for me and sarah

Your rage is inverted
a past and a storm
mixing, a cocktail
spiked by Her laughter
_____

a stork blocks Heaven from
any chance of Me
the courts
are eternal in
God’s eyes

so I am the sea now
I am green and
unstable
______

We move in calm procession
a block steadies our
thoughts – Her glass, Her great
fish jaws, and soon We are
lanterns floating high-tide

by every way the Earth breathes
We should meet with dead
shoulders, shrugged
off Each Other
______

I follow beauty like
a shadow, I live
miraculously hollow
waiting on lies
laying on My altar
______

You question every raw answer
a priest walking on
water, take My meteor!
Eat it.
Your world might
multiply if We feed it.
_____

We are Mighty brave
in a rotten state, two Wretches
hard-boiled,
crawling on the surface

They can’t see us as ants –
take my hair off
fate grudges
the snakes are coming
______

I have lost My ending
You beg cold against
the same heat in Hell
I ran away from

What are We then?
We chance ourselves
to nothing –

He crosses Seven
times despite
the waves of Our Ocean
_____

Let’s leave Him to His handsome
His misery is His to drown in

Leave Me With The Echo

Here. I am black echo ash.
Resin. The aftermath.

Always, the beginning is fresh.
Sweet cream masked – naked
baby’s breath awakening
to the first day.

I close my eyes to find it.
Seven minutes –
heaven is just beneath
his collar.

One breath, we melt forever
bonded; a rush, a plunge,
a distance without measure.

Instigator. I break as quick
as silver, my tongue –
an anxious alligator.

He snakes back to a shadow.
Strike a fire, burn
his path to follow.

Catch on flames, catch the blue.
Beginnings start out hollow.
Torch the love, torch the pain
leave me with the echo.

I Saw It First

so the world curves in and folds
over bottomless
alto-cumulus like
a second cloud
thundering over a handful
of broken hearts
I mean for you to find
out first
but it’s always my eyes
that watch storms
rolling in

swiftly from cracks in old
dreams angrily toward
nights that cradle infants
softly

strangling sleep that holds
and heals
I am tethered to heavy
weather on one of those old
Sunday’s watching my body
drift silently into you
I mean for you to taste these
memories trapped but my
heart is pyrite and I
saw it first.

How To Sleep In A Gutter When You’re Not Dead

Curl up raw, stranger. Where is your
husband’s thick pockets?
You must be one of those different
colours.

I’m dead on my feet, you’re
sleeping in the gutter. Five days
in February – we both struggle.

Half a dozen snowflakes
ring the city, one man
hangs high above the river
two blocks down –

I can’t get my gown down
when I hear the secrets –
you shiver under the ice
and I like it,

biting my bottom lip, I’m nervous
for the next move.
Who’s it to be? Me or You?
All is well and dead on this side
but you look alive –
try to get a grip around your neck, but
you slump over
the cold.

Where did he go with his large gloves?
Are you beating like a cat fish or more
like drums?
Your colour is looking frozen.
Don’t pull those tears off too early or
you won’t recognize me.

I’m sorry for you, sister, losing
in this land, but when I see your secrets,
I tremble from a cursed realm
and I am ready to fade into the big city,
9 o’clock,
locked up with something like a vacuum cleaner
and let you go.

Love Letter

Amaranth, on my back, off

the edge of life.
Dangling cords fall
like snakes, I hanged them
there to dry
me out. With you,

it is cold.
I can’t say that. I miss you,
but I do not. Have you
been tempted to rip her
skin off and put mine on?

My back is off
the edge, now
life is seeping through
my toes, amaranth
dangling, a love letter

for you.

To That

inch of time spent over the sea,

dragging your dead body back
from the sharks I fed you to.

There should be enough salt
to drown in. Now that is something
you don’t hear of!
But, I have heard of Buddha,
and Ghandi,
and what great advice for the
blonde girls in white dresses,
not scratched by hands of
light drinking, or hard gunfire;
the girls untouched by
living a dead life, waking under floorboards
built by their mothers.

Your heavy photograph burns to
my tongue. I spit. I curse you out
of your newly dried grave.
I am ecstatic for your corpse,
it grows on me like tough leather.

Now for her.
I carry a monsoon to her driveway.
She is lit up. A bright pumpkin
ripened for plummet.
She dresses in honeysuckle,
and flickers like whiskey.
I haven’t thought of her name,
she is black as a canvas; a new galaxy
before energy matters.
If her heart happens to
do that, I will carve it out.

I will take it back to July in my teeth
where the desert is waiting for me,
it’s Queen.

Old Memories Of Paris, Café Au Latte

Old memories of Paris, café au latte,
iron wrought on a kitchen sink
where she slimmed her figure
on a butcher block.

She dangled like a wind chime,
toes on pointe,
testing the winds and
the Gods on
Wisdom of Love.

Pretty little music box, my doll,
bathing in sunlight
through reflections of The Tower at
dawn. I asked her what she saw.

Her answer was as black as a widow
living off space between sun flower seeds.
I turned to her soul and spoke
to her in cotton,
she understood,
souls always understand what is next,
and why.
I led her to confession.

She rattled all the way,
dangling eight unworthy legs –
shooting silk like
it meant nothing,
because that is all she had ever known.

By sunset, she had dried up.
Everything that she had devoured
had taken over
and spit her spirit out.

DayDream

I can’t have you come back like August
without water. Your limbs shriveled and
cracking, bare knuckled,
moving like a tree
away from fire.

We built moons in the back of Cadillac’s,
coffee black leather seats
trimmed back – to make
room for the
others.

I wore thorns under my skirt, then.
I let the pure taste rise from your voice
and settle on the rhythm that
rocked us into daylight.
For you, sound lined up
and agreed with me.

You will come back like August always does;
a dirty deed to compliment me,
to bring me to naught!
But, the moon sails on
and without it,
I cannot.

Hot For War

I’m not so angry after all
this time, he smells like honey, hot roasting in the damp evening. 
His carpet moves like the sea. I might be breathing, but he’s not. 
His blood is worn out in deep veins, his secret time is up. 
I am not angry this time, he positions himself for love and I watch,
jammed with battle fever, I am hot for war. 
A soldier holds no fear, and there is no time to speak.
He engraves himself with yesterday and I wear him next to my heart.
I am not angry after all
this time. His blood dries up and my ache fades. 
We are both permanent in a temporary place. 

Departure

Some eyes open like black holes,
gravitationally throwing memorial stones through a moment,

letting time break a silence that lingers in every muscle,
every finger tip
for a soft crash of acknowledgment.

Other eyes move like flat lines and we must guess. Ache drips from our palms like candle wax, hot with the stench of regret
and blame.

I remember the first taste of his
time, brutal pine in November’s icy driveway. I know his eyes opened
to our flavor together,

but now he walks in such a quick
rush; as if the Earth might split without eating him up

and he talks,
like voices do
when they should,

but not one blink wrinkles,
or speaks,
or loves.