The Earth Knows my Secret Love

I sleep beneath the rainbow
and wake from dreams
of your humid core.
The sky knows my infidelity.
The earth, brown and
worm-etched, knows my secret
love. It is the Sabbath
here in my perimeter. This
means I pray. I pray for
more dreams, for fidelity, and
for a return to your core,
full of pure, unbroken sky.

And her Name was I am not Staying

She entered my life
like a battered dresser, all
drawers open, a
pyknic smudged with dark
that beckoned.
I opened up the last pair
of pants I owned.
She said, I won’t take this
lying down, just so
you know. I said, I don’t care,
I only came here for the
retribution. I said, I
wanted you at first, as
a balance, some kind of
statement. She said, stop
the palaver, cowpoke,
and brand me till
I say to stop. She was that
kind of wayward.
She was crazy as a star.
She spoke in fluent hurt.
And now, when I think of
her, and I do, a lot,
I remember her phony
medals, her thighs carved from
adamant, and the way she
made me a better man,
by kicking the dust out
of me, by making me survive
her unexpected absence,
like a cored apple, like
hope upon a rocking deathbed.