FROM The Last Great Adventure Is You

How Borges felt about hexagons

is how I blꚙdfell horses. Though they are lost

the moment I begin to skun

them, I could never ask for another

kind of music. The horses I choose

never listen to the horses I’ve become,

& just when I get close, all change direction.

& astronomically. 

& I’m trying to love a little

cruelly. & I'm trying. 

To love simply, but when I open myself,

the horses go mute & breathless. I roast their bones for supper, spill their blꚙd

as wine 

upon the heavens. Believe me, when I blꚙdfell myself

upon the bloody pulp of this page,

I've loved each & every & it was always real.

But the horses it has cost me, 

the grooves in my heart

this has sealed.

*

Let’s not skin a horse & wear it together.

Elsewhere I have to say no. Elsewhere I can't stand 

the magma plume of death::orse 

pooling us against 

each other—

Like moonhorsen awakened too early under the skin of the artic. 

Elsewhere there’s no more song of how far you'd go 

to covet & flay 

the :: wildUnplace ::

{of its AntiHorseSpace}—

Here you'd kiss the mezuzah & skin the horses from my breath.

Elsewhere I exhale the little graces & skun a home

just as fortune hunters arrive with first snow.

All we hear are weary horses within weary door.

To not skin will make us thin & mutinous

—& the horse is many & you 

won’t let me go, or leave

this elegy alone

& on the loose,

with bloody teeth 

& bloody hooves—

I'm no perfect moon, with perfect swell,

but polar gravity drunk on the spell

of purple mountains laurels—

Elsewhere a single raven is circles 

intertwining us both & you

inhale 

me 

as if your spoils

to impale & expose—

& all that's left to hear 

are bloody horses 

snared in bloodied year— 

:

:

Here you grace the mezuzah & lead horses 

away from my breath

Here you can't skin home 

without calling us

::Death::—   

  & I say no

to phantasm of farmstead :: longhouse :: box-bed

I’ll drink no more from wicked chalice

stolen straight from two-faced lips

nor hang 

map :: portrait :: parchments

to cover all the doors

broken in your head—

only for the sulfur clouds of Venus

where a single day is longer than its year 

would I give {this skin}

I'd endure the frozen side of Mercury 

& breathe the gas rings of Saturn

if it meant I could return to you

the kind of darkness in which nothing survives

until it skuns 

some new planet 

right here

in this solar system—

a cold 

{cold}  

distant no one 

has seen it

as you'd tell it

an army of bloody hooves skunning curious &

crimson

as if my death had never not risen

Wrestling Your Heart-Shaped Box for Weeks

No passionfruit stays intact for its own sake.

Perfect. Puckered. Thrown away. Or ends 

up in the humanlike hands 

of a raccoon the city has yet 

to catch. I will forgo how we got here. 

I won’t tell you how a social distance can stretch

since I should probably be dead. If honest about chances I did 

not have & those I’ve taken. Truth be said, I ate the passion

but the fruit got away. Because forces are known 

through their interactions. Because in making 

connections, I knew, going in, both of us 

were going to lose, anyway. 

These times make causal

an essence. How today “IRL”

is profane— if a city’s to chase 

a bandit with a net of frayed mesh 

& rusty grip— while we were sheltering {ⁱⁿ} -

over a screen—   I mean

I can’t not abbreviate the hyper- of this forced

reality. I’m trying. I’d like to get back 

to sitting on benches, sharing breath

-cheeked. Wind-skirted. Knee-to-knee. 

Chancing. I still mean the troubled grace of taking 

for granted. When alone & not thinking each moment

could be an uploaded view. Subscribers. Avatar. Revenue.

Not that you & I are part of this,

but just as guilty. & a guess

via algorithms.   It’s cost us

warmth & concern to connect. 

It’s gone on longer than this        

pandemic. It’s how we stay 

intact & near- strangers, 

how ⁿᵃⁿᵒinfoᵐᵃᵗⁱᶜˢ has. {ˢᵗᵃʳᵗ﹗}Up 

& ᵗᵉˡᵉchanged. ᴹᶦⁿᵈˡᵉˢˢintegration

&. ᵐᶦᶜʳᵒDissemination. In the dark even my littlest 

deaths can’t help. Turn. 

Institutes &. Fabrications

of less-wild raccoons freeing 

a million kilowatt & impassioned

froots from locked & chained

garbage chutes.   I vow both the raccoon

& I have masks, & either could be the more

reliant, this is true,      I believe

they terrify me

& wake you, my neighbor, 

to walk with me. 

We don’t remember when it started.

