Educating Sleep

Hum of the too cold lights fails to induce sleep
As feet shuffle a sailors squeak in the hallway
Awake dreaming of the world that isn't yet
Am I here? Or will I find I am still in bed
Down the hall from mother's cares quiet?
So,too, I could be ancient slobbering
Speaking dreams even now because none
Of this is or ever was real.
No matter the moment since this is now
I tell myself it is an eternity of now
Here
Always
Nothing ever ends despite our frail
Form begging entropy to free us.
That night on my roof we sat as the dead
Were processed through a neighboring
Window a song of gospel on the old mans
Lips to send them on to the next voyage.
How can I teach me to sleep
If the world is a run on sentence
A dream in quantum parts?
What can I teach myself of ends
Are only pauses in the rambling tale of
The Great I AM?

Bon Temps

I would have preferred better weather.
Rain on a Tuesday when I am sad
only manages to wash my already
flowing emotions into a current
eddied by your kisses,your hands
the way you used to say, "give me you."
My face once young seems eternally grieved.
How can I tell you what day to day
feels like in your absence?
In the desert night did you ever imagine
such a strange parting for lovers?
Exiled to normal lives when once we were
Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet.
But, then again, all loves fall, fade
to a ruinous end when compared with
day to day gaunt joys of easy living.
I wonder often if he sees it,
how I look through him and not in
missing the flavor of haste and hurry
the feel of need not want
those things I keep buried deep.
Even now on a Wednesday I miss you.
I miss you and you are only up the road
down the street
a phone call away.
Good weather. Yes, I need good weather
to lift my mind past this ache
and back into day to day
unremarkable caring.

Le Vol

I am never sure about how gravity
weighs against skin
until I feel mine cave in
like the sudden rush
of air out of a cabin window
on a plane miles above
the cumulonimbus
cotton of dreams
because you are near me.

August

Summer has been too hot this year.
I scuffle with the closet for some
surcease of heat in cotton, light
flavored,like peach or green to offset
how the water clings to us even now
at six in the morning beneath fans.
In the bathroom I clean my face,
begin the polish that will shine
when I smile, if I smile today.
You sit silent in the just rising
sun thinking of coffee, terms like
voluptuous and full on the tip
of your tongue. I find myself
smiling at you and your ideas.
Gather my bags and trappings
of what passes for a career these days.
Out the door the vacuum seal breaks;
my lungs collapse hungry for air.
Just as I catch the wind that is haval
my eyes percieve, just to the right
GLORY
as God stitches in pink and gold
the day on the hem of His
encompassing blue robe to remind us
that heaven is the fabric of the world.

English as a Second Language

All my words seem syphoned from books
poems
dreams of cantileavered barns
mashed together
back to back
face to face
infront of behind
languidly lounging
elsewhere
when at midnight
before we sleep
I want to tell you
what malingers
like discontented
quititude in my
less than laborious head.
With this dictionary
that thesaurus
and three foriegn languages
I have yet to
cipher how to explain
what I am
who Ive been.
Scrambled on pages
they look like a codex
for universal peace
love and understanding
if only
I could assign a value to
x to solve the equation.
Each syllable of a word
has a meaning
Each meaning makes a whole meaning
and I try sometimes
to use
un
or dis
mal
like undismal
to say today is happy.
But how can I teach you
to read a language
older than me
buried in my skin
pimordeal
prayers from oceans
in which we no longer swim.
So
instead
I smile
and hope you don't mind
that I am a stranger
sleeping
skin to skin
in your bed.

Chicago-2010

These beautiful people cages
monolithic in proportion
fill my heart with
a dialectic of contraries.
How can something so epic
full fraught with intention
feel empty and lose meaning?
Your music of shuddering
malcontent in traffic
punctuated by sirens
like the sound of
a piccolo in the Magic Flute
tell me this is not my home.
You, Chicago, need good rain
sweet against your window panes
to wash this self loathing
this discolored grime
from your hearts so that
you can smile when a stranger
fresh from nowhere asks
which way or what time is it.
Chicago your stories of snow
so deep my Mother could not
see over its sides as she walked
quietly to St. Mary's to learn
make me ache at your skeletal
remains that I see today.
What happened to you?
Trash rots on your streets
the tagged clothing of
murderers and thieves dresses
your walls, your windows,
your very soul until you decay
behind the vivid hues.
Chicago, oh Chicago
you are not the dream
of my Mother's youth.

