merciful release

I will fulfill the propoganda of your skin
a wordless manifesto.
mortal poetry spread by fire, the lines
drawn with the gasoline of my tongue.

lips advocate fanaticism,
single minded greed. A contagion
of fingers touching a viral desire

the terminal desperation
for the death found
in each other

flown

I awake on my hands and knees
an empty god above me.
a stain marks my chest
where the bird was kept.
livid wings were too faint,
the weakness of iron oxidizing into futility.
a cold deepening to blue
slipping into another sky.

all summers unfurl

grass stains on your knees
are streaked with fresh scabs, still
red from a day roaming
the manacured bermuda rangeland.
every street a dare, the sun burning down
on asphault, a roadway of coals to be crossed.

crawling through the skeleton
of another house, the timber bones
will soon grow skin and be closed to us.
a decay we couldn't understand.

There were days trapped in cars watching the world escape.
Jealous of the discoveries made.

soon enough we are caged by more than the walls of school,
the narrow halls of life a play ground of indoctrination.
seasons erode until time is a very small thing.

Last Eucharist

a mercenary communion rips
discretion from hands numb with loneliness.
fingers blindly devouring the bread of your body.
the price of your wine a banquet
of loss.

place the knife back into my heart
at least there is familiarity.
nothing will be known
of the requiem that crosses
your lips, a fragile breath
the last right of my passing.


painting by Jel Ena

another gospel

get over your grace
wash the blood from your ears,
the sustained distortion
of books and hymns
written in the breeze of crows.
a gentle twilight of home,
the early fingers reaching
for a feather grounded
in the simple dirt.

give to me your hands,
wrung free of your god's doubt,
and I will give a compass, knowing fingers.
a cresent of the past remains under each nail.
there are paths on the brighter edge of darkness
to stumble upon, remeber there is
always another way to skate.

see with your eyes until
looking away changes nothing.
the blue undemininished
by clouds or the skin of the moon's
silence. the squalid translation
giving way to the comfort of flesh.

long distances between

submerged in a ocean of stars
a gaseous seperation
and too much space.
the thin atmosphere of
loneliness pulled up close.

there are no angels here,
my heart has lost its
iron core, no gravity
to attract another.

no wired instructions to guide
the antenna of my nerves.
no signal from home
no home

waiting

waiting outside of a late night bingo parlor under the stars stubborn enough to remain in the fluorescent light draining through the open doors.

one foot on the ground. my ass on the hood of a van. one foot on the bumper. I need a cigarette to complete the tableau

influenced

bones born of caliche
bleached by a desert sun
carried in a wind stung sack,
an oracle cast.
wasps have fled
the paper nests of my lungs,
but a quiet rustle remains.

written in the rime,
the crystal breath
of a mothers memory,
missing compass points
lost somewhere in the depths
of bloods history.

it has been so long since I have
seen the ocean.

the wild violence of a new erosion,
a wet kiss to wash the sand
from my eyes,
a new skin to fall below

autumnal

leaves fall like small
birds shot, a twisting
wind pushing them away.

summer's excess reduced
to a golden fluorescence,
another spectacle of death.

empty fingers dredge a
too blue sky for sleep
and the dream of a sun
spinning back to pull
life into them.

consecration

fingers curl into a rigor of ecstasy
a reverence seered with the
cruelty of righteousness.
you burn in my lungs,
the ember of your divinty
fueled by the blood of my innocence.
My heart a cinder but still it pumps
pitch through my veins.
the rictus of prayer, all the ash
of hosannas falling
into the truth of my eyes.

I can not turn back the pages on my absolution,
the sin of my god is writ
forever in me

I wanted to be near

demarcation of desire,
fire writ and ready.
the embodiment of
nothern waters
the tributaries of youth

memories carried in flesh,
a dream when living hand
to mouth and
always a generous gift

worn and bent, the long
learned silence
dissappoints
and gratitudes whisper
is missed

another time

in the red glow
swim translucent fish
behind closed eyes,
but you don't know me by name

the sun knows the char cloth
of my back as it writes it
sad entreaties
to the silver of my eyes

lost in the ground
waiting for footprints
of the steps I fail to take

containers

1
the blood of silence
coagulates around my bones,
words never said quietly scar.
there is no echo, no souvenir of desire.
how can you fill so much of me
with nothing?


