She never minded the scars I carved.
She'd beg me for more, and as her wrists were tied in knots.
I'd make sure another night was never forgot.
Sure, she'd struggle, much as any of us must.
But she was lurching toward me wild and bewildered such.

She would calm as I tended wound and her panting
below became a parting of bloom. Springtime crept
in like a slow, low light on a horizon only meant
to be seen by us two.

Her struggle turned to sound and her mouth stuffed still.
Her lids heavy hiding stained glass eye windowed sill.
Her knees buckled with belt tied firm to keep her tight.
Her smile crept wide as tongue wetted what kept words inside.

Her drool ran and stained our sheets,
her eyes filled with tears which ran down cheeks.
Pleasing pleadings strung out by Morse code taps of her feet.
She was more than a canvas,
she became my tapestry.

Bucolic bottle broken,
Bourbon bath I'm soaked in.
One more twenty four hour landscape.
Another week of feeling like I'm late.

Cryptic poetry written with a clear idea present.
But thesaurus ******* doesn't help the lesson.
To be learn-ed like the old Astronomer,
to gaze at space again on a blanket among her.
Outstretched and a yawn on my teeth and tongue.
Summer is a force tearing me asunder.

Send me your two cent pennies and I'll flick them into your well-wishes.
Fair weather friendships and texts'n'calls, all misses.
Hung up but without much care or thoughts about the pleasantries.
Yellow brick roadblocks down the lane of Missing You memories.

I live a breath's away from the oldest river in the world.
While I don't take much of nature in it is awe inspiring,
to be sure.
I live within the crook of the oldest mountains in our history.
Not the tallest,
nor the proudest,
but for now these ranges are growing senile within their misery.

The riverrun through it and exposes rock perhaps a billion years old.
Our oral histories, passed on legends,
scary stories and mountaineer folklore accounts for
such a small passage of time.
We built a bridge once.
It was at one time the longest single-span arch in the world.
Now it's the fourth.
Top five, and that's something for which I am proud.
The oldest river, in the world.
The oldest mountains, in the world.
The highest fatal overdose rate, in the States.

There is a beauty to be had here. Somewhat backwards, but
growing up our water was clear.
It's now choked from coal slurry.
The brain drain of young adults leaving, in much hurry,
hurts us as the ones that remain become grey and blurry.
We are living in a permanent winter and we have high roads,
that wind and curve. Dangerous when icy. veins filled with
heavy loads and nodding verve.
I live a breath's away from the oldest river in the entire world.
I can't touch Roman ruins with my hands, or
sift through the Dead Sea and float on salt above sand.
I can't touch the hill where Jesus may have died,
I don't know what it feels like to hold history as pride.
But our trees even when green have a dusty coal darkened sheen.
Summer is overgrowth from the Springtime rains.
The highest fatal overdose rate in the entire United States.

Where once we built bridges to close in the gap of travel.
We unzip black bags with rigs and object with obvious cavil.
Our industry is old, the world is moving on from coal.
For better, to be sure, but in the meantime we grow cold.
Not from lack of heat, we can boil our spoons just fine.
But we need a replacement from shaft or the mountaintop mine.
Let us worry about beauty again,
let us treat addiction with correction instead of levying it as sin.
Remove the pantomiming politician speak
of addicts or the sick as being weak.

Let's find ourselves again, West Virginia. You're the only home I've known.
Childhood summertimes sat beneath canopies of caterpillar home,
the happy baby butterflies eating leaves so more sun could shone.
Walking sticks used to play with me in my yard,
and at nighttime I'd still be outside mouth agape at the stars.
Evening meant lightning bugs and I'd capture a few in the cup of my hands.
There was a whimsy to how nature responded to us,
how bees would bumble and land,
on the dandelions whose seeds I'd spread as I blew on their white
polyp heads.
Maybe it's nostalgia and my memories are tinted rosy.
The smell of wood stoves burning in winter,
the crispness of autumn breezes felt cozy.
There was a trust held in communities, or maybe I was naïve.
Some of my friends made a choice and moved.
Others among us took a more permanent leave.
My brother, too. He himself got in a lot of trouble.
Over the cotton swab boiled to a bubble.
He died when I was young so maybe everybody is right.
It's all sentimentality and a lot of lonely nights.
But does the past being ****** up make the worsening now fine?

