1.

a child's
fingertips like 10 distant stars
reach toward me
lost
in perhaps. my inability

to use a sextant,
scrabbling round
to land you
on my H

to the sound of a choir
of freckles. i will lie
to you. how close i am
to earth! virtually
underground,
a white horse
chalked in blood.

have i failed to bring you
out of myself?
if i could love you
alone into me, i would.

i search the hands
to dig you out
with astrolabe,
to tend you right
through fiery hoops
as rain.

2.

rolodex of stars,
you have probably
already died
a thousand times over.
the light i see is only just
travelled here.

i wait in my plastic chair,
and write quiet essays
on bushido,
stuck in lists-
my two cold hands
like swans of ice.

I wake up to the rain, and am pleased 
for the garden, dry as a nun’s lips.

I stare at it, growing it out in my

brain. I suppose I am a dying breed,

I say, and wish I was smoking-

at least I was a nihilist, back in the day.

I suppose I am. I keep doing these

Internet tests and looking at stranger's

photos. I can’t see myself in them.

Pouring themselves out into progress

like little pilgrims, the girls miss

trains, their mothers and sisters on them.

The sun comes out. I am pleased

for the garden. Later I will sit in a

bar, talking about things I disagree with.

My flesh will be observed. Invisible

score cards will score my body

to the patterns of pop-stars. 

I could do without mine, in reality.

It isn’t me, and never was.

I am a tendril of light, orographer.

I refresh myself and put away

days, like balled socks-

crowing up to the yellow-toothed moon.