my town

Streets rest empty
An anxious turn of wind
Spine stiffened
An upward thrust
With broken windows
Gaping holes into black
Deep sighs of vacant nobodies
Blowing ash to grey my skin
Painted shards
Of some days past
Splinter beneath every step
These tattered work shoes
Never mattered
My slow downhill slide
Of loveless decline
To the blown glass heart
A red center
It's everything
With cracks
Chamber
To chamber
And still transparent
I breath the dry decades
Away
This town could only last
So long
Passed my prime

moving on

Moving on
Worthy of equals
I should be still
Like stone or the Sun
Doing what I do in my own brilliant light
Or my own dense hardness
Or both


"You don't know you are winged, but I do. I see your span unfurl daily." - @Paul_McGovern


But she's perfect.
With and without
Light
With and without
The rotation of Earth
She is the flash of headlights on the wall in the late night wait
And the returning darkness in the sweet night embrace

Professed and confessed
I dangle on this limb
An old tire swing in Southern heat
Waiting to sway
With a returned breeze
But nothing
Scrawled nothing
On note paper dreams

This pen
Runs of ink
Have never enough words
Describing the everything
In one
Or a million vials of blue
Black
From one rainbow's color to the next
And back again

I hear the stretch of life
When she laughs
That early morning glow
Skin blushed sky
And together
It all makes sense

Moving on
But I'll still be here
Skipped solar ties
I'll watch her fly
Not believing
Knowing
She'll find her stars
Knowing
She's perfect

supper

In cooking chicken
Hanged heads and feet
Dry at the door
This once live thing
Lay in a bed
Of its own feathers
Fingers
Peeling skin
And broke bones
Nestled in the pot
It's own liquids
Soften timed roots
My own hands
Blood slicked
The stink of slow
Rotted flesh
Still tracked
For supper
One day
I will be
Such a thing

poetry

I lay in bed
In the dark
Nightly
Writing you poems
[I love you]
Thinly disguised
As poetry

wait

Feeling washed
Color from the glass
Curled skin
Of man-made time
Unexpected
Indecency of wait
Just alone
Capped by slats
Stabbed by finite
Moments
In counting
Wait
I am
Invisible
To you

*Photo is "Untitled (Woman and phone)" from the Kitchen Table Series by Carrie Mae Weems.

scrimshaw

My bones
Scrimshawed
Tied off
At the ends
Dropping off

"What's crackin'?"
He asked
"My bones."
I said
Listening

With tools
Of whalers
Drowning
In the harvest
Of heart's blood
Ornamenting
My bones
Marrow
For sale

tumbled

She
Butterflies
Take flight
Beneath
This
Crushed skin
My offerings
Are naught
Muse
Jester
But still
I'm tumbled
Her laugh
Her hair
Her quiet everything
I exist
She

sirens

Sinuous web
Of caved thoughts
Sparked dust
Hiding in the black
Memory dripstones
Reaching skyward
Perceived freedom
By the blue sky
Or cloud movements
Still
Just thoughts
In dark shadows
Making the noise
Of sirens

money

This surrounding
People
Ten sticks thick
We're still
A blade of grass
A polished stone
Wind or waves
Tumble us
Like we're nothing
Money
Doesn't buy
Eaters of resentment
Or guilted regret
Crisscrossing of hands
And legs
Mingling of spit
And hair
That faith won't save you
Every step forward
Grass
Or pebbles
In the sole
Of your well worn shoe

anyway

I love you
She said
Under her breath
Heavy with the longing
Of water for dry land

She held her palms up
Waiting for the chains
To fade
To the light grasp
Of lover's fingers

She knew
He wouldn't come
But she dreamt
Of his skin, his warmth, his love
Anyway

you are where you live

Why do I love
The peeling paint
Of aged walls
Every square inch
Witnessing history
He reveals to me
Little at a time
Yellowed clippings
And butchered papers
The more I see
I can't look away
Wanting to run my fingers
Under colored furls
Down his neck
Along the graceful curls
Of exposed extremities
This house holds
Secret paths
Behind sealed closets
His coat of primer
Slips a little in the light

green flame

Flicked green flame
Slow reflection
Off the unlit bulb
My eyes trace
The dimly shadowed ceiling

Or the floor

My upside down everything
Remembering how to feel
Sharpened talons
Across this pasty white skin

Pulled hairs
Contrast of love lost
I am as I was born
In screaming solitude interrupted
Only by barking dogs