This Me without You

Have you ever forgotten what
you were holding?
Keys or a plate your mother loved
only to remember it at the
clutter clash clanging of alarm bells
your hand closed looking for
the memory of the thing
now scattered across the floor.

Exotic Skeleton Sangria

This house ordinary quiet
All I got is thoughts in riot
Simple shades of yellow pale
My dark walls a prison cell
You got your hands in my hair
Devil struck and spider snared
Prisons of our own making
She sleeps and he's not waking.

Do she
Do she love you
Do she
Do she Do
Do she
Do she know you
No she
Don't know you like I do.

Thieves and liars in the making
in a world that aint worth taking
Does she know you like I do
Does it matter if she knew
What hands are silent saying
Tangle of intentions playing
Glancing eyes and slipping tongues
Her whole world come undone.

Do she
Do she love you
Do she
Do she Do
Do she
Do she know you
No she
Don't know you like I do.

Skeletons dance in the nude
Closet door dulls the tune
Sangria wine remembered taste
Stolen moments she can't face
You glance and dodge but return
Exotic truths in how we burn
She knows you won't stay
Just some domestic game you play.

Do she
Do she love you
Do she
Do she Do
Do she
Do she know you
No she
Don't know you like I do.

Shattered hearts forgotten here
Bodies bared and hearts sealed
He tosses turns beneath my fingers
Haunted her pale face lingers
Shut the door swallow the key
Seal them up when your with me
Do she know you like I do
Do he know that I ain't true

Do she
Do she love you
Do she
Do she Do
Do she
Do she know you
No she
Don't know you like I do.
Do he
Do he love me
Do he know that I ain't true

Monday I Will Love You

Right now, you are an empty space,
a blank spot, a non-entity.
I do not see you.
Maybe, Monday I will love you,
but at the moment, I feel nothing
except that this day to day
disingenuous regard for one another
caustically erodes love's foundations.
I look outside my window at roses
or sparrows to find my heart no longer
wings its way to your eyes or your kisses;
I think only of flying away.
My mother and father for forty years
have eaten meals and lay their heads
weary from the day down together;
it sounds tragic or sickly sweet.
I am afraid that if love means this
then I do not want love.
Instead, give me passion, to die quickly,
to be reborn phoenix lovely in flames,
to never be complacent or downtrodden
in plain, ordinary, unchanging love.
I see it in their eyes sometimes
the questions of the rightness of love.
I only know that today love is a nail
in dead silence like a coffin.
I would rather the agony of nails in palms
to know that I am alive. I don't want to sleep.
Today I do not love you, but wish you would
rough hand against cheek remind me of stolen
nights beneath stars or quick mornings before
coffee.
Maybe Monday I will love you, but on a Wednesday
my heart beats in frustration craving what once
sent my skin tingling and my mind reeling in
grappling body warfare for affirmation of life.

Baby Bunnies

Sharp canine teeth pierce
baby bunny brains
and your morbid curiosity
astounds me.
How can I save this bunny
whose eye eaten out
squirms limbs akimbo
final breath beating heart
beat
beat
silence.
Sedition failed like a farce
on an alter.
Your blue eyes tinged with tears
tear at my own heart
beat
beat
SEDITION
that you should know death
means never again in this life.
But the Baby Bunnies in Heaven
should appreciate your prayers.

Demeter

My soul rises today for the first time.
You return at last to me; advent of Spring.
My heart has grieved these 6 days
longing for your smile, your eyes,
your impossible questions
to wake me from my dead walking sleep.
Child, how could any God ask us to
let go of those we love, even for our own sakes,
but he does.
I let you go to stand at the fire pit,
your own heart brimming full of confusion.
I do not have the keys to his kingdom
so I must wait for him to return you to me.
It is as if Spring will never come for me
while you are gone sweet love.
Yet I feel that our God has shown me
a small smattering of truth;
a shoe on an uncomfortable other foot.
We hear of Demeter grieving but never
know how Hades grieves for the girl
when Spring sends her at last to
waken slumbering winter into violent
color forgotten sorrows in love.
No, I know today his grief must match
my very own as his joy is mine on
your return dear little one.
And as you grow, will your grief
at being never whole be all of our undoing?

