I never meant to fall

but sunrise greased your chassis.
The crest and fall of your jaw—

the blade and bend of it,
mudslide contouring of it—

dropped me ribless at your feet.

O promising land, crisp field  
of flesh, whose fireflies

steered my eyes in the darkness—
your land, where my eyes had strayed—

scaled over eolian caves, the slick
basins of your clavicle, onto
the hexa hillocks clustered
like honeycomb chambers
on your abdomen.

I never meant to fall,

but the cursive lines of you,
I might have trod with loose eyes—

even now, there is a voice
drawing them to strike
at the aquifer beneath your waistline,

voice of vined thirst,
of torso and tug—
with them, I struck and drowned

There is a nativity scene in my backyard every morning.
I can look out the window and observe,
With tired eyes, the birth of Christ
And the treachery of Cain
And the flood of Noah
And the sacrifice of Abraham
And even Moses’ burning bush.

The sun rises above the forest every morning.
It smiles on the grass and makes it grow;
The dewdrops on the trampoline
Cast tiny rainbows on the black rubber surface;
A tiny autumn breeze sways the trees
And they dance with a mysterious genius
That man cannot know.

I can hear the music of the birds in the morning.
There are tiny red berries and honeysuckle flowers
On the trees at the edge of the woods;
There is no serpent, though,
And there is no Eve to pick them and eat them,
And there is no Adam, naked and ribless,
And there is certainly no angel swinging a flaming
Sword in my Garden of Eden.

I chase
I chase
everyone pales in comparison
I'm stale
I listen
I hear only you
you feed me substance
it keeps me thin
keep me healthy
as i listen
i witness
I'm sinless
and you
you're skinless until I've touched you
i'm ribless until devoured
we're nothing
until together
and maybe
we're that maybe
that ends up making
some sort of
sense

If there
    is
no way out

No path
    of return

No tunnel
     at the end
of the light

It'll be alright

Just when
    I thought
I was going
    somewhere

I find
    myself
Once more ribless
    to someone who
I thought
    cared

Desoulment

I turn back
    into
One lacking

Resurrected without
a soul