My cardboard dream has
been slashed by the hideous
boxcutter in the corner,
the one with the flesh handle.

Why do I describe my enemy
when you are blind as the
sweet pink Saturday?
It is the white Sunday who sees,
and he says nothing,
sends refrigerated love.

My enemy rents a room in
my house, unevictable
though he even looks as though
his name should be going, going, gone.
He pays me in paint chips left
on a palette I cannot control.
It is lead paint to go with my
old hats,
but the textures and colors
are gorgeous nonetheless.

In the forlorn lake
my fish swims among the
deceitful bait.
Where fathers roam,
millennium meat
on the line.
The river speaks to man,
offers a challenge.
The inescapable mountain
pushes all of us toward the edge
of a precipitous end.

May my tongue be holy,

And my will be broken.

Fields shy away from me.

The city has offers me up,

Unwanted.

In my other language my dream

Is disturbing

the barbed wire fence beyond,

So many cutters cutting cutely.

My soul struggles

In scorching liquid glass.

His thumb print is the moon.

In His blessings,

designs of snow,

promises rare and sweet.

In life’s waiting room,
a harpy mute.
Pain is creeping somewhere,
the birth of all things.
In a chair, an old woman
suckling a doe.
Tonight she will wring its neck,
leave the meat to rot.

Quivering in the cold carpet,
a cigarette painting her image
in ash.