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

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.

The Sun Chases The Moon

I spend a thousand blinks on old memories.
Each taste like cocaine
broken teeth, pressing
truth against my cheek, a cold shock

like this one – 
crying on the beach, sleeping in empty sea shells.
My mother eats her hands,
choking on emptiness,
on regret –  I understand,
then –

fireflies above my nose.
Bathing with my naked sisters,
collecting our shadows full
of sea water – and with a rush of the moon
a tip of years comes rushing back
and I choke, not on emptiness
but on regret, and I understand
then –

it’s the same sun that passed away,
roasting flames with me on
Sunday; and what does He do?

He moves.

 

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.

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.

And Their Colour

I see how he boils
I see his skin blistered and peeling
at the surface, and
I see what lies beneath.

I couldn’t help it, his voice started out whimsy and soon turned grey.
I searched for colour, for exposure, for sound;
in every wrinkle,
in every scar I searched, but they grew dull
and duller, still.

There is only one way at a time like this,
for me, just one way.
I carved a switch, long and thin,
kissed it from tip to tip,
dipped it in ferocious honesty
and laid it upon him.

Every sharp went unacknowledged, ignorance shaded
his wounds, so I left them.
He came back for another round and
I smacked him with truth,
defiance and with truth,
and he did not believe me.
So, I left.

Then, he came back and I swat him again.
I welted and blistered his skin, this
time colour arose.
Red infection swelled at the lacerated sites,
and he boiled.
I listened to his blood and his voice boil,
and his skin gash and then blister,
but before all this
I saw what hid beneath.

Now, I stand in front of my mirror,
where he thinks my reflection is
hollow and bare,
and I see all of my wrinkles and scars
and where they came from
and that they will always be

but with their colour,
and their colour,
and their colour!

I Will Not Be Fictional

I am skin,
bones, and
two toned cheeks.
I reek of issues, baggage and
distance.

Walk a mile –
can’t find me.  No mile
could. “While
you are looking, could you
grab me a latte? Double shots?
Thanks!”

I found
a story, a long time ago. It carried on and on and on. Redundant. It nearly drove me insane! Then, one day, the story changed! I think I was in shock. So, I walked miles and miles away.
The story couldn’t find me and I didn’t want it to. I have no use for stories; real or imagined!!

A boy came along and he
started writing, sketching words and illustrations in a binder.
He had longing in his eyes as he
sat under a hot, burning lamp. But, the
poor fool kept on writing.

He told me what he imagined
and hoped he could create.
Well…I listened and I smiled and
approved of his story. But he had the damn characters all wrong!!

I told him of my loathe for stories and how I may
regurgetate my lunch if he tried to write me in it.
He sulked, momentarily, but he went on his way. I suppose he writes in a new character
to take my place.
All the better for me.

I am skin,
bones, and it might be because of all the stories
that make me regurgetate my lunch.