Accost the moon as it scuds
across the fields.
Brake hard
against the surf.
Chain the bike to the back gate, then
come in and take off your shoes.
Don’t wake the sleeping parakeet
swinging in its cage.
Every other object in the room
conceals a flaw.
Find each, and you shall have
succeeded where no one else has.
Gongs sound
a muffled music;
heard through burlap
thicknesses of air,
it’s no longer obvious
they’re brass with jawbone handles.
Joss sticks in the alcove
sweeten the air.
Kindness, they remind,
is all.
Long as
the days might be,
memory is
longer by far.
Nothing goes unpunished; not
even the skin around a callus;
oversight is merely time’s way
of staging an intermission.
Pillow books catch
the days’ unsaid intentions,
questions that we’ll mull over
in the afterward.
Rouged by heat, I like when our
foreheads touch lightly after love.
Stay with me and pretend
ours is a house on stilts anchored
to water. We’ll watch
the colors change,
undo their drafts,
revise what came before.
Voyage is a noun
or verb;
what is the grammar
of the states between the two?
Exactitude is not possible;
I’ve heard it said we
yearn because we’re born
into a chain of misunderstandings:
zoetropes flash brightly lit
illusions of static pictures moving.
In response to Via Negativa: Insomniac's to-do list.