touka

Jun 2018

eileen

I miss everyone
and everything

I can hear them whisper
within my teardrops

I can't forget you

I saw you in my dreams last night

I was hoping it would come to life

touka Jun 2018

epimetheus

she says I'm too young,
but sadness manifests the same
so I place my broken jaw
back into its broken place

a modern epimetheus
dragging my prudence by the reins
confronted with the trouble that'd been steeping
for years on the fire

and like the ferris wheel that spun every summer
that I lost interest in
as I sloughed more and more of my childhood skin

I look off into the fog, salt and sand
'n the moon perched so highly,
a king in the sky
sending off its armed stars to cut through the night

****** from this nonage fantasy
by the bitter taste of tobacco in my mouth

maybe I can't love anyone

not yet

touka Jun 2018

candlemoth

it heralds something
like the men that hike the piedmont, there

like one hundred and forty five moons
and you're stubborn, yet

it is a catalyst

like the curve of that road
like tapping on the sill

born in the heat
and tossed into the chill

and you're stubborn, still

patient for summer
so stubborn, still

you'll wait for the warmth
aching in the outfields
for the fire to spread
and carry you off
with its soot soiled hands

"there's a house on a hill,
and the moon is quiet, still"
×
crimson arches,
poplar springs rd

touka Jun 2018

maravillosa

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