Graceless and Faltering

These dreams that find you
Are echoes of my heart
But we are not what we were,
Romeo beneath my window.
Once your words brought me
Bright flaming from that window
The fire has burned too consuming.
My flesh a black ash of mourning
For what can never be again.
You are always just out or reach
Just beyond my love
Slightly off center of my crazy heart.
I long for you unbearable ache
like a child
Holding two broken pieces of my heart
Palms up to God begging him to fix them.
Scars no one can see, a road map
Of a journey that found my quest
Sleeping or not sleeping beside another
With me in his dreams and I
In another's uncomfortable bed.
What hope is there for poor sinners
For passion or love
But that of fate or destiny
To send us where we should be
And Grace to accept that fate.
I was never known for Grace.

Making Love To The Disabled

You smile beautifully on a blue sky Friday
from a book cover that many will read.
You are happy, at least in theory.
I should veil these lines because that is what
poets are known for; the subtle rife invocation
whispering vowels and consonants to dance the soul
precipice of self in which we too often swim.

Yes, your eyes, love, are as novel as these
raspy pages rough like your skin once felt
beneath my palms seeking understanding.
Your technicolor sight vivid as the kiss
given in haste between passing visitors
on a cold winter's night: Lesson of the Silver Chair.

Some would say you are defined by your limitations.
I know your limitations are not physical, they
are deeper and darker, a vile black hatred
masked behind an actor's slick facade.
I wonder if she knows she is making love
to the disabled? Love is blind and mute.

Love, your hands cannot hurt me the way your
petulant discourse can when the world just
isn't what you wanted at the moment for it
to be. No, your hands sharp scarring skin
never hurt me like your dissatisfaction.

Does she cringe in the silent tirade of loathing
whose focus internal bleeds discomfort across pillows
sighs and shuffles into doubt the meaning of love?
How could love ever last in this blue sky homage
to emotional debilitation. Dead, alive, buried.

What right word would have changed the varying
minutia in poignant silence to sweet close comfort
instead of indifferent dismissal for sins uncounted.
How can anyone love your disabled heart and survive?

Your missives that once broke the monotony of my day
are still missed, but I know whatever it was that
lay me bare against you was closer to the blind and deaf
trying to tap out forgiveness, love, and fury in the dark
to a God that neither of us remembered from our youth.

Yet, I listen. I wait for the intrusion that tells me
that your warm cheek against mine dreaming was not
a utilitarian catechism to affirm you are alive.
Instead I hope it was a panacea that sent you Lazarus
into her arms to share the story that love is real.

Rights of Passage

Years pass, they change me
See the past in blue and green
Its like I never left you
Its like I never met you
Years pass, they change me
I become, I became, Im yet to be
Its like I never left you
Its like I never met you

But then in the silence
I am caught in a blink
A photograph of you
Holding onto me
Who was I then?
Who would I be?

Years pass, they change me
See the past in blue and green
Its like I never left you
Its like I never met you
Years pass, they change me
I become, I became, Im yet to be
Its like I never left you
Its like I never met you.

But in this empty room
Scattered pieces
Of me and of you
I find that I am still
Part of this place
but outside it
a state of grace.

Years pass, they change me
See the past in blue and green
Its like I never left you
Its like I never met you
Years pass, they change me
I become, I became, Im yet to be
Its like I never left you
Its like I never met you.

I fall down to my knees
begging my heart
to believe me
I was yours and
now I am not
These photographs
are all Ive got.

Years pass, they change me
I am still what I used to be.
Its like I never left you.
Its like I never forget you.
My face, my hair, these lines
But Im still yours deep inside.
Its like I never left you
Its like I can't forget you.

Aries Daughter

Passion my blood
this war against
everthing
chaos my core
and you seem
daunted by my
half lidded vision
leaned against
the kitchen counter
mouth
slightly open
for egress of hot breath.
You and I have not forgotten
how hands quick speak
flesh into being
bright burning fire
Spartans would never understand.
We come
we go
but this is always the same
grappling of wits
and souls
feet tangled by tongues
until we are
at war on the floor.
Never give up
never say die
only release and sighs
until the next clash
of stalwart forces.
Love thy Enemy.
And I do.

Loathing

There is something special
about that word.
Loathing like slime glistening
slugs beneath bare feet.
Yes, this is what I feel.
Bile rises up in my throat,
my heart sinks,
the smile forced curls my lips;
I loath you.
Hate is not the right word.
Hate is clean, brilliant white.
This is darkness and filth
permeating my skin when you
touch my cheek to say
I love you.

