I don't know how to break this to you:
 you have a heart…
some sweet swelling;
then, catastrophe —
 all the blood squeezed out
 till one wonders
 will it ever flow again,
 those milk and honey days?
Like days and seasons
 throbbing with two reasons:
  one in upkeep,
  the other open to arcs replete
  with sun and rain,
  cold and heat.

Munch and marvel upon the apple.
Its planter’s footsteps tread on.
We share this future time with him:
 its tang on our lips.

One touch turns my clear, cold lake ashimmer,
Triggers my steady stream of smoke
 into a plume of vortexes.
I pull my skirt down;
 still, my ridiculous, silky legs
 form an arrow as bright as a billboard
 advertising that cleft in my soul,
 beating in my stomach.
Your seawater seeps into my clam,
 irritating my muscle, violating my space.
You fucker, sticking a thumb into my polished lens
 that held a million colors:
 a thumbprint rending all my pictures blurry.
My body quakes with chain reaction:
 I will never be whole again.
My life condemned: a vain attempt to protect
 this urchin part of me —
Only for it to continue on into
 as many grains of sand in the sea.

Not the ruby baubles the factory man
 works so hard to impress,
But the slumbering body
 relieved of its day’s demands…
and perhaps a lay–in
 Saturday morning

Baby, my porridge is not father’s:
 don’t take it all so much
 and improperly digest it.
Papa, my porridge is not Baby’s:
 it’s not so small to dismiss
 as a mere toddler’s trifling.
Oh, mama, can’t you see:
 I’m human.
Let us sup together;
 perhaps you aren’t so unbearable.

Here I am in my ocean again.
You pushed me or I threw myself in
 at the sight of you,
 at the quake of you running through my boards.
A sunny day and a light breeze
 dancing upon the waves
 enchant me and make it hard to see —
well, them or your eyes.
I don’t mind loosing ground;
I wade or fathom, now:
your ocean or mine?
I invite you in.
Either I would hold my breath to explore your depths
 or would you provide some oxygen?

Holy brothers,
you escort your sandcastles’ beauty
and gracefully cast it into the river.
I imagine relinquishing likewise:
why is it a crummy kingdom I uphold?

The night wind
 rushes through dying embers;
they burn just the same.

Pa,
I know the stubble of your beard.
 You kissed me goodnight
  after you missed dinner, working late.
I take that stubble to my grave.
I tell God about your stubble.

Those nights you let me
 shine the light for you
  under the car
I have absorbed all of that light.
I am full of that light.

When you hinted
 I might be another Einstein
I am an Einstein
 so as to fulfill your pride of me.

Your insight that
 I need no other guidance
  but my own
I turn this straw
 into gold.

Pa,
perhaps this story
 is incomplete
It is enough.

Thank you,
 Dave