Modern Crimes

a cardinal sin:
speaking truth where
anyone can hear

Quexque

Too pretty to eat, quexque,
a piece of the sky fallen down
to nestle between tree roots,

a broken rainbow's loveliest fragment
spreading itself out like a fan,
unfurling like an umbrella—

I want to roll you over my tongue
and discover what blue tastes like
when distilled from sunlight and shadow,
from the play of light over a dark sea;

I want to taste past and future
as I crush you against the roof of my mouth,
cold and damp from the forest floor—

but I know that most people
consider you peppery and barely edible
and that your color fades when you're cooked—

such a shame that wonder
always has such a prosaic end.

Marginalia on a Broken Heart

when the time comes
to speak words held
hidden in your heart
for decades
you'll know what to do

but time will not roll back;
the waves of it will not
erase the steps of your passage
on the beach

the pressure of your feet on the sand
will remain forever marked
all your choices indelible
inked between the margins
of your little life

the only thing that matters now
is marginalia
how you feel about the footprints
how you respond to the tide

Circumspection

Circumscribe a star, if you dare,
hedge its light with an
umbra so that you may
look on it safely,
your eyes free of its power, then
cut it free from space-time,
with a hex made of your bones;
illumination will
only come to you
when there's nothing left to see.

A Seed of Wild Dreams

Let me hold the moon in my arms tonight,
bridging my arms across the void between,
while cinereous ash and basalt dust
bite with needle teeth against my seams;

let me hold the moon in my arms tonight;
your unforgiving shores, my soul's delight—
I want to rise through the air on pale beams
and plant myself there, a foreign achene.

Let me hold the moon in my arms tonight
bridging my arms across the void between;
let me sprout from a seed into wild dreams
covering your wastes with a shawl of green.