You Are Not

I sent a far cry, hoarse jumping
against breathing on
every broken sleep wall
to find the one false edge
that wouldn't see me back.

So I would fall light
between the frayed roots stretched
over the dead of the concrete,
lending my joints away
to weed a spilled lock.

So I would hear the snagged drum
tap the ragged seams,
make the dark hunger in song
husked from lips of ripe pulp.

You are not the one
patching that swollen lonesome
hack of a closed door,
nor the one to tug me out
asleep in this crowded silence.

Betray Me

Make me ask you in stories,
point to my thrown (out) edges
see that they birth yawning
with fat floating wings
though I tell them to stay.

Take my graceless waiting-
with the hand of change
I bluff- lie to my greed
tie it loud ropes punctuated
(or I'll rob it back
to where I got lost
in you.)

In this treachery
make the quiet easy
and its reluctant death stolen
smart from me where I guard
it with sharp pleasantry.

You and Poison

Deep beneath the curved arrow
flight of my heartbeat, I wait
until asleep
in the bend of a broken bow.

In three oceans deep you go
tie away
me from my spool-spun eyes
so tangling at your heels.

So crooked over my sky keels
on the breadth of your breath on
open fire
to memories to turned to wine.

To dreams I dose, powder burns fine
without rest
where my unloaded heart thought
to bleed in my body left behind.

To Breathe

I am poor, with verse
my hands shake rain
shadows, meager tin-clap
libations at no altar climbing
a candle's broken beams.

Still you are here, sitting
to hear this beggar rise
courtesy for you,
windy rags of sun-skin
falling to ground, eyes
sleeping a home
in your warm breath.

And so you sing silence
on these words, torn
a flickering fire scars deep
empties in that open sky
choking me with sound.

Send Me to Sleep

You are the last peak
of rhythm on silver toes
at the tips of waves, skirting
to part the dusk-

You are the first sigh
that clears the glass
from eyes of the shore,
so steep is the felled night-

You are rest, my dear,
where this pen can sit
on this thin floe and look
to follow your song,
a hammock in my hand.

A Fish to Fly

I bare these words
past the hum of water
on their skin as they rise
(Up)
past my tight heart,
where breaths hide away.

I open them and wait
past their hems and see if
their dance will wake
(Up!)
through this heat, run me
speeding on my dreams.

Or they will wilt
before they form, they do
wait in the dust there
Up.
for when I cease.
for you.

A Silence Without You

My heart shivers, snowed in
with a winter of silence
armored and unjointed endless
a slaughter drowning the wind-

It knows not the refuge
between my night and yours
where valkyrie shield my brow
with hands of heavenly glass
crooked fast with rings leafing
with the cold morning sun-

It runs wild and kills
its fellows lest they sing
and sleep another night-
it vows to perish here
at my hand and yours.

To Wait For Love

My words break
their breaths, cough
down sleep winded
with the light of day.

They fear, they chafe
at songs; grit teeth gashing
into the wax of shadows
growing letters in my breast.

Creamy, pale prisoners
burn, cry out in grief
for the war I promised-
for the high heart
I swore them a siege.

Molasses Moons

The splinter of moonlight falls
a pearled bulb wrapping
in the low-clinging pond,
to find the water still
asleep with the sun.

There ghost wood pools,
its name frayed into thread
flung off its ancient cold;
its seeds scatter small
there, in that night
below this one.

I dare not laugh for it;
its cold braces my back
bare with its windows
thrown with a sash trailing
slow in sweet, hard wait. 

A Nightly Tide of Words

So still I lay- my breath
of tossed cotton falls
flat off my cheeks,
my eyes yield choked light yet
to suspended skeletons of voice.

Your words stay. I let them down
cold lifetimes away,
yet my sore heart recalls,
lets their echoes light up through
tunneling mazes, grown in glass
hollow with the din of wait.

They'll turn through me, soon
in touches loud with laughter,
soft in the rustle of song-
we'll fly through the bars
of the shuttered city night.

 But, dear muse, I'll sleep now-
not another tangled ode,
turning over a reasoned fire,
not another blind wanderer
setting out with bones of mist!

Roses of Summer

My shade sits quiet here,
its heartbeat a branch drawing
in the sand around embers,
faint in my unwrapped eyes,
too low for the lights to brush.

I wonder if I am ill with you,
if this rushing wind I send
across my harp-strung sky
should stray in rest and clasp
your warm hands,
and trickle to you.

But while I am here, dear
if I may find you I fear
I know not your hand-
the last bloom of this vine
indeed
closes fast without it.

His Finger Wills a Shadow

His finger wills a shadow
with soft, reverent breath
weighing but a candle's flame
as to pool on my skin.

