harbinger

it always seems like honking makes the city
bigger than usual

on most days. you told me you wanted me
to tell you when the reign of seafood was over, but

first, witness agave leaves ablaze,
wads of green

spikes browning deeply to
curly wafts gathered near

your face, like smoke unmade
from a once and future king’s

spice filled censer served a la mode
from a roadside stand, sturdy walls

glazed in ozone
and pocked with abalone bits, proprietors

sworn to grill soft shell shrimp, tiny
appendages, pincering mandibles, all

consumed by the infuscate water disappeared
down the sinkhole growing

inside. your soft neck blows about me
(do you remember what i was talking

about about like ten lines ago?
oh, your face and smoke? again? ok, thanks). i tile wood

floors with coins rather than tiles, so really
it’s more like harboring a villain

than anything else, or perhaps like burying
ligamental chunks of you

for to grow in the blood
red clay and bewitched moss

my house rests on.
all in all, i think it’s just got to be

your touched destiny
and me, and then some

out of the loop obelisk guts
we CTRL + S’d for eternity

in talking cookie jars
shaped like thieving bears

whom get their stinking paws off on
my collection of unfulfilled promise

rings melted down and recast
imperfectly into planet shaped musket balls.

you’re told

to sit still until birds call out

your name

in the rain

made gloom,

informing you

your table is ready.

you’re told

when you visit the sea

the waves are saying something

that sounds

suspiciously like

“we miss you”

over
and
over
and
over
and

even though i don’t know

you, yet,

i think this
gestures across the two of us
could be as true as all that
gestures above the two of us