I Saw You

I saw you on the roundabout        a burden’s squirm

an apple perched on the peak of           a hip bone

in the garbage heap.                     You did not catch my eye

but I caught your cold

cut out of the eye of your snake’s

skin. Jacket crumbled on a chair.          If scarves are

what make you swoon                                         look at my open palms.

What?

I said I would

smash the ukulele compressed in the folds of                           a moleskin.

   I saw you

cross out the last corpse in a group of four sticks                     in the fog.

Your greasy breath on the mirror.                                What?

Don’t look at my hands they are too small

even for the ashtray.            I came here for you.                      God

you looked like a mountain range                    conquered by fear.

I caught your eyes in a fish bowl                       a stereo stuffed in a garbage bin

a bee caught under your tongue.                                     Humming

a dead horse in the bends of your elbows.

          Let’s obsess a little.

What?

Trapped you in a stage light      my memory is the crowbar.

Saw you on a flowerbed                        keeping signature

with lightning bolts.                                           I had a dream

we would meet sometime soon                                     but never like this.

Buried you in my chest as if closeness             makes the storm’s

night wilting branches in a storm.                                   What?

You caught my eyes and I caught you                            a vixen ensnared

in a stage curtain.                   Help me keep that

collage of you scraping your knees                                              on the bottom

of the woodshed.                                  The scarf is long now.

I’ll see you tomorrow                 just give me one chance to burn

in winter’s discarded scraps.