Spotlight on the Navajo throw. Other 

nighttimes. The bed against the other wall:

“The cold, having snared the blanket from my 

shoulder, is getting colder; coerces

me with stranger’s hands. My bedside rubbers 

fold.” Slave to labor, treasures he can't lift;

a father’s public persona cries his 

need for a private life: “Older now than

Dad was when he was my age, I can still

see clear across the leafless park and track 

a single snowflake through the streetlight light 

without getting out of bed.” The sunstruck  

brick wall – buff, blush pink; framed by sash and stool

and blind – is a window in its own right.

The baby is good news hollered sleeping

lightly as my wife and I gape shaken

in our briefs and nightgown, feeling something 

like two run-down strollers, decorated 

with those stony daubs of desiccated 

apple sauce, like scabs, whose dozy seeping

cargo blithely eschewed bibs. Bothered shifts

the teething kraken; floorboards wakened back

trills elicited from the monitor’s 

louvered slit gills. White noise applauds the cat

retching somewhere in the darkness over

the radiator’s fills. Now the kraken

begins to scat; curtails; begins; or’s that

just the electric fan practicing scales?

As cloven love signs separate Christmas cards,  

precious potsherds spider every meal and

beggar apprehension like a poster

for a concert that’s already occurred.

Cloven love, tendered like a cup of tea, 

remains a hand’s length from small outstretched hands

while intent stains the methodology 

of real neglect very dark green. What gulf

might be allotted in between, yet cleave

a disarticulated locket? Fruits

that settle far apart, if near the roots,

can make me want to tear out my own leaves,

pore through sheddings for evidence of growth. 

Then again, it’s my chore to rake the yard.

Update: I thought that if I really bore down, I could maybe maintain this one-sonnet-a-week pace for a year, but having barely made it to the 6 month mark, it’s looking like I’ve got to scale back. From here on out, one-sonnet-a-week will become I’ll-post-when-I’ve-got-something-so-check-back-periodically (nothing this week).

"I just need to know: Does the dead wasp mean

no anything, anywhere, anymore?"

"Yes and no. Failed and failed, we always won;

still - the dead wasp stands on the windowsill.

Read this several times, but read it quickly:

I saw you downtown; it was someone else.

No place smiles like you do. Your kindness 

is up early, prepping allowances

like breakfast pancakes. Sometimes I wake too

in the predawn, trace our sweet signature

down stairs to humble beginnings, kind words

from an asshole ex-boyfriend, ripe bromides:

You need to need to, and know you need to

and you'll change, like me, majestically."

Fate fixed as follows catastrophic bris;

a bridge uncrossed, but ever crossed in thought

now rained my Saturdays. White covers taut

obscured the sex-bed's sere obscenities.

What unattended candle, what hubris

compromised the value of our home as

the promise of an indiscreet letter

discreetly flowers in an ash pile?

All's pyre, all's been digested in the blaze,

gobbled and shat; a new favorite sweater

lies around the corner yet. Trust the maze.

I threw up then laid down in my bed, while

with the staid sufferance of stabled horses

I waited the first wave of divorces.

It’s all too much, but not enough; Ry, I'm

over here crying for unlimited 

wishes, the spilt days of open-ended  

influence, when a rotten dad was mine, 

not me, and that same dad not elderly.

I miss it all so bad, the could-be friends,   

all those good times I never had; homesick

for your old haunts, I've relapsed, squandering

promise every weekend. Where’ve you been?

I could've used your help as my half life 

elapsed. Friends till the end, I thought, but wounds 

deepened in excavating undissolved

stitches ask, finally, Ry, friends till the 

end of what? I'm over here wondering.

Out past the threatening blackness, tangle

of meaning and sound that is the ocean 

at night. Smooth pink and purple stones, markers 

and pens quiet distinctions, the weekend’s

loose kimono. What's left unsaid misplaced 

and the bare horizon a single line 

from an unopened book. Anchored tankers

spell these cold-water flashbacks. Moored lightning 

is cursive neon lighting; adventure,

a backlit mood piece, lost, overstepping 

phantom crabs, fragmented badness. I see

your pining, toes huddled beneath damp sand

as a beer can warmer than blunt air stays

your laced hands’ trembling, but not your face. 

