familiar

rest you, demon--rest in me

and curl your claws in my muscles

let fear lie gentle in my veins

--I have heard you rustling

in the bushes

I have seen your ambling

shadow

amble with me

we go together, demon

--where the world is wild

we are walking

through hell

under the trees

stretch, lazy

and rest your fur

in my arms

for you, dim flashing eyes

and your loose-knit bones

I have made a place

of dust and shade

in me

you (ii)

if I never touch you--

still the air drawn

out of my lungs

folded on my tongue

and launched in your direction

is the cool breeze

gusting in the corridors

of my soul

and swirling in the corners

---

you, who bring me mountains

by proxy

who are the shape of the shadow

hanging deep

in the dusty arroyos

you--are the saving of myself

Do you suppose...

...I'm having a nervous breakdown? Because I... rather think I am.

---

silence
and also in your head
car
rumbles, in the empty street
must be the only thing living
when you fade
into
the bone
of your own skull
and your skull into the
trees
when you are skating
across the glass of you pupils

if you left
the desks and windows
of your days
would the sidewalks
become unfamiliar?

and once, below the windows
of the day--emancipated
I saw
a truth, felt it
blow over my skin

which is deadened now
and I see nothing but empty light

fairfax

--and no, you can't say,

even the trees escaped the winter unscathed

and my reflection hangs

shaggy and spindled

now, with the snow gone

the sun gleams on the peaks of my face, only

and no longer breaks itself on the ground

no more gleaming

--and I am not the man I used to be

with my jeans hanging in folds

what is to be done with returning sparrows?

what is to be done with the crocus

gnawing brightly at the dead leaves?

what--what

no, you place of lines

we slowly, in the cracked

mush of what you have torn

and ground and left for dead

at the margins

--each of us, pushes

each alone

--nah, the crocus can't walk

and the trees will flame and shake, again

but some of us--can rise for good

when the sky comes to the ground

again--

you--stiff where you lie

you will find, this pushing from the inside

by God--this blind pressure

will come to you also

and one step, ten thousand times

will grind you

back into dirt

... (xvi?)

raise this city, tonight

just now-- when the musky scent of day

still lingers, after she has left.

among the welter of lights

clogging the street

before the night comes to sunder things

from themselves,

and coyote's howl traces across the slopes

between the scattered lights-

before we must give the shadows their due

and let them eat out our legs for awhile.

spread across these streets, my friends

like the light on the clouds

and raise the sky up to the ground

flit

the sky as dark, and soft

as the down on the neck of a goose

and the wind the gentle

rustling of feathers

and as soft as the music

trickling through the door

and my thoughts too

flitting softly

across me

I was sitting

with the light drifting down

watching the mud on my boots

and fragments of you, all

lit, briefly, on the sill

next to me

wings twitching, and hopping

and rose lightly

gliding past the eaves

well you--you, all

clear skies to your passing

and may the night carry you softly

gap

and as always--

thirst returned sweetly

and I sipped a memory

inattentively

--lukewarm

it slipped across

the ache,

and fell away

--I am tired

only the thought

of heaviness

the pressure

of the nearby

--and the gap well-worn

to lean for once

and rest there