I dreamed
my scars were white ropes around my wrists.
When I rubbed them
they would lift
like rain-worms rolling off
pavement; beneath lived maggots.
I didn't know scars could do that, I thought,
rot you from the inside,
give birth to new life.
I pressed a squirmer from my flesh,
cut it in half with my nail's edge.
It hurt to be the worm,
it hurt to be its meat.
It hurt to expunge its eating greed.
A good host grieves departing guests
like a cemetery grieves ghosts.
Jan 11
Jan 11, 2026 at 8:35 AM UTC
Look on me dearly:
your stolen sullied sullen
daughter. I could dig you up
to hold your bones but
want only to wash myself
away, like white foam
from the seashore.
If I burn what is buried,
is it cremation
or disintegration? You would fly
ashes in the wind, like a wish
given
lift, like an altar of lit
incense.
Think of learning of your blood:
yellow skin and rice paddies
and great-great-great-great-granddaddy
grey for the Confederacy.
Do two halves not one whole
soul make? I take
a breath
and leave it
free.
Sep 22, 2021
Sep 22, 2021 at 1:28 PM UTC
May the gods drink deep your blood
and may the crimson please their gaze
and may the iron scent whet their lust
that the taste may sate it
for you are my greatest offering.
Apr 21, 2021
Apr 21, 2021 at 2:54 PM UTC
in time
the lens
turns large and flexes
small
and the colors of hands
the shapes of days
stains
the wallowing stream
the hanging chord
for god is change is time
is infinite is ends
is frozen is stagnation
is a self
a sculpture in ice
glittering melting
a tale the same
in every telling
till
gone.
Apr 13, 2021
Apr 13, 2021 at 9:25 AM UTC
The shadows move in circles
as the world does.
As we live
it spins
_
it moves through my fingers like water
leaving no trace except
that evaporates.
Mar 22, 2021
Mar 22, 2021 at 4:48 AM UTC