The Sweet-Minded

The sweet minds are digging
for dirt
What is forgotten later—except by them, forgotten
What is refined is easily lost, what is real hard to find
Except to those sweet minds
Digging
for dirt

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femme Could Sing

and she could sing a song in another tongue, not knowing it but the way the words roll out to tune
hair like black oil with flakes of skin petal-like cloud-white and her nose bubbled with sweat in the day

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a Course

you a course through my mind like a river at times
and sometimes you lay like still waters
o i cannot but feel
as time turns its wheel
you are leading me
gently
t’ the slaughter

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Traced

Trace my bones with your fetid laughter trip over each instance each remembrance faster.
The distance between now and those pungent moments is a life unto itself. I’m spinning sinking swallowed in circles Grey curtains close on the recent that stick together run together bleed
but still
the wind sets the trees to dance
and
but still
the tree beats fruitlessly at the wind

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Dew-

Dew-tipped stalks, sky-contained orb, thickened, shimmers
a sky barred sentiment
Hades, invisible, shivers

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Startled

Startled love rapid
there was a time you left me momentless
now no longer does the memory of your fingers set my stomach to quiver

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O Eros Mimesis

O Eros erase this face
Mimesis to dull my memory

Wind tease these lofty pines
Set the stalks to dance
the leaves to shiver
branches to quake

O whirl my bare feet
Moaning water, dampen my locks, wash my lost feet
and lips pricked with poison words

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8 Center Knolls

There once was a man of white who was lord to sixteen houses slapped together all in a row.
His eyes scarred and shone like ice and his smile could freeze a flower.
Like a shadow he clung stickily to the walls of the basement of house number 8. 4 young women lived in that house. Once.
He liked the sight of them.
He stole their skins, snapping off photographs, shooting them slight glances behind his camera. He like the sight of those young women.
He sought to turn them into dolls.
Sometimes scratching could be heard behind the walls of house number 8. The 4 young women saw in their minds and old shriveled crone stuck behind the walls scratching her nails across plaster and wood and dust.
But it was no crone, just a squirrel, which died, and began to rot, and reek, and the attic filled with flies, descendants of the flies that feasted on the flesh of that squirrel who scratched the attic walls as it died.
There once was a fire in that attic and the ice man kissed one of the girls of house number 8.
Once there was a house with bricks like teeth and cracks through which the wind would whisper icy secrets in icy breath.

And out of the corners of rooms and walls the echoes of life could be heard.