Your truth is sweet.
Mine is sharp.
I cut away at you, without meaning to,
my hands are scissors,
yours are feathers.
Icarus, do not let me be your sun.

Us and all our lonely ghosts
shells, empty,
trying to fill the gaps in
with lover's flesh and ink.
Whiskey to warm our ribs,
seal us air-tight,
and drown the monsters
we can't write out of us.
Suffocate the **** things
before they learn how to swim.
Haunted, but not horrified,
we've seen ashes before.
We only wait for the March winds
to blow them away
and light
just
one
     last
          spark.

They say that one can lead a horse to water,
but one can't force him to drink.

Indeed,
this must be true.

However that may be,
I've never seen a thirsty horse
refuse good water.

I imagine that Jellaludin would have
something very witty to say about this.

I simply will say,
let your heart be like the horse
who never refuses sweet waters.

Hair holds scent like memory.

The fall evenings spent by campfires,          
coming home to the empty house, washing the sensory reminder of fellowship and pine down the drain,
but the smell stayed on pillows
for weeks.

Remember smelling formaldehyde in its strands
after anatomy class
and holding the heart of the 17 year old boy
who crashed his motorcycle.
And wondering how many children
the hands of the ancient old woman
held before they stilled.
They were perfect, marble, the nails elegantly long.

I remember how my hair trapped his scent with me.
It smelled like his hands,
like his mouth.
Tobacco and smoke
cool night air and January stars.

I haven't cut it since.

Daughter,
you are a cathedral.
Your ribs rise in vaulted grace,
the nave of your mouth stands open,
and cloister arms,
extend.
Your skin's stretch marks
are etched like stained glass,
Flame light flickers in your eyes.
Wonder of time and art,
made by divine hands,
You are more beautiful than Notre Dame
and all her souls.

When the men come to pray,
Do not let them
desecrate this house.
Stand unshaken,
as the bombs burst around you.
You will tremble.
But you will not fall.

Enfold the weary pilgrim
who comes to you by night.
Sanctuary
he will say.
And find it, in you.

Beauty is pain.
It draws them in like flies.
They have caught their legs
in my flypaper hair.
And rip them off, one by one.
They fall like eyelashes into my palm.
They love, they love.
I cannot.