Gesticulations

Mimes know exactly the excrutiating pain
involved when words are not enough.
Silence prescribed for appropriate
gathering of wool witted wisdom
as one gesticulates a game of charades.
No one wins.
In frustration, you walk away.
How can I tell you that every time
you smile my heart is still subject
to sedition. I can't so I just try
to keep feeling out the sides
of this unseen box in which there is
only enough air to choke me.
Paint my smile and let me
pretend that I do not love you.
I think though that these fingers
give me away when you are near.

Kaustikós

It seemed harmless enough,
that smile
that wink
that sudden wing of flight
bird in our hearts
fluttering
until we could no longer hear
anything but breath.
I wonder sometimes if we
look like stool pidgeons.
Do we sing our guilt with
every smile, every look
that is just a little too long?
It seemed harmless enough.
But how can you land
sane, normal, unharmed
after the sky has filled you
brimming with blue
on a Tuesday afternoon
in a park alone with
profane love.
Sing sorrow
Sing sorrow
sweet nightengale
to forget the sky.
It seemed harmless sweet
darling dearest love,
Icarus.

What You Don't Know Hurts You

Your visits, friend, seem incongruous
to your stated position of peace.
Why do you dig through these pages
seeking to rupture your spleen;
flat line your heart.
Is it not enough for you that you sleep
the perfect American Dream?
Shameful how secrets draw us
because we all know conclusively
we cannot know
the stranger by which we sleep.
Look inside for what is missing.
It isn't a love letter or a poem,
unless you write it for yourself.
That cavernous mawing empty space
you feel is waiting only for one person:
YOU
You to love you.
You to know you.
You to like you.
You to understand you.
You to BE you, and not this man's dream
or that mother's idea of you.
You have your own dreams, don't hang them
like lonesome laundry to flutter fly
out of reach in a billowing blustering wind.
What you don't know hurts you.
You are stronger than you know,
More beautiful than you think,
and smarter than this wraith wandering
searching for the thing you have.
Cross your arms
Squeeze tight
This is your solution.
Words are only words, meaning is found
criss cross your heart true
only inside you.

Candor and Cotton

Smell of winter and cotton
and something unmistakably
you
as your arms encircle me
and I let myself
fall
into your comfort.
I am not as strong
as I seem
and tonight I would
let go of all this
and lay it into your
strong hands
because I
need you.
I find there is a longing
and a wish
second star to the right
that you would
lean in
close
and closer still
to kiss me.
We shy away
from the things that
hurt too much
but still
I thank you secretly
for at least this
touch
this moment
when things seem
right
and I can rest
salient dreaming
in your arms
released
of this guilt
that plagues me
in the midnight hours
when I cannot turn
to hold you
or be held.
I whisper I love you
but you do not
hear it in the dark.
I admit I need you
with this baring of soul
secret thoughts
and my hands seeking
purchase
in the hollows of your
form.
I beg time to stop
and let me remain
holding you
holding me
with the winter chill
and the smell of cotton
and the memory of
your hand against my
cheek forever.

Nietze's Lover

Your hands
are what I remember
and the sound of your
voice as you
lay sleep dreaming
drowsey telling me
of where you have
been and where you
might be going.
The passion blurs
in a mirror reflection
that shatters
at the roughness of
your touch upon
skin that begged
to be hurt for all its sins.
Redemption
that all fallen angels seek.
How did I know then
that you would be
my resurection
after all this time
in the land of the dead?
This child
Our child
has brought me at last
back to the world
that I had forsaken.
I cannot tell you the
lost years and the
lonely hours
of a life full of
wandering ceaslessly
looking for home
begging for ways
to die.
I thought that there was
nothing for me
but endless days
empty days
of nothing and nothing.
Stupid struggle of
existence.
I was Nietze's lover.
I went down empty
into your arms
and came up full.
And it is your hands
that still linger
in my mind
their rough touch
gentled by a long
labor to bring
something good
at last into the world.

Overheard In Room 15

Bleed out in Room Fifteen. No, you don’t need
any supplies. You’ve seen this before, the
hollow eyes, the wild haven’t slept for
days haunted look of someone walking half
in and half out of their skin until they
bleed out what is left of their mangled spirit
for us to scrub up the pathetic mess
in bleach and blue or green pills for all your ills.
Not even a fucking thank you very much!
You can't handle your life? Try working
here and watch every asshole broken bone
tortured soul walk through the door and take its
insignificant toll on the lives of
the living. I hurt. I need. I want to
forget the pain. Let that pain press you up
against the wall, vomit up the poison
and pray in the dark it won’t be you next
week that is cut up on a white sheeted
gurney for all of us to see how fucked
up you really are with your secrets pinned
down like a goat’s heart on a tray to be
dissected, desiccated, and disseminated.
And now Fifteen wants to leave after we
have started the paper work that will frame
her in these lines of indelible ink:
Off-kilter, uncertain, unwell and unfit
to do anything but heavy medication.
Doesn’t she know that we can't just stop?
That paperwork is in progress and I don’t
give a rat’s ass if she has someplace to
be. Should have thought of that before she came
spilling out her insides on our nice clean
sheets. You should be dead or dying here. No
protests from the living about living .

