What is the central passion of a life? To please mummy & daddy? To find a home for their furniture… To found a family of one’s own,

You-the purest pleasure of my life, the split pit that proves the ripeness of the fruit,

You operate on the afternoon You perform open heart surgery on the ghosts of your suicidal friends You divorce your parents

Nobody believes in love– not even me. Love is the thing you wait to end.

You call me courageous, I who grew up gnawing on books, as some kids

The decorum of fire... —Pablo Neruda We learned the decorum of fire, the flame’s curious symmetry, the blue heat at the center of the…

Looking for a place where we might turn off the inner dialogue, the monologue of futures & regrets,

On a darkening planet speeding toward our death, we pierce a rosy cloud & hit clean air,

The cover of the book is astral violet, & within it are poems, most of them

In the chest is caged bat who seeks escape through the mouth. He flaps his wings & the molars shiver.

Not wanting to write for fear that anything– the passion for the page, the love of carbon ribbons & e… will distract me from your face,

There is only one story: he loved her, then stopped loving her, while she did not stop loving him.

Spring, rainbows, ordinary miracles about which nothing new can be said. The stars on a clear night

After the first astounding rush, after the weeks at the lake, the crystal, the clouds, the water… the snow breaking under our boots… & the long mornings in bed. .…

At the edge of the body there is said to be a flaming halo– yellow, red, blue or pure white,