homemade voodoo ritual

we splash clean in the mud
cover our dry brown cake knees
sift blood and worries purify
our pleas ooze and feather
on leaves lifting invisible
weight from a heartbeat
in the trees’ arms they say
you are something
orderly and taxable
keep dancing kids and caress
our roots our tense
we demand nothing less
your skin cooled mud
or else seal wrinkles and settle
into soil’s porous soul
your elbows sign zig zag
when you wave hinging jointing
to illustrate tempo when your hips
speak loud as the flower print shirt you wear
peaks a colored petal
through the dirt
an angel is buried
in the dim hum
a humble eruption
white eyes open
a rich luster like dandelion sap
and the okay mist
from a river falling

joyous jackhammer

sputtering indecent drama
my neighbors disgruntled
and my dinner sits undigestable
I’m rattled like the windows
double pained by its inconsistence
a blutter blutter stop and shutter
pause blutter
machine gun shower
in the midst of coexistence
once again
I wonder what we’ll build there
what solid mass is still there
a mess of impermeable chunks
cobbled morsels once paneled
the burial ground some piping
some wiring now cancelled
like friendship or magazine subscriptions
obliterate unnecessary
broken dishware mere petals
from past people who lived there
or down the block, but close enough
they could still hear the rumble
from where they stood a piece of beer bottle
glass may have shone there a girlfriend’s
glance might have glimmered there once
or twice any and every sound uttered there
in passing a whistle a gust a collection
different-sized footwear step a subtle march
mortar to pestle a pistol to a flower culminating
in the cracking of a thick spectacle

el otro / I am / the other / soy yo

I am the other
What structure
falls over
or under
obstruction
the truth
a truck
ran over
turned concrete
crushed destruction
near a current corner

Never earn an ear
for sirens
are serious torrents

Never live too dear
on one avenue
love a lane or golden road
name a damn and damn the land
or Old Man River
absolutely

Dear Mr. Mean Norman Oldam:
Deal real god. Do not drivel. Read nil
& know oblivion—scant shelf on the corner.
I own her,
who earned a living as a dove
a sieve for amen
and all other ends

Am I the other I am
the other I am
other than I

it’s not okay to origami your forehead that way and there is everything for you to change

you’re the only one to be there with you the whole way
please introduce yourself
you will be your tour guide
you will change your nametags
everything everyday
until the oxygen thins along with your feathers
and your red uniform vest turns carnation
your spit incandescent

what wind whipped your eyes in that shiny way?
what went past your head those winters

if we shaved the crust of this world
how much dust would encase our beatitudes
how many layers do we conceive as solid things
and convince to melt?

why are questions arbitrary
and how are pumpkins like punctuation?
where can i produce
find a radish and a head of lettuce

remember when you ate that wrench
and rushed off to be your brother

nothing makes senses
senses make things
up all the time
five am
the sunrise
a temporary tattoo
a scratch ticket
a wingspan
and her feathers fade with latitude
first vermillion, then summer

insert a broken jar of marbles or a big wood floor more like

peter heaped handfuls of copper
sick with a sigh and I pitch
a long tone of low growls
(like a broken jar of marbles
or a big wood floor
more like) lionesses alarms
his giggles
an improvement upon his viewpoint

I turn a stone to find peter
move out of danger to find
the words get longer and the words
move farther from what we are
doing
nothing
to do with our hands
gestures

he sorts a sack of socks and sucks a kiss
between cusses about the cost of caskets
and casts the cull like an ecstatic caucasian
killer brought by oxen

I gloat over the glittery pennies peter gleaned
how they glow in his glove how they glare
when our lips close