I swirl the stress, turn
pirouette in my veins.
It is fuel for my fire.
I breathe in, out.
shallow,
yet crisp
the smell of burning
leaves on a brisk
autumn day.


I am the flame,
won't you put
me out?

I am eyewitness of charm, a skinwitness of wilderness, a heartwitness for pain. I wonder if you tear your bemused silences or am I stripping you of stillness. sometimes I am silent as a plastic plant, scattered like the vowels of a foreign language or whole as an apple. only the rustle of my hands is enchanted. you are  an impossible congruence  for a witness of the progression of tears.
You are searching for something, the hush of blood in the intimicy of the ear, an oceanic tempo, a steamy vertigo.  time is reaping my breath with some fascination. there is this feeling, a filling of one's body with  the magnitude of the other. this absorbtion.
I follow the rupture lines as much as I can. there is no filling from the outside, they wait to be inhabited by one's blood. I would offer my skin flambe, the memory of your skin feels like a cataclism of fingerprints

Parcelled and promised.
But not yours, nor mine.
Drags on. Flies past.
Never really unwinds.

A cure-all or illusion.
Could make fools of us all.
A force to which everything
Eventually falls.

An irreplaceable treasure,
That can’t be held in the hand.
Just one way that we measure
Our lives on this land.

sky,
earth, sky,
never try
piloting prop
when you're sad and high.
last night i dreamed that i
cleared my head, got out of bed,
and walked down the wing to kiss you.
never take random pills with warm wine--
sky, earth, sky, fall, roll, rise, you, us, i.

Verse

See the crone that comes
through the thorn-walk and the breaks,
with a ribbon for the coffin key
and a dead-scroll curled with snakes,

she will never die.
she will never die.
roll her bones through the catacombs--
she hasn't the grace to die.

Inverse

My eyes were tired, so I set them soft
in the cotton-bedded heart of a pale red box;
deep under the earth with the coldsong quick,
was nothing--and nothing--I reveled in it.

Verse

Hear the crone who lies
with a dead tongue, poison-sweet,
words chopped blind with a kitchen knife
tourniquet-wrapped and awfully neat.

her teeth in the flesh
her teeth in the flesh
slips gangrene dreams through the finest screens
making rot-milk sold as fresh.

Inverse

My soul was sick, so I intertwined
its feminine face with androgyne,
to speak itself twice in a language of thorns
to bleed--to bear--where vermilion's born.

Verse

Bury the crone who's filled
with a paste of hate in her hollow bones,
a candle kept in the bag of her gut
to wax the devil a hag-head stone.

she will never die.
she will never die.
resurrected, insane, infected,
she hasn't the grace to die.
__

i dread talking the truth,
letting those words flow out
of my brain
and out my mouth.

it's seldom.

i dont speak my truth,
i am never honest
with my real feelings.

wont it just hurt people?

Calm,
What a weird,
new feeling.
Stripping anxiety from my bones,
searing itself in its place.
Causing the old ache to seep from skin, my soul.

Hi, new friend.

Please stay.

Envelope my body,
Cause brush fires with my smile.
Lower the humming bird beat of my heart,
Let me join you every night with my head on your pillow,
Until I finally sleep.