When the world opens,
what steps forward to meet it?
We are given these bodies
to move through
their brief appointments.

Let your hands learn the weight of things,
let sweetness stay in your mouth,
and let bitterness, too,
have its hour.

Look how the day gives itself away
and how the old one haunts the new
with a deeper blue than you expected,
nothing gets saved for later.

The heart lifts its face
to whatever light remains,
ordained to open and never close,
and love says to it,
oh please, make me a way
through your beautiful vaulted bones,
like how we’ll beg a band of angels
to let us into heaven.

Look and look again,
look closer now.

I’ll always be here parked
by the river  
so cold, so fresh and awake
I don’t need a pass, 
no living thing asks
permission to want
what keeps it alive.

Now that you see me
stand where you are 
it’s already too late,

to be somewhere else.

   

There are directions to go in
that have never existed
in the endless tunnel of this dream
a blood moon rows up the night
melting the breath it touches
curious atoms stripped to
demons in the warm light
spread like buckshot across
the far sky between your hands
butterlfy loop constrictor my body
glows white at the edges
evenings come loose jungle
winds blow sweet and passionflowers
with their wild tendrils bloom thick
above dark shapes spun out soft
beyond the bend of my body  
and against your sliding skin
my bones blur and split to light.

       

When you showed me Brooklyn Bridge
    in the morning,
      Ah god,
      light all around you
you raised your eyes and looked at me sharp
“I have visions all the time”

       people rushing to work
       from their nice homes
       clutching their coffees
       nice homes but renting
        anyway

there go the birds
    carte blanche
        nothing can hold you
          dues are paid
      they’ll have to find you
      where they find you

    Mexico City
      turning down
           a whole lot of blow
    too young when your mom
     found you
       on the bathroom floor
    how you told me, so earnest
       and I couldn’t sleep for weeks.

Mad and gifted
    baring your paintings to heaven
        holding the light, the light

drawing me closer, closer
to your chest that scented heaven
    good god,
        like all of heaven
that’s when I taught you tears
    that morning on the bridge
        nobody else
          knew you cried.