When You Bit... Outtakes Pt. 3

                                                                      Grace

I am a limited body. I do
not encompass much, &
my ace-in-the-hole is how
& why I know this (from
long experience of waves,
which have taken salty
thoughts from my brains). 
I know vastness, being little.
I know defeat sans groans.
Being pure is what saves.
Out at sea, unnumbered
uproars roll past my ears,
like the Danny’s bar-keep’s
innuendos like thunder.   

                                                                    Cauterized

I can't feel a thing but pain.
Everything I say's a blunder—
form and feeling gone insane—
heaps of snow inside my brain.
She's my loaded cherry pie.
I'm not worth her sliding doors
unless my eyes get cauterized
and moving sand's a wooden floor.
It's all been said except for this—
that I will out the road I missed,
scattered signs, paraphernalia of
our last night’s pilgrimage past
the bucks hitting Bucktown’s tow-
away zone, down-bound baked goods.

                                                                  Worn Yesterday

To circle you from inside you,
from inside glassy globes of skin
offered up in mute scream to
shared sharp pangs, how a lock
might close shut in this, how it
could clasp us to a firmament,
how in arching up we forge bliss,
down, & to be gone is concupiscent,
& come is gone, white-woven in —
what’s still unaccounted for is
how when I leave this place again
for Philly, I’ll look for you on
Main Street, Manayunk, find
myself at Worn Yesterday again.