2
I spread my need thin
spider threads cast in a soundless breeze
the diligence of prayer captured
in a small porcelain bowl
the ground bones of the earth
vitrified to contain silence

house of the dying sun

ghosts flee to the shadows remaining as
light bleeds into noise and I fade into shades
of red, redemption fails and the sand of
prayers shuffles under my feet.
Radiance now cold, framed in monotony
by fingers lacking keys, locks only opening
somewhere else.
wires disassociated from terminals,
electrons trapped, meaning has no escape
meaning there is
no escape

sometimes everything isn't much

fingers fumble on the spine of my heart
embossed letters worn to silence
a book cursed to forget.
the quiet dust of useless words
fall into my hands,
an offering of nothing

a stint of faith

fingers worm their way
into blood warm sand,
roots looking for a ghost
in the skin of the earth.
Already on my knees
I might as well pray.
The sparseness of life,
a modest chaos of
background noise, the
slightest chance to be heard.
the hard edge of hope
pulls from the flesh
a small offering of willful bleeding,
moisture to the desert,
so the ears of a dry god
may bloom in this night.

adrift

pull the shades on the
stars watery eyes
while the last blink of the
moon falls into the horizon.
let the darkness flow through an
ocean of breath.
a truth that eyes can not see,
blindness unknown to hands on
the map of flesh and
the whispered breeze of hair.
boundaries lost, free in the void
we find each other.

thirst 1 and 2

1
weary hands pull threads
from under a rug of skin,
silk free to find the wind
or small iron rivers.
the certain thirst of oceans,
why is a mother always involved?


2
the drought of my heart
shrivels hope like the
blast of an august sun.
brown grass, crazy
from the heat
raises hands in
prayer to a true blue sky.
I wait for the thirst
to end

blood is not so easy

you may notice the confluence of rivers

the loess filled glacier melt

and the green blue tributary of rain

a constantly moving crowd of fingers

contorting into one another.

there is no sentience in gravity but

all water moves

to the belly of the sea

IED

blood runs in hardwired corridors

branching tunnels terminating

in fingertip detonators seeking

lightening, a dire gravity.

packed in a chest full of last breaths

a heart molded of semtex

always counting down,

a readily improvised suicide

offering

beneath the blind willow 

with an iron scrap of a heart 

I give my name into 

the twisted fingers of roots. 

Beyond the moons persuasion, 

under the skin of dirt,

and the bones of the earth, carried

to the ghost of water

a whisper rising again to the sea.

born as a memory

to find you

salome

swirling veils float 
in the ragged
opium haze, silk
clouds of desire, a
dizzying thunder of drumbeats,
orchestrated foot steps.
kohl black eyes
whisper intoxication,
simple flesh to keep
my mother's place.
pleasure comes with an easy price
fill my hands with the blood of a wild man.




painting by Jel Ena

ruela's flight

freedom

piled high, delicacies and baubles
a birth right of righteousness
the food of the gods for the godly.
heart strings and purse strings too tight
unable to sings, lungs filling with gasps drowning in silence
mouths open for more.
a wind of change carried on black wings
a murder of thieves
to relieve the torture of ownership
to redeem dreams sold for nothing
only in emptiness can a heart know its song

painting by Manina

burning

your lips sell arson,

fanning flames
a wild fire raging along
a topography of senses.
bottle rocket sparks in the
flickering grass of a drought
blasted heart.

I drink the molotov cocktail
of you hair flowing
through fingers like midnight,
a dark dream engulfing me in a
black blaze.

I am incendiary and ready,
a sacrifice for your inferno.

painting by Jel Ena

replicants dream

we push against the void 

magnetic fields enveloping, 

no matter how close our

titanium and kevlar enhancements

bring us a blackness divides.

a mind too aware of the planned obsolescence,

wet ware fused silicon dreams

a mortal desire, the morphine

of electron drift across skin

not designed to feel.