There are old battles here,
blemishes drawn there, cut
from a different life, to seep
deep as the luring, chanting
persuasions in my blood.

But with him, I know
no clock, no tearing the bone
to shake or the knees to quiver,
or the eyes to string tightropes
for walking through glass.

For him I am still,
for he locks me in
myself again, in his hands
me, until he comes in.

One Sky

Forget the moon,
so it falls
fighting the burning tide
between that other sky
and yours.

Forget and my brown hand
kisses its trembling face,
my touch, the moon
crumpling into this memory-
a sea breaks up on us,
my sky and yours.

But give me, this
sad, unending cry-  this hand
that does nothing, nothing
but praise the faceless gods,
and so it will be-
one sky once more.

As It Must Be

Shake the skies in my starry eyes,
take the key to my open door;

Bottle my cries,
they'll break as time flies,
set a fire across your floor.

But stay, take me
and my tangled lies,
free this heart
from its burning ties;

Show my soul
where its magic lies,
and I'm yours evermore.

If Only She Were Here

When you wear that last ring,
a sunset wraps into your hand,
into your bones,
a wobbly vase tottering along
in shadow puppet shoes,
still trying to meet her again,
and so you must remember her.

Take care, you say-
She has missing parts
where her scattered ashes flew-
a dream-catcher's breeze took it
on a breath of shattered glass.

You know she walked away
You hid her, take her out
from the hollows of your heart;
the last shadows sway on the wall,
a pendulum sweeps the hall
so she can come in.

Magnolia IX

The stillness overtakes me,

Casts pale sheets of light

upon the soulful, trickling want

dripping slowly over weary eyes.

Her soft gaze bears deep pools of gold,

Ringed with rippled watermarks-

veins left from the receding deluge

pin the sky over her face.

A dancer in subtlety, she sweeps, at last,

Bending to touch the cloaked ground,

Clutching its hidden seams,

So slippery, in nimble hands

so wisps of winged shadow fly,

but to come back in morning sky.

How quaint, as old memory recedes,

My friend of unchanging grace;

My love, as firmly rooted as she,

In rare, sweet rediscovery.

I Follow the Moon

Not to worry not to fret

my love tells me,

As she brings her world forth.

I lift mine eyes to her sacred sky,

Pulsing with ripples, slowing

winter winds falling to a still pond;

She divines in me, fills my will,

And so my heart shakes-

All light is harsh, dead

'gainst her hands in my soul.

One by one, they come forth-

The chieftainesses with diamond feet,

Their gowns bright with sulphur

trailing in an unmined sky,

Every corner of it proudly held-

The nations of light, their names

etched in the reels they dance,

The dust in sharp petals

left where they turn their heels.

And it is then, in the music,

My soul is ensnared, my being full

in open surrender unfurled, held

against my love's embrace of sky.

Remnants

Suppose I

could.

Suppose I could shake the longest, dryest of waiting tears until I'd never cry again, losing my reluctant love where it finds someone perfectly happy.

I smile, keep, keep walking, and it is gone. My dearest, my very last resistance, gone.

Watching.

Suspended in the sorrow that overtakes the wind for a long, long while, waiting, sitting on the meager shadows of rising and falling night and day. The cycle gets heavy, watching her dull, scratched reflection on the sea.

From far away, a tree grows where the sad little shame had been, already staining, bridging every little star to the sun and never, ever stopping. Built on tears, where the salt became the sand and the rolling, twisting sob burrowed deep and right through the rock, it wrinkles in disgust at the blushing sunset, and does not know how to smile.

Star to star, branches tip close as they can. To the others, they say. As long as this tree is here, no one shall fall, ever again. As long as this is here, every dreamer may walk forth, merry, on this thin, thin ice of a night.

Soon, there shall be a forever, stronger than the others, the little one hopes.

I shall touch where my master failed, and I shall glow in the night.

For all the dreamers, to sit where I break into the glassy night, I stay.

Still There

The moment's journey went astray
As the country road does bend,
The wildest run so very swift,
No one could ever make a-mend.

This dust, it rolls, so high and slow
Across never a straight post fence.
Why, it caught up to the sea,
Spent immortality, hence.

Your love is endless,
But a moment thought,
As it waited for an end.
Yet on the deepest summer night,
No map the stars defend.

Grain of Desire

The buried, endless want
Falls a straight path- down
Like a closing, yearning vow, penning
that almost silent wish.

Like spring, it falls, hits
not enough, not even full once;
Eventually it mourns, instead
upright and dreaming time away.

Here, it shall be- far, well marked
when you are long gone,
The perfect conclusion, doled
to this backwards-reaching seed.