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.