Twilight: bittersweet. Sweaty from work, and in the cold, I shiver under a cotton-candy sky. Is it so much to ask for validity? Is it too much to ask for brick and mortar? I’ve been trying to build a church out of my many failures and one feeble success. Is there no cornerstone here that I may lay a foundation and watch the blackbirds settle under my steeple? I: the patron saint of migrations and chapped knuckles. I: the purveyor of silence who takes wage in the form of holes. Holes I still cannot fill. I: drowning in debt within a society I never asked to claim me. I work at a gas station. My education has gotten me nowhere. I reorder words into lies in hopes I name a bigger truth. My one success? I’m still here, barely; still breath and flesh and jagged tooth.

On a porch swing that creaks
in the likeness of ancient knees,
I think about the last time we kissed,
how it felt
so much like losing a tooth.

The moon smiles crooked, slanted,
a tilted guillotine
scarring the darkness to blur
the trees that rustle like fluid opals,
fluttering like thousands of white flags.

I was broken before you found me,
a rusted hinge stuck half open
letting anyone trespass. I imagine
you walking up the drive
in your lacey, white blouse:

a ghost of Alice lost in the madhouse
of a world fully armed by spades,
all pointed like a thousand fingers
at your collarbone. You would have
gladly bore their nick for me.

The moon is the Cheshire cat, questioning
why I imagine such things.
A dog barks at nothing down the block.
A rabbit’s outline slinks into a gutter.
Am I crazy to have loved you and sever us?

The moon blinks. We’re all mad here, I think.

A wound is a well
save that a well can be full;
a wound just empties.

To love is to bleed
delicate: a maroon flow.
One can love too much.

Every time I think
about how she’s not here, not
lying next to me
the sutures are loosened: as soft

as unearthed marrow.
No amount of milk, honey,
copious *****

can heal the hair-thin
fault line in the core of me:
the best medicine

is our bright laughter.
A pair of wind-chimes letting
breeze cast its blessing.

The good news: she cares
enough to call me by name,
a sufficient grace.

The bad news: a wound
will sometimes reopen, and
will consume me should
I not allow light to trespass.

A wound is a well
but, unlike a well, remains
after it is dry.

I fancied burning;
nursed charred fingertips
from placing them between.
lips. I enjoyed love warm.

Love was easier
to kindle with friction
under sheets pre-lit,
shaped by body-heat.

Somewhere, an oasis
is brushing her hair,
is rippling with light,
lush with a fleeting smile.

I found her in autumn
laughing like a creek.
Her hair the color
of poplar leaves afloat.

She, restless, cascading
away and sometimes
over me, cannot
be contained readily.

My other lovers:
they were forest fires,
were all holocausts
filled with sharp facets.

An oasis is still sharp
to the taste. Her kiss
smooth: I can feel it
douse memories of cinders:

her eyes turn soft with mist
within my scorched daydreams.

you were the lacunar bolt the part
of a life spent wishing on stars
if stars had ever granted anything but light

chatoyant the yellow pilot lamp
down the street trembles weakly
wanting to burn out it flickers like a sun
struggling long past its expiration date

I was an absquatulate scholar
of wrinkled bedsheets and the way
the light ineffable shone around us
as though we were the ******* center of it all

a slow-motion salvation is better
than instant gratification behind words
like I believe I can’t accept this
I will give you back

your left behind particulars: your lingerie
your photographs the calligraphy in your letters
the blanket I have slept under for three years
dreaming you might give me back the ring

I willfully saved for you in the abditory
between these walls I was building
for us broken promises refract sanguine light
and shape future homes into abandonment

Should wedding bells chime in a dream you have, I pray the man,   miming affection     near the altar is not me. I am ragamuffin; a butcher with no cleaver     in his shadow,
instead a bouquet: Clenched in my silhouetted hand flowers turn into torch. I burn     as a filament in a bulb half-expired. I have smoked through my pocket money    in order
to scatter cremated angels from my throat.    I am cloaked by anguish      my grief    poorly sheathed   a tattered nerve. I have only learned        how to praise darkness.

Light is painful as it shimmers against frost: grass gleams in steady growth    discolored
scars healing. Here I am letting out a blood-letter addressed to you, wondering    if I send   a snip     of my own vein will it remind you how     one missing piece    from a whole            can forfeit the future. All any future is:      a motion into the next moment,  its pending indecision none can envision.      We can’t help but revise malleable pasts. Memories flux     rippling water and enough light changes it’s refraction with each new  ripple.        I cannot be a lover if love is not static    humming at least from its hymnal.  

I   write this letter in calligraphy mourning,    like most poets do – rending heart  rendering  this broken universe – with bone and feathered quill. This feather is from my wing, the pair fallible love clipped         the first chance you took to kiss my darkness.

