SPARROWS ON EACH SIDE SLIDING

My moratory body, gives me a moment of loved
disintegration, sparrows are on the bush
to the left of my floating ribcage
parkbench burns beneath me
I'll never get up in time,
the sparrows are holding
thin branches between
their twig feet fingers--

they shame me obscurely; not to be one
with their twitchy midst, but in not
watching closely enough--
I have erred, black tires
on black ice; and a floppy carrot
through my sadding heart, soft rot body

Their bodies of leaves,
atomic intricate,
flutter other bodies out of shape.

Antennaes buried deep
in each grave small forehead
down toward the nostrils of the beak.
Their eyes and bodies moving sweetly
separately. Their brown eyes
in bodies, moving sweetly separately.

Their brown eyes in brown bodies,
chests downy of white
atop the heavy-scented
hedges of low pine brush,
hung on a puff of exhaust

and not on the hope
of a human breath

OF THE EMERGENCY ROOM DOOR.

Girl-bone, born in small barns,
from a skeleton-leaf wood,
trailing a cape of bloodied feathers,
coming toward, me with my pork-chop mouth,
carrying a distraction of flowers.

Girl in ladyslippers, toting a computer
briefcase that quacks like a duck.
My mischief of little remedies,
my last great love before dying,
no matter what years it takes
my sad body to kill me.

A milk-yoke in a plastic forest,
an apple cored and thrown
among the ferns,
carrying all your old hurts,
a brave little lady.

I want to get out of my body
and cloak you with a hood
of anti-matter. I'd like
to find something to feed you with
that comes before and after time.
Take my body, though it's not enough;
protect the work of my hands,
though the world iced it.

Make my plot of land a tigerspawn of brushfires.
My will and testament a litany of fly droppings.
My marriage a union of broken ice-springs
in a moss cathedral.
And my birthright a trumpet the factory
never cranked out.
Time pulls its garters up its untimely legs
and gathers its hurts into the grocery store.
Time gathered is a studio built in a vault
of withering stars.
Time gathered is you like a microphone
next to my throat.

Make my pores the wreckage-pits
of other's smallest bones,
without much left to break, canyon kisses,
jellyfish deaths
far in all we never know.

French kiss in a river of neon
subway tongues dirty as two pigeons
belts tense with hands in the hooks
feet twisted by movements of strangers

if we don't get each other out of
here, our eyes will drown
to death in each other
beneath the climate-control
canopies, dear.

Someone tripped over a dollar
& into a feather cut. No more
mating plumage.

We shut her in a soft room. She ate the walls.
We put her in a tall bottle. She stayed
until a tadpole grew as her tongue
then squeezed a pregnant belly outward
until the glass showered.
Her tears sprayed antique walls.
She thought she could see the scales
on every scale of a leaving snake.
We shut her up in a strong room.
She thought concrete into soil
and departed through the earth.
He hides his mouth in a deeper cavern,
letting her walk over the linoleum array
of his many teeth.

from an oily mouth comes
a clean flood of tongue
a ship's floor full of standing daggers
and the eyes of a child
on the tonsil that turns into a snakehead
blossom sadly
then a road of deer-trampled snow
and a girl in reptilian coat
who says: these powerlines
are serpents leading you home
follow them to a hearth
or leave their squeeze before fire
for a desert highway
where you will lie down
your weathered skull crack
fragile tar
man's crust which is cracking
man's crust from under which
a vast skin is resurfacing

We run barefoot on a globe of needlecarpet
trying to call each other's names,
not knowing the names. Two throats
open to the air. Two bodies run
for more breath, thinking that their rush
will fill them with enough to call
across the planet's prickly miles.

This is twilight activity;
in the noons & nights we build
chain-link fences in many places,
hoping that a friendly playground
or neighborhood will erupt
where we can reside between the rattles
in metallic breezes.

We run barefoot to a shoestore
that closed decades ago, trying
to buy something that will move us
faster on our heels towards
the beginnings of us together.
Our lives move at the pace
of the cash register's pleasureless
pleasure, then run
with the rhythm of blood.