Mother

Fern frond
_____curls under.
Wood louse
_____inches down.
Droplets
_____stop -- splash

granite-flecked cement
framing shadows

_____firmament's
reflection:

North side of the house.

Nigliktok

_____Floes grow out
crooked
__________chrome-blue

_____skeins of hair
crone
__________color of ash

_____prone at
world's end.
__________To pretend

_____heaven shall be
more of the same
__________is our faith.

_____The snow this night
is underscored
__________bright, razor-shadowed.

_____It falls in soft
white swirls.
__________Feeble

_____hurricane
of midges
__________circles the Coleman light.

He's All Mouth and Cock

Wielding his tongue, a poison blade
He threw his eyes at them
grenades, flayed them with his soul.

_____Not the best way to fight --

Trunks support canopy:
such is the natural
order of things.

______Whence now this monstrous

fog, gray-white, cold?
Its wisps curl everywhere.

______It hangs on shaded air.

Lights hover among leaves,
dip and rise as though

_____to evade the eye.

There is that smell
the wet stench of rot.

A heavy chain grinds
across the parking lot.
Who drags it?

_____Someone
__________breathes.

Launch

Summer sky,
__________nighttime
_____glow green

from without.
__________Stars shine
_____five points

on each, like those
__________teacher
_____glued to

papers you wrote.
__________Cursive
_____still new

to you.  Remember that she
__________forbade
_____ink pens.

The air's close warmth
__________shriven,
_____naked.

Outer space stripped our souls
__________too small
_____to know.

To pierce the veil, sail
__________up -- smoke
_____broken

and nothing's
__________ever
_____the same.

Playground

_____I walk Folsom Street
just because it's there.

Start down Sixth
_____mural all norteño, slick

with reds, greens
whites from Blick.

_____My eyes lick color
like lovers -- her legs

flanked either side by two pair hairier
_____wound 'round.

Turn the corner, sounds
cars make -- squeak.

_____Through the gate
bisect the wet grass.

Marshy underfoot.
_____I am alone, my

kingdom is silence.
I arrive at a yellow broom

_____citrus scent.
Then beyond, past

the bookstore:
_____old men stick it in

each other -- very chic.
Run with the sun.

_____Review the list:
the few things you left yourself.

Old dogs bark;
_____they nip our feet.

Retirement

It won't rain
rest
_____of the day
a break.
_____Maybe night.

That smell is malign.

_____No opiates?
They make you sick?
Perhaps cannabis -- it's nice.

_____We're all
hopheads in the end.

_____Adrienne Rich
down the hall.

Past the old man
_____who falls
down.

Apollo

He steps
_____off
Helios's bright yellow cab
_____up
a curb, lightly burned.

A tan
_____scarred
only inside
_____heart
or as the Chinese say

liver.

Hera and Ares

__________Echoes of faces lost in time

baffled and kind
attenuated, spread
atom-thin across

__________years.

Have you met the young sergeant?
Detective before long.
Mark my word.

__________Tears

he cried as a red-haired child
at the side of a dirt-brown
wound shame him yet:

__________men's

frailties women
know to shelter, whereas I
have been Loki, better

__________than

most at tending the fuchsia
the maidenhair fern
but am merciless

__________when

_____thorns draw blood, black-red.