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.

Come With Me

If you have ever bit the skin
of an orange, lifting
flesh from flesh,
life from life,
you can come with me.

If you have ever sat at the wake
of death, eye-to-eye with the
giver and, or, the taker,
you can come with me.

If you have ever put your body to rest
under a sky full of the blackest of
widows,
then come with me, please.

If you have ever coasted over a
thousand scissors cutting
every corner of every thought,
then please, come.

If you have ever melted into
the sun, begging to be rooted
into the eclipse,

If you have ever swallowed a pearl,
hoping to be turned into gold

then come with me.

About God

He may kill me
in plain love, He has
done more already.
His words are iron,
a heavy chain crushing
my fight.

I left a sleepy hill
for His voice.
My feet ached with disapproval,
but I went, as a soldier,
and shall we fight?

I hold armour in my lungs,
but my hands are wasteful,
braided together in conversation
with God. I would be proud
if I had it now. I would offer
everything, but question.

Here, He comes!
Don’t be late. I think
we settle on a couch, sinking
into resentment, I feel His chain.
I am not, but is He
free??

The Only Hands I Want To Know

hold on, for dear
life, hold on,

holds on, tight
grip, white knuckles,
ripping my flimsy body
from the sea.

We are ballet together.
Strict, and flexible.
The tragedy of the sea
drips from my fingertips;
he twirls death out of me.

For years, I drifted on dead logs,
raging against a hateful water,
dipping my hands in to remember

the violent debris, floating barely
above surface.
He disagrees.

He only saw a body dance perfectly
ill-tempered, diving into
the boiling veins of the world.
His hands reached in,
not to pull me from death,
not to release me from dangerous
waves that swallowed me in
then spit me back out,
but to dance
a perfect dance
on dry desert land.

Monday Confession

It will be several days of confession.
I have starved myself.
I have been hard and violent.

Each doctor takes note, takes opinion,
takes my blood and stirs
it in his coffee.

It’s Monday. 9:30 A.M.
The sterile tile has been examined,
the hard carpet, despised!
I twist dismay into the carpet fiber
with one foot,
the other taps out
awkward silence.

Sunday was a long day of struggle.
I ate out of the palm of a man,
tugged at his whiskers and
kissed him.
He had a candlestick, long like a lady,
using its light to sort me out.
I had only borrowed trust,
I had to protect myself.

He became a smoky tantrum,
a raging death match forcing truth
out of my swollen mouth.
It was a Sunday of ruin.

Confession came, thick bees swarming
my tongue,
a blur of black and yellow before
I fell hard out of life.
I woke up to this Monday, a dream,
a foggy span of blasting conscience .

And this is just the start.

To Be Fair….

Black ink dries on hard paper,
truth has made me guilty.
Speak softly to me!
A kind message?
Sublingual peace?
Abuse me with gentleness,
please!

Death is not deep.
To be fair,
this blush,
this young sigh,
this surface, it is all false.

Clocks speak with the sun;
patterns that change me.
I am Heaven.
I am Earth.
I whisper ‘farewell’.
I trade it all for instruction,

and the day goes,
consistently, then
brings me back again,

in ruin.
Life and Death. Undivided.

I wish for a different fight.
With fire or the sea,
a fair trade,
both worthy opponents.

I can obey their rules,
succumb to each,
their own authority,

yet, I am not standing inside flames.
I am not drenched in waves of the sea.
I am wrestling with ink,
a low, clear friend,
an enemy I would save,

a hard lover keeping me freely.
I am armed in my own silence,
wrapped in God’s skin,

and the words,
all the incriminating words are
seeping in.

If You Should Find Me

If you should find me with my head in the oven,
and my other head hanging from the broom closet,
and my torso flattened under tire,
and my hands in a bowl of oranges,
and my neck breaking for a man I barely know,

if you should find me like this,
please let me know what waits on the other side.

Please give my words a violent bath
in ammonia and make my skin
as fresh as a mothers’ skin should be.
Please wrap me up in plastic and place
me under heating lamps

and interrogate me before I leave.

I want my guts to spew outside of myself and
my skeleton to dry out in fresh air.

The air has become so stale in here,
I am as dry as an old loaf of bread.
I am collecting spores of green mold and nobody
knows about it

and all of the living organisms go around and around
their clocks;
the women with their perky breasts and the
men with their swollen cocks
and all of their concern with pro-creation,
while I sit here and rot in
the truth of who I am.

In God We Trust

I’ve been digging through past lives for
months, searching
for fingerprints
in five feet, eleven inches of

deceit dust covering everything
I know! How many times did he shed his skin
back here?  Dead parasites are proof!

He was on the roof when it caved.
Climbed  over four hundred days
with water and
a bible.

He left spoons and mattress burns below him,
tribe familiars blossomed following his climb,
extending gratitude,
tribute!

And he climbed, praising God, until he reached
Grace,
humble resiliency…

We sang!
We cried and we sang!
We wrapped our hugs in packages with golden bows,
throwing them to a skeptical world! We danced, twirled
through moon phases, a
fantastic celebration!

Then, a sharp raucous!
Brusque thunder crushing eardrums!

Blood poured from our ears
as the noise devastated. Bible pages
fell like confetti over
our joy; a tearful,
thick pollution!

We cried!
We fell and we cried!
We wrapped our memories in boxes with golden locks,
sealing them, our treasures. Silently, we
remembered, our Requiem,
a tribute!

All we know is that he climbed,

and that underneath five feet, eleven
inches of his dust, it is

in God that we place our
rusted
trust.

The Tolley House At Green Gate

I share a broom with Virginia
and Miriam, I
have not had the pleasure
of either of the two
Green Gate
maids,

but I know
that their knees squeak louder
than mine
and
that
elbow oil lubricates their
twists.

I can tell by
the way they leave
my broom settled
in
corners.

Its
terse whisker
stick
mocks my grip,
my sweeping angle.
I try
to lead our waltz but my
broom laughs at me,
certain of my clumsiness.

We fight for direction
over the
trite,
Tolley boards
of the old Tolley
House.

Mr. Tolley had taken a wife…

Sarah;
a one-legged chicken farm
who burst babies
all over these elderly boards, then
cleaned them
herself as ten of her children
rolled their deathbeds atop.

Virginia and Miriam must
remind my offensive broom
of Sarah.

Sarah and her discipline.
Sarah and her doctrine.
Sarah and her ten dead babies.

I think my broom is in love with Sarah.

It refuses
my suggestive
movements to clear
old dust from the floors.

I have no choice, I decide.

I toss the broom out
to
a patio
that hosted a Tolley family portrait once,

grab my very own electronic
sucking machine
and suck the dead babies
out from
abysmal,
woe coated
slits.