I mistook it for a cry
but it rarely ever is
As a lizard
ugly and still a corpse
under the frail dress
of a tube-light old—

As its eyes
alert and quiet
A sleeping village
where every whisper
every rustle
is tossed around
from dark to dark

and a tail
As the burnt edge of a leaf
Curled up on the wall
once white
—flayed to grey

I mistook it for a cry
Readied a sword
forged by dawns
Carved and beat
a shield
out of nights’ sleepless
eyes

But when ruin descends
it binds the dark’s calloused hands
and every whimper,
every crackle
is smothered
In its rusty, dry throat
(Restless tongue, a guard-dog above)

When ruin descends
it does so a flower.
A stone rolled and rolled
pitifully
down the road—
It does so lovely
and patient;

As a blossom taped
to the cement wall
watching the smoky light
for unfortunate flies
That may appease
its ablaze pyre of a mouth

While I sleep,
I sleep a dusk’s last breath.

Sun-catcher of a child,
Ever crushing light to mirthful specks
—Hue-kissed,
One pebble you jump from
To the next, where around the grave
of your glassy eyed dove they sit.

A candle in hands
yielding to the flushed flesh.

On one, then another, you jump
Muddy soles and tears
dried to a wakeful slumber.
Ships, donned with innocence,
set sail;
papers withered and wet
by the lips of this hazy stream—
My, how many letters did you write?

Sun, hold these eyes and sun,
cry they out,
Pearls and pearls
And pockets filled with melodies
of your long-hollowed dove,
You leave your prints
on the worshipping pebbles—
Deserted this desperation, is it not?
Then, run, I hiss, and—

You— you, naive, moon-loved of
a weakened rose,
Round and round you skid
(A ritual learned from the ballads of a dove)
A flicker in your palms
Try you
birthing yourself a god
Resurrect your dove, you will, you say.
You will, you will, you will!
How foolish this sorrow;
foolish more the hope it feeds.

And, tread away, I hiss.
Oh, tread away!
The haze is rising, as the old sun
shrinks—
That ******* of your chaste love—
Would that I
could mold ruin out of hatred,
would that, (but I am dry an angry cloud).

Tread away—
Oh, I shout a forest gone mad.
No frenzy, you have known, none
can you fathom.

Crystal waters of lakes dawn-licked,
Round and round you whirl
your ****** beloved dove.
(I will, I will, I will!)
Oh, but,
honey of my aridity,
the vultures are here, and— and
it is not your cold, grey dove
they desire.

Then you, so adorned a dream,
Softened to a violent idiocy—
Would that I
could grow cages out of despair,
You would have had enough of these doves
and their skies twinkling with tales

Then you,
honeyed tea, and sweets
with gold shrouded—
A tasteless devour—
The vultures are here,
Precarious sun-catcher!
Vultures! Vultures—
But did you ever really learn…

Yellow in its fury, the fiery of tide
comes hissing down
A dome above us it roughly weaves
A tent, a shroud, then a restless tomb.
Seals, will say nothing,
and fish as unfathomable go,
This, I must say, before the sweet pyre
is lit:

Last dark, I sank in and clawed out
the gentle song of this sea.
Not a creature shall stir with voice,
as we, ghastly, love—

The town’s folks sleep on a heaviness
unknown to the night
Unknown to all, but your luring sway,
as tugged of strings;
the puppets, they lay—
Snoozed off to oblivion at the command of your hums.
Not a grain shall
mimic our melody,

Now with winds all harvested raw.

Yellow and grey, and blue
in its curious interruption, not this darkness,
nor that one, shall speak.

This pearl I say, that one then,
And a glitter-kissed sky we—

These marble walls, so soft their press
and smothering churn
Thirsty—so thirsty; a pink, dusky fire
it aches.
In I, her, through skin and flesh and vessel all;
Through lymph and blood, its quiet march.

Not a gnawing gust, no tossing tides
shall mimic
this black, black show—
This— Chords, with flicker,

with ash and plea,
with fight, with brutality,
So lovely, plucked.
—all is lulled to slumber.
All, with its sea and
yonder opened wide,

Bone to soot to pollen
to dust.
Settled, settled in us.

Red, then purple and green, the burn.
Then skin, then whites to a black, black show.
(Curtains drawn, and strings cut)
Its thirst quenched,

the sea,
leaves I, her
on its ashy bed.

Some people are so fiery a sky
No thunder rules their ground—
no ablazed suns

Some people run to other people;
they take less or more of their lands
—like all they have or
A little more still
to the furious seas where no god lurks.

Some still, are glass
or breaking bits of it
They love a sky, with lightening
ploughed.

Some nights are restless, oozing words
Some,
So vacant a fall—
Some then, somewhere within.

No thunder, no people, linger on this coast.
No gods; none built;
no suns bow—
Still, the noisy silence reels
Slow and sudden its dive,
as we, in talons, wilt
And still we, in skies, slither.