How keeping six feet safe

increases yearning.  

It’s just it won’t do 

a “damnthing”  when we come upon 

their grizzly bottoms sticking

up, stalking for day-old

crust & magnetars & sweet gamma beginnings.

When they rise up, catch us        watching,

I know I’m so far

from everything, 

no matter the pull of a given

interaction. I keep my phone lost

at home, yet. Solitude

turns to sequencing. You’ve got a new 

complaint. Blocking these little. Beasts. 

Entrenched in a different. Forecasting. 

Efficiency. Expertise. Patent. Demands giving

chase to. The city spares. By accident these days. So runs 

rampant. True. False. Not applicable, isn’t it, doesn’t it seem ALL

{ᵈᵒᵒᵐ doom  ᵈᵒᵒᵐ}—

a new 

{kind of} 

:: ! 4D ! ::

ᴴʸᴾᴱᴿ⁻ᴵᴹᴾᴱᴺᴰᴵᴺᴳ⁻ᴴᴱᴿᴱgloom—

*

One of us wakes up. One more 

drenched. This bench in a humid 

garden stings. My head steams in 

your warm lap. Curl-stuck. Shirt split 

opening. Nose slightly exposed. Shaking. 

Muffled. You want to ask. We both know 

it’s too soon. Three 

passionfruit. One too many

is two for you & me, & the last 

for the raccoon

who’s known

to expose his face

in the middle of the day.

Not in one’s nature. Not anymore. I’m trying 

not to hearsay. But the situation. When you soothe 

you follow me on social

& caught so many perfect flat-lays

of bisected mangosteen & guava cleaved

exposing seed on the cleanest    cutting 

in wood & mist   while on your way 

to temporary hawkers

beneath our train

  & what are seasons anymore & patience & half

-running       a single hope      I’d still be here

at the end of some rope—       ᴵᴿᴸ—             

I'm trying to tell you. I’m not sorry 

there's no formula, no equation

to forgo the lips, 

but not the hand,

so we can climb

right back. What it will be, I can't 

promise. Or ease. & that's not 

holding at this new length 

unblemished,

smooth,

obtuse. 

That's me telling you 

the truth.

What Did I Do to Deserve This

& it’s the most ʰᵃˡᶠhorsen thing to try to stay

{half :: human}

by making excuses. I’m not ready to leave

just yet, haven't 

the faintest idea

why, say, everything that fits me is still a little too big, 

always a little too long in the sleeve

so my cold hands are always warm.

How did this sort of thing work itself out,

while, never mind the season, I'm reaching 

for the top shelf, the flag on the mountain,

a ladder's last ring, friendly hand lifting me,

squeezing onto trains, humans hold the doors for me,

as if not taking up too much space is a good thing,

the best thing, half-step 

not yet open-

lipped 

joyous, a second lit

at the tunnel's end? As if thy neighbors 

will return to strangers, in the way

trains derail, whole families go missing,

sock lost in a laundromat, mere nuisance, forgotten, 

move over, kiddo, duchess, dame, & so what, & what's 

more they get a little trigger happy, sure, have issues, reservations,

party of six, minus one, they still grieve

& cross countless county limits & walled cities 

to spread happiness, wildfire, weeds, virus, preach

always someone else is a demon & the lay of the land

insisting upon itself as how things, all things, stand. 

I never knew where I fit in. I drag my feet 

through sodden sand & roll up my sleeves 

which still fall into the water, the oil-slick,

tin-canned, six-pack-plastic expanse

in which I'm still making excuses, 

asking for forgiveness in endangered

speech, my cold hands growing colder,

so far from whales which know not one world 

or two but three— and yet another & can't imagine

ringing 

through the outer spheres that brought you here.

If I ever stopped believing, would love itself die

a little, which might not be 

just a little, just another day I'm carrying 

my bone-dry raincoat over my shoulder,

bunched up, between

forecasts of heatwaves & hurricanes, a great 

flood, the world ending, if you could just see 

how I’ve seen dying roaches & dry creeks, & the dirt beneath 

earth::orses' feet, ants who never sleep

amid the apostles' catacombs, & fields

& fields overrun with magpies & locusts,

even if your most loving touch could not save 

the bones of ancient equine now extinct, 

if again I had to almost die

for you to get to me

a little too late

I'd still listen for you,

in this sea-leaving

pull I can't quite 

perceive, this no-stars  

breaching the sky, & there's no sea I've left 

which you've not uneased, this 

wherever time goes, you & I 

& what last stars I away 

will bind far 

from them static 

& plain say what 

  last stars die I have

been to have died 

  anyway