july (lack of) poems

july was as silent
as a hand sewing

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.

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.

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).

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.

Boogars, A Poem.

I sit here and try to be this thing I was
once - A Poet
- back when i could think and dream and
love.
instead i'm a lonely slug meandering
thick gray head bent eyes swivelling
drivelling, a trail of formless infertile muck i slap a title to:
Boogars, A Poem.
i laugh a little to think of
you reading dried snot like
tea leaves. then I weep
because i crave the touch of a breathing beating world
but all I feel all I can 
feel is the weight
of this
shell as I sludge across the page
and maybe-I-don't-give-a-shit. that's what scares me most of all.

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

Today's poem will be a journey to the heart of the hollow earth

travel the arid surface of a 
page until your pen finds just 
the place; then
drill!!
take no caution! take no care!
dust don't
dig or
not dig - it's breathless,
deathless - dig? so dig!
break those pores apart
exclaim, what a work of art!!
inject ink jets in lifeways
call it an effortless play in the sandbox
with baby pails and shovels
search and abandon the search
abandon the
humanity. Who needs it? What an artist!!!
oohaahoohaahooahhooahh
oooh wait! what?! oohaahoohaah
muscle?! blood! oohaahoohahh
heart??!
WE THOUGHT IT WAS HOLLOW DAMNIT THE EARTH'S CORE IS ON 
FIRE WHAT 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.