when i cordoned you off
with Gorilla Tape and lilac vine
once i was done attaching encrypted files
of pearls upon that sultry salt of your inner-thighs
once i’d borrowed bonds
off my favorite banker’s portfolio
so i could waste myself in their earned interest
ratios
of blood bourne by centuries of
hapless gathering oppression
so i could use them in mosaics of swollen sand
that i could lay
like sea-glass shards under your
ebbing feet as useless parchments
i swallowed you in all your swollen spasms of fragile oblivion
until that bottom of this tongue lept amidst surfacing juices
obliterating and obligating all that ever decayed amidst obelisks
your whispers
(hatched from your
breathy endorphins)
shook me into
mine own
desperate shudders
astride our gathering humidity
and i gathered in
your needle-nosed
plier
eyes
-rust encrusted grey
incisors-
wrought from melted andirons
mixed with slug
trodden
soils
of hinterlands i was
never
to penetrate
as if i ever slammed
you
with yore spinning flails
into night’s emerging chasm
of charcoal sprinkled
with inner-orange peels
and their attempts toward
all that is illuminating, wistful, brief, and
precious—

i am your son, i am birthed from your sal i vations. i am twisting, still, amidst these rudiments of brine...

Night is an old blanket
asleep on my pillow.
Night is the mist on the river
covering the willows.
Night is the moon turning blue
brushing her hair.
Night is a black dress
on the back of my chair.

Did you see the stars
As they shone on you
Vivid like a thousand scars
Inside the darkest blue
Did you see the hero

But that hero was you
Onward for people feel
When music becomes true
In the end you're never gone
Eternally remembered in a song

Little chick
under Abba's wing
intimate haven
of sweetest grace

Little child
learning to sing
of infinite joy
in Abba's face

The Bells of Notre Dame called out “Come fill my Center Hall”
“Come Catholic, Muslim, Hindu and Jew; Come with no faith at all”
The Mothers of the Murdered came, united in their grief.
For bullets and I.E.D’s cannot sort us by belief.
One woman in a hijab had come here from Verdun.
Like the Protestant beside her, She had lost her only son.
Both were strangers to this place, Unfamiliar with the prayers
But, having no place else to go; They found some comfort there.
The Highborn and the famous came with those of low estate
Some came here to find peace of Soul; to put an end to hate.
Some sought shelter from the world; to find sanctuary.
But the figure on the Cross proclaims we all face Calvary.
We all face the same sentence; all perish in the end.
We know this evil must be stopped but know not how or when.
The Bells of Notre Dame call out
“Let us begin again.”