Carrying gardens on your back

Determined to enjoy the chaos that upturns us, or
to leave it all behind, or cut
the thread evenly.

A real treatise on vagrancy, if heaven is too far
to imagine.

Existing as perpetual matter.
Bones, hammer, oxidized linen, bound up and lit
as an olive grove.

What wisdom can be afforded on days that allow
a certain cut of meat.


January 2022

Breathing in the molten weight

I am indistinguishable from my nightmares 
An impatient group of cells claiming arson, or the familiar  
Hands squeezing at the borders. 

Every inch of nail, discarded lengths of knotted ropes that keep 
The sun from strangling itself. 
A haze covers all light as it travels 
Into this chaotic atmosphere, one granted momentarily 
A mist that is ever heavy and carries us along. 
Our eyes, just spectators lately, we are 
bound to cross and dot 
Our relevant exculpatory statements.  


May 2022

The Time of the Hanged Man 

To gather tension or, as an object with curved sides 
lay at the edge of a steep hill 
Wait submerged in thick syrupy light. 

To wonder, embracing the form as it appears to climb  
Below the ocean, a shining modified eye.  
A ritual of setting stones in place, burning 
desire, and a melancholic deviation toward leaving 

ashes 
dutifully stepped on. 

April 2021

Demonology in the undergrowth

An accident keeps us coming back to the garden 
under a rain of fungal spores
 
scaly lichens allow the sun 
to bathe them as they rush 
to disintegrate mineral longings

The undergrowth claims a rebellious stance 
as we spread like mycelium,
burying sentiment in decayed leaf-litter 

We beat the sun with heavy fists 
and there are only harsh consequences
to dragging particles 
of light to feed the parasite