His bulletproof boots
decorated with wet mud, dried blood
trampled fields of flowers
fourteen years before her.
She, a cloud of fluff and rain,
was his first shower.
He, a kick of crack *******,
was her fifteenth.
Every departure had her,
tasting of his cigarettes,
teary-eyed against his shoulders.
Every mile of distance had him,
singing to her songs,
pulsing to another woman’s skin.
Tonight, with their hands interwoven,
his lips parted open,
sweating as if birthing a confession,
her smile lingers, glistening

like snow nobody has walked on.

Floating bloated.
Life aborted.
Rotting sockets.
A bobbing lifeless buoy.
where the river meets
the sewage.

Drunk and violent
I am stumbling over the civil dead
And my toe is caught in their quilt of twisted limbs
There are mother necks
Daughter legs
And fat infant heads
Their skin is a flesh ceramic
That is smooth appearing
Icy cool against my feet
Ceramic soon to be sculpted by scavengers’ ravenous jaws
Into disfigured cradles for writhing spawn of bug

With force I free my toe
I have no time to idle
I am late to my brother’s home

We are in his garden
Backyard desert earth
Greens
Pinks
Woods
Rocks
Clods of clotted dirt
His hands are watering the tangled vines at their pinkish roots
Solemnly he waters with copper tears and spit
To the east I am staring
At the white wall of brick
I wonder what lives inside these spongy chunks

When he finishes watering
He turns his neck
His head
He faces me
Killing my gaze with the porous wall

The lips beneath his compound eye swing wide and fully apart  
He mournfully breathes
Words with sharpened vowels
The letters are sallow blond

My wife
She left
Away
My wife
I slit her throat
My wife
I beat her
Beat her dead
She’s buried by child oak
You smell like whiskey
Brother
You smell like musky goat
You smell like the civil dead that line the path to my wealthy home

Have you considered being a *** worker?
You have a body.
I know you never sleep there,
spend less time breathing than associating with your own ribcage.
You're an actress
no script, just a character summary.

Limp, age 12, non-verbal marionette.
Snaps her strings when forced to dance.
Clings to the ceiling tiles, like the shadows she hallucinates.
Let's the puppet fall numb under strangers.
Ragdoll to be used for kindling.

When you play your part
You'll inherit enough money to afford a studio apartment
in Washington, or Las Vegas; anywhere with men paid large enough salary to afford your vacant body,
three phone plans,
a hotel room for you to stay awake in
Listening to dull thuds against your wrongfully warm corpse
Invited hoping the stinging could form tendons
adhere together like rubber bands
Snap you back into your skin.
You cling helpless to the ceiling tiles
Watch the ragdoll make mistakes.

"Have you considered being a *** worker?"
A homeless woman asked me,
*"Unoccupied bodies should start charging rent.
Let a man who can afford it pay for utilities.
You might be homeless
but you won't be wasted space".

Lips so red
Corpse so blue
Lips whispers quite
Corpse remains silent
Lips cry in despair
Corpse doesn't care
Lips become still
Corpse welcomes her will