Autumn

Globe-child

translucent as a freshly peeled Gogol
egg

God sealed a deal in
you

had the golden season crown its leaves with
you and crack

the trees with
wonder.

We are all asunder at your Autumn
atoms

baby

we are beyond measure in your
depth.

Reprieve

Oh, Noam,
how we struggle and
strive

how we search and we
dive

for reprieve

you didn't find it
in flannel pockets

will you find it
up a pressed shirt sleeve?

Orb

The arcade light looks like
a bulbous moon
reflecting in the windows
of our blooming worlds.

Antonia, reading, behind the register,
is turned to a swooning
lover, drifting, dreamily,
upon a lagoon.

Denham, the crooning master
of some lunatic
ceremony.

And me, beneath that
orb-like balloon,
I am the scribe of its dictated
testimony.

Untitled #9

the baby was struck by
beauty

Sunday Morning

Sunday morning

and all of last night's debaucherous
creatures come yawning from their
warm, sun-soaked winter bedrooms, some
alone, some in pairs, dopily fawning on
one another with heavy hungover
smiles and the residue of sex trawling
small-ly behind them.

Almost twelve

and all of these formerly bed-ridden
babies of the dawn need breakfast, lots
of coffee, strawberry jam on a
scone, balls of marscapone for their
waffles, all the comforts a glorious
cafe-foray brings after an evening of
forgetting these things.

Instead of Dying

gentle James
says through his frames
that he wants
to be lost
at sea.

*

I ring with the dark things

I Have Been Running

I have been running
these three
mornings

I have been running
because I need to be
recreated

I have been running
I have needed the
slap the
sting of
waking the
rip from the
womb of
sleep

I have been running
I have needed the cold
tubes of my frozen
veins to

flood
with
blood

my white
hands to
mottle with
purple and
blue

I have been running
I have needed my face to
flush and
forehead to
gush with
sweat

the oily
water of
stagnation and
regret

I have been running
I have been running
I have been running

Untitled #6

My heart is lined with trees but my soul is the city. It fills my body and forms my words. It is the breath blown into me; cold, smoggy, sly, necessary. The city has spread its sediment along my bones. And though my tree-heart cleans the veins that branch through this vessel, the city's terrible, glorious soot will choke me, lovingly, in the end. And it's an end I accept. An end that I fear and covet. Because death is fearful. Because death is right.