October poems (2)

10142016 dream

Something that gleams in the hot
bath water, sparks,
and my jerking thighs.

                                      You, falling
           from my lolling tongue and
                               quiet of cooling
                                             smoke.

*

october

I collect masks, laughs
like jittering candles, death
gasps of branches -
a wind brings crystals in the night.

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.

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.

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

on saying something vital

this tongue of mine's

twisted through autumns and springs, 

laboured long to wring

out these words now rattling

between my teeth; i stall with

'is THIS the time to speak?' and

store my heart inside my cheeks, 

like a twitchy squirrel, to keep.