jayivan

Lay beneath the redbuds, overflowered and starting to leaf;
Breathe in the long shadows fingering your feet;
Gaze up high;
Exhale a torquoise sky;
Spirit in me, you are a lie.

I want to get small
enough to crawl inside an
abstraction and hush.

I may be an oyster, but a handsome oyster am I,
Awash in the salty filth, filtering bliss, egoless.

brooklyn meat beater
bastards baste the bar in beers
slipped out mouths agape

I hate this. I hate
This. I hate this—this thing I hate:
when I can’t cant create.

acid frequencies
like sodium embers shine:
a dense pink joy

We are soft, too soft
for today’s pornography:
we shrink when we shine.

Forehead pressed against
the glass of a bay window,
his drooling lips stare.

My arms flex tight
To impress this strength, this bulk
Against
Into
Your body.
I hold my chest wide and loose
To encompass your exhausted and wet frame
Within
Without
My body,
Wet and exhausted
Dissipating
Into the lonesome misty skies
Gathering storm clouds in the mountains high.

His face, a hastily
built treehouse in a woody suburb,
beckons me up

the rickety ladder,
toward his plywood smile
And rusty fingers.

All you want for me:
Just to be happy, simply,
Like a morning smile.

This world would shadows
Be without the cast of you
And me, certainly.

Not what you had in
Mind, this thing, you find in days
Unstrung

I dropped my poem
While walking, not even rush
ing– careless me.

I’ve driven this road
Staring at the mountain crest
In which I see his

Ghost chasing wild dogs
Farther than my eyes can see
Along the twisted ridge

Beneath the cedar
Trees and radio towers
Beams, gunned-down ghost

Still there, still still there:
The red seeping knotted roots;
The smoking limbs; me

Driving in a car and standing on that cliff,
He’s watching me in death complicit.

Outside the temple
This body craving, inside
Bodies craving This.

The fast is a death,
A walk into the desert
In the morning light.

Go to that dark place
And linger.

Lying stone naked
On a boulder by the sea:
Sweat distorted clouds roam free.

Sidewalk skipping, cig
arette flipping, laughable
leering, smile-fearing.

The thought came unlodged

Slipped to the
edge

Teetered and

Sweaty men waiting

on the platform, eyes heavy

hearts sunk, fleeting, wise.