#adonisofdenver

1

  under a modest calliope

tap your feet, tap the sustain

that twinkles like gypsum

under the tightrope

  nowhere in this fabric

sun finds punctures

to tilt midday’s columns

of light on intimacies

gentle circus animal

has forgiven at what cost

  has learned to lift its head

  under your revered sole

before the plié, toe

and that swift song on

the banks of the low river

2

  do you know the words

we use to describe calls

of birds? the way a falcon

has so little cello in its swooping timbre

  symphony, sound together

in a bunched root lace

  thinning rhythms we

draped over civilization

since genesis condensed

on the sweating glass

  of all waters:

the slow rise and shift

of pickaxes sparking in mines

and, unlistenable, accumulations

  of last breaths. who will

record their entire life first?

if it is Piper, are we all Piper then

  is listening measured in possible

in college i learned that i do not get to decide if i belong. i have identities. i have competition,

internal and external. nature doesn’t want me anymore just like god. i take this as good, i am

unwanted and trash bagged. do not want me.  do not be dominated by anyone especially yourself

i would like to be drunk

and enamored with the vision

of you, high in any midnight street

and refraining, speaking one thing

that does not quiver as i let it loose.

  arrowheads pierce but they also weigh

the arrow shaft to projectile steady

until it is no longer thing but direction,

directive and intimate with gravity

like the turning of solar systems--

i regret

that life means the right arrangement

of vibrations and each click away

from the correct is a reminder

of death which is even more still

than silence.

  morning comes and my nerves down

either leg yelp wimper then go between

tense and release, hungover them my head

sinking down between my knees

my eyes trained on where

compacted trash column

in harbor light gleaming

topples, rotating mechanic

arm with excavating scoop

shoves it between brick outcroppings

of a dilapidated outpost of the empire.

  and here, it rests.

the sound of the ocean

receiving the rivers of America

in the hollowing of urban decays

where one could fathom the undoing

of the insurgence.

  if only Roman concrete

remained a great secret

to this day, lost in fires

and not draped over the continents

and their discontents and contents:

the squared off roots upending the stroller.

worn arrowheads. crude oil and fossils.

  the imprints of hands, garbage in the corners

and hollows in the layer of concrete

just under the topsoil

when we are finally

a constellation that looked like coins

shimmer around the comfy sun

someone’s tiny insects

and the first ray is a clean shaft

beaming from the mug of cumulonimbus

and i’m feeling a columbus

the equator of sun

lights on in the poets bedroom

fridge empty

sensitive necks

frame the sweet dilettante

trinity of mouths two divine and, man,

he could eclipse coasts

while the scatter misreads my color

and i retool the house with natural

light bulbs thinking of you

he and me and himself and you and

mixed texts with distress signals

going down. black box

drone sifting air. driftwoods getting cold.

i’m not an ocean on a tilted globe.

braille the mariana trench with

northstar comic books.  all this

Storming, left an umbrella to dry, or die

as the wind snapped its skeleton on the way.

Another white man in america

wishing he had three hands

passes by a football game

amidst the anthem’s playing.

along the edge of rivers, expressways,

and fences cities push together but men!--

men touch with gaps,   grasp gasps

of air caverns pectorum excavatorum

and flutter eyelids,     with zoning maps balled up

in palms cupped in suction; spit trails, popping out

of the acoustic skin and the percussive

slaps. slip, unstiffened splints drape the bandy legs

and the jut’n’heave of twink hips. quick to remove

the spent heads putting arms to sleep,

pushing bone into woozy flesh and headspins.

there is no puzzle with just two pieces.

and, if so, there is no pride in a solving.

pixel and parcel like ‘burbs jerrymandered, greed

and land grabs from the politics of shared sleep.