delicate emissions

Inside doubt as you might burnish a shove. 

To reframe, most modest scaffolding. Blood slows the feet. The green was not green was 

not red. Was not yellow. See, looking. This cool shadow of trees. Confessed, prehistoric. 

Hope is a thing. As time passes. Challenged. Breath held, long enough. Chords, scorched. 

Earth. Featherless, sapling. To reside is not probable. Best, into openness. Grammar, uncut. 

This restricted, compliance. You too could be occupied. 

, though your thoughts will not recline. 

Nascent. The same opposite, seen. How slowly, divine. Do I draw water. Out loud, like 

tennis. Trellis. The whole of poetry. So that what follows, precedes. A perspective, pantone. 

After a while. To lead, to perplexity. Follow. Newtonian laws. No greater complaint. What 

colour, is this. Is this year. This symptom of skin. Unravels. A boatload, of speech. The good 

night of my chill. 

mud, regardless. 

To watch the slow fuse. Stove display, flash. Interrupted. A kind of moon. We yield empty 

buckets. Mottled, sensory. The tides narrow, rise. Smoke floats, grey. In the English manner.

This tightrope, unfolds. This side of panic. Interlaced, underlined. Underscored. A 

torchlight, halved. In a curious manner. Recalcitrant, divine. To mend. Settling into, refusal.

Unstructured. The sky furrowed, distant. 

 Build an altar   

 Burn it   

 Watch Anaconda   

 death squads   

 When I was twenty-one, I lived in a run-down trailer 

 in a trashy park on the wrong side of town. 

 It was a constant juggle of the power bill 

 or water 

 or cheap takeout. 

 The job paid minimum wage 

 when the boss paid at all. 

 Friends came over anyway. 

 We played board games by candlelight. 

 The wax pooled on the table. 

 Someone kept score on the back of a receipt. 

 No one asked about the television. 

 No one left early. 

 Hazy azul, rouge and tangerine show 

 blood flow of my dysphoria, it’s alive 

 and bleeding. There’s this salmon shade 

 and I am flipping over, fried, thinking 

 about how my mouth does not open but 

 my mind shouts and I am with God if they 

 are out there; not your God, but my God. 

 This affirming, connective, pleasurable 

 endless energy; is this too contemplative? 

 I am here with you, cooling on the grill. 

 Evicting the first one was out of the question. 

 It was the coldest winter in over a decade— 

 the mouse would not survive out there. 

 With infinite indiscriminate compassion 

 I let the little thing share my home. 

 There was a second, a mousewife, and she bore him 

 sleek timorous sons and daughters like oats on a 

 bowing storehouse floor. The winter waned, mouse 

 begat mouse, and with every step I feel 

 one of them burst underfoot. 

 Behind a quiet shop on a cobbled lane, 

 An old clockmaker keeps a secret space, 

 Where gears lie sleeping after years of strain 

 And ivy climbs the walls with patient grace. 

 He plants bright hours in neat and silver rows, 

 Minute hands glint softly in the sun, 

 Pendulums sway where wild thyme grows, 

 And rusted springs lie dreaming one by one. 

 He waters time with copper cans at dawn, 

 Polishing each second till it gleams, 

 While pocket watches bloom upon the lawn 

 Like tiny moons escaped from careful dreams. 

 At dusk he winds the stars with steady art, 

 And night begins to tick within his heart.