I cursed the sun
for coming back
without your shadow
and all the answers
as to why mine shifts
alone

over hours of desolate pondering 
in frozen root-rot 
and composts of unattainable dreams  
the ice melts  
while breath quickens  
and for a shudder, 
fulfillment strikes  

He blames his chosen trade, his aways, 
He also blames his wife for not fusing  
him into Riley’s memory 
and heart, no matter how many pictures 
he texts to share with his girl. 

she's radiating ecstasy and we are riveted by her
grace and pure comfort in the spotlight so bright (just yesterday I was running behind her bike
without training wheels, to keep her from falling), this complex artistry of removing  garments
while balancing on the platforms she commands with military precision

the dry-humored sky refuses to respect 
the plasma of my pain. it smirks up its 
sleeve at the leaks oozing from fresh  
                 wounds, unwrapping a hot, 
                 plastic sun to queer the lymph. 
“they’re only paper cuts,” it sneers 

I’ve seen my portrait in a broken mirror, a clock spun backwards, a life lost.
With defeat I learn the most valiant thing a man can be is dead.
The value of existence accrued in stillness.

I’ve suffered a few whacks. The doctors call them strokes. But I remain committed to my lifelong poem and celebrate the final edition that supersedes all. Truth be, I’d much rather have a mud bath followed by an immersion in a cold spring. That is my ease.

no anyone can buy shoes, I said,  

but what then,  

and all I could see were her fractured blue eyes 
of our childhood,  

Eight o’clock, she says. Before I can
put away the sickle, Mother phones the
principal to say I’m assisting her.

I forgive you for before, your fury  

spilled into me like a firefighter's hose 
thrashing at danger. Now streetlights  

drift past your sadness driving us  
home.

Does it contain names, plans  
for a government overthrow  
from some clandestine leader  
unkempt and wild-eyed?  
Photos from inside the Pentagon?  

One day I invited her home after school. My mother bought cookies. Her parents didn’t want her to go, but she came anyway. We were happy walking home as I told her about my games and chemistry set, but when we got to our apartment my mother sent Grace home. I didn’t understand.

I am hard, I know, 
as a beetle-black sedan 
rolling away from my own funeral 
with well-wishes intact. 

Hand-solo that hard on, a horn dog. 
I am a wet dream, I am the WAP, I am the warning, I am a Sex-Jedi,  
jukeboxing your mind, I’m Doja Cat, random erections for that extra 
kick, IYKYK, a kosher knob slobbing, corn on the cob, gawk 3000. 

and before
when you kissed me

you tasted
like cryptic cocktail, before

more shelling.

Vacant canvases shape artists, too. 
But I don’t just belong on top— 

Put me inside your finest frame.  

How I’d toss them back in grubby fistfuls, between chokes on the juice, as honied explosions—sour and sweet—took me to Heaven and back then ‘round, again, while she looked out the screen door, tossing hair from her eyes—cup of black coffee in one hand, cigarette in the other—staring at my father working in the field, beyond. 

like that flat black bumper sticker–
I saw on the hearse while I drove in reverse
through the Goodwill parking lot–read in glossy black writing–BUMPER STICKER.
this poem says it over and over
and over

like the workman walking under
a ladder leaned against the church

you can only think so long until the chatter comes forth

the tale of us always a quick disappearance,
incalculable shrugs, CCTV footage
skipping, never in the proper sequence—
our plot, allegedly a goodbye without history—