your own key

i had a dream
and i was not afraid:

front door bells
rose and fell and lifted their voices
when you walked in and

“mornin, sweetheart”

with your own

key.

land dreams

i keep seein you in these land dreams i been havin,
long stacks of ancient lumber one-armed over your back,
overalled and barechested,
sweatin through knee-high grass
and layers of time.

we always drippin music,
you an me:
thick as southern louisiana summers
and gawd’s own breath

your universal heart
stops me
~ in time soft swollen and capsuled ~
when i look up from the garden
or over from the clothesline
or through the boil pot’s vaporous veil.

and in these dreams,
we always make eye contact
and never talk
~ outside those timeless sideways smiles ~
because our knowin
is enough.

…

i hear our loved and family workin this land, too,
laughin and makin music and food,
fixin and creatin needful things…

and there are more,

more of us
that i sense but
can’t
yet
see.

we are building
in these dreams…
we’re buildin so determined
~ so all together ~
we’re buildin with such Love and Intent
because the others…

lawd, the others
we’re buildin ’cause the others are already
on their way.

doll fiddles for the River

Directly on the other side of the canal from me,
a human form,
tiny with distance,
sports a tomato red hat and
practices fiddlin
into the golden hour.

The strings stretch leagues to reach my ears
and are
doll sounds
when they arrive.

Miniature pale hands,
stark against dark clothes,
pull and saw and bow lateral
at clavicle’s height.
When the human turns away,
I catch its shaded elbow’s
hypnotized revolutions
against houses
of split pea and turquoise,
against red metal rooflines and
titanium gingerbread.

The figure fiddles prayers to the water
as its feet are pulled along the levee,
drawn
foot by footfall
toward the River.

new orleans, 898mph

Moon’s almost full,
luminous in her early evenin gown.
She and Sun’s dancin together
across the room from each other
never breakin eye contact,
intense with intent in their libidinous old ceremony.
The atmosphere between em
burns with Beauty
in miracles of light and
rich subtleties of color that
a camera’s eye ain’t never gonna capture.

As I walk the levee,
I’m beckoned up by Moon
just as three cormorants
fly across her pearlescent face,
and I’m suddenly
dizzy
with Earth’s rotation:
898 miles per hour by New Orleans’ latitude and circumference.

I slump heavy and weightless to the ground,
all too conscious
of our impossible velocity,

dropped
by what I take for granted.

Blowin Mach 1 way behind,
reelin in revolutions,
I wanna know how the hell to maintain this moment’s
Awe and Wonder
all the
all the
all the time
without
puttin out a beacon
for the institution?

comin out

i found myself suddenly considering the
idea of “coming out” to one’s family,
lettin em know
y’maybe like t’get it on with people got the same goodies as you.
and i wonder…

did my friend
who only likes to fuck amputees
feel compelled to tell his mama about it?

.done with nothin.

Been doin nothin so long,
I’m pretty sure I’m done.

Got t’get myself right with
Gawd & the River,
Got t’get it right with
Earth & the Giver.

‘Cause y’can’t
Can’t have one
Can’t have a one without
the others.

Ol River Family

Old Water chilled
and soothed,
steady/sway deepwater’d me:
this bottom-end movin alluvial shoreline
channeled
away through my poet’s bare legs.

Upriver ancient bones
with all their huntin gatherin growin
groundins
squelched soft and rootly
through my toes,
whisperin
“How are y’daughter?“
into my earthly cells.

Ain’t it true that
(notre nièce douce, th’ain’t no need t’stay away so long)
every Family calls its Calm and own
(baby girl, we’re Come What May)
to supper Open?
(They’s always
they’s a place set
darlin, they’s always a place set f’you at the table)

scale for scale

I was Wednesday given an amazing gift
of an old ceremony’s sacred bond;
I slept with it by my face,
woke with it in my hair,
and dreamed this so thick,
I wasn’t sure it was dream:

Perched within snake coils
at the top of a sky-high caduceus,
surrounded by floor and walls of clouds,
tiny earth below,
I’s tellin Musicmaker,
him half obscured by (s)naked staff
and here somehow with me
(through his holy gift, no doubt),
that

“I been climbin since birth
and climbin hard
for nine long years, I think, to get here,
and now I’m not sure what to do…

but I feel like maybe I should get good at
gettin around this pole
and knowin this snake mama,
scale for scale.”

 

in body.

Thoughts both immaculate and lascivious of You
crawl up me sideways and spineways
and
my body convulses
~wavelike~
from center to ends.

Eyes half roll,
lips fall gently open,
and a supple, feathered
moan
escapes my throat,

writing
alone here
at the kitchen table.

party of virtue.

Mama told me one time she had a dream about hangin out with Gawd
(Mama has lots of these dreams).
She said she’d lived her life as purely and chastely as she thought proper,
as Proverbs 31 as she could be.
And Gawd told her he was proud of her for her persistence and then asked,

“Soooo…didja have fun?”

And she thought about it for a minute and,
“Yeah, I mean…where I could.
Bein virtuous ain’t exactly a party.”

And Gawd shook his head and clucked his tongue and sighed,

“Huh.

…Pity.”

:::

And she woke up
and knew she’d been goin about this
whole thing
all
wrong.

:::::::::