I couldn’t find a word to say

to tell you

but it is sediment laid

so many fractured

bits splayed then

compacted

we are

by accreted heat

and particle

non-erasure of

all this time

we build our bed

I see our contiguous

days—the spread

of us

it settles and

I know

I know it stays

our lines

are made firmer

by years and steady mess

turn us into sturdy mass

nothing

nobody

just you and me

and our basin of

that word which

is never all I mean

billions of worlds will

come here and

we will remain all

our layers my love

you are

you are only

we are

Once blue big flame

find here tired now true

coals spewing flecks

scalding latent

lanes of my brain trained

sidewalks patient while

toddling legs and bouncing

clean tongues pounce with

white curls on them begin

and not will I find

where they end

on me there is no front or back

no start no finish with us

odd minutes supply infrequent

quiet

the fray

connects

melody in warm

ash stored up shores start to

speak

never this coast

want I to walk without

this ship built

built of blonde curls

without the curls I paint fruit

made of wax and plastic

There is always dust on the floorboards

every day there is more and though

the task never weakens my effort

does wane, and I worry I can’t

sustain the courage each morning

ahead to dust it again and away.

Dawn is supposed to be new

but mine seem the same. I heard

manna was given— but one day

at a time— so the children would linger

and stay nearby. I heard the ground

remains cursed, not for His, but for ours.

So the dust is consistent, the

weed always sprouts, the work

is unceasing, our time is spent

pleading for dust and weeds and

unmade beds to relent. Maybe

this is the manna: reliable toil—

Capitulating lambs will

succumb till greener dust

we become.

When I hear love songs

of devotion and adulation I sometimes

wonder could these sometimes

be about something all together else the

love of something larger

secured to something smaller

smaller like us

a love we know cause we

don’t just hear it said or sung

it’s love that tills

below shoal and shell the

unabated mining doesn’t always feel so good

but this type of love comes in and plans to stay

in all who will

all who will

they may

may ingest the fleshy alm

swill then swallow from the

red iron flavored cup belonging to one certain

Author and Finisher of love songs

the gift at first implanted will probably just sit

most unaware of what was given

but then eventually it starts

starts to simmer

a concentrate made down in One

and you pause surprised

cause you aren’t just filled with something new

you are bound to something big

You couldn’t do this before but

now you can you

can rise and take

up the bed you’ve been stuck in

and walk

Giants came down hiding

behind the clouds

they thought were the reason

for the overcast land

they took the blessed innards

of the happy youth in the

vacant space laughing left

a horrible festering

beetle who fed on the remnants of

the stuff in the queue for defecation

and the new guest would have

fed on the leftovers of a heart if

there had been any

but there wasn’t

any crumbly

bits left in the place where the

heart would have been the

head of an expanding crusty

creature sat in it and the foreigner

wore the body of the youth

a body still that spoke and walked

and the body ate but none

of these bore the sameness

folks who knew his pallor

and gait took two glances

at first a smile the second squinted

confusion at a trail of

milk in contiguous shlep from

a spoon of deft cheerios

not her milk once she gave

this a new sidekick

and the other arm

occupied something swiped

swiping over and swiping

again sometimes pausing to click

and click then swipe

and though many had missed

it a few of the folk noticed where

the holes of ears should

have been were shiny white

pearls perpetually stored

in the round space

they held a village

counsel to confirm the oddities

they voted and found the youth

responsible some suspected

stranger noise at play

but didn’t raise what—

most continued to pelt the

youth in curious inquiry

the lad seemed to not hear

the clogged ears

more than many days even

years later the grubby

visitor after he’d

collected all

he had been

after even helped itself

to a bit more the gluttonous

hoarder after there wasn’t

any more to take

the antenna

on the head of the

putrid thing sent a memo

for the giants to to come back

and retrieve it home and they

did come back holding the

somehow preserved

insides of the youth

surprising he was not to

their fleshy liking and the giants pulled

out

the fat squirming termite and

replanted all the entrails

of the youth

a sec to find where

each piece had been eventually

to get it right

hearing their own

stomachs grumbling they

broke their retrieved insect the

plump squatter they had just taken

out of the older now body of the boy

they popped it

straight in their mouths

they broke it into

into equal parts of course

the lad is returned

the valley assuaged

the lad is now running as his

way but running

away

I COULDN'T FIND A WORD {TO E}

WHITE CURLS

ALWAYS DUST

LOVE SONGS

TRAIL OF MILK