4:54

Strange
Surgeon
Lays out
Outside-in pump, 37
Uncased
Wide variability -
Murmur to thunder
By the patient's pillow
Love is
Extraction
Operation-room humour
4:54
Just a dream
There's no tumour
But the morning static
Feels like
Failed Sheherezade's
First midnight
In the slaughterhouse
Of dismembered lives
That my emotion,
A frenzied
Rattling
Of the cage
Could rip apart.

Throwaway

Late spring

Thrust

I bite my lip

Cough up my mind

Anonymous,

Warden of sanity

Incorp. soul

Greets 

Strangers

In the open garden

Keeps the shutters

Closed

Talks Japanese maple

Dreams 

Of biting 

Into the bittersweet fruit

Of the ancient tree

That stands

Up on the fort

One climb

One fall

Risk

Such alluring

Throwaway freedom

When life is

Stop/start

Mechanical deer

Oblivious

That the city park

Is a wall. 

Following

I fall 

Into step 

Beside him

Rhythmic ease

Is his heart in sync with his beat?

I'd be content 

Following

Following train tracks,

Watching butterflies

But 

This is no country 

For trespassers,

Where he goes 

I can't follow

I don't know 

His species

So I'll call him 'friend'

Hey! 

Friend! 

What is it like 

To move 

With the languid grace 

Of a cat 

Who assumes

Time is just 

A sheep 

Grazing on a hill?

He's working out a route 

Conversant in the economics

Of a swimmer's 

Choice between 

Streamline

And breath

Late evening 

Traffic will sing him home

I head 

Into 

A different spring

And don't look back

To check 

Which master 

My dog-like heart 
Will be following

Anatomy

Spring reaches into me
With mnemonic tendrils
That seek 
Never bloom
Milky reflection
The self-absorbed face 
Of the pound
shrinks 
expands
Spring reaches 
into me
With cold, 
double-jointed fingers
She knows 
My anatomy.
Knows that beyond 
The ribcage
She might still grab 
My heart
As it hangs 
An upside-down robin
Obstinate child 
She'll hide 
In the emptying well
Until time 
Has lost 
It's withered crown
Of bluebells