I’m charting learning a path to winter in an opposite sky:
one only I can fly.

You ask me what I'd wish for if
I knew it would come true. I knew
it was true: you left me
to sleep out in the cold, dawn
hours and half a globe away.

If it meant I would receive frostbite,
shiver uncontrollably and turn cyanotic,
suffer hypothermia underneath the window
with the blinds closed and you
behind them shedding tears I cannot catch,
I would suffer. I did.

It reminded me of the Thanksgiving
my uncle had me grab the prong of a wishbone,
my best friend on the other side.
We made a wish and the horseshoe of ivory
cracked, and splintered into two pieces.
He got the larger half. I still kept my wish
hidden, hoping, that one day I'd meet you.

I would suckle the sorrow from your fingers,
wipe the tears and mascara with my cheek,
and croon to you I will change. I can change.
But, I must do that; and not for you.

Our love is like that wishbone. Every time
it breaks, we wish but do not work to see it through.

It didn’t really happen. I was awkward,
a sloppy crocheting of clumsy hands.
I was scared of my body; or maybe,
I was scared of her body. Foreign,
but bright from the veil of curtains
slighting a late spring light. I kissed
like a maniac, but when it came down
to the business of pleasure, I could not
make a transaction. She later told me
I could have gone on longer
than my half-a-minute slow grind before
I chickened out. Even now, after
my fifth major relationship and plenty
of romping and dancing atop mattresses
mine and not mine, I feel my first ****
is how I approach love. Tentative,
too contemplative, and none-so-bold.
Perhaps it is because I learned early,
to hate myself, this body that is still
so new to me: twenty-five years owned
and I still don’t know how to love myself.
I just hope that one day, I will be that light
streaming into the room, touching everything
around it, feeling with tender warmth
the goodness of what soon hinders its path
casting shadows behind what I come to kiss.

the patrol car has left the block once more,
a bull shark circling
nearer to some shore, headlights
blared, a black silhouette steering the vehicle;

night kisses the horizon, pecks it sharp
like a bullet case
scraping the darkling pavement,
only the whitest stars visible above.

many like me stroll sidewalks at this hour,
smoking a stogie
or sitting on empty swings
in playgrounds vacant of laughter; it is better

that children sleep while they can and can dream
before the true night,
that blight of bruise blue, sirens
wailing on their way to steal away some dark man

from the streets. where I stand on an apartment stoop
I count the vehicle
for the fourth time, lurking
out around the corner, like a wolf dressed metallic.

nothing gets better come nightfall. nothing
gets done while asleep.
i slip on my shadow, hood
dark, concealing my face. lean back into the steps

and light another cigarette. inhale.
exhale. most don’t have
to worry: their paleness turns
them ghostly, invisible, to the patrolling cars.

but I wear my darkness. i wish I knew
how to make sparks fly,
have them issue from throat, crack
into splinters of glass. the law tells me to sit

but I refuse. i am a phosphorus
fuse; i am whitened;
but i am impoverished,
and I too have my own reasons to be frightened.

Trill of beak into birch. Dawn spooks
the graveyard into silence. A heart
hardens at God’s withered finger reaching
but not reached for. I trim the hedges
and the whir of ****-eater disturbs
a nest of yellow jackets into tornado,
dust devil, of translucent wings and sting.
I walk among the dead three times a week.
I am learning their language. They relearn
the mundanity of white noise above
and quietly forget, quietly forgive.
This hill is the crest on a wave of coffins,
each one a boat through the world below.
Submerged in a bloodshot morning
I listen to a woodpecker in its throes
of building a home out of the depths of bark.
In the chill, the soft fog rolling, it pecks
and it knocks. The doors to these lives
long closed, I hush. I do not believe God
will visit these grounds to reclaim his clay:
I plant flowers in it between the plots,
each name engraved of marble a blank stare.
The flash of red flushes from budding branches
and I return to work. No one answers.
I relearn the dead’s language, their silence,
relearn every day how to repair stillness.

https://youtu.be/73TOA_qdd0M?t=26s

I watched the morning come,
its satin sheet of light lifting
off of the curve of the world.

Venus shone something crooked,
like the eye of a magpie staring
down at my blond head. I took

one last sip of whiskey, stood
and in the sauntering, in wobbling
home to my own bed, Venus

watched me turn my back,
like a stone rolled in front of a tomb.
I finally stopped chasing love.

I decided I’d rather spend
each night thereafter comfortable
in the bed of my life, no longer able

to sleep while sick of the resurrection
I had at one time simply called six a.m.

He never taught me
how to perform
the art of the jump-shot.
I simply watched.
He would dribble down
the clumsy circle
of our carport, back up
behind the exomaed bicycle
and detach his body
from the world, against
gravity’s insistent pull
and fade into a legend,
his wrist becoming a swan
pecking toward the sun.

