I thought if I could swallow the stars
I’d be as beautiful as the evening sky
I tried one night    with fireflies
They burned my throat
Their legs striking at soft flesh
But my skin did not glow
No moon crawled from my eye sockets
I was left with corpses in my stomach
I soon learned I would only ever be
A cemetery

I need

...but have been too long alone
untouched by desire
the presumption of love
in joints of dust –the lame of lust

So...

Unseen
Years creep by
Silent, numb

No one remembers
who I was

Raising my eyes
to the window—
–a flock of sparrows rise as one
into a gray sky
of mind

Beauty left by the back door of day
unnoticed in fading light

A dull ache
is all

my heart will return to the earth
once more to cherish the soil where
i left you laying dead. here, and again,
a promise will glow in the ground,
and sound out for cool drops of hope.

it snows outside, but spring has
blossomed in my heart for the first time

a fox crawled into a desert yard
with frazzled fur and a broken nose.
looking for a spring or drop of snow,
he dragged along his splintered hope.

across dunes of sand and the valley
of despair, he marched along and sunk
his sins into there: in the sand, he’d tally:
broken dreams and streams out of reach,
and every day his tail drug heaviness
behind his paws, but he marched on
and on
and on