Beneath a Sky the Color of Beach Concrete

At night the lamps and rugs of the vigil make the sound of waves along the keel and the steerage.
        The sea of the vigil, like Amélie’s breasts.
                                                                              ―Rimbaud

The tide shifts
                              & the mist
              fits snugly
                                                up against the cliff

& it stays that way until the wind picks up & the sky
hollows out

Sometimes you realize & start to feel heavy
which is shorthand for pale light dropping in from
what the ancients called “golden”

to exonerate the sacred pyramids & taco stands
like a trick you can do with an ordinary
deck of cards

like the decompression of atmospheric strata
                                                a tangle of white lace
              or the blonde indulgence that one might ask
of the sacrificial heart
                              & receive, perhaps, in reply
……………………………………………………
The way steep parables in the blood
assume the pitch of desire
                              to accelerate the moment
              that passes as a careless gesture

like a transparent tractor parked on a hill could
pull the landscape out from under you
in one grand sweeping flouish

candles lit & fluttering like rain in the trees

the smell of fever in the mud

I didn’t say “mercy” I said it was
a shame you never knew the difference

retreating to the pulmonary root
that rattles within a sigh

I keep assuming you know these things
so I don’t have to say them
              keep mistaking answers for questions
                                                collecting relics from a future
                              no one can remember
……………………………………………………
Something in immaculate day-glo tips the rooftop shoving the rain aside for a moment & setting the moon down on the ground like a machete on the red mud of the flood plain, she said, & I said, yes, certain emotions are like that.   Given your inherent darkness, its tumult & slant, to be held in your hands or whispered along the sand in a language only the tide speaks, combing tinsel strands of light in wave patterns etched on the cathedral glass you’ve got wedged into your heart.   Nothing touches the radiant indifference silhouetted on the pavement of your windswept desire, I guess, now that time breathes the mist of all those abandoned parking lots strung out along the coast like dark pearls shimmering beneath the stagger & warp of las palmas.
……………………………………………………
LIQUID DRĀNO
It’s as if a switch had been flipped on
& there is now a brain disease

the waves turning Japanese

& all that rain drawn up into the syringe
of twilight