Light and little;
mistaken,
so easily, dead—

In you I left a little kiss
A speck on lip of lip.
Like a leaf may
On a leaf spring-coated
Before it slides off and off
And into the brown below.
Like a star may,
On the window of a house
Cold in houses cold.

I lingered by the shores of you
Dried, a bone,
Memorising the hues of
A sweet, sweet marrow—
In sun it glittered, in moon sang—
In you, in you, you.

This restless room—
And ants devour around
With their fast steps and abdomens angry
And a scene of us
Through deep, hardened dirt, I dig out:
You held a garland, of foliage weaved,
I smiled a kingdom
All alive and gold.

And the young leaf will forget
Of the rusty feather
That stumbled past it,
One young dawn—
And the house
In houses lone,
Will sublime
In the day’s pretty love, but

In the blue, a bottled letter—
Too small a gift
For an illiterate sea, but
Hold it it does still,
In its secretive embrace.

So, when you born
To an arid tree—
And in blood of stars I wade
As down descends
The sky we built,
Do not cut open the insects
In your frenzied search for me—
All the kingdoms
Could I smile
In you I left with their riches and green.

Dried, a bone, I
Remember the hues
Of a sweet, sweet fruit—
In blooms it blooms, in stars
On frosted windows
In you, in me, you.
So, when I sway
In this lovely quiet,

You sway too
In the dawn.
And born you
Then born you
And reborn on a spring—
In you lives a little kiss
And wilt you,
It wilts.

There, she lies on the altar
Almost held the sun she—
almost in her hands
Opened up, a rose-bud chaste
petal by petal by blood, with
a sting, oh, so sweet and sweet, as
sunset reborn a bee; she was
gold and silver and black at once.

Almost held the sun she—
and no wax wings used
Oh, Icarus, loved you did a wild sky,
— yourself a light-licked doom  
as your father cried,
Your father cried for you.
A veil, as purity, as tear-coated eyes, she wore
as wings of wasps
as beetles she giggled—

Icarus, flew that you,
—and with tongue-tied elation too
Icarus,
she rambled on for hours long.
A letter she held in spring kissed of hands
—I will wed you to the sun,
her father had sworn.
The sun—and oh a sun he was,
child of the sea, some sword in honey
dipped; now her awaiting.
And blushed she did herself a dawn,
a fall's first bronze, a flicker's
childish song—

The altar, on the altar.
Almost held the sun she—
Swallowed a mayhem for the father's sin.
Icarus, tell me of the plummet.
Tell me of the greens you saw,
of blues, of whites,
of the whirling world—

Men tread around around her
their leather-hard soles all ready
to crush lost skulls an empty moor.

Twirling,
the dust, like may have, her hair
before the wedding day
Strands and strands, gently styled—
Of rays of stars, blurry through clouds,
of boughs, of wings of swans.

Spears, swords,
rubbed and rubbed to mirrors,
to lakes' lifeless serenity.
Armours, and ships laden with life, with
sails, the fluttering doves;
As the winds dance once more—
as harbours vacated, as waves torn apart for the horde, as move they on— on too the sun— as
She still lies.

Icarus, Icarus, was it the ocean
that cupped its palms, or did the soil cave in
as down into the dark's slick throat you slid?
Surely, was soft
the sea's well-loved mouth,
Surely soft or true

She lies on the altar
a trinket glossy
on a hoof, a ****** in the bell,
how does one say—
the valley of lilies, she grew it inside.
Spilled out on the stones, they are fed
to the flies.
Almost held the sun she—
Icarus, must you know

You did not sleep a wretched silence
within the womb of war.
No crescent blades you drank
down a leaking throat—
She lies on the altar,
Vanquished for moon
— for metal upon bone
for blood, for blood, for blood.

A father’s green promise—
Seasoned to rust before the king
a wilt, a quiet; a plucking, a rustle, a quiet once more as the shore is cleaned—
a speck of brown among
a thousand more
beneath the feet of the sky.

Icarus, on the altar she lies—
as insects swarm about
a ripened land far, far away—
Icarus, Icarus,
on the altar

I never meant to fall

but sunrise greased your chassis.
The crest and fall of your jaw—

the blade and bend of it,
mudslide contouring of it—

dropped me ribless at your feet.

O promising land, crisp field  
of flesh, whose fireflies

steered my eyes in the darkness—
your land, where my eyes had strayed—

scaled over eolian caves, the slick
basins of your clavicle, onto
the hexa hillocks clustered
like honeycomb chambers
on your abdomen.

I never meant to fall,

but the cursive lines of you,
I might have trod with loose eyes—

even now, there is a voice
drawing them to strike
at the aquifer beneath your waistline,

voice of vined thirst,
of torso and tug—
with them, I struck and drowned