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She clatters the pads of her fingers in frantic raindrops. The cobblestones take the warmth of her skin and wear it as their own, painted with the scrambled bones of our sounded history. White scars of marrow, rich with cool, drunk tongues, skid into each other, a rolling storm sucked from the surrounding black plastic flesh onto the placid white screen where they become words, alive where words are more important than people. These are the fossils that are dead to the gamblers who grind them and the heirs who squander them for whatever currency the meaning of life takes today, whether it is bitten down to sobriety or left bloated in its dreaming.

Cross-posted from laspalabritas.tumblr.com

Imagine. (rewrite)

I.
Imagine if my hands could fly,
plucking a world of liquid color,
each strand the hidden contour
of shadow beaks and butterfly wings
   dancing behind each current-rose,
a different taste of pastel, each
   flossed by a full-mouthed light.

Wide as the wingspan of the sea
always singing a swallow,
let its captive sky and unarmed sun
paint me as I change my threads below-
pigments eat tone from starved stone
   where even the waters will shiver-
   this land of the injured breezes left
   slung in gauze sickles to drift asleep
   as clouds for the meadows beneath.

First light, I'd spring my spine,
steep myself in the horizon cheeks of sunset,
    with a dawn yawning into a cold cloth-
I'd watch the waves cast away silver hairs
   as I pull in another gossamer tapestry
   dyed from above the river of night.

II.
Imagine if my hands were the wind,
my soul a water nymph, quicksilver fast
     in a dance to flee from thoughts,
my heart, two laced silk shoes
far behind with heavy heels hobbling,
     too lost to look for breath.

In my high castle in the clouds,
cold with deep keystones of ice,
my own domed ceiling will be woven
by spiders, who drink slow rains
clotting through the veins of storms,
      a river of frost, not yet spun
       will run beneath my rushes-
The unripe sun spills on the ground
to melt the bones grown in gravity.

Forever, I'd weave the days, guard
and chain them in steel-eyed mists
to be a keeper of life in a sea of stars
      on an island nearly lost,
An unending siege forced to a standstill.

My Sort of War

The wars they wage on,
the battle cry an asthmatic
squeak
as the calloused generals
squat low, then bend over
in drumming sub-breath.

The battle scars, they stretch
into feathers, their skin a-thin
down melting wax
into fat blood wicks, which
then harden into sunseting scraps.

Moon-beaks peck at shafted streaks,
fancy their yellow shadow
of peacock-eyed plumes,
underbellies thought soft and safe
from the pin -dark- drop spindles,
a blister of stains and spears.

Clotted spills pool
in the crouched joints,
bright black shells strain a
barreled gunpowder march, halted
beyond barricades of barbed wire
and smooth electric scrawls.


All the world tires and still
that impossible white fog,
the head
is no man's land.

Blasphemy

Atoms dance edgewise, cloud
constellations on a sky
called the universe.

Jealous are these gods,
my purity in them true
beneath only time.

Every movement spirits
in the darkness only theirs;
waves without a shore.

My martyrs' bloodline
lives to tell dry revelations
tied to ready pyres.

We grew up cloistered-
gravity the communion,
mass the monastery.

Immortals waited
for their scriptures to be read,
but whose will to please?

To Live

I open a clenched palm, see no solace
to come and shovel blind,
warm sleep
into rotted pearly grates,
always chip-dreaming
to be just dirt once more.

What terror it is to live,
to slap words backhanded
choking into windpipes
fat rusted over, sores hollowed
in silver watermark shells
shining with white moon veins.

The mercurial poison flakes
well of age
with every heart-beaten step,
pricking ends of this sorry speech
that makes this young life bitter
and this old stillness tired.

Hair (Revision)

I shall drag dead claws
through your scratchy Clean, choke
the carded sounds
you spin at me, scatter
the sore herd bleat begging
to chase my shelter
to the thick forge, bitter
of the ink blown wind shedding
a sooty furnace of strokes.

Strand, I will roar down the hillocks
no splitting/waive over
the stomachs of pages you read
send them scowling, still- half
purchased half eaten gloss-chewed
promises I wouldn't keep
(for sale, with a little knifing).

Grow and grow it will, I will,
and live and scream mercenary knots
from locked fat bottoms rich, sworn
against the threat to
profit you pretty
with every second you sell.

Soothing, Say

Any fevered who in a why
cast the battle scarred bones,
bled blind of their longevity,
bitter oracles they are now, see
the silence drops asleep
on smiling toothy ridges, clink
goes the starved scarecrow scales.

A shadow collapses and
rises a doubled over wing,
a lazy mosaic breaking in the face
choking the wind's crumbling jaws
lapping low at the fray,
waiting thick for hand ringed tears,
still close to bloodlines receded,
still closer blunt mortar bolts
to drown clinging cross hairs.

Just the same, who- turn-
and why- still so young
they beat back the deep fall
of a thousand summers
oh
and then it is the same again-
just the old bones
still from tossed hand.