Leaving fire in the house

Part of a longer poem under construction: 

there's use for cracked fingers

between the iron and the tinder

hooked like padlocks, there's use for fire

melting is s form of surrender

to ash, the ultimate grey 

Infamous words

Bread, half broken on the table again,
 feathers gather for the lesson on the windowsill,
how many birds die of hunger, each morning?

The jacket

the pot brims of today's
downpour, roses, dog and fish have fallen
to earth. I move to the side, careful with the produce
not mine and not yours
there's so much to think about
like the fact that I am wearing your precious jacket
but there's a dead rat by my feet
like the fact that the streets are now unfamiliar
to the beating of horns
but the corners are just the same.

If I listen

The tap drains, I haven't fixed it
the little drops could have made an ocean, that's what you would say
I drag my tools, to put math into the equation,
I plant a stone in the waterfall's way

the bread lacks salt and good yeast, but I only make bread
with the residue of  yesterday's corn and today's disappointments
and my day has been charming, so far

in the room, I sit reading, in a dress of sunflowers
I tangle concepts into eight figures, try to make sense of
the way commas run and stop, from the leather chair rock
the dress is long but the eyes are short, 
and the riffs are strong, yet the strings are from threads
what you see is what you get

today I have leased a room from distance,
the dripping in my bathroom is loud
in the kitchen bread is grey with grief
if you were true, the waters we swam
could become an ocean
 we stop tasting the riptide to know salt is an addition,
a primal necessity-the material makes due the man-
if I listened I wouldn't look the grounds for active ants
if I truly listened I wouldn't have the river for a bed.

sycho-therapy

deceased, time when you walked
straight from head to toe
hard, it seems for a generation
 not to count on a pill
to save the days.

natural disaster

nature takes shape to form it's surprises
takes her steady stirring to make broth of
lambs dressed in snake-skin, moldy
their bites are sharp. these surprises can be
small, effective
like goat mothers becoming childless
like milk drying up for calves.

In an art gallery

I enter, alone-
think, you haven't been with me to any gallery
where laid out is what we've put up
as life. The ceiling here changes,
 it's high with plaster, angels and sardonic faces
downing us like the start of the Apocalypse
this is where the world starts, in reverse.

I walk the paved corridors alone,
take my time to stare at the portraits
each one, a decade, long enough
to dictate features that could have been realistically
another face in oil, another baroness
begging in the afternoon for a piece
of stale dignity.

in here, I can think, separate myself
from the noise of who I
take for granted to be, my face
my features, my smile
things that could have easily been
in a decent portrait
had I found the artist

sometimes, in galleries I see other pilgrims
like me, hiding
some latching to colors, to light as if it will dust off
the breaks they have from thier packed lunches
or packed guilt for sheer lack of luck
in creation

in most art galleries
colors save face, then lose some
in the indignation of winter and restless heads
there's no cure to hunger for the summer
to aspiring, to better lines on old material
what matters is left, mattering

I march back, alone
think, how many humans seize to become
portraits and become pictures instead, flashing
down like thunder, steadying my steps
I exit and the portraits
walk me to the doors.