Waiting For Alignment

She says to watch the waves. The tides are mixed, we wait for alignment.
It could take years….and in the meantime my bones slap against the equator.
The water is low.
Fish flop belly up with baby jelly beans dangling in reverse….the tide is turning.

Zenith encourages direction. I am vertical; midheaven.
God is intersecting.

What house do I belong in?
Am I breast and bone?
Am I flesh and blood?
Am I fire and system?

She says to watch the waves. We can go from there. The sun must first come
over the horizon. I strain East. I feed on the ecliptic axis and wait 90 degrees
like suggested. I wait

until I fall beneath the Earth. X lives here. X is virulent and understood.
X is ability and invasion.

She says I have to learn how to be with the disease. Who I am is bound
and fruitless. I will never find alignment when I greet
X in such short periods. X will never release the bacteria and set me
back on land,
on shore,
on sea,
where I can wait with the tides for alignment,
and drown out the suffering.

Like I Am

I did not touch yesterday, like I say I did.
My fingerprints are missing.
I lost them on a glass man,
wrapped my hands around

his whiskey sour, like I shouldn’t have.
He mingled with fire over
victory, like a beast gnawing
on my shoulder

I looked over his shadow like I owned him,
but daylight quickly ended, now
here I am. Fingertips dripping
off frozen glass,

as miserable as I planned it,
and here I still sit,

alone and empty-handed.

Just A Dream

The vile’s are filling from the back of my knee.
One full of life, a gifted excretion,
the other full of poison, waiting to take the former’s place.

I am set out to chill. Overnight. Alone.
I don’t mind except that the
sounds become so loud
and all the movements in all the world
become heavy like a rock.

I used to dream that I stepped out upon
the softest land,
barefoot,
soaking comfort in through my pores.
How quickly the dead tree branches would poke
up and stab me at from
beneath the peaceful ground.

I used to dream, but now silence
sharpens itself in my ear.
It is a carved loneliness, perhaps from
the other side of the grave
where the ones I love have finally made room
to love me back.

This side of life ties me to boulders and
smashes my ankles with hammers.
My bone fragments roam about
under my skin
wondering where they belong.
They cry out to me, but I
do not know where they go.
They are just fragments,
and I am just a dream.