traffic signs

your exit signs are oracles

that buckle under flocks of harmless omens

fathers’ fathers watchful of observant eyes

red glare and military awkwardness

artworks to be noticed and sped forward

clothed communist with traits exposed

associated illnesses and muted clouds

electric as the heap of movement

predetermined ornamented route

swerving like beheaded snakes

the waverings from course

in circumstance familiar and jolting

warnings

your awkward viking storefront doesn’t scare me

nor does the pitter-patter of the women’s feet

scampering like cats behind your alley

the lopsided warnings of your trucks

their gleaming headlamps only eyes

my unborn child read about in books

your naked two-by-fours don’t make me shake

no arsenic will keep me from your stoop

that desk they say you left to me as bait

old and wrought-iron

weatheredly delicate and strange

arrival

a face of black dandelion seeds
cast by a puppeteer into white sensations
eye of a landscape that moves before it
meteor thrusting through falling paper cranes
awkward symphony of a third man’s hat
snake that breaks coils toward a sea of white
the geometric moon of a child
a festival of yellow wings and death
draped over tenant parking

Eyebranches

First like amber leaves they will be drawn gently over our frantic heartbeats. Like curtains we’ll be drawn toward them.  The arching bones which hold in place the vaulted ceiling of the earth will blink with rain, like threads reaching up to an architect’s unstitched heart.   Then the drowsy blinds will open.  

We face a dark stage, where the hollow body of our own words is the only, fatalistic sound.