i am the king of insects

i am the king of insects
he said, he says,
he continues
a conversation
he started but dropped
he starts, he stops
this conversation,
it’s ongoing,
it went, it goes on,
he goes on with it
to the fine veins of a tattered brown
leaf, he doesn’t know
leaves, but he’d guess this one is
from an elm, he guessed it, he guesses
it became, it’s become
plastered to the window with a glue,
this glue called rainwater, he calls it
rainwater, and it was,
it is a glue, with the winter air,
stronger than paste,
much stronger,
it wouldn’t,
it shouldn’t
hasten anywhere, so he picks up
where he left off, he leaves off
after long pauses,
no,
no not the king, per se,
but they flock to me,
not like they’d flock
to a living leaf, or a wayward crumb
of pumpernickel, but they come
seeking
something,
I said I was a king,
not a wise man,
though wise enough,
and he paused,
and he pauses,
but he can’t continue,
he tries
but not with a glue that’s dried
and a leaf that’s slipped,
it dries, the glue,
and the leaf slips,
it slips and floats down,
down to the gutters
filled with so many browns,
when it hears it,
it has heard it,
enough

lonesome blood doesn't move

lonesome doesn't move, it clings
to time-tapered tree limbs,
to grey
sidewalks refreshed with a white snow,
and to the blood red brick walls overlooking them,
but not overlooking what went
past, no, not overlooking what passed as a life,
a life that went speeding past them,
with no quiet moments to take a breath
or to sit within them;

the past didn't go
the way she wanted it, the way
we'll see it, not the way
the blood red brick walls wanted to feel it,

but the bricks hold it, with tree limbs,
with walks, and they hold her,
and they offer her, still lonesome,
Hattie, stilled by blood, here to me,

and she comes to me, no, not her,
but the thought of her still blood, and when I take her,
or the thought of her, I take it
away, a little of our lonesomeness, the blood

everywhere and nothing

god,
i envy it.
it's being, everywhere
in nothing and ones. it's god
i don't envy, being
everywhere
and nothing at once.

There are. Know coincidences.

This coincidence
is only the difference
between paying and stealing attention.
I stole
a glance at a bus. It speaks its destination
in lights, and the lights think
they know where
you are. I don't, but I know
I won't go there.
I know instead
I'll go home and not watch the TV
where actors speak with words
not lights, and they speak one word to me
at the same time,
the exact same moment in time,
one word, a name,
pops into my far-away mind.

Happiness

Happy. Happy. Happiness
won't. It can't. It does not hop
out hazel-eyed to greet me
from there, behind a Hornbeam.

Happy. Happy. Happiest,
it's not, to hide. It will not
hide its slippery, crimson
cheeks, beneath a skipping stone.

Happy. Happy. Happy thoughts
it can't keep. Sunlight yellow
grins, it gives them. They are not
bundled in petunia buds.

But, I'll chase it round. I will
take it and toss it. I will
pluck it and sniff it, and not
finding it, I'll still have it.