I can’t pray or weigh my words right; doomsday is here my friend, but you’re immune. We sufferfor you. I’m weaving crowns of sonnets, dreads;a souvenir so you’ll never forget your friends.

We played with the moon all night, painting faces on its blank cheek, shining its spotlight into sleeping people’s windows. But mostly we just ate the moon, stuck tongues to its surface and felt it dissolve, left chunks of its minty scalp on neighbors’ doorsteps.

We could scan each car for terrorists and lovers she could lean into my camouflage her head resting on woven trees. When they come for her body she could run deep into my uniform into the forest of me where they could never find her.

With each kiss in the cold house 
we swallow clouds of breath – exhaled spirit, speech bubbles
 we’d rather lick away 
than fill with words. We run naked from room to room, 
keeping the walls warm.
 Our bodies blur through the halls 
of your house, its winter circulation.

Offerings gleam beneath consecrated trees,boulders, and caves where Kami nature spiritsminister to congregations of saki cans, lotus root, and the glow of tangerines; still-lives silent as prayer.

I dreamed in night vision; whiteflowers of nocturnalgun fire – day residue shot to hell. If I held my dreamsto a windowsill,sun would sievethrough my screams.

Veins of ivy scale stones,find footholds butthe caretaker cuts earth short, peels creepers from Cotswold rock and props the deadhead to head so they won’ttopple like drunkson their moss-soft shadows.

First, make sure the ocean is rolled by an older woman whose quick fingers have been rolling the ocean for as long as you’ve been alive – She’ll fatten the rice in hot, sugared water spiked with rice vinegar then make a soft bed of it to wrap a slip of fish muscle, squeezing the bamboo rolling mat until the ocean’s circumference is compacted in seaweed’s brittle corsetry. It takes her just moments to dress the ocean, its nudity a pink tongue poking from iridescent green nori wrap