Shadows on the wall
Noises down the hall
Life doesn’t frighten me at all

When I was young, I used to
Watch behind the curtains
As men walked up and down the street. Wino men, old

The night has been long,
The wound has been deep,
The pit has been dark,

Her arms semaphore fat triangles,
Pudgy hands bunched on layered hips
Where bones idle under years of fatback

One innocent spring
your voice meant to me
less than tires turning

When love is a shimmering curtain
Before a door of chance
That leads to a world in question

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon,

Your skin like dawn
Mine like musk
One paints the beginning

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s siz …
But when I start to tell them,

A last love,
proper in conclusion,
should snip the wings

Beloved,
In what other lives or lands
Have I known your lips

Soft grey ghosts crawl up my sleeve
to peer into my eyes
while I within deny their threats