june poems (10)

this hurt
like glass i swallow
shredding my tongue
taking the words

*

big bang

imagine everything pressed tight-
hot exploding. beautiful;
violent:
that's you.

*

This beautiful sun.
This minute before 7.
Notes of hallelujah spilling from the quiet radio.
This memory of you stirring in my heart.
This love, this ache.

*

remember how slow
the world used to move every day a
drop of light caught in beads
of oil remember night's laughter black
and gold tumbling through the tall grass remember
falling?
how heavy it felt bringing me to you

*

you, a mirage that
pooled
in cracked skin, on
bonedry lips,

i lick myself to taste just
a dream of ran

*

06132016

We lock dead eyes, we
love by chance, lungs
plumped on dust. Above us,
satyrs dance.

*

the sea betrays its
deepest wish, to dissipate
and kiss the moon's smile.

*

if i'm a piece of meat

know: you can lick me dry
but the ugly story of your teeth
will be written on my bones.

*

if my heart is a flower,
it's sick
and never opens to the sun,

only daring to love
the rain on its crinkled skin
promising the sky in every dying dance

*

I go

beyond the promises of birds,
where time runs like a stream down
summer's endless throat,
remembering the scent of apples
your golden eyes and tight tongue coiled
only like a chill that recedes, here
where waves lick away my melting eyes,
I wait for you.

I carry you with me

I carry you with me
the promise of your bones
the urgent froth of your dreams beating
against the shore roars
always in the scooped
curl of my ear. I carry your fears.

I carry you with me
your stories like
distant stars, reaching,
tickle in my throat, coughing
fire in the gaping gut, burning
me out.

I carry the contradictions
the hate on your tongue tied in
a mouth that smiled and kissed,
the warm crinkle at the edge
of your eyes that sometimes
filled with spite,
the gentle lick, sometimes the bite.

I carry you with me
the promise of your bones
I am the why, I carry this
question and your life
folded over and over itself
in mine.

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.

101015

do you understand that you shut me down
do you understand that

your words should be rain not arrows or

you are like a heavy darkness
a dot of ink spreading
under the skin or

do you understand that i don't even have words

reminder

i don't want to forget

the precise angle of your shoulders

or the tight curve of your smile

but it has been a while

and the skin forgets its goosebumps

the heart forgets its joys

there is a deepening void, and i cry

I remember! I remember!

pleasing aches and little plummeting delights!

of course! the pain of that jagged edge of satin petals fluttering out of sight!

on a sunny day --

I remember (because i'm terrified

to recall only that i've forgot, 

to know only 

that i loved you once and then i loved you not

as undeniably

as dreadfully

as a dead thing rots).

04092012

into your throat as you slept i
mouthed let
me be deliriously weak let me

be the broken-winged bird
i am so tired of flying
i would sing for you until i die
if i could rest

like the feeling of love
here stopping your breath

let me be
precious and never break
me please
tell me its ok

sleeping duty

she slept and as she
slept life crept
a briarbush unchecked neglected
circling about her wrists up her thighs
tight round her neck
unwary she became the whore
of thorns that prodded pierced and tore and
not a soul there was that knew
the roses were too sweet that grew
did you not stop to screw one too
boohoo boohoo
boohoo boohoo

textual frustration

Some men will strip themselves like
dead fish and lay their spines in 
my hands: They want me to stroke their bones, 
I think. I'd prefer if they were octopi
with fat purple tentacles I couldn't fight shoved into 
me against my whimpering objections. 
But no. These men are 
pens: I suck their ends and 
crack them between my fingers when the words won't 
come. 
Is there no load to degrade my hate? 
Is there no man that can break my hands 
so they'll never write again?

the art of not giving a shit

You would be something to me, maybe,
(you would be the world)
if I gave a shit
i would weave you into me
like a priceless
thread of gold across the
tapestry of my history
you'd be
the happy twist,
the thin wisp of a subplot
winding through my narrative like
a thirsty stream
only to explode suddenly, gloriously, unexpectedly into the
ocean vast and deep
or maybe you'd just be
my heart's deepest wish
murmured in half-sleeps.
maybe i would love you
more than words could hope
to explain, from a place
limitless in me. maybe I would
love you 'til it hurt. if i could love.
if i could hurt.
you would be something
(you might be everything) 
if i cared at all.
Thankfully,
i don't.
you're nothing
but a pronoun
in a careless poem.

wisdom of trees

A man who was broken came upon an ancient tree,
and begged, "Great grandfather oak, teach me how to be
stable, for I lack the strength to face this life."
The tree replied, "Climb these limbs of mine, child, and see
whence my strength derives." The man did so. When
his face met open sky, he saw the
leaves dancing like careless children. The oak explained,
"Mid-summer noons, angry autumn winds, jealous frosts, prideful showers
weather me, each as each will. I don't resist,
but move when I am moved, sway when
there is music. In that concurrent movement
is stability." The man, for he saw, leant against that aged tree
and set his heart free, as his roots grew
deep, deep, toward his quiet home.

on a summer evening

on days I love being alive,
i worry i'll get carried away with the wind,
rise from my toenails where
i hang around like fungus ironically
commenting on the smell,
move through my intestines,
wind upwards through the ribs
and get to know my heart
a little. Then I'll float right through
this skull of mine and fly

like a strand of hair, twirled between
the fingers of some ancient, loving spirit,

on a head of 7 billion hairs
that've all felt the wind
and thought poetry of it. 

So i resist beauty.

i don't comment on the stars
although they still my buzzing brain; i try not to mention clouds
though I would like to dangle my feet off one and 
wonder at the world spinning and blinking; i think, but never say,
that we are all notes of the sweetest song played
upon the strings that hold humanity
together like a gift from the universe; and i would never, ever, ever,  tell you that
my love for you is as deep as the ocean,
though it is true. Poets are supposed to be new,
poignant like a death adder strike (so i've heard)

and i worry it's just not very edgy or new
to say "i'm glad to be sharing a wonderful world with you."

Conception

They tremble at the

pentip-paper

fornication beneath my

hunched figure,

tremble at the birth

of the harvest, of clouds gathering,

the damned infants of my labour.

I fear them too.

They are and will be death and hurt and once

they were. One does not forget

the monsters one sees in a reflection.

And thus the fear.

And thus the hate.

Thus the fetal thoughts

waiting waiting

for a nurturing hand.

To love these bastards is my greatest struggle, now.

Moving Around

The heart-lights are out,

the windows uncurtained to the

emptiness that tells

callers no one's home.

The feelings have gone

north and taken

the words

there they're

lined along the shelves

by subject. But some are

in boxes marked DO NOT OPEN -

words like anger and pain

and love

and friendship.

I think she thought she would feel happy.

I think she thought too much.

I think she feels nothing.

But I feel she feels a

restlessness

and that she will come home again.