11262015

Scratched out from a silent womb
I've grown into a tumult:
ever-buzzing roar and whine
of tortured stone, and groans
of men heaving rock. Even in 
the quiet hours before the
engines start, breaths not mine, 
dreams not mine animate my heart. 
What has this crescendo consumed?
I scratch into the womb of
me to find the silence to be.

Cactus

prickly like
a sudden poem
a heart that breaks
a life undone. My fingers
to know the pain of you
reach. And there - the many million stabs - 
I gasp and pull away to find a
tiny thorn trapped in the labyrinth of my fingertip, 
maze of my identity - and now, the pain, too, me.