Medea

Husband, her heart
she will fracture
for you; for
she is faithful
even still.

Batter and burst
do your worst
crush everything
cruel
courageous.

She is only a
woman, a weak
and wanton
jug
to drink.

Husband, her tears
from home to here
will bulwark
break with
lamentation.

Ash not stone
she begins to
waver at their
sweet smiles
returned.

Medea we beg you
Medea we ask
you to hold your
poison behind
your mask.

But resolve
clabbers curdles and
spills her ill will;
napalm
soul ignited.

In motion
the world kilters
hurdy gurdy forward
machine
universal.

Come to me then,
little vessels of love
little pots of laughter
all things
good and gone.


Clay pots,
scattered like islands
on a red sea of trouble.
Intent
broken wide open.


These pots
will never hold water
again so why do you
gather the
pieces into your arms.

Isis and Osiris

In dim memory, the bright glow
of the candles made the room
a tomb of Egyptian treasures
with Pharaoh presiding
over the afterlife, his head cradled
upon the breast of Isis in her
reverie; a game of jackals at best.

Yet, my heart, always too tender,
my mother said, could not abandon
him. as we lay wrapped against the
cold, juxtaposed white on the dark
leather of the couch; a bench in a museum.

Beautiful bright and silver dreams
spread their wings upon walls.
Frames of moments past,
some of copper, some of brass
others fine and feathered.
things of a lifetime gathered lovingly
and hung with quiet reverence.
They thought they knew him.

Much weighed upon the scales
of Pharaoh 's heavy heart.
Anubis had buried his
curse deep within Pharaoh’s
alabaster skin. Words, I feared,
might tip the delicate balance
of Pharaoh’s papyrus grasp.
Wasted ink; The Book of the Dead
lay open like a hope upon the black
and glass table. Amber flame
spilled light upon its pages,
wavered like Pharaoh
in my arms, asleep at last.



(II)

Grace, her hand with held, muttered
apologies and mumbled help,
fumbled us careful close a last time.
in the darkness before all things
would in memory begin the ending.

A down comforter seemed a sin against
the cold night that bore our bodies
witness against the shadow of the lamp;
Nagasaki etchings into walls.
The end of beginnings isn’t always an end
I whispered against your heart willing you
not to leave me in this cacophony
of expectant silence; hush of hospital halls.

The Ave Maria’s were crows hanging
upon a fence gathered, like dirge notes,
Ave Maria,
gratia plena . . .
gratia plena . . .
I would not be there to see you again
would not let them speculate how
we once lay tangled in white sheets
Isis and Osiris on a winter’s night.

The white of the billboard broke
the clean line of the horizon.
He will be missed. Raised
above green grass, asphalt
yellow lines. My heart a
red stop sign in traffic on a
Tuesday afternoon lunch break.

(III)

Open casket. Visitation begins at 6PM.
Newspaper crumpled in the front seat
where roses lay, peach tipped white,
like the ones he sent for my birthday
a year ago. Is this what you bring to
the land of the dead? Reminders of
your life for them to peruse and curse

Or perhaps bless like this letter
a last offering to the boy who
wept like a child,
I don’t want to die
I don’t want to
say anything to anyone as we
sit cold marble against cheek.

Strain of ears against stone
at twilight for your resonance
telling me of flying machines
jungles I have not seen
until at last I must concede
I will not hear its like again.

