Maiden in the ashes
Robed in silk
Robbed of milk
No mark on your tender skin
No sign of turmoil within
The coal does not yet scorch your soul
...
You walk your delicate path
Bearing the sightly, brightly beaten cut bloom of spring
Luscious petals not yet knowing
They will drop from the stem
No seeds to plant, and not her fault
the only water here tainted with salt
And the ground is hard, turned up in its roots
Do you know the path you tread does not want you?
Do you not yet feel the cut of stone or burn on coal?
Or does this black earth need your bloodstained steps as much as you need to bleed them
Is it possible for one woman's blood to nourish this dead soil back to life?
And one woman's love to seed them

Embalmed skin -
seemingly made anew,
yet pocked with sores…
from a life past.

The then waylaid heart
needed only whisper…

And long was the walk
through the cursed labyrinth
of sharp worldly things.

You wait for me
to learn the corridor going
to marbled stone god. This was my faith.

Only the pain of ravens
was true. It was not black as their
feathers were dark. Look, someone is watching.

I cannot bid goodbye
to myself. I am alive in all my poems,
singing as white as the moon.

you left your blueish dress
twisted by the pool’s edge
like a cold monument
to every single misstep
and my heart is overwhelmed
with visions of a dancing grave

via crucis in the morning
carry me to our palisade
while these tiny arcs of light
leave my eyes, breaking easily
and your voice keeps me awake
i believe that i need this

you were wrong
i am nothing
but one more familiar face
amid the pageantry

What’s this glaze
over my eyes…

A heavy mist
with fingers…
that lingers.
A cataract that
dives and claws
into the black
of irises.

A film,
a veil,
a canvas botched
and vandalised
with arguing paints.
And indelible black
that sings of sadness,
highlights the aches
of dejection
and screams
betrayal.

when I awaken
I extend my finger
towards a panel of dancing light-

did you know that its veins were torn from a mountain?

a whole hierarchy of angels
living inside the earth
were turned to transistors

so that my letters
could glow in your hands.

when I learned this
I began sleeping beside a stream,

in the places where I could watch
wires dance-

beneath wooden pillars and their flimsy black arms
whispering secrets in permanent embrace.

every night I would dream  
to the forward noise
of churning water;

of fluid drifting through the air unseen
or pouring from life long past-

terraforming
for the maintenance of symmetry.