I’d been green, a thrifter, no twisted sleeve,

trod leaden arches, crumbled, bridged pitted

malls in disbelief; clenched while morning burned 

outside my soiled underpass. I smelt 

the forlorn shore, so familiar for 

so long away, distend my trap rock floor;

empty beers roar marine, held to my ears. 

Something’s hard between the ground and me: I

tossed stones at the gulls circling their plights. Thrift 

had had none but its own late reward. Why?

I'd been a wet book, a cheap date; I'd left

a trail of breadcrumbs up to heaven’s gate,

of apple seedlings back east receding,

and of all the novels I’d quit reading.

Nothing goes wrong where red is green, stop go;

even so, darkness domestic for light begs:

With love's key - mutuality - debased,

the embraced closer to the embracer

than the embracer close to the embraced,

and reluctant gifts granted, she'd become

veteran, grim, (her sacrifice's sum:

superiority) beyond reproach;

each round fired seeming some false tracer.

So the soil flew its own paucity

and like pollywog between egg and legs

stunted, in windowsill jelly-jar glow

fool roots, as the cutting's fate is to broach

only retardation's opacity.

Lonely while, on the appealing other

hand or side of the same coin, enjoying

the lack of all sense of obligation,

I vainly wait for real consolation                   

or reasonably wait for the merely –

what? Wet drink, to indulge an empty glass?

An ardent partner, whom I won’t much like

and who won’t much like me, for just one night?

Well I don’t drink wine and anyway she

had none (the empty glass clumsy and slight

as some inapt metaphor), just Pepsi.

Needy as I was, I reached out for her

to map the measure of my precedent

waiting-for; limn its limited content.

The job is not the pay: What she felt was

seasonal gloom was a plain old work day’s

ripe bouquet, futile parfum. Lateness

wreaths, compounds; might keep for a thousand years 

like poison ivy or honey deep in

Pharaoh’s tomb. Prompt payment was a virtue

on a wobbly barstool like an egg 

webbed with cracks but whole. Hard boiled or no,

a criminal’s no stronger than she. He

bides his untallied captivity on

a display of weakness. Drop your trousers

at the urinal and come to missing teeth,

wake on the train to find the only trace 

of your nameplate necklace is a tan line.

“Ken! Long time, no see! What’s up, man? What’s new?”

“Back pain is back, old habit, and reckons

the end of the sex need, the beginning

of such apathies as enlightenment.

Middle age: the open window beckons.

In that empty space, beyond my braying

reflection: my calm senescence, winning.

While burning steps give in towers swaying,

burdened yearns the mummy wrapped up in chain.

Man’s first small step through a revolving door…

Surprise! The same lightless, barren moon. Or

is someone there? Hello? Is this the end

of excuses, explanations, back pain?

Tim, who can say? Anyway, how are you?”

Could I have had the sex I didn't? Would

who I kissed in jest I not? Why wash my

hands only to pick my nose? Meaningless

grins puzzle strangers dancing; imbalance

is exposed, flooding last night’s turgid span.

Wry vomit rose: To never see someone 

again, never especially to know 

someone really or to hug whenever 

saying goodbye. At least I scored. We'd tried 

again but felt it foreign as early

inebriation explored... Nostalgia

is a heavy vest, a failure of touch: 

   Tests of human friendship are the domain

   of tomorrow but today, not so much.

Somewhere not very far away at all,

lone tree not frightened; autumn’s calligraphed

display wrings proscriptive wrongs, treats Mommy’s

clotted mood to orchard’s upstate witchcraft,

story of woodsmoke on the breeze. Putt-putt 

city shunned, rows of rain-cloud rentals dealt

for those of Baby’s toes and braided trees. 

Sure beats Daddy’s big idea, to’ve spent

his day off indoors, pickled, slapping “snooze”.

One does choose but doesn't so much pick one

as twist it. Apple choosing. Fill prepaid

bag to splitting seam then stop for ice cream 

and head home; sun sags, stem’s twisting. Backseat,

Daughter’s listing, eyes shut but’s listening.