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.

Am I New

Flapping tongue, to change your name, to change yourself,
to change,
to change,
you say it’s smoking time, maybe if the zone changed,
but we run on desert time,
at devil lake
I wish I was, a reservoir, I wish I was a dog,
rolling in the dirt, a tumble weed,
collecting time and breeze,
in the hustle
rolling,
changing,
flapping in my sleep to change position, to change disposition,
to change,
I meditate, a trumpet sounds,
an angel sings, is it me?
Did I work? Did the clock split my tongue
and now I am two?
Am I new?

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.

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.

His Name

just the beginning,
slithers off wet lips with charm.

Mockingbirds use many tongues
to sing of slick footprints
stepping in,
stepping out.

At first blush they call,
crested blue, aggressive;
wild for the North,
where dragon fruit merges with devotion;
where I found his name.

We spread together as far as Summer could take us
until we melted into sunspots at the edge of the Earth,
high desert heat drying out our love.

Later, we flew south in high, asthmatic screams;
nocturnal – fugitive.
It is never the first time.
It is never the last.

His after tastes like a razor blade,
but I am a glutton and I cannot
let go of his name.

To Prove Something

The best part of the sun, where it melts away for its own reflection.
To prove something.

We stand in snake skin and
leopard print, digging for
bones of the extinct

while money blows up the noses
of our youth.

I thought about you today.
Your early reflection smoking
life into you,
black coffee lungs watching the sunrise bring life into
the rest of us.

My skin is hanging up now.
I am melting away for my reflection to do the same.
To prove something.

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