I admit I am a dark, exhausted beast--
a memory no one summons.


But you rise at dawn with raven hair--
a child of soldier and sun.


Although you've gone,
I covet your crescent grin.


and the sun

within the lining

of your skin.

On my darkest nights
I awaken in the ocean
lost

your constellations branded
against the back of my tongue.

A bloom of tattooed moonlight
the senselessness of slumber--

though this ocean swallows me,
I will stay afloat.

Promise you will come.

When the light embraces dark
when the planets fade like scars,

promise.

So that we
might be the moment
of everything.

i dreamt of you

you warmed me in
your callused hands

and sighed as if
i were a hummingbird
out your gran'pa's cabin

lovely                                                    ­an'                                                     quick

but i wailed until
my throat was grit
your eyes had turnt'
to green

and the hummingbirds
flew south

to be warmed by
more faithful things

than the rasp of your callused flesh

I want to be
in a flesh warm home
with walls the color
of bone.

One of the homes
where ugly is kept
'neath fresh white faces

and all that lies
'hind lily frames
inevitably erases.

For Connar:**

I linger long for you
in the desolate wasteland
that is
my speechless silence.

Lusting for replies
to my love
that demands
and scorns.

Why would the rose
of fields so fertile
dare to touch
this trodden ground
worn,
and weathered?

Who am I
to claim
your ****** toes?

By: Devon Artis-White (4/28/13)

I've learned to submerge
in sparse droplets of
your scent and skin

I let them melt on my tongue
so that they may sustain
my body for months

I will bathe in this for a moment
but your fresh wet scent
will linger


and I refuse to quench this thirst

though I know I'm going to drown.

There is a creature rarer than
you dare to dream.

If once it flourished
within your lungs,
savor the eternity,
it left on your tongue.

I have been evaded by
that space between the stars.
It's existence has eluded me,
it's true.

But it thrives in side your mouth
in your cuticles, it blooms
traced 'cross your eyelid
wandering from me to you.

Now I grasp the phantom creature,
I feel it's warmth between my thumbs,
taste the word within me,

because this is us and this is love.

Your trail of ash
bright as a scar

lead me astray
in skies of tar

it was a threadbare
love affair

doomed from the very start

and if I know
you at all,


I know you've gone too far.

"Dreamers" would be kind, but no--
two liars
from the start.

We can't exist
outside this place

the streets lead us
apart.

Can we speak of these certain vacant spaces
in my abandoned bedroom where the moon dwells
and shuttered creatures search their teeth
for a bloom of flavor and sun.

I'm surrounded by prosaic twilights--tenantless places--
where plaster perfumed by dormant fire
gapes with cavities and empty mouths
that seek him with their tongues.

Where darkness crawls on poppy seeds
on moths and reeds and shoes
to reach me in my consternation
now that his name has fled my lungs.


Today I sewed his note to my breast pocket
but it grew crescent roots like fingernails
and murmured that we were too young.

For centuries
my weary soul's
been swallowin' grey-faced spirits whole.

But the porcelain broke
between the lips
I feel dusky fingertips.

I have short moments,
one brief farewell
before I place my sins in hell.

Stranger please--
lend me your ear,
I've become what I most fear.

I know there's no
such thing as ghosts
but I have seen the demon host.

little fawn with two bowed knee
do not allow
the boy with crooked mouth
so near your porous flesh

little girl with freckled limb
there are too few fibers
on his winter pelt
to shield your ivory skin

little fawn
let him flush the marrow through
till he has ate
the whole of you

little girl
your flesh is clear

but he does not hate you less

although you've disappeared

Your eye
is the single thing.

I will fill it
with summer weeds
little stalks
no wrinkles
weighed with rain, like lungs of June.

I will fill it
with the hush of grass
swollen
with sun
your quiet lips like prayers, on my tongue.

You must never meet
puckered soil
wasted stems
no sickness
in this summer age.

Your eye will never fill
with these
trembling
wringing hands--
this ceiling without a star.

I will care for you.

I am stranger to the taste
of candor, honor, or courage

a bland and simple fruit.

Exceptional at nothing,
I am exceptionally nothing--

withered from the stem,
the whole way through.

However I have seen
the pallor in your cheek:
a tempting succulence.

Salvation rests beneath
your ripened skin.

I will break the unmarked flesh

I will learn

to be
honorable too,

once I have had

the whole of you.

