It’s been awhile
Dead light
And
I

Have you been watching
Little me?—
In all my corruption;
Has your sentient ablution—
So tried—
Decided to set me aside
In my hiding?

I grovel here;
Blind.
While You glisten—
You listen—and weave
Serene discomfort
Into a little-soul
Like mine.    

Supine and slight—
I trace Your patterns in the
Night and try to name them
As others have
Before me:
Dipper. Orion. Northern-light:
Compass bright.

Are they suppose to
Mean Something?
I cling to their instruction
And move nowhere.  
Your pictures do not wear the weight
That answers
Do.

Can I sough purpose
In their Recitation?
—For I have wanted for comfort.
I repeat the names—
Cardinal ghosts in dotted-frame—
But their direction
Alludes me.

Oh, You Pin-******—
You Old-Flames—
You Astute Celestial Hosts.  
Have You hung silent
—In all Your knowing
Just waiting
For me to let go?

Do You know the cold of war waged
Alone?——
Blueprints of rage have rewrote the
Geography of my limbs:
I am not my arms my legs I am not
My breaking
Heart.

My hands aren’t mine, anymore.
I have never been so
Stolen.

Hey, Heaven’s map of decussation:
Do You see me down here
at all?
Praying for Your mum
Eureka call——
To pull me past
My boxing halls?

You are all l have left—
to follow.
Tired of feeling lost.
Tired of letting go.

But it could be awhile
      Dead light.
Hopelessness is a heavy might:
But I thought—just maybe,  
you might—
Wait
For me.

I face you
In the night.
—Until I get there.
Me: the tiny nightmare.
At the edge of sleep’s reprieve
Before I face the mourning,
Bare.

My dear,
Me.
Thrumming underneath.
Sobbing.
My sure soft
Heart.
Sleeping between each broken
Part.
Have we waited here
Before?
Swallowed the lock
Afraid of the
Door?
Little one--
You're not so
Small.
Far far more than we might be  
Tall.
Far far more than we're often  
Limited.
Far beyond such simple
Primitive.
Bigger than these boxing
Halls,
Far beyond our fearing
Walls.
Little heart in petal
Glass--
Pink clear water of the
Past--
Listen now, your worried
Heart.
Don't just pull, but simply
Start.
Sorting through the worried
Ends,
Kissing every broken
Bend,
And laugh with every angry
Knot,
Smile because know we ought--
To know no better,
Or be more good.
Listen to right where we
Stood.
And hold it up into the
Light,
Abandon what we fixed as
right.
Abandon notions of
"What"
and
"Might."
And open now, to endless
White.
And healing
Dark,
Trace along each mending
Mark,
And I, sweet me--
Just simply
Start.

If I could speak maybe I would but the water in my ears is
300 degrees and
I am tired of being the peace keeper of people who don’t
Deserve me

The world would kiss my feet but
I chose you
The clouds lick my cheeks but
I chose you
I could know the sun’s brightest eye,
But I chained my throat with
Your gilded promise

I write your good-bye letter over the course of two days.
I started-over seven times—hunched, under the weight.
These worn pages and spilt ink, remember your name-
I hear it softly murmured among their rustling grain-
And as mine fades from the aged oak of your sprawling bed frame--
There is nothing left here for me.

My pen falls as the climbing-cry of cold morning comes,
With a quaking in my wrist, and sharp silence in my gums;
The patchwork quilt is half-hazard, and snaked across the floor-
Where your tremolos dreams had tossed it-the night before,
And only your body’s ghost-imprinted on the mattress-do I look for-
Because there is nothing here left for me.

It’d been fun, I suppose; like Peter and Wendy, infinite and young-
We’d drawn together and merged; then delighted, we had run-
From the duty of daily, the city-those mechanical ghosts scattered among,
And the curtains of riches-in the air, which we’d spun-
Had garnished all of our days; a honeyed veneer of ambient sun!

Yet severe as the prophets-or poor Noah in God’s storm-
In the corners voracious shadows gladly took form
With the slipping lines of your smilem, the lingering chill round the door-
Fall had swept in violent: laughter-dead then, was mercilessly tore-
From our wild-flower wind-pipes, that once inviolable, bore-
Proof of something here left for me.

Now aching, I crease the note crisply and vainly, do try,
Turning it caged, between frail-bird fingers, to descry-
The moment opulence burned, and from the ashes recast-
Mocking imitations: these edacious phantoms! Aghast!
Howbeit! Were we not unassailable then! United, so certain to last--?
Yet just silence, is here left for me.

I don't have all the parts
to rebuild every one of
your burning buildings.

I see you sleeping and
all your whisper weary
age lines disappear.

I don't know how I'm suppose
to pull you from the dark
when you're bleeding.

your ghosts elude me
though to you they're
so cruel and clear.

I don't have the strength to
prevent both our hearts
from bowing.

neith the past
the future
and the insurmountable fear.

I trace the shiny zig zags and
remember that once your
hands were solely for hurting.

memories carved hold an
effervescent  charm
that thickens the air.  

between us is still
but the shadows give way
the predator lurking.

so we'll pack up and
move to where there aren't
faces who stare.

we'll make the most
of it.

