National poem

I blur easily
my skin feels like newspaper
burying days
beneath the nights
beneath the streetlights
an act

of citizenship as
automatic as the filling
and emptying of an
impossible
warehouse

behind each
arc each slash against the
chalkboard in my mind
there is the need for
anonymous
apologies

because
relentless camouflage
smothers the crucial subways
that save me from forcing
blasphemy

blasphemy that
seeps into my very architecture
and worries my bones
like telephones inside
a coffin

until even the sky
is a blanket over a map
and I ache
like a satellite without
a message

---

Dangers of moonlight

I believe in absence
and that deep forests of it wait
like cold cocoons

that tomorrow's most solid lullaby
allows only so many visitations before
being prevoked into vigils

which fool themselves
where they sit like pigeons
soaked in chaos

like some violent new
perfume arriving by dying
through the keyhole

(such roots long for
twilight even as they dust
themselves for sleep)

---