the bone-ache of wind and cold
runs up her legs as she walks through the plain
so she could rest in the earth and finally
sleep, knowing she found
something better than it was
before.

she searched the jungles once
but all she found were choking vines
still, the leaves whispered
𝘱𝘴𝘴𝘵, 𝘱𝘴𝘴𝘵, 𝘱𝘴𝘴𝘵
but the tip of their tongues faded
into static and she thought she found
a parchment’s glass bottle washed
up onto the shore but then the sea
leapt up and stole it again.

she sat on the beach for hours
like a long-lost lover, yearning and
waiting
but one day she vanished—
not to home, there was never
home, but to a place that replaced
her new loss with the ones she’d
met before, old friends with the other half
of the story.

now, she walks with the others’
manifest destinies but hers is a
glory that they’ll never know,
no gold or God or greatness but
an answer…
brushstrokes to give definition
though the edges always bleed,
so she reincarnates to do it all
again.

hello,
hello,
her fingers are shrouded in my hair
spilling memories from lips cold of morning coffee
her eyes are made of it
i take them as i cup her cheek
and brush away her past with a gentle touch

hello,
hello,
day by day we meet
and i watch her soul crown her in frost
she’s beautiful
light flows out of her as she turns
i reach for her hand and leave

hello,
hello,
time and time again
ice numbs where the needles drove past her skin
weaving her veins in gold
and still she stands
an anchor in the blizzard

hello,
hello,
she’s still
waiting for me
but i no longer
wish to come
please leave her be

hello,
hello,
i can’t help it
they’ve bound us so
and so i take her hand
a final kiss
and
close
her
eyes.

hello,
hello,
hello.

making characters and stories in my head
and realizing
my favorite ones
are just my issues and flaws
personified

He is like a god to me
    alpha of my pack, my rescuer and my rock:
his breath like beef’s bouquet
    his words like brittle bones breaking in my mouth.

Our touch like summer
    as I rest my head on his strong thigh:
gazing adoration
    staring petition.

I stalk him
    for the crumb that falls from his plate:
and wait patiently
    for scraps of skin from his repast.

When indecision strikes
      to eat or not to eat:
He nobly leads me to the door
      and tethered takes me out.

He leads me through
    musky canine
          saffron sage
              scented pastures:
and corrects me when
    squirrels like sins
          tempt me to stray.

We romp through rugs
    of red and russet
          fallen fronds:
foraging for
    foully fragrant food
          delight of doggy dentes.

I am his humble hound:
he my mighty man.

<Frothy waves coated the slippery rock
Seagulls gulled annoying caws
A ship had wrecked upon the beach>  

There he sat
Dazed and confused
Trying to grasp his surroundings
“Thou art alive,” he said to himself.
“Not for long,” replied the sea.
Fear told him to run
Reason told him to listen
Experience forced him to say
“It is true that thou hast lived many a year,
Ye foul beast,
Many a day hast thou slaved upon thine waves.
Just look upon my hands and ye shall see
The scars that time and ye have left upon me.”
He waved his hands in violent gesture
Caulouses cracking in dehydration
Pain a parasitic friend
The sea casually mocking him
“Oh, but I know of thee.
I have looked after thee from afar for many a sun,
And moons have bled and stars have fallen
That cannot give number to the times I held thee afloat
When otherwise thou wouldst have sunk into my depths.”
He laughed and his body ached
A grin twisted his wrinkled facade
Gazing around at the irony of the god
He said,
“Yet here thou sittest, surrounded by thee on all sides
Accursed by thy blasted brethren baking thee alive
And thine water be poison that I cannot drink
Parched with a thirst thou canst not sate
If thou be so benevolent,
Why must thee be so prevalent?”
At this a rogue wave rushed high
A not-so-veiled threat flattening him in proscinesis
“Little man, knowest thou not of my scope?
Thou hast sailed me across the constellations,
Beyond Terra and Firma
Riding Pegasus to Orion
With Polaris as thy guide
Across the entirety of my body have I graced thee
With nigh a swell to impede thee.”
He paused in recollection
Remembering hard days and nights
Pulling his oaken oars with little resistance
To his taskmasters chiming rhythmic timing
“Row… row… row”
A tear rolled down his face to join the sea
“Then why hast thou stranded me here,
Alone to die,
Ostracized from thine protective *****?
What sin hast relegated me to divine flotsam,
Cast away and destined to be forgotten?”
With a splash that could be translated as a laugh
The sea sighed as the tide began to recede
“We all have our limits, little man.
Mine is the earth that bars my current
And thine the body which rides it.
It seems we have both reached our ends
Mine the land
And thine thy life.
It is time that we say goodbye and part ways
Mine to my depths
And thine to thy death.”
With a wash he looked down
Only now realising the ghostly cast of his weathered skin
Slowly he stood and with a few tentative steps
Descended into the God who had taken his life
In exchange for his freedom  

<Frothy waves coated the slippery rock
Seagulls gulled annoying caws
A ship had wrecked upon the beach>

There were no survivors

pit...

pat..

So goes the Rain's silent ballad.

Each pit a pat,
a heavy pat on your sweet head.
Pittering pats of despair and dread
pointing toward tragedy dead ahead...

pit...

pat...

Each pat on your soft head
rips a pit into my stomach.
I gaze up... and then down.

...How many more can you stomach?

pit...

pat...

One too many... your lifeless body...
... with the Poet above I plead...

pit...

pat...

The ballad wets the pavement,
the scarlet a testament
of the poetic intent:
our lament.

pit...

pat...

...pit.

I have become as steel, forged within frigid winters heart

With a hardness, no desert summer could hope to rust

Sharpened to a fine edge between shifting sands

And grinding glaciers, which, given millennia have honed

Shaping my geometry in such a way as to cut inward

Carving jagged crevasses at right angles to the core

Whose arrhythmic pattern resembles a diseased damascus

Indistinguishable from the delaminations of a failed weld

Running down the length of my spine with spiderweb cracks

Covered by a clever fuller designed to distract the eye

With a stylized straight line, slowly tapering at the tip

Rounded by the blunt force trauma of repeatedly stabbing

The anvil on which I had been so hastily hammered