touka

touka Jun 2018

weak-kneed,
heavy-eyed,
stumbling

I push through the thicket
to the patch of land
where the air is thick
with burnt pine and turmeric
to where the moon sets
spry on the water

I take my legs
and offer them to the strait
my plunge
into the euripus

what use are they
if not to walk
to the nape of hope's neck?

well, then
it is this
I am whelmed
carried off by the cold swell
of adam's ale

then, somewhere
along the river
and its rushing stupor

I hear singing
a voice that rings like clinkstone
and the ecclesiast begins to pull me
a quiet accompaniment
careful quiet, in the night –
such is thievery

subtle, without much grief
take me

for whatever gold I am
whatever glimmer that I could give
burnished of whatever sin

May 2018

r

Bridge

***** Joe's got a ways to go
before he can climb up
from beneath the bridge

He's not been the same
since after the rain
of rockets on Robert's Ridge

He stopped spending his days
living life in a haze
of a VA induced nirvana

He forgets he's a Vet
and the checks that he gets
goes to his sweet Suzana

He keeps his head clean
with a fifth of Jim Beam
and clears out the bile in his liver

Most days he can be found
with his head on the ground
and his thoughts out on the river.

touka Apr 2018

hydra

the ticking
of my orrery
douse the sun
its rise and clutch
exscind what skin it might have touched

like clockwork,
I whisper

like clockwork
as Jupiter bumps the earth
the orrery whispers in its corner

like clockwork, ticking

my soul's in the city
somewhere,
patiently sitting

I bite my tongue
hold my breath
let the anger fill my lungs instead
like anodyne inside my chest

a sea of concrete
somewhere,
singing, seeking

conjuring
and conjuring
but the moon wakes to sleep
and not much else
creeps
between the sun and the hour hand

surely

I'm buried
in the barathrum
locusts, wild honey
where the clove
is over-running

somewhere,
long removed from me
a wraith, a ghost
above the wings
my soul sits
and sings
and sleeps

like clockwork
I wait for its return
a heartless husk in the ground
the ticking
as my orrery sounds

days too deep, crows or keys

touka Apr 2018

white knuckle

windows open in winter
lonely, hiemal caress

I feel my veins curl
wilt like pulled ribbon

they cramp under the muscle
cold stifling the crimson

the blood collects in my cheeks
pools there; potent, pressing

but he brandishes the pain –
I watch him thrash the world
off of the hems of his cuffs

offer a fist to his cries

I watch him dance around his ills
like they are open flame around his feet

bold, loudmouth
his thoughts bounce right from the brim
of his broken lips
with no caution; it is to the wind

only a fool could be so confident

"we have set these tears flowing for all time, in you,
and they'll always have sufficient reason to fall."

touka Apr 2018

disomus

a few words to
knock my mandible loose
I set it back into place;
she can be sure
my ears are ripe to listen

her nails grew
in her rearing days
clamantly
clawing
'til quiet is connate to me

condign, burke
a silent sting

spoil, spoil, spoil
spare the rod
save a disparate word
and you turn to strike the wind from me with it

snag my heart
on something keen
rip it from my filthy sleeve

cosset my mother when she cries
bleed my wounds to quell her whine
I could never spill enough
to sate that empty barathrum

just waits to lay me in her snare
lets the bile sleep on the tip of her tongue
best to burn the skin that's young

upheave and hurl my cares around
would I wait for your sorrow?
for your penitence?
I long for it
but it would be swallowed up before the moon could set.

grief creeps in on me
like the morning

touka Apr 2018

hungry

with a broken jaw
and a broken spine

he tries to tame the gnawing
unhinged, colubrine

he claws for claret, cherry blood
sloughs his futile, far loves
sinks his teeth into the silt mud

swiping bugs from widows web-spin
perhaps I'd never reach my anthesis
perhaps I'd never shed my dead skin

like he crawls along the leaves
all the rest crawls from his sleep
in late hours
he thinks of me

"I've always had a broken spine."
hungry, hungry, hungry