(In memory of Ken Spano)

On the Road to Damascus

"I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," the Lord replied. "Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen of me and what I will show you. I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me."
—Acts of the Apostles 26:12-18

A broken vessel is hardly a map
Hardly anything but forgotten
and swept away.
Ah, but he is a clever potter
isn't he?
Clever indeed to crush these shards
to dust
to ashes
everlasting
water of life
stirred
Baptism by faith
remade
until I am again fired thrice
and painted
whole again useful.
A shard is hardly a map
but it is a beginning.
What was I?
A knife that cut you.
This map
a road to Damascus
traveled without knowing
the potter's plan.
I am a journey written
in skin and bones.
These scars were road stops
where others waited with me
for you.
These scars were dark nights
where alone I whispered
into the starless sky
your name.
These scars are Halleluia
Amen
and the traveling circus
whose mystery is not
the bearded lady
or the trapeeze act,
but the ever present hum
of the masses gone silent
at the miracle of Lazarus
returned from the dead.
The map whose jagged and raised
lines mar smooth white
tell you the potter
hides a message
a mission
a reason that will shine
best when broken
wide open
screaming
make me your
image again.

Areal

Exquisite torture
buttons undone
like my will
as hands find
purchase
birds on cliffs
leap of my heart
as they fly
across hips
breath
echo
catechism
we call
respond
find meaning
in the ebony
black
dark against
pale skin night
not to be
forgotten
like so many others.

Monomyth Without Seduction

Your letters interspersed between trivial things
like Homer
are not forgotten.
Simply shuffled a bit and placed
under folders like Saved.
Were we?
I cannot say that the direction,
entropy,
or distance from a phenomenon
does anything but create a box,
a shadow box,
in which nothing is clear.
Or perhaps a diarama.
Yes! A diarama with cavemen
dinosaurs and all things neolithic
because we don't know
that everything doesn't happen at once
when we are 10.
They say time heals wounds.
I say time makes the wound a phantom limb
hard to connect with but always
ever-present
there, yes, THERE where your finger
pushes against my pulse I can feel
what used to be my beating heart.
If I forget for a moment that
it is no longer there it beats
like the day you broke it.
Mad, insistent.
It tells me that I was once on a shore
almost home
almost.
Sleep tonight then, love,
knowing that Odysseus still sails
and you are safe
sound
reasonable
in another's arms.

Orion's Bell Jar

Rain on glass paynes;
a house that isn't mine.
Air
clings close to skin
pressure but not movement.
More disturbing
is its sudden
absence.
Jerk of stomach inward pulled
eyes and tongue
implosion.

I am screaming
screaming
and you do not hear me.
You sleep sadistically fine
cuddled in covers
smothered in layers of apathy
about the chaos in my head.
Do you know at all
the finer arts of love
where kisses greet
greedy hands
rush of words unspoken
eyes meet falling
clutter clash buttons
to the floor
flesh cages unbound.

Entropy bleeding inward
I cannot breathe;
a wound
a wound
no amount of empty smiles
will ever fill.
The Bell Jar hush
cripples me until I am
a silent film
muttering in the dark
that love is nothingness;
no stir of air to remind me
how once my skin leapt
beneath your teeth
telling me that nothingness
was the lie.

Bones are hollow
my head is hollow
let it be quick
the forgetfullness
let the screams
cease
let the silence
cover me until
someday
there is a bang
and we explode
outward again
heavenly bodies
alone no more.

Happy Valentines.

Tautology

Your eyes are amber honey
as you smile
THAT smile
indecent descant
come love
come
let us lay hands
on the truth
the heart
the ache of being
let us sing salvation
in kisses
belonging in whispers
sighs
to count hours
days
years
until our timely death.
Your pulse on my tongue
tacit we bend
supple strength backs
vaulted
simple church of the body
praying
that God does not notice
how we cannot help
our human nature
rife dissent against
the inevitable fall.
Your smile
anticipates my breath
lifts me
tanglewood brimming
with promises
of thorns that carefully
wound caramel flesh
that I may lap them
in the dark
lashes against cheek
after our release.

You Are Never Far...

I close my eyes
I wake
You are there
in that space
I cannot numb.
Your smile
Your hands
white pillars
in fire
as my head
tilted back
flame and desire
against you
until
you begged me
give me you.
How then this ordinary
love does sting
when compared
to those days
those nights
when rain on car roofs
we could not wait.
But this is steady
it is stable
it is
not you.
You call
just to remind me
I will always
somehow
someway
some deep dark place
be yours.
You would dance at my wedding
except
there would be tears
in both our eyes.
Perhaps I will not marry.
Perhaps I will
just to punish you.
Perhaps I will simply
miss you in the dark
or when I drive
without thinking
past that park.
Oh, love, strange
are the stories
written for lovers
who didn't know
that it was love
until it wasn't.
So tonight
I drink
I dream
and I try
to expiate you
lover
demon
soul
heart of my heart
obsidian
sin.