in the deep the heart of ice rain is sapphire

 

 the creek's pretence at resoluteness winter drizzle 

 congealed in a puddle discarded skies

 after-rain steam sweating off the weight of blindness

 

 mewling tinnitus a poem once

 

 your nose a shark looking towards saturn 

 sometimes strong giraffe eyes

 stare a condition of the eye that belies the soul’s long rains

 

  

skimming bridge waters a collared cloud

 fault in a tourniquet an inundation

 

 sunk in darkness words long dead in the telling

 

 following instructions we make ears for wasps

 listen the unraveled whimpers from an ingrown silence coiled in a diary 

 wakened to drips on her brush blue water coating sheep bells

 the cosmos flowers like it or not  even in cracked persimmon suns

 

  

just caught a soft glimmer from a  foot-stabbed sun dial in the dark 

 his arrhythmic heart
on a treadle…
does the weaver know?

 until the air comes clear again flat in the layered stillness

 

 long day in the rose bush another finger bleeds 

  

on a curb dog burying trampled flowers shrinking soil 

 through a wave of hearts the pineapple emoji

 fresh shave you become a good heron

 mermaids the fingerprints of fiddles

 overheard fish eyes drip with sunset fears

  lined up for a drink the tyranny of loose fingers

 he pries open a wind-blown gift box of despair

 the sound of birds bathing two miles from china

they taught me to count and cough and mock the larch trees for hoping

 trying on old lies a verb shifts into a noun

 precautionary note lily pollens stick to words 

 floating up the neon flood a school of eyes

 deeper than an ocean roar a dry cough

 

 wind thumbing the alphabet the tall and short of clouds 

 

 strapped to a lamp post skin moulting unlabeled

 

 

 whale clouds crossing the night bridge for breath

 

 no one addresses darkness with due respect 

 

 stirring the eye of a hurricane in her matcha

 

 

 storm wind a pregnant silence heaves

 

 he pries open a wind-blown empty gift box despair in the time of the COVID-19

 

should fingers born elastic be of man whose dreams belie a hand?

the book tells me twist your curls in spirals to heaven 

boat-like no matter his foot marks melt the mud

the next page a loon  known to me

vacuumed silence a tundra

insomnia the creek talks in stitches

 words/all have sneaked  away into the darkness 

assignation  a congregation of Spanish moss has taken over

where to find rain that I may wash bitterness off my chest

stare a condition of the eye that belies the soul's long rains

the shifting light presupposes I’m on terra firme

the sea in my ear washing to shore a bridge skips sunset 

screams draw the night moaning as if torture is ecstasy 

insomnia pitched voices stalking shadows

mid-orbit a daisy chain snaps into screams

in The Big Book of Snow 113 words for blackbird

more and more the eye of me not me leaf-shadows carousing mindless

when someone leaves before dawn a cotton-y sky all I see

so why not swivel the mind seated in the brain unsaid of elephants

and what you have to become stone or rice

hoodlum clouds across her face a rough pie cut

over humps can't look away from his Adam's apple

furious wind
 losing the magic word

the blue nail polish I borrowed turned me into a planet

limber souls adept in worship a broken neck

pushing out to sea a solitary eye 

I water a black rose shedding petals on a brush

march of words scatter a cataract vision of history on squared jaws

in the rook of a sagging love seat where you're curled up totally insane is a crime

watch the step snail

and from the glyph that became the cipher 3 the waves in the wheat was made

the sun growing big with the stench of unwashed mouths

frog thinking: croak now or be a pond forever

banging against the wall an empty head wind

naming raindrops between (possible) world wars

The itching in the left thumb. You. The rain machine.

either with a telephone or with another human being

i think he's dead the wind on an hermit crab

on a marionette’s cheeks a finger-stream

thunderstorm relentless on our faces

in my orbit a rumor mongering spring

in a sentence hump back whale

no springs no spine only limp arms paper moon

 

imprisoned by air stale paradise

walled-in darkness a somersault of anvil clouds 

as if the sky does not cause clouds to mutate into white mice

hatched ‘tween barbs sobbing eye-less tears doll heads  

nodding lily stalk the pastor to his empty church 

we do not bleed like nightingales when felled singing

floating up the moss-rimmed pool a school of broken words

shirred wind, why do you make of shadows an abstract of fear ?