Painting by Jel Ena

kiss

feel the whispers of shadows crawl along your spine

as my fingers find the pulse of blood in your neck

gliding under your hair to the base of your skull.

your frail resistance breaks with the

pull of the anticipated collision. the hard edge

of my love slides across the curve of your ribs

slipping into your heart.

I capture the collapse of your breath

with a final kiss

penitence

I am not the flesh of your penitence,
your fetishistic fingers will not pry
forgiveness from these lips.
you may rip out my heart
but it will not bleed,
there will be no pleasure for you
in my blood.

Painting by Jel Ena

white lies

I have given you the morning star
a jewel in your crown
adorned with the souls of the damned.
the blood on my hands burns for you,
every atrocity, all the innocence I have stolen,
has been for you.
you know I am your lamb,
my heart only beats to feel the kiss of your blade
my dear, yours is the only skin
I would crawl under,
how can you doubt the voracity of my lies


painting by Jel Ena

lilth

born of the same dark dirt
the work of a lonely god, bodies made for each other,
trapped in a garden

one chose the soil, a decomposition,
to be reborn poorer each time.

desperately hungry
you chose the freedom of storms and
sanctuary in the blindness of night.
an appetite for the blood of life
and the song of demons
thriving on the fear of men.
revelling in the truth of lust.

as a son of adam you haunt my bed
a lithe container for sin
and rootless dreams


painting by Jel Ena

small

jagged whiskey blooms,
blood drips, a heart opening and closing,
dialation and contraction of spaces possible.

hands carry a ghost
to fill shuttered lungs
a few leaves spilled in sacrifice.
twin contrails in a January's long dark
free to fall between the trees breath
a slowness, their nakedness belies.

the ceiling of near dawn gives way
a sky failing to the yellowed incandesence
and I am small inside these corners again

dusk

fingers dipped in ink
the path a root takes
searching through hollows
filling me again,
words lost in the art of skin.
an open hand, an unknown path,
a chaos of branches
more directions
to loose
there is only following now.

I bathe in the quiet of another empty sunset
lost in your shade

adrift

I press my ear to the cage
the song bird of your heart
reminding me that I still live,
your breath a tender breeze
that catches me in its sway.
the whisper of your fingers
entwine in my hair
stranded in your embrace,
a beautiful oblivion

somewhere

with my back to the earth
an ocean of wind blows
the stars through the trees.
whispering to the night
the light is as thin as the answers,
I wish I was naked of desire

psalm

when your body is bent in prayer
and your hands tremble with righteousness
I can fill the belly of your need,
but can you contain me?
do you have the arms to wrap me in
silence, can you break the fingers of memory
and give me the smallest
peace to blind me to my past?
do you know a trick to kill the dead?
I am be the bread and blood,
corporeal and unrelenting,
I will eat your loneliness
but what will you have
when I am gone

until the end of the world

the blood is dry enough to be legible
between paper blue lines
I pour out what I can,
a honey to attract the smallest fly of attention.
A single minded religion of desire, the flesh of faith in
the empty hands of the sky.
yet I seek any translation for the
single tongue of my need, an oblivion
where prayes don't matter and every language is mine

this cup

I would drink the wine you pour
to know the crystal kiss that your lips may have left.
the faintest vibration of your heart
lingering in fingerprints remembered heat.
the gentle poison of your touch insinuating itself, and the bloom of your cheek
in the flush of blood rising in me.

do not take from me this cup until I have drunk fully of you

empty

with concrete feet I pace the the floor of days,
the slow grind of fingers along the bones of the past
just an empty spark and a
rusted out gas can of hope.
sodden hands overflow into eyes holding close
the night so shadows
can not steal what I can not see.
prayers flutter around the moons salience
lost in the temporary freedom but this is
not the emptiness they can fill.

slow

dance with me real slow.
try not to breathe,
each second held a little bit longer until
time gives up
and we are alone together.
the music, a rythym of two hearts

stained

the raw silk of my skin absorbs
the colors of your touch.
a blinding blackness
of desire, burning like midnight.
nicotine stains of anger
bleeding past edges and smudging
finer colors, filigrees
of happier times.
the twilight blue of a moon-filled
kiss, the yellow dawn
of a Sunday with you
wrapped around me.
all the flowers of your voice
have stained me.

