bones
where a
joint aches in proximity
to a snowbound gathering
overhead:
these are short
words in an eternal
sentence:
these are rolling off
the tongue and
wincing at its acidity:
these are bitter near the
marrow, in the
jaw,
but blossoming in
the liver:
these are alive like
flowers no one stopped
to pick as lovers and
weave into hair like angels
(wings, feathers,
hollow bones):
these, whose stomachs
remind you how
sibilant life becomes at
our soft centre:
these last callers for the
forever that awaits
in highways and byways
and your thunderous
backyard.