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.

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.

011313

is it the gray month

is it the winter rain in the cavern of her
breasts cracking
stone where it falls that makes her break and
say

i'm old
and i'm alone oh

if only if only

i could take the coldness from her
i'd lay it like a shroud over the sky and lick
her ragged forehead till it was smooth as milk.

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

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.

Frightful Farming

Sometimes I see

my heart is full

of poetry ripe for the reaping but

I am

an eyeless ant

in haggard denim overalls

and that

is a garden brimming with Aphrodite's

choicest mousetraps. The musky scent of

life and love reminds me yet of death.

[untitled]

Because you asked, I will try to make it
clear; my love for you was greatly
fear at the thought of
you not in my life. That faced,
I found I love you
because it helps me fall
asleep - nothing too deep
but comfort.

gianduia-toast

Because it was too heavy,
I slashed the tapestry of my brain
and brought out that grain
of galena-love
deposited there so long.

And because its glimmer in the
earthshine startled me,
I thrashed and bashed and beat it
hard
against the bridge between us.

I hoped it would shatter into sand
and sift through my fingers into Lethe

but instead it sparked and flared and has left
me burning before you.

Chilly

My heart is a stone
which sometimes skips
to feel requitement's
caress, those ripples of
nothing.

But always with
a dread does it tread
the surface of
its love for you.

You are my lake and
you are cold and

I so fear submergence.

Frank

Once, I was the
clearest spring;
now trees have sprung
and aged upon my banks.
Where once you sipped
and knew the taste,
is mud and shade of
a tangled wild
that none can navigate. But wait.

Somewhere, there is a diamond with the weight of
all the earth and the light of all the stars.

It is the heart of me;
it is my love for you.

But a warden-wind tells me
"that will do."