Stop Motion Cyclops

Your shadow burst through the tree limbs Cloud halos dripping from your chin A constellation of cassettes Glow in the spiral bound sunset Melting in the heat of church pews Ghosts of teenagers miss curfew “We swim like dinosaurs,” she said Bathed in the spiral bound sunset Your parenthetical heartbreak From bunny ears to mouth of snake While others tell of loves long dead We toast the spiral bound sunset Darkening shine, between the lines Your kitchen pale face on the floor The ocean cannot find the shore Empty chest when you realize There is no spiral bound sunrise

Flower petals in your fingerprints, dropping like hints The facts you won’t evince Silver string sewn in your tongue and teeth, glimmer as you breathe Sparkling from under Neath the tough leather skin laid bare The green softness you’re afraid to share Say you’re made of stone but it’s clear you are an Alligator Pear Watch the sunset in a burning match, see a new day hatch See the moon detach Skeletoning everything concealed, reality unpeeled Truths finally re Vealed in a much more flattering glare Your inner core so full of love and care Say you’re made of stone but it’s clear you are an Alligator Pear Tryin’ not to reveal you’re An Alligator Pear

There’s a skin to your absence, hard as a cactus, keeps me from moving away Feet sown to the floorboards, tongue in the sock drawer, my words all amorphous like clay Did you canyon your past, is it echoing back? Does it reverberate, or just excavate? In the night I can hear the moon singing for lovers dancing alone, Beating hearts, filling eyes with fog to be released from the ghost in your home Fall into your echo eyes Did you canyon your past, is it echoing back? In the grave in your eyes, phantoms starting to rise In the night I can hear the moon singing for lovers dancing alone, Beating hearts, filling eyes with fog to be released from the ghost in your home Fall into your echo eyes

With a skull full of TV snow, dreams spill from my ears A blurred panorama prismed in my tears My heart like a hummingbird and belly of beer The ashes of memories stoked flames of my fears Oh, Daylight Moon You told me the story of the lonely lady Her eyes were pianos and her voice was the sea She lost herself in a storm of hyperbole Dandelion mist dance in snow globe jubilee  Oh, Daylight Moon On baby’s breath and kitten paws We squeeze our way past twilight’s jaws As truth slaps us in mock applause And time handcuffs our wrist

In the backyard hideout, underneath the leaves, Whisper all our secrets, tuck them up our sleeves And it makes me nervous, ears a burning match, Hiccups skip my talking like a record scratch Where the sun won’t rend us in its judgy jaws, where the stars won’t point out all our shameful flaws We binge on emotion then explode our hearts, tape them back together and we call it art Green lime smirk and we’re shirking sleep, in the challenger deep When you’re a reverse rainbow, monochrome debris, feeling like a pear in a partridge tree Sinking in brown carpet, tangled in the shag, gravity and gravy dousing time to drag I will sing your anthems, I will set you free, I will shear your halo of uncertainty With a Velcro crackle we’ll reset the skies, fill the dull horizon with apricot sunrise Unzip dreams so that we can keep in the challenger deep Green lime smirk and we’re sleeping, in the challenger deep Unzip dreams that we’re keeping, in the challenger deep Secr

Fall from your knee, tumbling free From a conjunctive summit Untethered frame, echoing name Resonating plummet My hand’s an astronaut, tears through a comet shot Swimming like leaves, draining from sleeves Into infinite azure Smiling like brass, captured in glass To suburbia pasture My hand’s an astronaut, some astral afterthought Trailing, flailing My hand’s an astronaut, occipital sunspot Scent of a dream, flows through bloodstream In the folds of October Quick rush of moon, sweet breath of swoon Intoxicatingly sober My hand’s an astronaut, these fingerprints are fraught Sailing, failing And last of all, before I fall Reach for your cheek

With a rush of sand Hand bleeds into hand Land snapped into land  Every mountain of every range Every river of every sea Come together to disarrange And be free All the world in one place Margins gone, all erased Freckles flood the whole face Every mountain of every range Every highway and every road Come together to disarrange And to flow It’s a smashing consequence In a supercontinent Geologic providence In your eyes a glimmer See the light shimmer Pangea Ultima Every mountain of every range Every river of every sea Come together to disarrange And be free

Scrambled eggs, oh how I love your legs And how they bend at the knee Bones of glass, you are a fragile lass With will as strong as the sea Quiet as nuns, hymns coiled in lungs Snakes bursting forth out of shotguns Snug as a cat, beige as bath mat Disturbed rudely by cowboy hat Scrambled eggs, scissors in place of legs Slicing smooth through this song Submarine, deep inside a dream Memories all redrawn Fingernail moon, puncturing my cocoon Secrets spill out like black balloons Werewolf shame, no sheep to blame Not even Ferris wheel to tame Scrambled eggs, something about your legs Part of a balanced breakfast With teeth in hand, straighten my ampersand Snuff out all to the preface Shadows with wings, feelings with skin Tangled in busted guitar strings It’s all just eggs, just scrambled eggs All I’ve got left is scrambled eggs

Because the rain fell cursively your face smudged like a love note Beat up by waves of white noise drowned in calm without a lifeboat Stiff upper kitchen chair, souls spiral up from mugs of coffee Without a point of view you feel just like a horseless jockey Moon slices up the mountain, serves it up like upside down cake Downstairs I dictionary up my nose until I earthquake Shove secret centuries in kitchen corners and old sock drawers Pick up the phone and on the other line is Turkish Star Wars Orphaned tarantula scurries along suburban sidewalk Pendulum can’t upset the obstinate grandfather clock Your birth certificate is printed on the sunrise pink clouds These inert history books are drained of everything but nouns Because the snow accumulates inside your empty eyelid Map collapses into itself, spits states into beehive dream grid These seeds are helicopters chopping logs along sunken shores Flip to the index see the entry labeled Turkish Star Wars Time laps

In your face I see my wish, swimming like a jellyfish Gliding through your smiling eyes, captured in the twilight skies Ooooh… Ingrown feelings fumbling, through beauty that is humbling Open doors and stolen keys, head among the tops of trees Dreaming of feeling Lost in the stars tonight, swimming in lush starlight Luminous beings are we, radiant jubilee Fog-breath morning, lamp lit dawn, three deer stand calm on the lawn My apprehensions all dispensed, in the courage of their innocence Growing and floating Lost in the stars tonight, swimming in lush starlight Luminous beings are we, boundless and beaming free Lost in the stars tonight, swimming in lush starlight Luminous beings are we, radiant jubilee Lost in the stars tonight, swimming in lush starlight Luminous beings are we, boundless and beaming free Turtle dusts the room with stars, whisper secrets into jars Midnight hair in shimmery sleep