The River Ordeal

There are no long black
robes, no gavel, no formal words;
your witnesses have stepped down.

Here, your rhetoric falls
on deaf ears, grown-up games can't
save us now - gods pinch our fates
between the fingers.

Cold rush of - deep breath -
Leviathan, water, (so I hope you
remember those summer swimming lessons
when we were young together, diving
for rings on the pool floor.)

If you're lucky, send your slaves, as many
as you can afford. recall:
their lives may cost us ours.

Mother, they can't train in classrooms
for this -
Justice was never meant to be dressed up
fed cocktails, a great pension.
I came to earth in a flood of water;
to the water, I must return.

Intimacy in time.

The walls shot up between us
like skyscrapers in the jungle
to violate our warmth;
and hostile - the spaces between us
grow.

Furious I'd let -
my hair down
(as though you
might be the sort to climb
up, and let me tell you stories
of all the dragons I've slayed.)

I've written this poem before:
this pen is the mast
of our sinking ship.
(If you look closely, you can see
me - wind ravaged in the crows nest.

If I look closely, I can see
your spirit wandering
the ocean floor,
finally free of your
rude and useless body.)

-------


If you put me on the stove with

1 tbs cinnamon
pinch nutmeg
1/2 tbs ginger
1/2 c orange peels

just turn up the heat. Let simmer.

Soon my sweetness will blossom,
I'll slip lovely into a mug
to keep you comfort while you watch
the wind;

or the house may burn down,
and we could then be seen
from space.

------


As far as I can tell, we were standing
still
but the spaces grew between us
and vast --

like looking at you through water
your knees blur at strange angles
like a mirage, we fell into some
vague story about people who only looked
like us.

I used to like us; I don't anymore.
now we look like inflated pool toys
bumping into each other
at random, awkwardly.

I have grown jumpy
and bored.

----

I lift you up, carry you to the
bed, gently lay you down.
I cradle you, I wonder if
you would leave me, if you could.

I'm glad it wasn't that way with us,
we started slow - no one-night-stands.
If I felt like you were using me
we just talked it through, You'd still sleep

next to me everynight. I love the way
we've learned to live together,
and even if you sometimes make a mess or
miss the litter box, I forgive you.

Aeneas

I know we just met, but
you make me feel needy
- the loneliness of my cat, humming
computer, the lack of roommates, all
louder because you don't,
you know,
text, sometimes.

It's not that we have nothing to say,
we exercise caution:
new friends, like slippery rocks -
and we try to be moderate, but

If you were a book, I'd read you all night,
miss my first class, climb
inside your vowels, find the climax -

and my library late-fees mounting.