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Every "fault" is a poem,
like a dip at the faultline--a sea drifts,
forced & hung
like weathery jibbering, slipping
off of buttery hand
-rails
like unobliging cats
that will not come when called upon
or where camouflaged animals burrow
into a semi-dry, thorny ground.

It never matters. The ground
is only good for a future existence
of fixed days, bluer than sky blue, greener
than grass-green.
Town bells striking the hour.
The future is a twisted hand, boundless.

I spell out your name
in the soggy brown soil. I clear it away
& repeat, like the stuttering lions
on my tongue
as if reaching for
what can never be said
when mesmerized by your beauty.

So this a poem, eh?
Or perhaps a fault of mine
for being so darned poetic
that people try to understand it,
& to understand me, as if
one searches me out as I stand
in front of a black backdrop
wearing all-black--blacker
than our tax money "at work,"
blacker than ones with
deceiving rhythms of breath,
as if within a half-conscious state,
as if to actually "talk to the hand"
& being able to understand the hand itself
more than what comes out from
your paranormal mouth,
where Trouble appears
with all of its words attached.

The faultline is sustained & soothed,
between vespers & compline,
odd illusions crashing down.

You see it in the night.
A shape in the darkness
that appears to be gripping a flashlight tightly
with plum-skinned forms.

You realize your fault, then turn away impatiently,
swinging back to the doorway
in a delicate shiver, like a pressed cuticle,
your thoughts leading you away
or leading the way.