Most nights the train wails through the countryside,
a lidless cyclops banshee, sightless levin searchlight, and so sonorous the bridge's paint curdles
Grain streams out of cars and clatters among the tracks
Might your midnight snack have jolted free your soul and ferried you through the moonlight?
Morning announces a sunless sky, for you
eyes tenderly shrouded in a heather gauze
She whispers foul incantations across sludge and waterless brambles
- a lullaby to rustle and carry feathers from flightless wings,
to entangle them in the earth's course, tawny hair,
adorned and glittering with glass slivers and hollow bones
Mar 20, 2021
Mar 20, 2021 at 10:17 PM UTC
mind like a hive
oozing honeycomb thoughts
skull sticky with residue
the world sleeps but
the darkness hums
sleep arrives slowly ‘neath the moon’s lidless eye
her ceaseless beam an interrogation bulb
questions swarming,
inhaling that honey,
drowning in sap
rearranged days,
circadian rhythm working around to the other side of the clock,
crunching and stretching like a cracking spine
bedsores of the brain
eventually exhaustion feels mundane
undereyes stained, bruised, sallow
limbs caught in the tar
relentlessly gulping, swallowing greedily
too sleep deprived to resist the undertow
Sep 16, 2020
Sep 16, 2020 at 3:12 PM UTC
I'm glassy, threatening to spill over
busy mourning the sunrises I've missed,
moments I never noticed.
So present below the skin that days skip around me.
Am I sick?
Or is this normal?
Disease of self-awareness
Flies just stick to **** every flight a quest for a new pile
so filled with purpose, unbothered by their nature
What do dreams mean?
Why do I question them?
The sky threatens deluge, then clears without warning,
dictating my thoughts, my moods, without thought.
Thought is a gift, the gift to muddle the clarity,
to question change without control
There is no motif, no purpose, just wings drumming the cement,
to right oneself after tumbling, to what end?
Sep 13, 2020
Sep 13, 2020 at 6:42 PM UTC
First fall:
We walk, my left hand twists the frayed strings
with your left in my right, we waltz home
seek warmth resting on bended knees, to get closer
to kiss you
Weakened fabric acquiesces to strain, splitting further
across my knee and we laugh at the sound through each other's lips
and are lost again
Then winter and fingers slip through rips and behind slats
to find even lean protection from the cold
Trapped against my thighs, fingers
right against my thighs, fabric
doesn't stretch so it shreds a little further
Time unravels behind us, behind this moment
unravelled, freed threads to pull and pick at
littering car seats, bed sheets and under my fingernails
we leave behind and weave ahead
So spring though summer and I trim away ribbons of denim
and wear the remainder while sun desiccates our skin
and wears us away invisibly - water through rock
rips and tears us - rapidly we dissolve
so I carry past days with me still.
Aug 10, 2020
Aug 10, 2020 at 8:53 PM UTC
red presides over pavement
suspending a stream of steel
glinting off fenders, glancing from glass
staining knuckles gripping wheels
some few - the crosswalk's front row
spectators to street walkers
summoned by chance
to an intersection of existences
toddler fingers streak tinted glass
in time to someone's stereo
eye contact in rearview mirrors
and a man steps to the crosswalk
a haggard soul, straining forward
against a cart of belongings
straining slowly, against this weight
wading, as through water
august air; maybe molasses
while the dammed river hums
absent eyes await impending green
unsighted onlookers - do you see?
a stranger shouldering three coats
slipping through your midst
stories swirl across his palms then
flutter up like exhaust
fleeting as the yellow
Mar 6, 2020
Mar 6, 2020 at 2:56 AM UTC
When empty, I was ravenous
and with hunger came drive
frenzy of a starving creature
unquenched, thus alive
Now, hollow with phantom pain
deepest ache, darkest grey
I, a shifting spectre
quite liable to drift away
Sharp pang of need
Serve my deliverance
Slash through the fog
Shatter this reticence
Oh, famine, lust, longing -
to be famished for living!
to be removed from this apathy,
relieved of this malady
Replace hollow with empty
Restore pain, grant clarity
Mar 4, 2020
Mar 4, 2020 at 1:30 AM UTC
Years that washed over me,
eroded my skin my smile my senses
time reclaims; what was given me - taken
but predestined dissolution feels fair compared
to carnage caused by
You - accomplice to whims of time
lulled me to security by our regularity
then vanished with those parts of me
coaxed from me unwittingly.
At least the years admit their crime.
Mar 3, 2020
Mar 3, 2020 at 3:20 PM UTC
For the first time, when I see that I’m changing
I know it’s not into a stranger
And it’s stranger to think the songs weren’t exaggerating
When they mused, “it’s like coming home”
The first time you kissed me was so soft...
Cautious.
Such a quiet knock on the window
This glass - so fragile
And the second time you kissed me
All the panes shattered
A thousand cutting prisms
Returning sun that could scorch me back to the heavens, to my eyes
We two are treading on glass
And I’ve been caught between places - my house and my heart
And been told I can’t have both
But I’ll take shards in my soles if
I might rest my palms on your cheeks
I’d trade a house for a home, for a heart, for yours.
I see it so clearly
These exquisite fragments reflect a collection of peices and I recognize each as my own by recalling where your fingers have been
Your touch is reassembling me
So expertly.
Perhaps I’m coalescing, not changing
Perhaps a shattered mirror may be unshattered
If only you find all the pieces.
Jul 1, 2019
Jul 1, 2019 at 4:34 PM UTC
Goldie,
perfect things come in small packages:
gold rings and goldfinches,
sun-soaked raindrops,
marigolds, goldenrods,
memories golden-hued,
and you, dear Goldie, too.
You shared with us such time-worn treasures:
the swimming hole,
orchids blooming ferociously in Hawaiian humidity,
children lost and children gained – your bittersweet legacy,
misplaced brassieres in laundromats,
atrocious climates and thermostats,
and speaking of weather – Stormy Daniels too.
Your sense of humor shone right through –
remarkable.
For life can be an ordeal, you know it well I’m sure
and golden youthful moments too soon become silver
With each winter’s passing cold,
frost-heaving each and every life,
cracks spread across our pavement for
against the inevitable, we can’t fight
and giggling rivers grow slow and stale
and evening skies sicken and pale
But despite the cold winds, you – dear Goldie –
Remain golden still.
Jun 13, 2018
Jun 13, 2018 at 5:32 PM UTC
You tell me that this is where it ends
But think of the lilies
bourne up, aloft
upon slim green limbs,
how they dip to the earth
touch their toes then
salute the sun
in rhythm with the wind -
the sky, her every breath
And how their delicate legs might snap
bearing an overzealous bumblebee
Yet they coat the valley floor
a scourge of beauty
Resilience
Breathe in their life exuded
from tremulous petals -
Take it for yourself.
Feel their leaves under your feet
Allow them to paint your toes
with their blood, vert - the colour of life
And I dare you to tell me that this is not where it begins
Mar 7, 2018
Mar 7, 2018 at 10:13 PM UTC