raw

There are no more ways to feed me.

I wrote you the most beautiful bowl of fruit;

but my words were twisted up in

the flames of your

blue-lip fire:

nodding its heads under

their bodies.

Cooking.

Don’t cry.

We are made up of the same piece of sky.

And I can’t leave, you can’t leave,

we’ve tried; and

we’ve tried to mix up our miseries

and we can’t even do that right.

I will look for you

in the crowd of my personalities.

Hold me, hold us, hold, don’t stop.

You are the vast ocean, but I’m every drop.

Swallowing your anger

is an empty pill that

makes me hungry.

volume

When did he stop roaring? And why. 

The way he opens up claws stream from his tongue and lift me onto a higher cloud. A fortress in the tone of
anthems and access. 

Give him back the way he holds up the universe with a rumble, throat tumble, vocal mumble, where did mine go?

If it gets too loud in this cafeteria we’ll hold up a sign and shackle closed your chords, and if you even let out a hiss of a whis

per, we’ll drag you outside the crowd to your own separate table. We’ll take your voice and your name and your squad and you’ll punch your own head repeatedly because we said “shame” and you didn’t 

know any better.

molt

I stop; look back.
Hand over my eyes to block the
manic light,
and I see
salt pillars.

They glower, vaguely
outlined with my own face.
I’ve peeled their chalky skins for years.

And I try
not to catch their eyes –
Midas, Medusa,
basilisk, Balor.

It’s a fix.
I’m ripped off and stacked up and left out here.
A new me moves forward,
and I’m frozen in the reflection.

What will she be

after the last peel;
just salt?

brute

I thought I might give it a name.

It was sweet and it played; it was tame.
The West told me, why not? Go ahead.
But the East shook her dazzling head,
and said:

If you give that thing a word,
you’ll teach it hate and fear, I’ve heard.
It tends to hoard and make a lord
of names in cages just like birds.
It’ll think its word is better
than all other ones, I swear.
It’ll label you and know
your label’s different. It’ll care.

I hate to even think – but
it could learn its right from wrong.
Do not name it, please, I beg you.

So, I taught to it a song.

fruit

Leather and wood in my house;
crunch a crying carrot
amidst the bones and souls
of the once-alive.
Watch my cat
eat a box-elder bug
with a broken leg
even though it crawled on my journal,
which was its way of asking
for help.
Don’t think about the
fingers who stitched together
your t-shirt,
sweltering in the healing sunlight,
forcing their glorious eyes to
quiet. Mercy.
Use death and
death and
death
to animate your ruthless
heart,
and levitate
your peaking breath.

hatch

Your life is an egg.
Push on the colors in your lenses,
just watch;
they’ll crack,
fall like walls.
Everything that’s ever happened to you is yolk,
fluid firming into feathers;
feel them bristle when you see
an especially interesting tree
and know that it’s more real
than you were ever meant to be.
Don’t be afraid.
One day we’ll leave our starless,
sharkless cocoons,
break through
our amniotic rooms
to join
a new parade.

eve

I swallowed a bad wind;
fingernails in my
chalkboard throat.
Made me pale
and impatient;
lined my tongue with soap.
I struggled,
spewing filthy air,
and everywhere
I looked
there were canopies
of fallen trees
and sages burning
books.

stone sin

I ache for your words,
for the way they sank into my soul,
like barbed wire, beach sand, and rock and roll;
kissed me soundly until my breath was gone
told me gently that the world was –
wrong and we were –
right.
Don’t let the floral arrangements keep you
from crashing through my window anymore –
shatter glass onto my floor,
and leave the orchids weeping in despair,
without a care.

Don’t

Don’t say that I

haven’t been there for you

always

 

Eat up the sky

and pretend that you wait

hungry

 

Don’t say that we

just weren’t meant to be

darling

 

I have never seen you

I have never seen you more sad than today

 

Climb the rocks and paint the trees

Any color you please

Take my hand and don’t let go

here is the body I own

 

Don’t take the chance that

today is our last,

my love

 

Determine to waste

every second you have

on my touch

 

Don’t say that we

will not live happily

just this once

 

I will never leave you

I will never leave  you more sad  than today

 

Climb the rocks and paint the trees

Any color you please

Take my hand and don’t let go

here is the body you own

I own.

the letter

I sit in the still of my house, low and somber,

all wishing for witching and time machine lumber,

my promises baking like pies in the fire,

a crayon-soaked clamp round my neck like a wire.

 

A small steady whisper keeps saying its lines,

“I know you are sorry, but really its fine.”

There Childhood and Innocence leer from the rafters,

and choke on the smoke of their recent disasters,

 

and reel from the paper weight of written words,

and never stop squeaking like smoldering birds.

I watch as they wriggle in subdued despair,

I watch as they point devilishly at air.

 

I stumble while seated and stutter while silent,

the cries of the birds rise, soulful and triumphant,

I lay down in decadence, which I ignore,

the beat of their wings echoes down to the floor.

 

I simper and whine like a dog put outside,

the Haunts grow much longer, and stronger, and wide,

I see or hear naught but their song like a flutter,

I bury myself in the bedding like butter.

 

The cushions are soft here, the food never ends,

I’ve time for my mind to sigh, wrecked on a bend;

these Ghouls which you send me are holy and just,

the way you work through my pain which,

dear, you must.