I’ve sat with Silence
As she cast silhouettes
Moving in the likes
of Ballerinas across
My hair.

I’ve moved with them too.
That’s how I’ve come
To know their names
Or natures
As such:

1) The one who sold her soul to the Devil
For pennies and a dollar
So her mother could
Come off the
Corner

2) The one who put Fireflies and Rainbows
In mason jars and played make
Believe with running fingers
And a wounded
Moon

3) The one whose only trace of a father is
The bloodstain on the wall like a
Family photo with X’s over
The faces because he
Destroyed more
Than his own
Soul

4) The one who strung sorrow to the ceiling
To play its marionette with dancing
Shadows weeping and frightfully
Abandoned, hiding under
A candle in shameful
Bliss

5) The one who wandered though fields
Of whispering epitaphs that
Made nursery rhymes
From the likes of
Madness

6) The one who locked her heart in
A vault within ashen walls and
Wrote letters to stars that
Wrote it’s not her fault
She’s infinitesimally
Small

I told myself I would never return
To sleep
To dream
To surrender my mind to its own
Devices
Vices.

But here am I, Lord
Swinging with the wind
Under a purple tinged twilight
Making friends with twisted tongues,
and braided hearts slinking through the alley.

I’ve bore my heart like a cross,
Carried it past moratorium
Marching east for west
Until my frantic feet
Cease to move
Me.

I talked stars onto strings,
Dancing with my fingers,
Draped in dreary shadows-
Under whispering widows,
Weeping on the wall

Or

Walked a mile backward
On the ashen red bricks
Of wishing wells who
Wondered at the soles of my feet
and the Souls of my heart.

Or

Maybe I wrote a letter
Written in cursive amongst the stars
That turned and left me
To copulate with the night;
Born the Moon

Who

Locked my words away
In a vault in ashen walls,
Told a story under her breath
Of a man who watched
A sunset in silence.

Every word
a land mine
buried under thick skin
drowned in venom
mauling at teeth

a shoreline shudder

Hardened men
tiptoe around a sentence
a rosebush infested
crawling with
depraved lions
masked in solitude

and then the pounce

the way
boiling a *** of water
brings a blizzard

the way
a twig snaps underfoot
in the dead of night

the way
a clenched jaw
met a quiet tongue
at a cafe
called each other
red
dead
underfed
and one to another said

where do we go?

The forest welcomed her
With myriad open trunks.
She swallowed
The deep sweet deposit
Of dew on the drowsy rose,
Then lay upon the lawn
Naked and profane,
A creased sheet in the eve
Soaked through with passion;
“Make no mistake
My dear,
You’ve lost your way,
I’m the guiding voice
And you’ve nothing but me
to fear.

Here.
Where the queer meets a quarry
and the Queen is questioned
by pests
I’ll never surrender my love
Until I’ve whet your slender breast
And taken your breath
Made into mysteries,
Silent as a changing season.

Lucid in all lingerie,
Elusive and eloquent;
A humming bird made
in Pity.”

Footpaths fidgeted
‘Neath her fragile toes,
Wind whispered secrets
Within eternal woes.
When the lunar and
The lunatic ride ambitious
With their foes
She waits in hunger
For the fair,
kind
Wolf.

Tick.

The sun flicked and inch
She winced
Shadows flinched.
Their eyes met
Eons blinked
The Guardians of Instinct
Waves crashed and
Mountains clapped and
Meadows flashed

Each in one another;
The gods took cover.