There’s an altar in the northeast,
the ark of our covenant,
a dream chamber framed in chocolate brown lines
like wooden roots and living vines cradling the earth of our marriage.

It lies against an eggshell wall,
a soft nest
where this sparrow sings his song.
The bed where I rest and hallucinate
a brilliant mosaic of sweet things I can’t remember
and kind gestures I’ll never forget.

I lay my hand there sometimes when you’re gone.
Just close my eyes and feel
Warmth in the shape of you.

And I sleep on the couch when you’re not here
Because our bedroom gives me visions
I need your wisdom to interpret perfectly.

I sleep on the couch when you’re not here
Because when you come home from work
You’ll wake me
and be the first thing I see.

I sleep on the couch when you’re not here
So I can fall asleep to the TV
and pretend the voices are yours.

Darling,
I didn’t write this because it was Valentine’s Day.
I wrote this because I never woke up this morning.

I keep having this wonderful dream
where I’m married to you.

It’s time to climb.

I stared at the rock wall for an hour
and watched the Others rise and fall.

I stood in the room and drank myself to stupor
and feared that black synthetic rope:
that cord like a noose in the shape of a U
for a kung fu hero to choke himself out,
lose consciousness and move ever closer to climax and doom.

I idolized wildly a man who intended to stand and gasp for oxygen
at the summit of a mountain on a distant continent.
We talked on and on about this faraway land
and everything rhymed and it was easy to understand
and I laughed and they laughed at the Rainbow and the Klan
We Laughed At The Thought Of It All.

But then I dreamed of a brown recluse
and he sank his fangs into my left hand, blackening the skin with a pallor like death.
That bitter bite infected the best of us, we got distracted from the master plan
And suddenly, there’s leper colonies
And FEMA concentration camps
And this afternoon I touched a hot pipe on my bike and burned myself
GOD DAMN
IT
STILL
STINGS.

A sore appeared on my face.
Then a scab.
But now I see the web that connects all things.
This is just the bad tide.
This too shall pass.

There are these landmines
hidden in the fields where children play, over in the Middle East.
They’ve got candy-coated bullets, we’ve got pop rocks and soda.
They’re all the same color, and we’re all xenophobic,
they’ve got the Taliban, Al Qaeda
we’ve got McDonald’s, American Idol
and a DEEP WHITE SHAME.

The war never ends.
We’re forever on display.
Even with these friends,
I still drive them away enough to define them.
My own kind,
my very own kin,
I will study them within this personal space, from this specific distance,
and make a note about proxemics.

One teacher gives us a map.
Two teachers chastise us for napping during the collapse of conversations we’ve already had.
Everybody’s quiet because they’ve said everything they wanted to.

But I understand.
Reinforcement aids in learning.
Which is why I keep having these dreams where I see the future
and keep yearning to interpret them perfectly before they come true.

I’ll watch the people store up food,
and medicine,
and ammunition.

I’ll tell the truth.

Love, I’ve got rebellious little fires in my belly.
My eyes, my eyes are smoky.

Crows fly overhead – they carry pebbles in their beaks
to quench the Thirst
beside a potter’s broken wheel.

He abandoned his dreams!
He abandoned his sleeping wife and her tears fill this stream!
And the salmon froth the water
and their eggs soak in cream
and everyone remembers the first thing they killed.

I’ve always loved you.
Even when this hatchet hums and hungers for a head
you soothe me.
Even with the weapon in my hand.