The Host

What is time
but a string
of endless moons
as slippery as soup
a self-consuming
cityscape
mined with stars
that understand
a kind of speech
used as an oil to absolve
the continuance of birth

what is time
but a weird fungus
that thinks like
the way it moves
and moves
the way it thinks
engrossed
to the point of rupture
a parasite
that consumes
abstracts for hands
and excretes
a chain of fiery brains
two
contrary
forces
that collide and combine
to make a third
a medium
for the others’ violence
that continually
erases itself

The Gardener

There are living beings
inside
our ideas for things

greeny veined shoots
pushing through the soil

breathing through
our promises
wastage and art

their minds wetly needling our own
their tunneling and
rooting

a naming of specifics not
in our control

an excavating of chambers
not of our
own design

they worry and coddle the minutiae

like agitated rootlets
when they grow flush we also
grow flush

when they strangle we too
must vomit out
our estranged pits
caged potentates
season-starved particulates

the paintings of our past
the warped potentials of our future

The Ponderosa

Let yourself be
staked
wagered
to a single choice
not your own
a kind of prayer
but
interpenetrative
nosing both sun
and below-ground chambers
both
calm air and
your own
buttressing rootwad

if there is
a true thought
it is in
the mere possibility
or potential
of a branching
an eye
split into two
in the compulsion behind
our smooth
constant exhalation
or in the blithe
and variable
drop
of our slough

if there is a true memory
it is in our skin
the notches in our limbs
cleft-wounds pacified
with hardened sap

if there is true desire
it is in
the mere chance

for our spills to overlap
to spin
our unlit mixing
into a new dream
shadowed
and encumbered
with fire and ash

horizon-honed