Where Dead Mice Sleep

Bring your church to the key – back rooms –
chimney sweep – flushed with soot –
black like cats – deep in Winter sleep.

Bring your arm to my ball – and chain
me up – downstairs – I
am a slave

to black waves of adultery –
and let’s not leave out the China, please? – In
the hutch, where dead mice sleep.

Take me to your temple – here, now go
to sleep – shackled to me –
wrapped in spite –
or luxury.

I won’t drop or swallow – your metal is safe
against my chest – One of us
is naked on the inside –

Christ would like how we make it here –
every Winter –
while the cats let the mice sleep.

When It Snows In The Desert…

there is no grace. Each flake is a poisoned needle
jabbing in my skin.

Every sting of winter is a piece of
her blue eyes,

and
his blue lips barely parted in a box.
I imagine his last breath and
wonder if it felt like Winter,
if it felt like the cold prick of
hell jabbed into his veins.

Winter has chained me to the past.
What is lost weighs more than everything
Winter has ever given.  I imagine her singing,
and if she sounds like Summer.

I know that I am here now, and I can never go back,
but still, I wonder,
when it snows in the desert.

The Devil’s Home

The sun lays September to rest,
my single tree quivers
against black canvas, frost steals my breath
and this night makes it hard to be a river.
My moon cannot gaze quick
enough in any direction, I stumble
over boulders, though these dormant feet stick,
one-side of heavy rubble.
Gentle, I offer, white whispers,
(and knuckles), as I lay my head to rest,
because, as he often does, the reaper
shreds nightly peace, to build a home in my chest!

Then He Asks Me For A Prayer

it won’t be long

the Japanese death garden sings wildly
across the world

I whistle back, a soft. black tune
and lose my eyes to winter

I sleep with her on desperate nights,
her hard skin teaches me
God’s lessons.

I am a body of ache for men to pour their
pain into, she tells me how to behave.
I cry that I am to be a desert,
I am naked, on my way there.

She holds me quick, against her cold
and blows me into prayer,
I lay deep in hell, but I swear, God touches me here.

He reaches through me and pulls
out a song. He whispers,  “it won’t be long”
then asks me, again, for prayer.

Pale Blue Soul

I wasn’t ready. I could deny that I was ready,
that I was black consequence,
late.
I had blind chances,
but sight breaks
like disinfectant.

His quiet minutes blew off the wind.
His face said that he had no
direction;
empty and careless,
and I was a thoughtful child
going East.

We were west on the river together,
he wanted to float
like fire wood, but my
blood was a red earth drink,
fearing love and
death and
everything that
sickens in between.

I wasn’t ready to lay my spine calmly
over salmon and
kill the iron blackness
that tightened me deep inside
the roots of the land.

Life after life I planted sorrowfully.
She murdered me
with lima beans and raw potatoes.
I was in love.
I was in life with her,
the river,
the sky,
the Earth,

and then she cast a shriek against
my roots;
a massacre of my protection.
The sun went down and
a pale-blue winter soul
slid between my thighs,

and now I am her,
and I can never be ready.

White Winter

In my dreams
she comes, frostbitten;
blue asphyxiation.

Her lips like dried leaves,
brown,
crisp.
Her eyes streaked with trauma
and
under siege.

She commands me, summoning
my tremors with
her poisoned whistle.
I try to inhale,

but my lungs are missing!
I drop.
To my knees, in panic!  They
have escaped!

I cannot find oxygen to grant voice
to tongue. She wrings me out!
Her eyes clamped tight
to my throat, twisting
her frozen corpse
to my
bone.

She has spread; I am cold,
White winter.
Alone.