When The Fire Burns

I haven’t drank you for an hour,
or swallowed the sharks
swimming in your pale
manhood.
The road gobbled me up and
I do not miss your cancerous tongue,
all I smell is rubber
and all I want is the moon
to take me to bed
where I know what lives under
the sheets.

I know the blank ceiling page
and the rotation of the clouds,
I know how I cycle down,
a tornado scripture
burning my steeple to ash.

I translate you into languages unknown,
too complex for me to read,
the devil’s tongue,
a serpents spit,
a good muse when the fire rumbles
me to numbness.

Ether

Magnolia’s rattle to the North,
an odor I’ve never known
before now.
I have no lover to scoop
eyes from for warmth,
no body or bones
to mix together and boil for
nourishment.

Silence is a tough fog,
golden; triumphant;
whispers like a noose.
She is a smooth, naked
flamingo waiting in the Ocean.

We will travel together, like apples
ripening throughout the season.
We will be sisters
by blood,
by grace,
by moonlight.

And all the stories I tell you
now will be flat
as skin, my words will prune up
and the golden knife of silence will
slice the truth out.

The Whisper

A whisper,
sapphire, spiral breath
in the air. We choke
on language. Our silent hands
hold each other
up. The staircase
is a treacherous place,
though.

I at the top.
You at the bottom
of a death match,
strangled by guilt,
waiting for a whisper to
mend your wounds.

You turned me to salt.
I do not breathe.
I cannot whisper.
My eyes have become two
blue deserts.
My voice, a cactus.
I am rolling over barren land,
searching for hard water

and you stand, at the bottom
of the world, in a white ocean begging
me to whisper.

The Box

My soul has hands that feed my mouth
delight boxes marked “poison”.
I have second hands that are language.

I gave up youth for silent lips that
spread too thick. Two plump
pulsating cream puffs injected
with secrecy.

The boxes piled up to a thousand acreage;
a still wall with a calm face,
sipping tea with the Queen of servitude.
I have become a slave to iron curtains
and black rods.

Once upon a decade ago, I slept with
meaty warriors with bull-dog ears.
They carried sturdy death machines that
slaughtered innocence.
I heard them slice my siblings
to hamburger, while my stable body hid
in a homosexual bed.

I bled out of my ears for one tight night,
then woke up to the funerals.
I faced a casket with strawberry frosting
trim, small china pieces laid across
the mahogany lid.

I tipped with warriors, drinking their poison,
swallowing fear in full, single gulps.
They offered me a butchering tool
and I pulled it in, deep through
tissue and cartilage, into the warm cherry
pie that was wrapped inside my body.

I melted with metal. I succumbed to
murderous beasts that carry
angry weapons,
and without useful hands,
or mouth,
I became a box.

I Was Born To A Gray World

I was born to a gray world.
Void of sunlight.
Barricaded by ice.
Hunters have come for me. I watched them
gobble up
sisters, a brother,
and the woman who birthed me.

I stayed, under rocks, under dirt,
for sixteen years. I washed myself
in sin,
couldn’t come clean.
Stained with nights that smothered me
in the devils
chest hairs.

My hair grew to the length of
a woman. Sweeping me
out from
the dirt, standing me on
one foot,
then two.

Then, my breasts grew,
not much larger,
but wiser!

For some time, I lived out
dull
nightmares.
Screaming in sleep.
Silent during the dull day.
Grinding coffee beans
with quiet grips of rage.

I sliced each strand of woman from
my head,
became a man. I cut tears out of my arms
till I forgot how to
cry,
smashed my head heavy till
I forgot
everything else…

except that the world is gray.

My hair has grown back out
to the size of a woman
and my breasts haven’t grown
anything but heavy,
in a heavy body,
in a heavy gray body.