I.
safe respite from a scary movie
i woke with bags under my eyes
heartbeats under dryer sheets

II.
you could carry me quite far
i loved for you to grasp my hands
they smelled of sweat and cinnamon

III.
first cigarette sixth kiss
you wrote me notes, i burnt them all
of you i do not speak

IV.
you whispered as i wore
your granite jacket; i have yet to tell you that
it's been my favorite color since

V.
you were damp new leaves
weathering fall's best storm
and i destroyed you just as completely

VI.
wet rain long fingers
i rest and watch you speak
i believe
you may be
the final sequence

Your nails were
soft pink crescents

they chafed
along my cheek.

You plucked
the silken petals

watched them wither
at your feet.

I fed you dandelions,

Picked stems
from your teeth

with my tongue.

But in the creases

of your mouth,


I saw the weeds of doubt.

well I thought of you in summer
but you did not suit the season--

a pale and solemn human,
your fingers stark and slim.

what was it like to shelter,
in the ring of salt and stone?

you thought that demons could not watch you,
when they've always found their home.

I saw you climb inside your skin, thinking
you'd be safer from within

but his fingertips
poked through

and he was the end of you.

I was at home in the crooks of your arm,
tall above the root.

Our sweet-bark skin, new spring at hand,
trepidation rendered mute.

The earth succumbed to restless sleep
as I ebbed between your palms.

The moss and shroom a witness
to the wilting of our psalm.


But the story the crow told me,

is the only one he knows:

like the morning sun you come,
and like the wind go.

I was told that the people you love
turn to ghosts inside of you
and like this, they survive.

But no one's ever told
how it feels to become the ghosts
that loathe being kept alive.

grasping
clutching
ribs expand
over
frenzied
beating hearts
forcing amber sparks
through burning veins
you've turned my will
to fire
with your touch

i see triumph
in your eyes
as beleaguered souls take flight
their flame-lapped talons bear
our husks of memories
away from this destruction.

feather kisses on fevered wrists
courage on coal-smudged cheeks
I turn to you and learn to fly—
escape these smoldering ruins
like fledglings born again

trust in newfound wings,
our scars and burns forgotten
smoke and flames still in your hands
so let me hold them, let me soar

live in the sky again

I remember very little.

A hug of tweed
a porcelain sparrow.

Everything burns like a cigarette,
but you tasted better.

Waxwork crystals
on window panes
and ledges
collecting sun
in precious hexagons
to return
illusive light
of feverish summer
to an earth that’s
lost its luster.

When I awoke last night
a dire wolf
was howling down below.

Six hundred pounds of sin
grinned, at my window.

The wind was fierce an' cold
I clutched to fear alone.

So I took a breath
and all I said
a quiet, "come on in."

Lit by sparks, debris in flame,
I could not meet his eye.

Your gaze was coal along my spine

burning me alive.

We swayed on lukewarm asphalt
futures scribed across the sky

I closed my eyes against the night

And felt your footsteps shift with mine.

I arched my back against your breath
you rasped, "can I cut in?"

Your lips against my lobe

left me taught and thin.

The glow of sparse-lit flares
your fingers worked against my skin

a desperate moan escaped me

at my gasp you flushed and grinned.

Knuckles clenched along my hip
bare feet weak on a damp road

the bodies parted, our gaze persisted,

swallowed pain and my eyes closed.


Because you are not mine

I am not yours

we had one night,


and yet no cure.

If time allowed
I would return to you.

You and I are far too young,
to pray this world will not turn round.

You and I are far too young,
to pray our lives succumb.

Yet we lie awake at night
and waste away
by day.

Remember our first kiss

your lips were hard and urgent

I searched so long
for another mouth
that felt like yours.

You always come to mind at dark.

Your flesh dissolves
through my open hands--

your scent becomes fleet
and pale.

Sometimes I'll inhale
a warm clove of you

but more often


I inhale you through.

She told me her story.
How it is to miss another soul
so thoroughly,

that their name

behind your teeth

gorges on

your waking dreams.

Look at this, I made for you,
with lungs and fingertips

I've painted the whole of me,
but you've always seen less.

I must have been afraid.
See how my knuckles trembled
to create something so large,
a human soul could fill it?

Don't look at it,
I'm bare.
See my face
in every stroke?

I'd rather turn from you
and quit this sick indulgence
but you must have always known
you'd claim this ruptured soul.

So I have given this nothing reason,

as I gave your darkness color,

and I have given this paint a purpose,

as I gave myself to you.

I believed that I was done
wasting thoughts on you

but memory is relentless.

you said
"i am afraid of a love like ours"

we have yet to fail
i have yet to falter

sleep
breath
remain

one more year
if i try
i can collect
enough to last forever

do not falter
i will not fail

just sleep

breathe

stay.