As we lie dying
the little death,
pull me close
beneath your chin
and hold me tight.
Breathe me in,
feel my heat,
wear me warm
like a well worn blanket.
I will weave you a dream
of dyed wool, desert moons
and a Paiute wind.
I'll dream us through
this long night.
Wrap yourself in me
and rest easy.
Breathe me in,
sleep in me, wear me
like you need to.
And when you awake
I'll still be here
like the desert moon
in a Paiute wind.

r 7/15/14

Andrea Gibson

Introduction:  A couple years ago, I was told a story about a soldier who was set on fire and burned to death because he was gay. After that, I started reading similar stories about people in the GLBTQ community who were tortured or killed by being set on fire and burned. I couldn’t stop thinking about the people who had died that way and couldn’t stop wondering what they might say from where they are now.

The night I was torn from the pages of their Bible
and burned alive
my ashes came down like snow
and a girl who had never seen my face
saw me falling from the sky
and laid down on her back
to make an angel in the powder of my bones.

From heaven, I watched her,
‘though my eyes were still aflame,
and my ribs were still blue.
They didn’t win, I whispered, as her arms built my wings.
They didn’t win.
Look at that moon.
It is a pebble in my hand
Tonight, I could skip it across that fog-drunk sea
to the lashes accordion in the night
and all they know of hate
is that it couldn’t beat the love out of me…

that when they dropped me to the grave,
I fell like a bucket in to a well
and came up full;
carving my lover’s name
into the skin of a weeping willow
that had spent its entire life laughing at the rain.

Hold me like a lantern;
staircase my spine
When they bring the children to my funeral
to scream “******!” at my dust
tell them I was born in to their casket
but I wouldn’t pull the splinters from my heart
any more than Christ would’ve pulled the thorns
from his crimson head.

They can come a thousand times
with their burning matches and their gasoline,
with their hungry laws
and their empty mouths full of prayers to that god
who greeted me at his gates with his throat full of trumpets
and his tears full of shame
as his trembling palms collected the cinders
of his children’s crime.

I know what holy is
I know that the soul is shaped like a bowl;
I know the lies we try to fill it with
and we spill too often
the orchards inside.

But my lover’s shoes were tied with guitar strings
and when I walked beside
there was a silo in my chest,
there was a field full of sun.
there was a river full of gold that we left
to pick our sweet hearts from the trees
that kept uprooting tombstones
so the names of the dead would crumble in to poems.

Write me down like this:
Say my ashes never made the news.
Say the jury was full of shotguns.
Then say the snow that fell on the tip of your tongue
refused to melt away.
Say this to the kids hiding their heartbeats
from their father’s fists.

I planted the garden of my kiss.
I opened the night with my teeth.
I loved so hard that when they pressed their ear to the track
the train they hear coming will still be my chest,
a rumbling harpoon,
a sky they can not bury.

Look at that moon.
I am a pebble in her hand;
a harmonica held to the mouth of the river
where nothing ever burns.

If you could see things through my eyes,
Even if only for one day
Then you would forever realize
How it is that I feel this way

You hit like a force of nature
I was unmade at just one glance
You opened up my long closed heart
And made me want to take a chance

Seeing that spark that’s within you
Is like seeing sunlight’s first shine
And when I see you smile at me
The entire world to me seems fine

You’re my meaning of beautiful
You’re my reason for holding on
You bring the peace into my heart
When I feel everything is gone

How could you ever feel alone
When you are with me everywhere
I catch my breath thinking of you
I close my eyes and see you there

So ask me once more what I see
And I promise to tell no lies
Let your hand feel my beating heart
And see the love within my eyes

You are where love began for me
It’s been only you from the start
I’ll carry that love to the end
Forever safe within my heart

Blue the mountains
holding close in view
sacred smoke of yesterdays
blue fog shrouded trails
beneath the rhododendron

falls of sweet blue water
replenishing the rivers
sapphire lakes reflecting
splendor of the bluest hills
above the peaceful valley

hear the sacred music
of the blue ridge mountains
magic in the songs of old
forever blue my appalachia
blue the hills I used to roam.

r ~ 7/4/14

Against the wind with fists of rage
He stands in youth despite his age
He’s walked the ice and witnessed the floe
Refusing to worry of his time to go
Defiance resides in his eyes
Like storm clouds dotting morning skies
He will not bow he, will not bend
He takes his time to meet the end
He fears nothing on his own
Intimacy though chills his bone
Alone he stands against the wind
No bad choices may he rescind
Perhaps one day he’ll find his faith
Until the end he stands the wraith

Tears vermilion reflecting the night,
St Elmo's fire burning bright,
Sea sick sailors pray for the light
Doomed and forgotten nets are dry.
Albatross soars, wings of flight
Guiding the lost with cries of gulls,
Let us laugh at their misfortune,
Schadenfreude
Styx flows too soon,
Gold on each eyelid
The Titans shall have their due.

Hyperion weeps to Neptune's view
As Icarus burns to seas of blue
And the sails catch on,
Enlightened by the
Dawn multifaceted hue.
Scarlet prism gems
Reflect the fallen, truth
Through crimson tinted lens.

The butterfly and the bee pollinate,
the unknown flower of memory,
then fly off through the gaps,
of the spiders web into the blackness,
of the vast midnight of the mind.

Words shower down into a torrent,
that falls upon a bewildered numbness,
remaining incoherent, they flow on,
into the stream where perhaps a child,
will gather them and weave them into a melody.

Slowly the poet slides away, unnoticed,
into the mist of time and unconsciousness,
Hidden deep within the flower bed of memory.
an unknown flower not yet pollinated,
still waiting in the realm of the midnight darkness.

In the childs mind the sun shines brightly,
as she brushes the words she has taken,
from the stream of life, with the days light,
The poet breathes, renewed and alive.
so it is in the universal garden of life.

Summer days are past and gone,
And colder days now hurry on.
The lily draws her  tender bloom
deep into the cloudy gloom, and
soft mists risen in the night,
turn to frost at dawns first light.
In the margins of the pond
The ice holds fast the frozen frond,
and under hill the mole curls tight,
safe and warm throughout the night,
pink paws, pink nose, a velvet coat,
all safely hidden from the stoat!
The swans, clothed in their purest white
glide, like ghosts in black of night
as safely on the lake they sleep,
while the coot and moorhen peep
in their dark and sombre suits,
from the tangled willow roots.
The fox that cunning red marauder
creeps stealthily along the border,
as the weakling winter sun
Announces a new day begun.