feeling lame with the moon I clip the cat's claws

nostalgia: this pining thought sealed-in tight until an unseen hurricane of notes lances through and out bursts a geyser wrecking the stillness… 

in the wind the yelping shreds buds of the arbol de fuego (found haiku in 'the whelp', an unpublished free verse)

wind-serenade gracing the stillness a dumpster

micron droplets of lifelessness behold your last breath

brewing her own dreams a pronoun with clipped verbs

transplanted in me as if decreed the sun’s many eyes

stone fences the quiet courtship of evening rain

rip in the eaves the receding hours

when even clouds cannot speak of heights what can draw water from the well

floating up the gurgling pool a school of broken words

peeping moon she lifts the cover off the mulch bed

a lodestar where we belong is not among swans

droplets on bent daffodils could be tears

what's left of the mist paper roses

shuffled distance between my feet and tomorrow the finale

screams pierce the dusk masked ghosts

this morning a lot of people have facial birthmarks

unbecoming of a moon dried up inkwell

afraid of the virus birch trees

low octave staccato ti possibly a scavenger

with padded hooves he prowls a bottomless void the unfinished poem

long after their shared umbrella COVID-19

dingy in the movie sinking upholstery

sundown haze free format driftwood wedged between secrets

Oh my, it's 2:02 am...wrong diagnosis

gull’s shadow playing on a precipice our eyes tilted on billows

feeding 10 swords to the virus

green again the gills of a shallow well

there are freckles and there is staring at panthers

what of finger slats on rationed moon-nights the flight no other way but upside down

sun blast singeing cherry petals left for the spring wind

half cracked walnut waiting for the promised century

you turn into a tiger but it is sunday and there are no giraffes because it is sunday and you eat a cabbage instead

married in cement time’s hero

shadow patterns in the pool a shivering sky

in rousseau's drinking he fights a kaleidoscope and loses but buys drinks and it's ok

why muffled caws rise over sewn lips coronavirus

keening silence the edge of a word unbuttoned 

you send him the frog emoji

to make room for a virus she locks herself in a room full of guitars

i hate everything rains at the window

goose and i half light

---After MM

Gardeners are the luckiest people alive, says the meme.

early spring for recycling...a crying doll

nowhere to pine for you grey hills

... to trade in my thin shadow for your flight sparrow

tongue duel slowly the dishes recede

walking a mountain bike how ridged the other side

poetic justice a swirl of verses persists in the alphabet soup

spring twilight it’s always the mourning dove

wind-pause a liquid sky leaks excess wisdom 

minä kampaan minun hiukset virtahevolla

tinnitus too much said of phantom gripes un-flushed from cabbage brains

yawning garbage bin as if sleep falls from skies

my toenails sanded grey a burst of raspy breaths

the cold hits them hardest this thing called silk

seinalla kasvaa hevonen

edge of sky I step into a republic of flat notes

screech in a pitted clam shell still the wrong cause

becoming rain a dinosaur

condensed emptiness dripping on lichen a keening darkness

enteric coated absinthe moon

grey stillness a weight in volumes roots me in fog

branching out the space between stars

excruciating how she belts from a cistern a gate flung from ear lobe to ear lobe

somehow it's frail the silence between breaks of sun and a blizzard

at the bottom of the river not smelling lilacs a boulder

I wonder what gets children into cages…is it our dark eyes?

we do not bleed like nightingales when felled singing

until when is your side under the moulting birch empty, Orion?

could be black and white, and any hue from there and what they mean at the back of a mirror

malignant eyes no other soul

twisted ankle late for a bulb implant

cankered sides the cypress hedge since long ago

wind-shaken spruce what they forgot to replace

proposal the lint in my collaris alive

the waning moon a pregnant sea 

where I do (not) exist depression suite

after the child’s dog dies a man appears holding a rubber replica

depressed all month you feed an algorithm

buffalos not being all that you become a death poem

on the tv show about knives knives

you are only half of what you think you are and the other half is potato salad

snowfall the sound of your wife’s name

gurney straps deny a rose its thorns

incense ashes so politely lavender

time becomes a snot-nosed question

with milk you draw a picture of the ocean in your inner ear