Greenwood Cemetery

In the Backyard

Up in the trees
the birds talk to each other
all day long.

****

The airplane roaring overhead:
What bird does the Sparrow
think is singing?

****

Birds chase their hearts
through the sky.

The man's heart paces
back and forth
through the cage of his ribs.

A Laughter

I digress. A laughter. Your laughter
unlike any other.
Let’s go on a lovely digression together.

When I see a sentence I like
and when I see a beautiful girl
it’s the same thing.

Your beauty is the best lie there is.

And when you call, you activate the beat
of my heart. Every text is a little defibrillator.



I have no idea what they mean
but they mean everything to me:
The indecipherable smile and eyes you have.
I fall into them
I fall into them
and am never caught.

Closed Circuit Reruns

Each trying to think of something
to say to the other,
the camera stares at
the television
repeating
the sight of itself
in empty shrinking
screens vanishing
into a distance
that is
not even
flat.

Fragment (from a Spring a few years back)

I want to see how long
her hair has grown.

When I kissed her
she grabbed her face
and went, "Shit. Fuck. Shit."

The flowers she gave me
are in an empty wine bottle
still dead and beautiful.

Short Film

FADE IN:
EXT. HEAVEN - DAY.

GOD, white, flowing, hungover as fuck, rolls out of bed. He gets up and pisses over the edge of a cloud. He farts.

EXT. EARTH - DAY.

Thunder. Rain.

A MAN curses up at the sky and pulls out an umbrella.

FADE OUT.

Watching a Movie In Bed In New York

Watching a movie in bed in New York,
I think I recognize the green soy fields of Ohio.
My eyes, trained one year
in the angular
graphite of street and skyscraper,
are struck by the wild green.

I look past the faces of the farmers,
the deep wells of fear in their eyes,
wanting only to see the grass and oak,
the green I can hardly believe,
the smooth yellow fields,
the occasional patches of shady trees,
the long gray roads and heavy blue skies.

I want to lie down in those fields,
I want to drive those gray roads.
The wide green seems a good bed
but there the garter snake lies.