Tell me
Scalpel the red cord
Don't wait
Don't

Wait
Dress in rat skins
And slip to the unknown

That man is perfect
Though
Casting his own shadow
Against the millions of texts
Scribbled on pearled white walls
He listens to his own voice

Never changing his mind
I'm in the wrong footprints
Wishing they fit
At the top of my lungs
Counting sand grains with my back

The night puts me to sleep
Like every night
Dreams of unpast time
And suturing wounds
By the light of green flame

If only he understood
Every thing
Every

Thing

His voice reminds me

My own tells me
Stop being the mat

The bulb shimmers
To on

memories

Boathouse to sea
Of corrugated tin
Sheltered winter's hell
Black waters roll
Blocking out light
The white caps
Bowing with grace
Curl through the door
My throat
Filling my skin
In a locked rectangle
This maze of bars
Rusted and set
Braiding with arms
Like reeds
Reaching for air
My fingers hit steel
Leaving them stained
Oxygen red
Wheeled legs
Roll with the surge
Mermaid weave
Through glassless panes
Unmissed pains
Silent breathless scream
Through bluing lips
Ocean roars back
With salted baptism
The oncoming tide
Steals everything
But memories

seasons

Never to write of Love again
Feeding its will to multiple
A disease spread across a field of Spring
The nefarious shadows in cold endless night
The tips of the earth on sloth-like rotation
Love is my Winter
Warmed only by a distant moon

Or
The thought of a distant moon

I spread my warm skin out to hide
Beneath the fleshed surface ripples left
The Autumn leaves sponge all the color away
The other side of Summer
Me
I fuck love with glass shards and razor blades
Bleeding some tasteless antivenom
That smells of time
Ticking
Half past loneliness

start again

Sky blended
Camouflage blue
My invisible eyes
Wept the canvas dry
Pink lemonade
Of newborn skin
Stretched
And stretched again
Over man made armor
That green insect crawl
Across bruised knuckles
His split tongue
Licking self into atrophy
While each hair
Of the brush
A tree
Under glossed finish
To start again

tick of my heart

My jaw
Unhinged
The top of my head
Flips off
Wings
Of gap-toothed bats
And stained moths
Caress stale air
Escaping from the dark
Bowl of my upturned skull
Tiny scurried legs
Spiders and roaches
Defy gravity
As they up and over
Leaving a trail
Of sooty footprints
Over illusioned purity
Of dead marbled flesh
Sin of words curse structure
Peeling away all the jointed
Connections
The last of my skin
Thuds to the floor
Laying in a crumpled circle
Around the sticks
That hold me up-
Right, skin
Like a plastic grocery bag
Emptied of its treasures
Leaving only the sullied
Record of commuted transaction
What's left
Segmented tick parts
Expand and contract
In tight controls
Sticky legs curl
Against a browned translucent body
My quivered heart
Beating still
Inside
Where hearts should be
A cyclical devouring
Of food and life and love
This
Left of me

goodbyes

My mind empties
When loud music
Scrapes the surface
Of the graying veins
In my head

I never did goodbyes very well

The end of my work day
Goodbye, see you tomorrow
What's the point
I'll just see them again
Tomorrow

Slipping away from parties
Disappearing from
Nondescript banal conversations
Goodbye, thanks for having me
Slinked on the wall like a flower

The uncoupling rattle
Of important relationships
Fittering away the last of words
Burning inside meanings
Of everything that came before

The death of flesh
And carried in a box
Never saying goodbye
Because it was all so sudden
Like time scatter to dust

The noise of their heartbeats
And love and gratitude
Always buries the shit
Deep in my own red muscles
What's left of them

Let me rot
Like old stored fruit
Leave me alone
Away from all tendered connections
So I never have to say goodbye

Moon Blooming

The moon
Blooming
Giant oak
Bare branches
Flowering
Its nightly sway
Balanced
Between his wooded
Fingers against
Indigo her
White petaled
Dandelion blow
Into stars
The moon
Bloomed
Pulling oceans
Taut
To gaze at
Herself
In monthly passing

slip of the tongue

Rushing to her head
Side to side
Blood
From iced veins
He cut
Inside her
A slip of the tongue
Razored edges
Separating flesh truths
Her open wound
Cried
Frozen blue rivulets
Stream and stop
And stop
On molded skin
She made herself
Her very cold
The only stoppage
To this
Undying sameness

sharks

Sensing fear
The toothy predator
Of love entanglement
Peeled skin of the past
Where other fingers
Crushed your heart
Just a little
Then a little more
I'm not them