Arms swaddled in a moth eaten blanket
My skin peers through the holes, cold and curious;
My young outline taught to constantly fret
By a hidden mother – I’m spurious,
A wretched lust baby from gusty love.  
My useless heart still beating in her womb,
I could drink sallow pity, but enough!
Weary feet shall take me from Phobos, loom
Tall man, your shadow stretches behind me.  
An iron chalice holds my sanguine heart,
Leaking on my bone’s silver tapestry…
Strength does not mean one cannot break apart –
Soon my sadness, rimy stars, won’t matter
When my harsh palms hold my soul like water.

Arms swaddled in a moth eaten blanket
My skin peers through the holes, cold and curious;
My young outline taught to constantly fret
By a hidden mother – I’m spurious,
A wretched lust baby from gusty love.  
My useless heart still beating in her womb,
I could drink sallow pity, but enough!
Weary feet shall take me from Phobos, loom
Tall man, your shadow stretches behind me.  
An iron chalice holds my sanguine heart,
Leaking on my bone’s silver tapestry…
Strength does not mean one cannot break apart –
Soon my sadness, rimy stars, won’t matter
When my harsh palms hold my soul like water.

Birds and bees rest lonely in the garden,
Suckling the milk of bleeding flowers
Until their mouths drip sweet golden sin;
Clear feathered wings piling in towers,
Reaching and ripping empyrean sky
To lick a relentless tangerine sun.  
How you take up but a corner of I,
While razing the grasses of all but some -
Outlines of spring buds painted with cold, blue
Reality, pooling beneath my feet
Ready to drown the air for me and you,
Washing green til it's the color of wheat.  
Serendipity fills me with unease
As I sit within rings of broken trees.

Oh modern schoolhouse, such fine lesson taught
To rambunctious children like you and I.  
Ah, your vapid air having my brain rot,
Sitting still for you tip the day I die -
I give much thanks for the literacy
And my will, once fire, now dust and smote -
I was taught to ignore the birds and bees,
And slapped on the wrists when my fingers wrote.  
I was taught not color but black and white,
That each heart clangs like an old metronome,
Sound ignored in the flaming starless night,
Taught it's better to breath and love alone.  
I slept with my window open one time,
Before I was taught dreams a heinous crime.

Watching a sunset
Splay its colored body
Against a hollow, indigo sky.  
Her children,
Lost glowing specks
Of iridescent dust,
Peek out from behind their
Empty, lightless blanket -
Shy and blushing.  

Tongue and tooth
Clicking together,
Tickled by vibrating
Chords hidden in heated
Throats.  
Stories slink
From one mouth
To another,
Tickling their
Deep limbic systems
Until every nerve
Is laced with
Oxytocin.  

Laying in grass
More brown than green
With stomachs to the sky
Are bodies with connected
Palms.  
Formless dinosaurs spin
In shapeless teacups,
While amorphous cats
Shift into mustachioed whales.  

Bodies curl around each other
Like clay
Fusing into one piece
And two colors,
Both a shade of red.  
A chest meets a back.  
Its fluttering heart
Crashing through
Two sets of ribs,
To rest with another,
Both bleeding in tandem.  

Love is
Not some byproduct
To gather dust
While writhing, undulating bodies
Coat the air with sweat.  
Love isn't made,
Nor is it preformed.  
Love is

The world is too small for me.  
The land, with its palette of
Green, the malachite feathers quivering on the
Brown, rough boughs of trees, that sprout from the soft
Earth, dotted with flowers, their petals
Prismatic, broken rays of a rainbow -
Red dust stained with
Yellow grain crossed with
Violet air blended with
Blue seas that stretch into darkness.  
I cannot see in the dark, and the sky,
The sky is bright.  

I am compressed.
Filled with the need to stretch out my arms
And let the wind
With its opalescent hands
Carry me into the atmosphere
Like a meteor
That fell, the fire of its descent stripping away its rocky flesh
Leaving behind only bones made of skin
Returning home.  

I could speak to the stars.
My words traveling through the void of space
Silent, but not voiceless
And marvel at the heat touching my blue lips.  
I could touch the sun.  
The fiery eye surrounded by bright, unfurling rays -
I could pluck them
Like the daisies I had thought so magnificent as a child,
Their soft, white crowns served as the stars
To my younger shadow.  
Their tangibility comforting
In a large world.  

My, how I have grown
When the world has not.  

I would preform ballet on the bands of light
Being drawn into my own black hole.  
The ravenous hollow created out of destruction
And when my body breaks apart
It will do so with the light.  
I would waltz from asteroid to asteroid
Their metallic bodies cold beneath my bare feet
As they spun, empty and lonely -
But I would turn with them
Smiling and laughing silently
And I would feel free.  

There is so much
In my sky
Past the blue.  
But, no matter how tall I grow
Or how high I jump
Or how far I stretch out my arms
I will not ascend
To where my heart has gone.

I can't remember
If I loved you -
You, the woman
Who held me
Inside herself,
Watering me with her blood
So that I could grow
Until you were too small for me.  

There is an injustice
When you can leave
As though I am nothing,
While I am left to remember
That I couldn't exist
Without you.  

The thought leaves me bending,
Under my resentment -
Not just for you -
For all mothers, all fathers.  
For everyone.  

And that means myself,
And I fear that soon I may crack,
My rage bubbling up,
Ready to burn,
But before I begin to destroy
Water will leak out,
And I will curl in on myself,
Hardening like stone
Until that is all I am.  

I remember bits and pieces
Of you motherhood
And my childhood.  
They aren't bad.  

Sitting in the harsh morning light
You sleep, and I watch a film
About a girl who wants home,
Even if it's grey,
And in my hands rested a bowl of letter soup.  
I swear I saw the word "Mommy" in the broth.  

Running in the low light
Of a southern evening
My bare feet are tickled by blades
Of coarse grass, damp from the summer heat,
And I laugh
Because I hold wriggling stars
And I know you are there
But I cannot remember if your face held a smile.  

I did not know how to sleep
Without having nightmares
So I wandered
In the shadows left by candlelight
Until I found you
At the door, the scent of
Shellfish and beer clinging to your uniform;
Your hand, in between rough and soft,
Grasped my own
And led me to the couch
Where I would watch a flickering box
While you slept.  

These fragments
Glint like shards of glass
Embedded in my head
Refracting light
So that my skull is full of
Shadow.  

They aren't bad,
So why did you give them up?

You refused to make the break
Clean,
Choosing not to leave,
                  not to stay -
You had us
Jagged.  

I saw you,
But less and less
Until it became never
And you became nothing
More than a photograph
Exposed to sunlight
Before it had a chance to develop.  

I'm scared,
Because now I cannot remember
What your voice sounds like,
Or what your face looks like,
And you have taken the word mother
And you have made it something I cannot say
Without my heart ignoring my head,
Beating away in my chest with the knowledge that
I am unwanted
By a woman I cannot even remember.  

At night,
When the smell of the moonlight
Wafts in through my window
I still cannot sleep -
I suppose you were meant to teach me -
And I ask myself,
In the dark, because sometimes
It is better when you cannot see the words,
Have you forgotten me too?