Tangier

on the famed tangier

watermen spell their own names wrong

i see a lot of smoking going on around here

and bells that call the firemen out

to the crash on the runway

my butt is on a cement chair in the shape of a crab

I walked the island this morning could have done twice

herons, terns, ospreys 

cats sprawled artistically on the trailer stoops 

I saw the dump, the sewage plant, and utilities

I felt the boats come in on the western shore

as if the moment weren't the beginning of the day

I am awake on Sunday on an island where

being out on a Sunday and not in church

used to be a crime

we were pirates, stowaways and farmers

took the dead in the floods and sold the bones for gold

Canton East is where the babies were protected

a sea wall and a patch of grass, a tricycle

the golf carts run early and there is no motor sound

no highway buzz 

bell rings for church and i don't hear 

the mechanics of the latches or footsteps on porches

so it's me here on Sunday morning

pinching wifi from the town museum

good morning afterliterature and world

wait there's one golf cart passing 

and a woman dressed for church

her hubby in a t-shirt

vestiges and the lyrics of isolation

or is it sheltering one or the other

I can smell honeysuckle, gardenia, and wood porch

conversation is the culture over the picket fence, no lie

people make each other breakfast and take it to em

cats lounge in the yards with metal scraps

trees as old as America that survived the storms

one after the other pelted like kitchen wife

today I try to see and learn that there is no seeing 

only feeling and past the moment of recollection or insight-ment

i have to take this day and pass it on to my  next

there are no decisions there are only livings

bamboo wind chimes and the screen door 

she picked up her bundle from inside the porch

today I am sitting on this cement chair shaped like a crab

as a matter of course i will lay my pencil down and take the second

go round the island

to see where it takes me

this time

i am not

this time when I opened the door

there was a shredded gift on the stair

a carnivorous gesture

in its simplicity I read only endings

the stringy musculature of avian and bones

as hollow as flight

there is some current wrapped around the texture of your tragedy

that lifts dead birds and restores them 

even by the perpetual ending of things

this chaos of an open door

the narrow threshhold

between certain words 

tropical bird

a fat pink body standing on one leg

yoga woman on the beach at sunrise?

somebody loves you

somebody brought you birds

to celebrate you to bring you joy

plastic bird, yoga woman on the beach

hymenal morning a county fair of sweet things to say

fry me, please

carriage and all

Good Reason Not to Bother

Don't worry

Death will be here before you know it

Like that wind

Knocking on your front door in fall

Bringing dried leaves

And other debris

Mrs. Gollum Speaks

much of things together we are be

like every hours and holds his hands

and watches his childrens grow

in my lifes i keeps questioning

lovings

much of things together we are be

soma

lovely leaning temple

dark skinned unshaven

i will make no bones

it is your exotic nature

soma, tini, tinio, tinio

your lean polynesian remarks

maumau o mea faamalama

wild somoan, out of your seed

here, your thoughts

on my hand

a black unknowing

maumau o mea faamalama

that I grope in

a tiaʻi e le malo

uce, uce

thank goodness your heart is knowable

and I am not lonely

your lips

your mouth is a rose

warm morning opens

i must still be dreaming

taxonomie

taxonomie

the end of my marriage

is much  friendlier than I thought it would be

there is the building of the promised shelves

the ferrying of children

unsolicited grocery runs

actual words

and other things

to keep me company

and because there are no more pretences

real laughter occurs

and there we stand

in the living room

with those smiles people try

to repress at scenes of horror

gawking at our remains

: the lisping fairy tales

of that very first fuck

some sort of memory of athens

a white shirt

my reticence

your feelings of inadequacy

and a pile of familiar phrases that all mean the same thing

i’m not good enough

it was not the fiery kind of marriage

when in the end there are no more words

just flat and white and wide

it was not the loving kind either

that would have been a stroke of luck

the consolation that nothing lasts forever just move on

it was not even the empty kind

with no one person at fault

just alcohol, stupidity of youth

rather it was the long, limping sort

when, at the end, running ensues, marathons, 5Ks

random stabs at love questions about money

the kind where the ending blindsides one

while the other grows merciless

and unforgiving

which would be me

What i am not

I guess I will keep having infatuations till I'm 70
or maybe til I am dead
what I thought maturity would cure
turns out to just be me
how my body transforms a thought
to something tenable
how my hand on the paper
how my fingers move along
with that heady string of words
back up cross out
and me, there, inkish and pumping

but mostly this poem is not about my hand
or the lined paper
or how they connect
but rather, it is about how my body moves
along your bends and crooks

[still working on last lines]