Samuel Ace

Standing at a desk of cranberries a small triumph of jumps I wait longer than the rescue of rains I send prayers to the terror walking north

I do a pantomime on the edge of the cliff overreacting to the sea and the creatures in back of the house if  you had just looked out I would have said this is my little resonance

The guile of parrots a carnival a killing a crusade the final 
pursuit either a panorama or a demon

The fan click refuses to stop or to cancel its insistence stubborn in the face of carnage the once famous once child fortunes the fifty days of posters all the field deaths all the cries of Jimmy! Caddie! Victor! Are you coming?

Today not to beard but to wear black today not to trace the creases on my face today caught in parts today to bicep toward justice but not to beard as if that were even a possibility even with lasers and goats an ocean of black dogs and boats searching for better swells a more favorable forecast a mast out of water I want what the pelican sees

An answer comes in the smell of woodsmoke as he passes by a personal note at the slope of his neck trials of bridges and the moon alongside Pont Marie I follow that smell with the O of sails and sorted shoes with brushes and the corners of candles a firm clap then the rubber stickiness of stones I follow the tremble with the white noise of busses and a can of coins surrounded by Joyce and daughter blind on a broken chair hearing cobbles

I'm just like you some dying some grief some scotch my final please unhooked from fire and earrings knees in the grass sinking into the sorted dirt my beach a tree pleading with the summer surf walking or chased a finned orange fish that sucks at my sleep a morning trail in lavender musk preacher mounds a human fever a corner room settled in blue plaid a pot of red bowls a curtain of frames a pitted eye a hill a chimney a pear

Where would these words be without a subject? little carvings of mosquitoes landing on my hands headaches digging an elision of craters a great empty blow of air that follows my feet the big lumber of my dog's no longer here his hair an excursion still fluttering on the tile slush and whispered breath where the naked man on the street washes his back with purple flowers

You keep saying boy like it's the belt that was used to tie you to the bed you keep saying bull like you were forced to fight you keep saying dragon as if courage had no sound you keep saying hair and crib like babies come out of shells

From button to button what spunky rope what cold claustrophobe what caravan of pack dogs what kink and rocky tunnels do I have to sliver through every exhausted moon batteries dwindling toward unnameable and permanent night my knees pray the floor will open to a new city

A door to my back the molding cheesy and rectal I run with the horses across the field the town wiped off the track and left behind you curl up at the back of my neck and we go bucking over the whole knot of trails the whole veiny land
...

How is it you bring me back to the cliffs the bright heads of eagles the vessels of grief in the soil? I dig for you with a gentle bit of lighter fluid and three miniature rakes burning only a single speck of dirt to touch a twig as tiny as a neuron or even smaller one magic synapse inside the terminus limbs of your breath

The fighter jets fly over the house every hour no sound but inside our hands I hear a far chime and I am cold a north wind and the grit of night first the murmur then the corpse first the paddling then the banquet first the muzzle then the hanging the plea first the break then the tap the tap I hear your skin the reach of your arms the slick along your thighs more floorboard than step first the flannel then the gag first the bells then the exhale

I hear a dog who is always in my death the breath of a mother who holds a gun a pillow in the shape of a heart first the planes then the criminal ponds first the ghost boats then the trains first the gates then the bargain a child formed from my fingertip and the eye of my grandmother's mother a child born at 90 the rise and rush of air a child who walks from the gas
...