DUENDE-TRIPPER


Decapitate the headlights, I did

so our bodies could alone float free
away from the blacked-out city.

My darkness, it expanded

to fill the space provided, like a melody
or a metal rod placed in a loved one.

Some summer ago, the surgeons

they shoved a goodbye into my jaw.
There was confetti in the carpet.

A steak knife in the ceiling. So what.

So long. In between such stations
my life can save no song.





CIAO MEIN, MORNING STAR


1.
Whiskey tango foxtrot,
pipsqueek yankee sweet-

heart! So strange it must be
to sing your own name. So

glad I am to have a pain
I can call all my own. A life.

My life. The life of it and the life
in it. No, not who am I but

what I was. One-third-dog.
One-third-man. One-third-

star. A mind out of time
and almost brave.





2.
Some bloom slum
later, high on Christ

and some kind of kindness
we two cross kites

and kiss against cars and
shine like a skulk of foxes

all warm skin warm
under a sky sans junk—

You: Roller-skate skinny
Me: A box of blood