it's true
they did love you once.
feared you too, but
maybe that's the same thing,
gave you
roast pigs and animal pelts
and you didn't even have to ask.
a pretty good arrangement.

now
i'm the only one that sticks around
and even then only
when i'm bored.
i'm taunting and i'm cruel and you, love,
are not a great conversationalist
but
it evens out.

so i get to
take jabs at you
til you're frothing at the mouth,
like seafoam, briny
shaking valleys and hills with
your anger. and i can't help but laugh
at you. you,
with your dusty ruby eyes
(that lie now in a museum
somewhere
because the white men walked into your temples and plucked them right out -)
and your stone paws,
roughly hewn, mossy,
ugly.
we laugh and laugh
about what you lost
between galileo and darwin and euler,
so many years and the
backs of men.

You are nothing short of iridescent.

Like the pearls the divers pluck
From the depths of the bay and
Crack open to reveal;
When set into gold and silver, they
Glisten.
As do you.

But the fishermen trawl the very same bay
With their boats and their nets,
And you are iridescent as
The milky smooth insides
Of the clams they catch—
Iridescent as the shells that they,
Hungering,
**** the meat from and
Throw back into the sea.

yours is a vengeful god
too old for some benevolent dictating
even on good days,
beard scratchy like steel wool and
wishing it all went down
easier.
he's
raising hailstorms in
little-known third world nations
with each cold and
stubbed toe.
came home friday night hammered,
and with a whole new point of view,
he said:
"i don't wanna forgive you
not because it's hard
(it's not)
it's so **** easy it's
a cheap trick."
flicked the cig at the ashtray
and missed. he
stopped loving you just like that
on a day that smelled like gasoline,
while in the midwest the droughts went
on, and on,
decided that what he gives is
what he wants to take.

sometimes i pretend
that the scratchy feeling in my throat
is you,
trying to claw your way out;
and when that happens
i slip another lozenge into my mouth
and grin.

the truth is,
i'd never thought about my thoughts
until you
asked me what i was thinking
and i had no answer.

really
what could i have told you?
all i know is that there are
a thousand leaky faucets in me and
a thousand overflowing sinks
and that my head pounds to the beat of
stampedes in south africa
of traffic jams and the
screeching tearing twisting
of fenders
(and other such parts)
of the buzz of construction sites and wasps,
of waves beating against rock,
incessant.
(i'm really just
missing all the crucial components
and my skull leaks thoughts in
the ugliest symphony known to man.)

he whispers words to me that i don't
understand anymore
and i can't tell but
even to someone like me,
they don't sound like words
they don't even
sound.
they feel
like he's testing out the rush,
the scrape
of carbon dioxide across skin
stale and a little bitter.
stinging.
i can't hear him, anymore, and
he doesn't want me to.

and after you were done with me i was
gutted:
had lost myself
in you
to you.
became another one of them
(and there were so many)
fish you'd caught and thrown away,
an empty chest
sinking
to the bottom
of the ocean.

"For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."
GENESIS 3:19

because who knew
that the bones of gods were made of glass?
that they'd shatter upon impact with marble floors
that if you smelted them they'd become indistinguishable
with silica bits from sandy coasts
that you would have to
sweep up the shards
before a child could slice his fingers upon their many edges
and bleed?
figured it was worth a try, and
it was.
your body was so light, for once
and before you knew it you were
flying up,
out of this place that the angels left
long ago.

wake me up, she says
i don't want to ever sleep again
don't want to be that girl
tiny jagged holes from
a thousand needle ******
a forest so deep,
lost where the
light doesn't reach, even in summertime,
and the wolves can't get you.

and no amount of breadcrumbs
or kisses
could possibly make me
want to leave.

i can always tell when you're nervous.
by the way you drum your fingers
against the
nearest available surface
(usually my skin)
the way your shoulders tense up and
fold inwards,
turning to stone
and the way
you gnaw on your lower lip
and just a flash
of your canines show.

or maybe it was my lips you were biting
i can
never tell.

who forgets to feed the ghosts?

the ones that
with not-quite-there fingers,
play tunes down our spines
a note on each vertebra
d major and,
encore.

the ones that covet
our pearly white bones
and our wire thin sinews
and settle themselves inside us,
pretending to feel
the stretching of fingers and toes
and each whisper of oxygen past our throats,
like the taste of early mornings
and hospitals.

the one that
cradles his cold fingers around my heart and
hopes to keep it for his own.
jealous and starving for
thousands, and thousands
of years.

this ghost, he
clings to my shoulder and
whispers in my ear,
asks,
who feeds the dying
but not the dead?

It took a long time standing still
and too many camera flashes
and too many 'do not touch' signs
to realise
that missing an arm has never really suited him.

remember that time
when i disintegrated into a
pile of dust
and was never seen again?

yeah,
neither do i.