He never taught me
how to arc a blade,
the gripping bite of a razor,
against my cheek.
I simply watched. He would
lather his face with foam
and I sat conversing with him
as the blade giddily glided,
graceful as a demi-god
reaping the crop of auburn
from his then young face.
When I tried, as a teenager,
I nicked my upper lip and
only harvested my own blood.

When he grilled, he flipped
the meat like an ace of spades,
magic in his wrist revealed.
When he drove, his hands
and feet became extensions
of the car. When he drove
a bus, his eyes sought all angles
of the road, chatoyant caution
in the flicker of his iris.
When he fiddled with our old,
beaten, mellow-toned guitar
he was articulate though
he never knew a chord’s name
nor what song erupted from him.

He read the Bible, but kept
the gospel in his eyes, at the tip
of his green thumb. He read
the Koran, the Torah, the words
of Gotham. I read how he
sought truth, beauty, in all
people. I simply watched him
traverse the dividing line
between saint and stubborn,
between sinner and relinquish.
If there was ever a man
after some God’s heart, he was
one who asked questions
and lived into the answers.

He kept his hands clean, kept
his chin high and mind
was always lofty and companioned
with a world of dreams.
He would often stare out windows
sitting at the dinner table, and I
knew he was living into a prayer.
I never asked what he was doing,
never asked how to do what he
could do. What my Father taught me
was to listen to my own inner voice,
no other’s, and if I wanted to be
a man, I was to simply watch
what a man did for that spoke
a language more fluid than air.

Even were he to explain,
he’d much rather show
to you his scars. He bears
them like medals now,
knowing well they are
made of clad, like nickels,
like cheap bullets.

If he could, he’d chuck
all of them into the deep,
the sparkle, of a wishing well.
He knows that these scars
have not only unsown himself,
but made trenches between
him and possibilities of love.

If he could, he’d place
each scar into the chamber
of a rifle, aim the .22
he never owned at a flock
of starlings. He might miss
every time, but at least
the ravens would scatter.

He knows what he’d wish for,
were each scar dropped,
at 5 cents a wish. He has enough
of them so that they jangle
on him when you embrace.
If he could, he’d stop collecting
them, and wish them away

on you. He’d put away the rifle.
His carving of a smile would fade
into a grin. You had always been
the loveliness of a needle,
of thread and steady hands.

The ear is an amazing tool. Subtle invitation,
subtle beauty, and the jewelry that decorates it!

I saw your ears before the gauges, and even then
they were small, delicate, and open to me.

If I could be any object, knowing what little purpose
I would serve, I would be the decorations, hanging,

from your earlobe: I would be satisfied being worn
on your body, your bright body, your beautiful face

sparkling from the lights you liked to daydream in,
placed near the delicate halls you’d always embraced me in.

I believe in the match, white phosphorus,
scratch of Bic lighter spurting like a miniature sun
in the deadpan havoc of the darkest night.

I believe in the neon sign, blare of argon
red like lava. The invitation to come inside a place
where everyone is a saint in rehabilitation.

I do not believe in a steeple. I do have a church:
it is full of cripples carrying their hearts like a crutch.
It is full of ***** fingernails, swollen thumbs,

epileptic prayer circles, a choir of bums, riff-raff,
pulled off the street into the warmth of this fiery song.
We are all martyrs burning, like pyres, exploding

in moments of sorrow like gunpowder. God is not
in this church. We are too far from his icy heaven to hear
the cold menace of his manic threats. We are aflame,

making heaven out of the hells we were born into,
the ones we had no choice but to carry like a deformation,
but making our heavens the kind where work is.

We have built heaven out of pillars of words. We
have scorched even the newest of testaments, sifting
through its ash to divine new meaning of resurrection.

I do not believe heaven or hell are nouns. I do not
believe they are adjectives. They are verbs! ******* it
they are verbs: boiling or churning with photographs

of every failure, every success, every bruised knee,
every severed tie, every father that did not love us,
every mother who could not save us, every lover who

kissed the dark sides of our light hearts. I believe
you make heaven, that you make hell. I believe in
only the fire, crackling like skin molting from sunburn.

I want only to be consumed. The world is too far ruined
to douse this from me. Let me burn. If you look closely,
there are doves in the smoke, my bones glowing branches.

You have a pair of eyes that whisper spark.
I can hear them roar when I glance into
the picture of you, smiling behind glasses,
freckles punctuating your joy. I am glued
to your face; your deep irises, hair dark
as beech wood, lips full as a lunatic moon.

