When you showed me Brooklyn Bridge
    in the morning,
      Ah god,
      light all around you
you raised your eyes and looked at me sharp
“I have visions all the time”

       people rushing to work
       from their nice homes
       clutching their coffees
       nice homes but renting
        anyway

there go the birds
    carte blanche
        nothing can hold you
          dues are paid
      they’ll have to find you
      where they find you

    Mexico City
      turning down
           a whole lot of blow
    too young when your mom
     found you
       on the bathroom floor
    how you told me, so earnest
       and I couldn’t sleep for weeks.

Mad and gifted
    baring your paintings to heaven
        holding the light, the light

drawing me closer, closer
to your chest that scented heaven
    good god,
        like all of heaven
that’s when I taught you tears
    that morning on the bridge
        nobody else
          knew you cried.

Imagine this
I leave the lighthouse
empty, not a bird
in sight

you emerge from the rocks
as mist, with no body
or mind

last time you were an owl
crying over my window

I shapeshift into 5 blue
tulips in a big vase  
    a business I know well

I hear warnings
on the radio

the Atlantic moon
sheds its light on you
because the moon is no judge
but of course
    you mistake that
    for love

 I say: look
    news of me won’t come 
after this
    I am sick and 
I’m leaving the coast 
    to be blessed on the mountain
    where I was born
  you won’t be able to pull
my roots out of it 
  
but you did not come to listen 
you move into tempestuous
sweeps and whorls 
dancing like fish 
on the hook

you just want to be seen
    you know
I can’t dance, at least
    not in this form 

flowers stay still
but they are very psychic
how they lean to the sun
and know when to die  

flowers don’t force life to last
or cry what’s left unsaid. 

   

Twilit rooftop in the class of
young, all-american men clearing
six feet clean, swarthy tans
summer bent still
over their bones

what of America supreme
war and worship I walk
your kingdom’s line with
dog-faced poems running
loose in me

there you stood
fixed vortex on the far
making steady steady

I seen you in three cities
from New York to Wichita
two summers passed us, now
they are all one

you glide amid galaxies
tailing a phantom, telling
you her life

hung that moon huh that
gold hoop in the gu-gutter
face up in the red light
I fold my royal flush

you talk your tongue
out of motion, dead
or asleep cabrón you please
hauling the silver ball
to my feet

swirling it opens
and englobes in bright
glow, swift night goes
psycho, while apples
sweeten in the tree.