Thou Art Found Wanting

11.

I have body slammed this living looking
for its weak spot and I have found
the ground; on the whole, it has been ungiving.

Like Shakyamuni’s lotus sermon.

  How many selves have fallen
    as I come to know him?

22.

He is sitting by a wall
He cannot see the apple trees

 Or my skirt as it billows in the wind
Or that my thighs are real

His molecules are senseless
And full of integrity

Like the wife who won’t
  Palm a twenty

33.

Desire or craving
 he says
 (he means to say thirst)
  is the cause
     of all suffering.

(He is the one who wouldn’t remember me more:
the one who let my face fall without shock

like vapour from his mind.)

44.

Some of us have bodies
so spungious thin

 and delicate
 that we are fed

only by sucking
into some fine spirit liqueur

that pierces
 like pure air

and pine oil.

55.

           The man I love
        Is sitting by a wall.
              The wall is white.

mine-mine

6He walked up to me
like some kind of god’s dog
yellow eyed and bald bellied
he turned three full circles
before he made his bed with me

7Always appeared
after the hoarse call
of the raven
he could smell predator
so he knew he’d met his match

 cras-cras

8And there he was
his breast in my mouth
I called him mine-mine
my loose toothed coyote
kissing mouth to mouth feeding
swallowing his breath
and the ghost he put in it

9He called me blood-swan
drank from the river
of my thighs
weeping lunar red
my moon madness streaked
across his hide

10But he was the first to flee
the burning stubble
when the final sheaf
was cut at harvest

 mine-mine

11I cried but he was gone
his yellow eyes remembering
some other rabid moment

On Longing

12Will it ever end -- only
From underneath I think

13Your hand reaching through
The backyard cedar

14Scooping up koi
Orange in the blackened pond

15The wind in your hair
I could live as the tillandsia

16On air I think
On the breath of a word

17No it will never --
Not even underneath