she's crawled back through the thin film of my skull
the fleshy thoughts made from home
and once
back when sun was smiles
when history writ itself for miles
and I could sing like divine treatises
I'd held her hand, our fingertips like petal lips
and now
all black, and blue, and cold
my shivered heart
my hungry wolfish brain
it starves for that from whence it came
and I picture, my beauty, my oldest soul
the moon burrowed beneath my skin
the sun, bright, and silken, and harsh
that had told me words I'd feared so oft
I remember my last year's love
and now
the only way we touch
through memory and old sentiments
I'll wait as long as she'll let me
until the pain
consumes
us both

Down in the belly of my beast
I slit my eyes
I key my teeth
Sharp, and thick, and fat, and creep
The walls are gum
Fade, and sluice, and slither on
My shoulders rise in prowling stance
I court the darkness for a dance
And whisper not, the final kin
For words are valueless
To the lost ilks of murk
And their leaded dogs

Body thrums
A housed hive
Fingers climb
Sky's light

Under the moonlit stage
a stagnant rhythm plays
and my tiger hears the call
folding out his teeth
and I luck the words I know
and this pulsing fury grows
until all sound is shouts
all heard and left unremarked
I am the tiger in the dark

I am a reckless writer
I plan no poems
I throw myself
violent
hardy
head-first into the words
as the world roars around me
let them consume me
let my mind run

Poems can't hold the pounds of words I want to spill
It's absorbed all the linguists it can take by now
I've got nothing left, nothing good
My gums hurt, my beds hotly humid,
I'm weighed down, the rage has abandoned me once more,
I can't cope like this, when even my coping tastes like defeat.

I stay home and sty my own attempts to leave
I'm out on a mission to block all the exits
like the opposite of a safety sergeant
and the flames are crawling up the walls
like assassins in their pitch black suits of night
and I can't breathe in this air while I'm burning my own mask.

I swallowed my tongue
but I didn't choke down

Seagulls whispered their prayers
in that funny chip-stealing way of theirs
those opposite eyes
and burning beaks
they flew me down

I took the ocean
one swing, gone
I burned it to the ground
and although that seems fake
everything does these days