Citizen's Arrest

His soles played the broken glass settling in her 

screamless back alley like wind-chimes, 

leg halfway over the first fence 

before my feet could part their lips. 

I’ve only ever caught three thieves. 

The first was an Italian gypsy, 

but the second wears all my same clothes;

so when I saw this one, I knew People only run like ghosts 

to finish what they shouldn’t have time to do, 

I followed stallion, galloping, forty yards, thirty yards,

leaving a wake of scattered trash cans, shadows, and bad advice.

By this time, the dogs had robed into fire alarm chorus.

I wondered if anyone had been surprised enough to call the police. 

He didn’t look like he was slowing down, and I was gasping, 

legs drunk on adrenaline, blurring into their own confession of love, until,

he turned at the trail through the park you can beat taking 15th,

And I got him.

As he pushed against my jail bars, I told him I might let go 

if he emptied his jacket’s elephant skin first.

From his pocket he pulled a vagina, 

barked “she gave it to me, OK?”

I yelled “Where’s the rest of her?” 

His eyes crumbling beach fires, sirens singing in the distance,

shards of innocence biting his tongue, he coughed

“Listen, that’s it, she promised.”

the mountain

I wonder at the busyness of man.
We crawl like fire ants beneath the god of flame,
handing our blood to the masses like it was the very mist
off our punctuated words. The deflated tunnels within drape
themselves over our bones as if for a nap,
but they stay, and I forget. 

Their slumber settles into a glaze over our eyes,
and before long, appear to be hammocks.

I am slow to wake. For years have not looked twice
at the pillow for my weary back, whose ghost is given up,
the slung up boa constrictor, these rolled fishing nets,
this comfort I take in lack.

A doctor evaluates his patient not unlike a mechanic.
If I need a new engine, will I save money going to a mechanic?
Would he order me a new caffeine pill? Perhaps a day planner?
or would he sell me for parts?

The west was won on the backs of respect.
Must we all deathbed altar to the god of progress
after an oxen’s life, siphoning our oil,
the world on our shoulders?
How to wield this extra pair of legs?

lake washington

Lately, lust is a drought in my skin.

The way the ground buckles in the dry
forms the kind of Sahara cracks that

wedding rings roll down to pawnshop shelves.

In summer, the heat is a closet monster that keeps me outside.
My neck hits adolescence, growing wiser than his scarves by the day,
living out of the bag that’s been packed and in the trunk since Winter
looked like he was moving in with mom, and I am marooned by my desire.  

If there’s one thing I learned in school, 

it’s summer is the season for forgetting.  

Swimming, I forgot desks, 

traveling, I forgot home,
and this vacation still makes me forget my history,
especially on the beach, where a sturdy handrail and plaque
would almost make a good zoo.
My neck spends all his money on gas to get here,
because here, I want to do and not remember,
and it is summer.

This time of year, in the Sahara, herds live leaving.
I imagine I might have a rhinoceros on each arm, and a pack 

of giraffes on my back. The gazelles’ migration impresses wings 

into my legs: all of them swirling,
beating out their basest angst for survival, 

for fear of the lions resting in the shade of my mouth, 

always a sentence away 

from preying on the weak.

How can my neck be so naïve,

that girls in summer have faces,
that my voice box is slave to his bedridden angst,
that I speak with the tongues of lions?

How did I forget my face, 

become so hopelessly reckless,
when beneath the ground,

I am an empty wallet.
I am backpack of dirty clothes.

23/289

It's been one week since the storm
near New Zealand pounded its fists in the Pacific,
and here, on a Washington coast, the ocean finds
final resolution from the bloodrush.

My eyes tell me I am currently the only one
on this beach to congratulate the ocean.
This is not true, for here, the ocean and I lay
down our guns for an audience of One.

What is it about skin that makes us forget
our first loves?

Jesus, the sand must be your punctuation.
I hear your words in the echo.
So, here, like a sea of turbulence, I crash.
Here, I give you my storms, as my body pulls
back to the landless coasts it still calls home.