Strawberries are kind of like people:

this morning I went to eat some

but their skins were soft and

bruised.

So I cut them open;

laid them on their mushing shell.

I gazed at their perfectly  

pink insides-

and they tasted just fine.

I want to roll up the
moon and fit her
in my pocket.
So she can sing me
to sleep with
  no sound at all.
Then I'll jump on birch
branches like the boy with no
baseball and swing till their quiet arms
dip low and moan-
"please child, enough-"
        because I don't know limits.

It's so strange and

Striking;

Knowing something near but unknown has departed;

Knowing there is a heart that won't be restarted.

Hold your moments-children's glass marbles,

Sparkling in the river water-

Like precious stones.

The burning fire, neith all the words we 'er spoke,
And the thrumming of the trees, that we mistook ,
The ports are cold round here my love,
I'm all alone at the boundary.

Rise up and walk-
         None of your bones are yet broken.

Cold, soft, dusting skies,
Sweep away the gentle night.
Rich violet brings promises of the dawn-
Glittering stars grow quiet-then are gone.

The lulling whisper of the sand
Silences itself, once again.
Lays dormant and muted at your feet,
Voices submitting to enveloping sleep.

Soon the sun will scream it's rise,
And blaze relentless across empty skies,
Beat down upon empty land;
Beat down upon empty man.

And I'll wait patient-I'll wait for dark ,
Wait for the noise of day to depart-
And in its wake the cocooning reprieve,
Of the endless, satin star-lit sea.

This is elation:
A flushing fever through my bones;
Fire on the skyline, molten smile-wolffish,
bright.
And a hum so giddy it snaps the seams,
In his ecstasy flavored freedom-
He brings forth the rampant howling of the night.

This is the purpose:
Artificial gleam, ablaze your manic eyes,
and the taste of copper and anticipation,
In scarlet cinders - amplifies
The chase that is upon us;
You,
The demons
And I;

And this is the reason:
The blood in our bones
knows nothing more than the
thrill of the fight.

It's a raw honesty.
An unbided brutality;
Laying bare every fear lurking beneath
Your shelling skin.

It is forgotten that the light
Is just as frightening as the
Darkness.

Soft strung on mourning dew
Moon-lit nights stung, chasing you.
Evanescent upon thin waking lids
The pages burnt with nitrogen.

The aching echo, overbearing hollow
Dusty ash. An after taste.
Not tear enough to hardly swallow-
Or stomach left to try to sate.

The pillars-statues-all in our name
Bleached out hero's in history's game.
Naught plight enough to recall how human
Our blood-our tears-stained our face.

We legends born from pleading minds-
Broken spirits and battered limbs.
Who seek to finally cease the crime-
To bring back the light-wash out the dim.

Give our strength-are cast in shadow
To drive the ghost that haunt the land
Back to their own, bleak bloodied meadow
With our hearts-grasped tightly-in their hands.

The rest is but a washed out vision.
The lull of peace saturates the land.
But you and I have been ripped open and swallowed
As the lion now scarified to the lamb.

A watercolor film reel.
            That is how Olive is to me,
Dancing in the dandelions,
Grinning chicklet white teeth.
Olive smells like summer-
Like salt and a wild sea;
A mane of seashell secrets,
And eyes that mirror the gleam.

The gleam of self-realization,
The leaping fires in your dreams,
But in such a supple pastel haze,
That quietly, sings and sways—

Like hot cotton in your ears
Behind your eyes
And round your throat,
But the tune is gentle and smells of the ocean-
Olive’s own anecdote.

And I remember, at the end, she put the sea into a jar-
Sand, colored glass, and rippling waves of ocean water.
It felt like a tribute; a memory-
Like death.
When olive left the coast line,
And her glass ocean world-
Glinting crystals in the sunlight-
On the cat walk,
Still sat.

Wet grass and inky skylines,
Dusty summers have us
Remembering starlight;

When forever was on our fingertips;
When home was always wherever we
Chose.

Sun kissed and infallible,
Sleep was the shadow of a
Space forgotten with winter;

Forgotten under the dappled shadows in May;
Forgotten in the water, the warmth of seemingly everlasting.

On our backs in a tangled night,
Ironically-the sunshine had us
Remembering starlight.

Shedding our skin and being
Born baby-serpent-new.

Remembering the taste of dirt and of freedom;
Remembering the sting of a crazy memory made:

In bright, and in night, we were brought warmth-
A respite,
Of a most dampening life,
One dictated by walls and
By strife.

Yet she insists with hope and delight--
*Remember the starlight.

I have been waiting for you around the
Edges of my heart, where you lurk in
The underbrush and the shadows; still
Too lost in the rest of the world to know
To navigate back home.

I have been waiting for you in the
Pause at the end of every sentence,
the hitch of every breath, and
Within the depths of my waking lids-
Explosive starlight ablaze in my minds
Eye.

And
I have been waiting-
Patience my sedative-
For the hand that fits over
Mine and warms the chronic
Chill.

You have waited too; I can tell because
In your sleep I am always awake and
Pacing-I know you are restless
And need someone to kiss your crown
To remind you that not all kings have
Castles.

But they have riches--
my soul can promise you that.