TRAFFIC

don’t live in a port.
when you look
toward the quay and run
your eyes along your ship’s taut lines
you can’t help but
think of thieves
sticking their knives
in your business.

BERTH

You are a harbor of great girth—
I have laid my murmurous timbers
beside you; the warm
warped oak of the quay
is the sure flesh astride
my hull.

I have bucked
in bitter waters these long months
and sucked of foreign spice—
but the hot smell of your meats
yet stalks the mess.

The sirocco funnels me
toward you—I am implacable.
I have but
to charge across
this churlish air.

RIPE

You have striven
to lay me bare; bathed
your teeth in my rarest juice;

But I have placed my soul
in the pit—no matter how
deep you eat, it is a thing
you’ll never be able to swallow.

THE CHANGING FACE OF CONFLICT

It's been
such a hell of a long time
since I last surrendered.
You know
how lonely it gets.

She loved
my eyes
and what a nice guy
I was.
But I have got
good trenchments,
and howitzers
could not gut out
the deep fleshes
she hankered to worry.

When I saw her bodybag eyes, I laughed loud
and said wasn't this a pretty thing,
is this how you send a man away.
It didn't last and never does.

An experimental piece, though I shan't fault you if you can't spot the experimentation.

CARNASSIAL


Raw shriek—
the owl
next door. He wakes
me every night, the
sound of his billowed chest
and the swollen smell
of his claws.

I don’t listen much, not
to his husky eye
rubbing hard against
the moon—she answers,
her white belly
trembles like eggshells
and she succumbs.

It doesn’t concern me so
I don’t listen much, instead
I devour the book in my lap, ignoring
his bully romp
in her soft craters,
the page unread.

TRIANGLE

My civil suit I have shed, and
this evening I would be clothed in you;
The long hallway’s throb envelops me,

I am enervate with anticipation darling: I spring
from behind the cherrywood jamb—but here is someone else-
he is red, engirthed, breath-flogged. And you,

to think that you could find such
succour under barbarian flames, you
who have sheltered in the lee of my flesh.