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.

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. 

In the Ocean

The sea strums my hair
inks my dry paper-armor,
kisses softly all the sheen
off my bones,
unwinds all their breath
on a tear-tasseled kite,
a shell-ripple wind soaking
into the sky.

Then it leaves me
where it sifts in the sand,
seeps coldly into me
away from its long, wide pulse
before it is found;
my sleep scatters in its sigh
as it breaks my words, so
small
in the hollow of its roar,
on gleaming silver scales
heaving against my heart.

Trying to Sleep

Small as a breath, I jump

down the wet throat of a night

hatched in hunger, whittled

of its tears to cry;

I fold around its blisters

as they curl into vines.

I scratch hard, swallowed

past woven castles in the air, 

unfurling a creaking chorus sung

swinging from knotted bridges.

Then I am still

awake-

scatter-boned wings rake

the light from the sky;

it breaks to spill more.  

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.