When at the peak voltage
streetlights **** the stars
and behind closed doors
rumbling slumbers
down the cries of the nocturne
awakes a world of opened windows.

Home from the last show
eyes colored with screen idols
shadows huddling over supper
talk of the length and worth
the plot intrigues and intricacies
the creator's whims and fantasies
while unbeknownst the night lengthens
tiring the shadows
that excavate the trash bin's bottom
for living through the morrow.

The filaments feel lonelier
as those last windows shut down
starlight wasted
on an enveloped town.

But i need a day
To lay in bed
And twine toes with somebody
And stare at the ceiling

A day to talk
About nonsense
And be really heard

And laughter
I could use
Lots of that

I just need
A day

Or two or three

**** the witch
hogtied to this
thin-skinned wagon
packed with privilege
call me wicked
if it makes it easier
view my plight
as one of my own making
I should have done
as I was told

Brand me traitor
as dust obscures
this timeworn scene
I know what it means
to be a whole divided
drawn and quartered
dragged to all four corners
left for buzzards
along the walled
deserted borders

scattered limbs
seeking unity
I reach for what’s mine
only to find
healing hands
too tightly praying
too busy manufacturing
high ground
in this time
of righteousness

Label me other
as I diverge
light the skies
with fireworks red
belt patriot songs
I will not mouth
empty words
to an anthem
I no longer
believe in

love is how you feel it.
love is what you do.
love is the reason to live
when love has abandoned 
you... it's so cruel the way it strikes
and the way it departs 
the way i never knew you
and i never thought
my soul would ever suffer
for Her Art 
i never had a clue 
till it was gone 
till everything right
went so terribly wrong
till i found myself on a ledge
in the dark
i saw the truth. 
and that's how i got this scar
it softens the blow no less
it tramples every
flower bed
it crushes everything like a god
love is the loneliness 
of the lucky ones

and no one ever tells you from the start
they just let you fall 
and watch your parachute 
be nothing but a rock 
on a rope,
but that's not even -
the joke

then it hits you like a ton of bricks
and just for kicks
it kicks you when your down
and your lost. and now 
your hard

All Because
Love never had
a heart.
never had skin the game
that you loss.
never apologized
for the hole in your life
that was left behind
when the light left you
for another man 
and a lie 

and you keep asking  why ?
and way down deep inside
you wish you knew
that love has lost it's mind
and never had a heart

till your love went blind
and you had your heart -
removed.

Part I.  Like Gods Falling

At first—
new trembling
and then she didn’t want
to be—

alone

with guilt

or seen

as **** half-eaten evidence
So she held it out to him
with her half-hearted, “It's OK.”
her crippling distance

“Why doesn’t she just embrace me
as before?”
He thought
that he had never seen her eyes that way—
with no words for their ruin
he loved her fearfully more

Gorged in the aftermath of forbidden
fat and animal fruit
Sick with excuses
Staring at
the core of lust
Rationalizing
Food?  Beauty? Intrigue?

Wisdom!

Searing awful terror
into each other’s minds

Part II.  Love and War

In the years between
the harrowed rows of sprouting corn
they found pleasure without plan
that bound them more than guilt had severed

How curious the textures of a man
in sunlight

her power?
In all the brilliance she had bargained for

How curious this burning for her
in the sodden life of rotting

She was always holding him now
from the scorching day
as the earth sizzled and swam
in seas of senseless—
background drone of locust and revenge
sealed in sweat and clutching labor

She was always holding him back by night
from the icy crackling mad!
his restless hunting hate!
And sometimes, while she pleaded
he would seize her
Make her pay!

For that afternoon

by the well where the boy was washing
A basket of vegetables returned
a bowl of blood

Part III.  Grief

Prepare the darling carcass
Shroud it in her pleas
clawing in the mud beside its silence
consumed beyond all fire by her anguish
“Can this not be enough to make him move?
Yes! He did! I’m sure I saw it!”
Can this not be enough?”
to stop the knowing…
grief from pouring into space?

Not even light escapes
____

Returning from the Mount of Meeting
hollow chores
collecting fatwood
grinding joyless grain

From corner of her eye
she watches the boy
walk toward the forest
spear in hand
She pauses
looking down
at hands on stone
that once had cradled...
Breath catching on jagged sorrow

She continues to grind

bitterly pregnant


Part IV.  Endings

Descended now
Reclining heap
reflects before a sun’s surrender
His face gleams with last light
hair blown back by volleys of wind

Her face
Not visible
as we are behind them
Her head rests in his lap
She is on her side
Soles of her shoes
mute and toward us
His eyes search the sky for a god—any god!
Her God

Exhaustion poses them past
the point of question
When the matter of “Why?”
becomes each other

Close in

the net of twilight
Dulled of hope and pain
at the edge of all that can be done...

...everything is gray going on black—
but we always knew that

7/15/2017

A plank of wood,
sand mites bite our ankles
my ankles

One in the morning at the
Gated Beach Community
and the signs said

Without parental supervision,
No one under 16 allowed
but there I was, 15

Dealing with a bad lease on my brain, don't forget yours, too
parents nowhere to be found

Or maybe two buildings over
Years later, it's night
I step over puddles, drunk boys

Walk around the complex laughing
Trying to remember when I found that sort of thing fun,

Remembering never,
I sit on a ledge--
And you'd never guess the sea

Was several hundred feet away
with the way the sky bleeds black
congealing, together

The Atlantic and it.
Remembering my old obsession
With blood, my old poems

Speaking feverishly of it
adding meaningless symbols-
the flower the color of it,

or the sky in the morning in august
trying, selfishly, to make sense of my life.

I wish to run a fever-- forget this place ever existed
Or you, truthfully.

If he loves me...
...or not...no matter
I will stay rooted in his memory
I planted seeds of my touch, my scent
and my kiss....
My voice will stay in the breeze
Whispering his name through the trees

They remain to germinate within him
When at those dormant offhand moments
He needs a bit of my smile for sunshine :)