camilla

give yourself to love
if love is what you're after

the song on the radio
is your hair, soft between
my fingers, the soap traveling
down your back, trickling down
my wrists. when you were
three, i had to sing you
to sleep for hours.


this room is mute and soft light.
to venture into the world
i must leave it. there is no poetry
strong enough to save me from that.

last night's fried chicken
a temporary buffer. whenever
the fire is lit, it mentions
protection and triage.


in the sand out
side our backdoor
blue and green plastic
shovels flower-
i would like a day off
to play with you.

there is no church
i'm reaching into no stained
glass monolith to brighten
the dreary week i feed
with my time. lurid florescents
and green circuit boards
the ticking of the cable machine
acrid smell of flux, burning.

inside rests several poems
everyday several poems, some facelifted
many rinsed with clarol, their children
nymph into adulthood, my children
explode from a chrysalis, the economy
keeps grinding us all up
for nothing but the all, up.

i would be sad, here, now without you except
i have given my self to you, in a package
with tissues that keep peeling away revealing nothing
more than what you have always had.