Confession From Heaven

Confession from Heaven

as you can see
we have potential

although hearts burst out in tears,
locked behind bars, in chains,
against a will of their own,

we carry every blink used
to wipe away the pain,
we stand guard when the Earth
shakes underneath feet full of breath

breathe easy
we have potential
we have not lost the sunlight
of yesterday,
or the smell of a growing world

childhood kisses are fresh on our
souls

we have not passed
we are not the past

we are your honest future
waiting
for our bound hearts
to hold each other
once again.

Inside Of A Sleep

You have gone.  There is no now,
just used to;
cement packed into Earth fragments.
Ironic, it is, that solidity above the surface
is made from what lies beneath.

Think about – oh how you can’t!
I miss that.
Poor baby.
You try to kill me again,
and again,
to show me something new,

a new world inside of sleep.
Is this how it is for you?
A permanent anywhere,
where you never are, but were?

I miss that what it was
will not, and never be anything
but you and me, asleep inside of a
sleep.

I Love Her More

She has a name hanging
in a back orchard somewhere.

Cowbells are ringing. I gave it up
like an omelet to a woman married
to perfection.

I am missing limbs for limbs,
heart for heart. Who am I to promise
life to another broken life?

Her name stands on a balance beam
between two tongues, heated tongues,
a melting puddle of ownership.
Where did she come from?
Where does she belong?

Tug-of-war. I own her more.
Someone who should have been born
is hanging in a back orchard somewhere.

I let her go. I love her more.

The Death Of Aaron James

The
cello is a thick, heavy syllable
crying against the shoulder of
a thin woman,

a road of auburn hair trailing down her
spine. She understands value.

Prose is never numb,
it spans across nerves
playing emotions with finger

tips of red wood.
You brought Lydia to me
at twenty-five,
she dripped into my sleep
and led me
on a journey.

For you, she was a symptom of
something incurable. She opened my throat,
expanding me and you
suffocated.

The cello smiles with wide fingers,
thick like its soul.
Lydia takes me on a piano ride
in red wood snow where prose
grows and grows and grows.

Sleep Walk

Sleep-walk

through a black body bag

toe’s tagged

he falls dirty like a dish rag

My love, his chalk

outline becomes my bed

he sleeps deep inside my lungs

I try to cough up his death

We exhale sharply together,

our silly little game

one of us a winner

the other in the grave

I am stuck with this raw, young body here

but he has taken my blood

my pulse is stiff against a man

yet I howl for the touch

For the moon’s milk

to puncture my skin

pray for my spirit

bring me to life again

Waiting For Me

From the top of the blizzard
with buzzards ablaze,
the reaper stands watching,

waiting for skin to drop
or lungs to fall

waiting for the right moment
to steal fingers imprinted on
the Universe,
hearts beating on the sun,
and moons kissing under the tender lights of love.

He stands waiting, in every dream I dream, where your hands are
more than a memory,
waiting for me.

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.

My Mad Voyage

Were you, yourself, a stranger with no clear account of his dying?
An accident crowned that day.
A ticket arrived, golden and hollow,
at his bedside. 

He laughed.
He board a ship in the morning
that carried no heartbeat
or skin.

I think this is all we talk about.
A mad voyage where listeners were
not, until now.

And were we strange to his fable, with his legs up on the couch?
I should say to him, I am not.
There are two bodies I know,
inside and out.
I fasten their heads together in knots around my chest

on my own mad voyage that carries no heart,
or beat,
or spirit
that is strange to his hand on my shoulder, softly at rest from the world.

a life of a ghost man

It is hard to believe in a dead man,
a ghost,
a life,
a life of a ghost man….

a life that hands my limp direction
over to those that can control it.

They must have told him,
the people,
that his core was rotting,
that his brain was infested and crumbling?

That his daughter was sick with
raw nerves and would never get better?

If the bombs in Vietnam hadn’t sawed his
spirit away,

if his own father
hadn’t dangled lily liver from
the ceiling,

maybe he would have heard
the people,
the ghosts,
the whispers of his daughter’s twisted,
raw nerves grasping
for contact

and saved me from rotting with the same
crumbling infestation.

The Sickness

The sickness is under my skin again, crawling in confusion.
Daylight screams.

It starts with the alarm clock. Night terrors, tick-talking me to sleep.

I slit your arms around me,
But why did you leave?

Your mountains are stained by
wild midnight. You’re in love with her air.

Her skin is made of cyanide, her bones, frozen and bare.

Silence stands against my bed, my tongue on splintered wood,

I bet you’d eat my carcass, if only you could. You could!!