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His silence screams like a searching wind
a death-hungry spirit painted in
pallette-knived smears of
grey and fear and crimson
streaking across the night sky of his heart,
lightning-bolt ricochets striking, incinerating
the solitary oak tree of his soul,
scattering his acorns down the hill where they
are lost among the weeds,
shocked into infertility,
But he is a seascape pine,
weather-worn but razor-straight,
Gargantua in wood and steel
establishes his personal space
like a rabid porcupine,
And he is a tower,
hiding his soap bubble dream
while she brushes her hair
one hundred times
one thousand times
one million times
until the dream is
lifeless, breathless, armless
and tucked neatly in a refrigerated drawer,
As his silence screams like a searching wind.
- From Picture of Yourself
now.  I am
enjambed
the tips of my toes radiating
scarlet and plum from
gripping the slowly eroding
precipice upon which
everything balances.  Freezer-
burned ice crystallizes
my lungs as I
draw breaths
dredging a lake for
my own body.  I am
scales weighing
what I have lost and
what I cannot disgorge from my
over-macerated soul of
olives long-forgotten in
a rancid
brine.  I am
enjambed
half-baked and
eager yet
incomplete without
end.  I am
- From Picture of Yourself
A man rips
   apart my house
bite by bite

with teeth holding
   rotted wood chips
like toothpicks
after a meal of
   summer corn
roasted in spring green husks
and
strands of butter silk

A man rips
   apart my house
bite by bite

with brilliant teeth
   in a mouth that
speaks in tongues
that my heart knows even
   as it slips through my mind
slick as coconut oil
to pool in my wordless
mouth

A man rips
   apart my house
bite by bite

A man rips
   apart my house
lupine jowls slathering
as his chain saw teeth make
   dust of where I live
dust of what I've done and been
ashes of my name

A man rips
   apart my house
- From Picture of Yourself

— The End —