Bone

Rest your jaw.

The bone you have ground yourself down gnawing

will outlast your night.

Bury it, submerge it in your fecund sorrow

soil of your body,

and let the weeds grow over.

When you return, for an age gone by

perhaps the capsule preserved,

your selves exhumed, the itch of forgotten failures,

by then will no longer scratch at your soul;

perhaps it will not have been,

(when the memory no longer punctures you)

a pain worth keeping—

a time worth yearning.

Skipping Stones

What we have found is only a platform for the sea:

The pebbled sand of the beach

A cliff so worn one does not realize

The mountain beginning

The clouds do not descend with us

down the steep steps.

The pale blue sky embeds itself

upon the soft mottled blues of the water—

warm between your feet.

Come skip stones with me on the ocean

Your mind, made flat and smooth

grinding against the world,

skim it low across the surface:

You cannot hear the splash

above the crashing waves.

Lungs over Time

I tell myself about the night

because I cannot compromise the morning.

My clocks will not bend for me

Any direction I push.

I condition the air

so it does not feel like August.

I have somehow missed the summer

between the cold glass

and the chain-smoking clouds

Pressing themselves against

My twenty-five stories.

I wonder if it can bear my voice.

Ao, how can one begin a lamentation

With all the finicky regret of words.

My brother, you and I whom have mourned time together

cannot share the melancholy we comprise.

I do not know how to explain

the things that have begun

passing through my lungs.