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.

Heavy Brass

The trees thread heavily bright
in the winded night. It runs
crashing with heavy footfalls,
breathy glow edged with smoke.

It makes light the hills
gray and rising, bloomed afeather
soft sage and heather clouds
in a sweeping low sky.

Beneath it I sit, strange
as the stars tearing roots
through the thick sleep above,
the earth springs
sculpted from ringing brass lungs
burning through the dark.

As I sleep the dust settles
in coiled rings around me-
a land broken, buried
with the march of music.

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.

Meek Words of Mine

I write to you, my eyes
peeling off the light,
my box floating in it, rocking
in the shells of stars.

So dry it is to wait there
for my prose to break
into fray sanding swords
down to needles, thin
as the scar of sea
stitched in my ear.

So the words beat slow
where the fog slings nets
to catch their bellies, swollen
bare in the places they fed
their blood to the clouds.

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.