That new leaf
You claimed to turn
Looked just as unsightly
As the old one
Although
I only caught a glance
While you blew by
Yet again.

Three kids sitting cross legged in a homemade shed
A trifecta, if you may
A band of crickets screaming prayers into the humidity
One recounted stories of robots in the high school hallways
All laughing and golden, whispering empty epitaphs into the abyss
Singing songs of nothing to a comfortable god
One spoke of aspirations shrouded in cigar smoke
A life of more than mother's wishes and monetary muteness
Being caught between stagnant calculations and hammered guitar strings
Lyrics tattooed the back of her teeth, curious wonderer, light wash grief
Questioning the deities found anywhere but her circle of friends
And we must sacrifice ourselves to rock bottom
One drank a singular beer and couldn't see straight
A hole in a head, filling fast with all those secret woodland soliloquies
Like for the first time, she could see
Clumsy ankles treading through the over brush, love or lust
And how should we go on living through these nights fated to end
There was a soundtrack to our revolution,
Haunting hymns over the busted stereo,
Love poems washed away with morning

But the night sounds
Oh, the night sounds
The holy ghosts in moonlight reflecting off the leaves
The sacred rub of skin on skin beneath the moribund trees

I see them pause to talk and wonder
What could be said between the ages of old and young
Of womanhood in full bloom, womanhood at near end
Except if not by word then by presence speak
Of the preciousness of life begun between their legs.
.

© 2016

Like so many
times before,
she went out
into the dark
and pulled it
around her--
its cloak of
          charcoal
              staining
        her fingers
as she
grasped its
deeply opaque
fabric of smoke
turning her
eyes into mirrors--
mirrors reflected
inside out, thoughts
and feelings
brash and quiet
in their subtle
points of weaving
until the cold
gleam of shards
of the onyx air
clung to her form
like an inky abyss,
the very reverse
reflection
of black snow
spilling and seeping
into her essence,
filling the weeping
in whispery presence
until all she could do
was curl into the
soft embrace
of obsidian,
surrender her soul
to the starless sky
and let
it in

A picture may paint a thousand words, but a word can communicate a thousand images.

Shivers on skin— I walked among stars;
I walked on broken edges
I walked on broken light.

The sound of space is the mourning of a mother,
a lullaby of the past,
of all the pain it takes to become
on someone else’s demand,
and all the time it takes to disappear
by your own accord.

The night smells of burnt ash;
there are no falling wishes here,
only wicked angels.

Come, let us sleep.
It does not do to step on the dead.

Pink hyacinth girl
Throwing flowers in the air
A garden dreamer