Pluming smoke,   pupils like myrrh,  lavender eyes, sage skin, grenache lips,  a tongue of tannin with a gravel finish.  The record spins, the needle placed, it’s just now catching.   I’m laying on a beige carpet, bonded to it like velcro,  staring at the eggshell white, popcorn ceiling.  My body’s become a cauldron of amorphous fumes,  the

She came to me in the end of night  wearing the stems and leaves of a sword fern,  adorned in cockle shells, her hair sprinkling black sands,  her eyes like moons, her hands swaying and caressing   like the rolling mounds past dry gulch.  She came to me after as the birds started

The night is dark So dark you could catch the darkness in a bowl or catch water in a bowl at the bottom of an ocean The machine roars, a lonely rumble It cuts through the dark Disturbing the peace Here I am, controlling this metal beast My headlights barely

Life is the river your father drowned in When the tailings dike failed, Or his friend died in the mineshaft, Or some such thing that your mother won’t say. It is lunchtime in the house that smells of cigarettes and mildewed laundry and damp basement, ashes wafting from the polyolefin

Have you ever forced your own soundtrack over top of the TV news headphones in ears blocking out assault by political commentary making pundits move their lips in sync with the beat their arms waving, their eyes shouting, their mouths, futile. They are tragic figures of speech, Silenced.