I live a breath's away from the oldest river and mountain range.
I live with the highest fatal overdose rate in the United States.

Her eyes shake in her sleep.
Is she awake or is she dreaming?
Dare I ask her and bother to interrupt?
No, I'll wait for her to naturally wake up.

It's so loud in the nighttime. The silence is deafening.
The hums of the refrigerator,
air conditioner,
the small city rurality.
Crickets chirp like frog croaks,
dogs bark at bicycle spokes.

She murmurs in her dreams, words that make no sense.
Completely static expressions leave me in wanting suspense.

I wonder where she is now.
Blurry confines of pianoforte,
soft & loud,
like our bed sheets and pillow tops.
Comfort without a sound.

Sleep for her is an ease within which she slips carefully.
She wakes with dreams and stories, descriptions bare
vividly her soul for me to sip.
She happily spends a third of her life having the plaque
of her mind scraped fresh and waking anew.
From the autumn dusk to the spring dawn,
the drying evening to the morning dew.
I sit here awake planning out a future based on days long past.
Watching as dust lingers in the first reminders of sunshafts.

Have you ever watched a loved one wake up from a gentle kiss?
Feeling guilt in the hope of having her wake with your wish?
Seeing the smile split her lips wide and her eyes linger longer
as if she had been worried in her sleep that you had forgot her.

I was always here in the nighttime making sure you were safe.
I'm sorry I fell asleep on you while you were still awake.
But I saw your eyes and they were thriving in their shake.
I assumed you were dreaming, my darling.
Now I'm left with guilt and shame.

Chimes bid farewell as the last wind to ever end,
blows its final charms through the hairs on our arms.

Walls, with bubbled fire gleeful for escape scratch-
out etches of their own cave paintings. I'll remember you.

Times hid beneath a soft surface the soul's foreign purpose,
to explore the alien that is land beyond here, a future mere.

Struck dumb, deaf, congenital heart murmurs and other gossips.
Fogged out windows bottomed at the last ends of an emptied quarry.

We dug the new digs and the careful resemblance to a rhyme we like to sing-
along to, in lieu of the high notes we contort brows and eyes high for a few.

This tumult of twenties gleam in stark contrast.
Made heavier with temptations, I forgot everything.

Finally tired of the past I find the future narrowing before my salted vision.
Too late to change course,
reef ourselves, then. The wind has harrowed a billow the last of its kind.
We are now safely where we must be, were told to go, were held and pointed
to by arms hairier than ours then, "That is your place in this world."
Carried across the sea in a pity as a great wind,
carried us, too, across the sky.

We act as rupture on this virginity.
A land with no wind is too new.
God, please, tell me what to do.
Guide me in, again.

An ashen late Autumn was upon us,
and in our best worn coats and sundries we--
held steadfast by a masthead of a rotting boat.
Wooden on a shore of the lake we adored.

We held still as soft deer galloped their lanks through strange
lands lifted from grounds with brick built upon brick,
wherein now were filled, not berries, but hunter's saltlick.
We ravaged a place we called our own,
We stole from the savages their home.

But we found a peace amongst their nerves,
and we were fearful of speed and we'd swerve,
if ever we found in our path one that deserved,
to have the freedom to rummage through roughage.

On this solemn lake-side we found pride in the soft light.
Because what the **** else can we do,
but to sit where once grass stood in dew,
and instead of plucking and mucking about,
no, in lieu, we sat and stared and remarked,
instead about how we've done damage we can't undo.

Wave that sweet handkerchief at me.
It is not a call to come over, or by, but
a wave of rejoice. Of revolution.
Wave those dried tears at me,
make me remember who I am to a
woman that looks remarkably nothing
as you do.

From atop the gates you sit upon the fence,
waving that sweet handkerchief; freedom,
free of the chaos of your long-lost lore.
Suffer no more, suffragettes.
Or, at least, suffer openly and not only
to sisters and to therapists.

Scream your pink and black lungs at us.
Coughing up the secrets that darkened
your heart, soul, mind, and finally your
lot can speak in time. With the same
sufferers. Kinship met in kind, as the
emboldened world wished to be blind.
But no more.

Tell us your stories, of heartfelt ache and
the dismal display of attention promised.
Of attention mustered through fantasy play.
Wave that sweet handkerchief at me.
As a test balloon of realising we are ready.
To hear your side of a story you helped write.
What's this chapter called?