I’m surprised you haven’t burnt men alive
with your glare: you are more forest fire
than glass of wine. I’ll bet that you sizzle
when you’re kissed. A man can burn like a pyre
should he even think to utter a lie.
I want that. I want a woman who sighs

and sings songs that smoke: one that can’t fizzle
out with sadness, one that can shine like stars
on a moonless night. I’m a dry stack of wood:
here, take my hand. Ignite my skin. Your scars
are molten gold, glimmering. Make me dizzy
with electricity. Make me red like Mars:

a man once sailed an ocean, for a face like yours;
and, I think, given time, I also would.
Helen of Troy was gorgeous; however,
with eyes like yours, a man could fight forever.

He told me that he is burning alive,
not literally, but inside. Said that he
feels palpitations every time he thinks
he might go back;

like his heart is a jarful of moths,

beating against glass.
I told him we are all breakable,
but that he is going to make it through.

He asks me if monks can really
spontaneously combust. I reply, no,
but they light themselves on fire.
It’s a way of protest. He says oh.

He then says, I want to protest

against Adderall, Cymbalta, and
Marijuana: he still can’t focus, still
can’t be happy, and being high is
a minor fix. I don’t know what to say.

We sit silent for a while. I ask him
what depression is like. He laughs
and says, it’s like a really drawn out
stubbed toe, only it’s in your head

and no matter how much you curse
you think the pain will only get worse.
It always does too. I just want to die.

The next day he scorched himself.
Someone called 911 and reported a man
walking out of a pawn shop

with a jar full of something dead

and then poured
gasoline over his head and lit a lighter.
I cried. I wondered if there were wings

still fluttering when he burst into ash.
He could have at least saved what little
flight he had left, what little life, for me.

Most days he mows
the immaculate lawn of his front yard,
sweeps the carport
and trims the hedges back to near buzz-cut.

Today he sank
to his knees, arthritic bones aching for
soft patch of earth
or lush grass on which to rest his grey head.

In the spring, buds
burst like silent fireworks near the road,
all his doing,
and the birds alight to watch him plant more.

I have watched for
a near lifetime his yard across the way
morph into Eden –
one handmade with weak limbs – and I know now

the cost of love
for things that cannot love you back. He is old,
with a question
mark for a spine. He sweats and bleeds for his home.

He has no job
but to nourish the Carolina clay,
into yielding
beauty that cannot love a single soul.

I was heading
out of town for a long time. I didn’t know
if he’d be there
once I got back. But, my intuition

whispered, yes. He
has no home but the earth. Even after
his silent death
he will still be watering the flowers

and the blossoms will not love him more,
but never less.

kiss me like the ocean
touch each tooth
polish me with your lips
until I am bone white as a beached whale

teach me how to draw
use my freckles as connect-the-dots
use your finger to point out
the many constellations on our skins

show me what melting snow sounds like
lie down with me on these white sheets
allow your hand to fall on me
as gentle as a soundless avalanche

correct my grammar
tell me what’s wrong with this sentence:
how much love can a bad boy share
if a bad boy knew what love was?

listen to the sunrise
chirp back at the birds precociously
then pounce on my chest when I wake
like a cat who steals my breath from sleep

**** me like the tide
drain me of myself
bite my ears like I don’t need them
to hear the jungle of your drumming chest

leave me behind you
call back to me like an explorer
disappearing around the bend of a river
where all I ever hear is an echo of your voice

I found this poem on glass bottles,
sunken like crystalline boats
in the fathoms of my cabinets.

I found this poem at the bottom
of a salt-fringed shot glass.
I have been thirsty ever since

for the words that will raise the dead,
bring back the ones who forgot me,
or drown out memories of my failure.

I can only slur my apologies now.
I can only watch blurry-eyed, raw
in the face, fire burning blistered lips.

I have been drinking saltwater,
dashing my hopes upon the rocks.
My shiny bottles are as empty as I am.

I thought about making a ship-in-a-bottle,
but if I did I’d have to fill all of them
with oars. I would have a fleet.

Instead, I imagine them there. I try
to hide them away from the daylight,
capsize them into the recycling bin.

They haunt me. They float above
the kitchen counters, buoyed trophies
of sadness. I cannot raise their anchors.

I can taste the kiss of last night’s rain,
its touch so gentle, as if my body
were a pond rippling from drizzle.

We humans have a language
we choose not to speak,
a brimming tower of gestures meaning

nothing, at least, until we say them.
Hands that float like foreign syllables,
twitching legs that jitter in time

to the anxiety of others’ conversations.
Posture can hold an argument of its own
the way it makes us sturdy as bronze.

In this darkness, I shake my silence
like a bad dream. I want to be honest.
I want to be a silver thread sown

into this patchwork quilt world. The rain
whispers yes. It says let me kiss you
so that your lips feel like they’re dancing.