It is not just the sky

steamrolled by hospice clouds.

Too, the inner-curvature

of calcium, you

came thoughtful

in to this impulsive (& frankly),

self-pleasured time. When

from a young age, you

unpuzzled the stars in to couplets,

in bars, everyone agreed.

The tune: 1st quarter

with drunken precision

right in to the slot;

vintage 80s bones, waxing

gibbous—now, nearly 2020,

meagerly squinting out

blurred, black tridents

turned on their sides.

Oak leaves will soon fall

in crescent shadows

across brick shopfronts

& onto re-cemented trail in

blindfold-purple, incurious light.

Is it so: inside our

bones, we are scything

the cane, walking away from

the stipends & perks & payouts

yet ghostwriters

—they bury the blues

of this most honest of skies:

arrange us, sowing pastures

of no actual life:

cranes, pelleting buckwheat

under a stomach of clouds.

We played

hide & seek around the base

of the volcano; dusking little shits

running our endless energies, out

in to the dead-end, Carolina yard.

Yes. There were volcanoes then.

Pah-sta with red sauce, Breyer's &

Sega Genesis, a decade freckled

in the roiling: our childhood home

on 412 Waterside Drive.

Now, we are unobvious. Old, our

hearts less playful, dusked, tough.

To revisit, once more, that tectonic

edging (dark equates to good), to

dangle from sentences of rope over

the mouth, I refuse. There was heat

& there was light down in that deep

stanza of earth. It fed skyward, sent

our volcano like tree sap, running.

Yes. All of this running, for me

it started

down there, in an actual heaven.

Far down in a center of the earth.

I was brought up from sleep

this morning

having swallowed a stink bug.

In self-defense, it ejected its spray

of bitter bile & I was unable

to breath deeply for an hour.

The press of coffee tasted

like formaldehyde.

But eventually, my body

fought back the ancient chemical

—it is always trying to straighten me out.

I ought to be thankful for

my internal pharmacy. I am not. Something about gratitude seems dishonest

or forced, when directed at my

faculties. No, it is not just that. All sorts

of gratitude, even as a little boy

with zero axes to grind, like hiccups—

it has always gotten caught in my craw.

There is suicide in it.

Thin pharmacist in perpetual white

scoops his pills beneath neon light;

his mind spills out like iced lemonade

unable to recognize itself.

The gravel-rote elm leaf

leaning out over Johnson grass

seeking a shade more sunlight

though brushed dusty by the gusts

of tractor tires, does not dismay

my feet. Though they lose

traction; stumbling daily over

a replacement of blue stone

they carry on. My body

is not a sail, not like the tractor

—not like yours. My body

is lead, a lodestone, sinking

ever-deeper in to clay, unfettered

by Ra’s endless victory dance

about the climes.

thing

I need

help

with

is

living.

Your

Baltic blues,

they are

the only mirror

to assemble

a reflection of

the man

who sees out

from mine.

for

looking

at me

with love

in your

eyes.

In our deeds

I am your past.

Hiding god

behind the wall

we are the

passage.

I no longer

long for

their paradise

impossible

to let go

when passing.

Shall we?

The great Houdini

opened a door

looking for mother

found drawings

& photographs

on the floor—a

case run cold.

In the tunnel

below the plant

remarkable

an endless cycle

the origin

of all suffering

suspected

no more.

That I do not adhere to the principle I commandeer

as a way of dismantling 'the other';

that I was not shown (nor were they), no elder has known

the whited-grey of our volcanic wuthers.