Time After

post-rape dim space 

he’s asleep, if he stays asleep

you can escape

                             that eerie still-drugged

what’s-going-on chopped-up thinking

slide off the bed

                              dirty floor

feel for your clothes

tee shirt, jeans

tiptoe, twist the door knob

                                                more men

sleeping, tiptoe between them

out the front door

                                no clue

where you are

sidewalk, streetlight, street sign

bum a dime

                      dead of night

soles of your feet, goosebumped arms

stand close to the brick wall

                                                   wait

what seems an endless time

for the slow-down sound of

his two-stroke exhaust

                                          shaved head

full leathers, never absent

smell of mary jane

                                  he jackets

helmets, goggles, & shoes you

helps you climb on

grab hold

                  city streets to country roads

eyes-closed journey to time after

time before

Synapse

turquoise sea, sunlit shafts filter

through humpback waves, our limbs

boneless, wrestle, our torsos twine

your sex a minnow inside me probes

spasms, wanes, my nerves sympathize

fail to crystallize, flood like tide

toward what won’t be found, shiver

vs arrive, over & gone, sea’s blood

heat, sea fills the hollow, muffles

ache, afloat a something to stand on

makes no claim, sandfuls curl

the toes I rise from, salty glade  

schools of fish loose, like spears

fling from shade to speckled light

Blaze

where corn or grass becoming hay once grew

glass & metal planes         capture translate transmit

nettles around the compost heap

leap at bare knees         pixillate the rain

children grow invisible

go off to their own lives         ramify

Amtrak whistle         marks the time

chores done no plan a sine wave of idle 

rain the softest blanket, soothingest sound

drips less so         who knows what’s dripping

a car swims in a road         a carbon sink

unpave the state         let hay pull wagons

the earth we choose to degrade         shuffle beads

raise the stakes for bodies to rest on

Memory Loss

new scars block the paths to memory

marks of things I knew, pale streaks

in place of names, facts, words

a mention of Morocco lights up

a deep scar, image of a man in a cave

reduced to a bear, mutilated & degraded

by desert people deaf to his white-man’s

monied learnèd presumption of worth

how ably they cut out his tongue

collar him, needle him to dance

minutes pass before the author’s name

glimmers out from cerebral dark, as if crucial

yet it is, I prize him for creating a monster

deep inside me, speechless, whirling

Good vs True

she slips

               beside a canal

I trip

        on cellar stairs

we’re toppling through space

                                               Whoa

so this is what she means

my arm stops my fall

                                  spares the bones of my face

he catches her hand

                                  dislocates her shoulder, or

the weight of her body does

what matters most is the pain

                                                waiting

for the emt

a drug, a relocation

                                a splint

that trues the bone

I blame the stairs

                             some blame him

does anyone praise?

our goat-feet

                      are usually good

every step is true

Bent, or Bending

everyone I meet         don’t meet

hiking         I remember some things about them

silhouette         bandanna         calves         bike helmet

birds         the beaks of large birds

too foolish to sing         poets sing foolish

or         write nothing worth         while

long         view from front to back

green at both ends         double-digit August

ragweed         brown stalks         the chance of dahlias

make the chores         last all morning

dusk’s drifts         dragonflies         roads dim to dark

Friday’s footprint         would be enough