Leaving a Mark:

leaving a Mark:

being the ring inside my white 
mug

I'm the coffee. If the carelessness of letting

things go cold are a poured

pause, I am what’s been sitting,

what’s held, going numb but still

held, for lips and tongue and cheek—

wet warm as the inside congealing,

soft solid waiting to pass the exposed bone’s  

open gate.  Once sipped, I want the inside

of your mouth to be a grand cavern, and I want to

camp out as though I were 20,000 years old

but not showing my age, I want to shine a small light

and find the Lascaux of it all, the canopy

of an ancient painter’s world: all those bulls

and mares and elaborate antlers.  Because listen, once,

once their blood was as warm as my living tongue. 

Once their blood was as culpable as thunder, ramming  

the way I ram words when I get nervous, piped

directly from the cistern at the foot

of my heart, only to find the gutter’s plugged,

because it’s fall and the trees, saving their sweet

for spring, shake their hands bare, every breath

a letting lose, but the hands remain behind,

they sway like rooted bristles, like paint spray before
it hits the canvas, like the tired at the edge of things.
Is it time to pull all that’s fallen out of the choke?
Is it time to sip at the cold mug without rueing that I should

have done this before I fell?  But when I looked up

in the small light, and let it come, straight on,

the heat of your throat is what I deserve.  Yes, yes,

I said, straight on, let it come,

so that when I look back, this time, I know I’ve been

there for the small stain on the roof of you.