Used Knees

used knees are bruised knees
knees with indentations from praying
or praising
---submissive either way
used knees, maybe not two knees
with stripes down each side
a sign of swallowed pride or
a sign of pride
---either way dismissive
used knees
wide knees
thin knees
strong knees
knees with scars
knees with shards
freshly scraped knees
   children yell
these stabilizers
bone joining notches of activity
these back-and-forth-ivory
these left-left-rights
these thrones for kids
these chairs of discipline
these crawl able crutches
these crackable junctions
these fragile fortitudes
these knees
these knees
theses knees
and never once not used
used knees are your knees
dads knees
ma's knees
baby jackie's,
johns knees
teenage comicon knees
WW2 and 'Nam knees
computer softwares tom's knees
lovers, sluts, and doms knees
mountain climbing robs knees
fat, wide, and globed knees
your knees my knees
used knees
wise knees
carry you where ever you go

grey glow

I woke up this morning
7am to a grey glow and cold
I believed

My choices had changed in my sleep

I was near 1000 miles gone from where
I closed my eyes
where I had traversed the day before
snow would grace

I could drive to my heart
and tour the scenes I imagine in my
head

But really, it's just 7am
and the grey glow isn't
just from fresh fall

my choices made firm
so dreams are fantasy's

and fantasy is always
never supposed to be

my reach is my life

Milwaukee

Milwaukee promises poetry
closer than tendon to bone:
it offers up floorboards, inches
upon inches of soft cedar
calling for my ghosts to settle deep,
asking me to send dust
spinning through the slats of yellowed light
leaking through paper blinds
left open, on the off-chance
I catch sight of your shadow.

What I know of Milwaukee
I could fit in two cupped hands –
three weeks worth, maybe,
or one side of a record –
just enough to lead my mind to wanderlust,
away from any task I take my hands to,
enough to sink like an isotope,
like music notes and age-old books
inside my skin. Milwaukee
did not exist before your voice
and it lingers, unexplained.

But I could revel in the unfamiliarity
of every lost step, rediscover
these clumsy limbs, slip between bricks
and hug the mortar close,
letting spring drip over the eave.
I could stop throwing the loss of you
against every surface, stop
pinning this rowdy grief
to walks and to sage green houses,
to cat dander and certain songs, to poems
and champagne and thick tangles
of starlings at liftoff,
a landlocked imitation of those startled gulls
we chased into flight.

It’s Milwaukee winter that lures me:
the front page of a book yet unwed to ink,
white walls without connotation.
I want the wolf shore,
the hard grey, the miles frozen deep
with static. I want to pause,
feel the blackness of my eyelids,
weight of my own lungs, and not see
that scorched sun that sunk the pier, not feel
the wind laden with grace, not laugh
at the glass-crowned waves
that swallowed us whole.

Time Comin'

The world doesn't rush past,
when you feel like that
it's because
your amoral tendencies
are getting the best of your legacy.

Time doesn't past
you move through
And when it slows down
that's just you

creating your own timeline
your own time

years become irrelevant
months are tomes too large to pay mind to
days are the opportunities you miss when looking into
the eyes of someone you can't help but love

you become a god

creator of your destiny-maybe someone else's
moulding space to what you need
knowing all you can
publisher of purpose

If you give all that up, don't worry about time
it will come for you.

Punnett Square

This is my inheritance: limes rubbed

on the inside of wrists, earliness

as a virtue. A clever tongue, to be a

happy drunk. The ridge

that splits our faces and green blue eyes

from southern Flint. Pens,

writing lists as daily prayers

we add to just to scratch off.

Smelling the trash

to know it stinks - Thus

an aversion to tequila, to

our knotted knuckles and backs.

Johnny Walker Black

with water on the rocks and

the snap, pop of seasoned knees.

A steady hand on a French press,

folding and refolding dogged ears

of Melville, of the gospel of Luke,

margins almost black with scraps:

poetry. Doodles. Hebrew and Greek.

I know why you married her;

how her grace tempers our nature.

And she told me how your father

pressed cash into your hand

as he hugged you. And you bookmarked

your favorite poems

with dollar bills for me,

threading our inheritance.

the land of

i had a dream of milk and 

honey you were in it, leading me

across a way i never built, saying

sorrow never hurt a body and oh

will you give me yours, sweet heart and soul?

i had a dream where i was ghost

so maybe more than how i am

to your pen on paper future

spinning a wish of what i could be.

it is sorrow, isn't it honey? it bites

me so swiftly and heals by the

the knowledge of God that steps

where i step since i met

your conscious voice, all of grace

verse my nature. it is nature, isn't it,

this sorrow's hurt upon my body

and this awake. it is not just

my dream i dreamed of milk and

honey you are it.

this is indian summer

this is indian summer:
sepia ink on my wrists,
the dusted monarch wings
resting on your extended palms
face up toward the cool sky
and the rogue moon that brushes
against your flushed cheeks
as you dance with a grown ocean,
landing with lavender and
half-turned leaves.
it is the finger dipped in batter,
the first delicate step into
a lightly bocca-ed rain,
nails navy blue and lashes
curling with laughter, slim fingers
round a coffee cup i fill
and fill again to hear my name
upon your lips, & eleven-morning
sun on a street burned gold,
shadows matching and smoothing
the frayed edges of my hope.
it is your Michigan Americana folk song
smile, gifted.
this is my return to your unaware;
the architecture of my autumn.