22/289

To the right of my bathroom mirror,
quiet as a painting, a moth.

Moths are misunderstood.

To the left of my bathroom mirror,
raised as a gavel, a switch.

Moths are martyrs for light.

A well-nested reflex in my arm,
a thought about clothes, a towel.

To the right of a moth,
wide as morning, a window.

Under a failed parachute, a moth
flaps one wing, pushes with half legs.

In the eyes my bathroom mirror,
guilty as truth, a thief.

He won’t last the day.

God, please forgive
me of my waste.

21/289

In a restaurant, the word, corner, is the waiter's
only protection against cacophony.

Without it, the dotted lines flowing from his
and hers orders intersect in explosion of beer

and what's left of plants and animals whose whole
existence has centered around people mouths.

Even still a young man, I have done a lot of waiting.
I have rounded many corners walking too fast

to hear any voice of reason protecting the food,
already paid for, in their hands.

The restaurant has been too busy to service any question
or regret with the detail my smile claims. But I try. Really.

I yell corner! on hopes they'll turn and run, to keep from breaking
things glue can't fix, to keep from wasting the purpose of their hands

on a cheap mixer of beer, confusion, and sometimes awkward glances,
like the one time a table of ten watched me total their entrees and
two desserts

like it was my job. I told them I was new. And sorry. My manager
comped the whole thing, but I'd never earn it back.

The trust of a co-worker is irreparable. As time goes on,
I can't help but notice more and more changing shifts.

In training, they don't tell you about gates, or how eyelids
can be weaved into chain link by careless steps.

Broken plates on the floor look like continents.
So I've started kneeling on the floor, I'm trying.

I'm charting a route to sail away from self-hate,
away from this man who knows failure like a paycheck.

I'm thinking if I look busy, I can stay down here. Maybe
someone will trip over me, see the dotted lines

where porcelain dust has brushed off with my finger,
and stay, to help clean this mess I've circled as many times

as a restaurant parking lot.

20/289

This everyday thing is difficult. If it's worth anything, I've been working on past rough drafts and freewrites, but that's not much for the everyday. Here's a new one from today!

Harmony, a love poem

Dear harmony,

I am looking at you,

right now. Don't worry.

When you've finished reading, cloud watch a minute,
let your walls flatten into fields, forget the color blue,
and you will see me, too. I have combed my arm hair
out into wings with wishing and set my feet onto airplanes
like the stepstools they are to vacation,
in space.

Don't worry, on Sunday, I was the dissonant one.
My last words to you would be full of flowers.
If this letter is the last time you hold me,
imagine my hands around yours in the snow,

It is the only thing I could not have done, and

cannot do until my return.

The first reason I have left earth

is to test the spacial limits of eye contact.
Record the number of shooting stars between now
and when you see me next. They are
prayers mirrored on earth's eyelid.

The second is to try out the gills I've grown
chasing what everyone says is nothing.
Pray they're working. Thirdly,
the last I can think of-ly,
to see how much missing it takes to pull a body
closer than orbit. Sometimes, I admit, you look like

a manila envelope. In grade school, the word manila
by itself, was enough to make me think of retirement
homes - not the inside souls, but the place where
certainty's only friends are sterilization and death;
it's the skin color we know by comparison doesn't exist or
only has hands for privilege. To the eyes,

you look like all I know,
which is why I even mentioned retirement,
but I forget that envelopes are the perfect
mistakable-for-nothing-at-all width to hold heaven poems.
I have gone in search of these. Of the beauty

I can't see with well fed eyes.
Of remembrance.

Proper perspective.
I think the planets have always had it right,
keeping their admirers at enough distance to wear want
like an appointment. Where I'm going, there's nothing

to breathe but homesickness. Pray
my lungs grow heavy enough
to drop me back to earth before my body loses hope.

In a Glossary of Star-Strucking, orbit is a state of despair.
I guess the planets had it wrong.
They will never know the crash of being loved.
They will never know the sound of themselves
played back through a dusty speaker
pushed and pulled
by forces he did not set in motion.