but now your hand is gone. I fade, but the
monochrome of the rain can not
wash you away from me

wind

wind pushes the sand
into waves, the desert flows
around sage collecting
in me

dischordant windchimes
beg mercy
while windows whistle

I have been cemented here,
a dryness that takes root
and flowers into dispair

wreckage of desire

I want to feel your fingers
drawing lines, a pen and ink of touch along the
whole of me, mark me up and down.
nails dragging down biceps, tracing
veins on forearms, finally finding my hand.
interweaving into a Gordian knot. Bound
hand to hand we find the texture of pleasure
in the fire of flesh. A wildfire consuming
two bodies, a wildfire consuming
two souls until the tide of satiation
and an ocean of breath sings
amongst the wreckage of desire

after

I seek through furrows
turned in earth, and deeper along
the bedrock flowing further
into the past, calcites and
chirts sharpened into points, bound to
tools I no longer know, red
dirt, iron rich. polychromed
and lost in effigy.

worn to exposure, towers
carved of rock, preservation of the hardest.
daggers of light show the solstice and
bones find their memories
written under the skies
flame.

for now

small hours

an anorexic crust hangs
lopsided on
the nearly empty
plate of the night.
hungry clouds
devour crumbs.
the insatiable void of the darkness
is heavy with desire

rio abajo

I fall into the flow of your hands, a cradle to carry me
past the poems of the cottonwood, stories newly born
in the spring winds.

drought has reduced you to a meandering ribbon
among the islands of willow and saltcedar.
But there is enough of you to carry enough of me,
the currant a melody of miles.

I will stay until we are both lost in the sea.

before

If I opened my chest for you
ribs splayed open like a book
my heart a story incomplete and
the hollow of my lungs waiting,
would you cup my heart
in the valley of your hands and
bring it closer to yours? Would
you breathe a song to fill
my lungs? When you have
written your story on my heart will
you return it to me more than it
was before?

canvas

the rain over Santa Fe
reminds me of brush strokes
the water bending to earth
bristles from the clouds
there is no method and
only discipline enough to fall
but there is intensity in the
broad expressive strokes of color
left behind on the thirsty
canvas of the desert

listening

the faintest vibrations emerging
through the silence of glass,
whispers along the surface tension.
a prayer of faint hope grows
in the hours when it is forgotten
we are prey
and the heart determines a god is listening.
the runes of a ghost drawn
in the chill rising along the spine

faith

words chewed up and spit out
mumbled teeth just
a strand of busted
blood red pearls,
truth is cyanide and
I bite down and
grind my prayers
to the bone, because goddamn!
I need every bit of faith I can steal

____

the stitches of miles unravel,
threads of paint pull me onward.
A tar paper ribbon loose in the wind
the destination unwritten

escape

Flying down a highway the
consistency of worn out chewing
gum in '68 Chevy step side. the
cab is an oven, I feel the heat
crawling though my mesh back
and on down my neck,
the sun is fixed on me, no clouds ever to hide behind.
Windows down, the only ac
Is the wing vents squared to my
face, speed doesn't cool the air
but it sure makes this bucket rattle,
it may be old, but it stays true to the line I point.

If the engine lasts to night fall
I just might make it out of this goddamn desert.
I'm going someplace that water isn't
a memory of an empty arroyo,
gonna baptize my self with salt water
and learn a new sadness

lair

entice me with
your spiral seduction,
a subtle math too delicate
to be dangerous.

wrap me in silk
cocooned and safe.

take from me the cup of your promises,
it corrodes my will and
calms my adrenaline soaked heart,
let me die a quiet death
safe in your lair.

fires

1
Divine fingers sow fire,
A phosphor trail of
Desire along
Tender quick neurons.

Tongues ripe with flames
Persistent chemistry
Ignite bodies,
Flesh consumed, an insatiable
Hunger distills pleasure
From raw lust.


2

I seek the blood of a lost god
My hands slick with desire
A mouth full of prayers

I have crucified myself
For your holy flesh
A penitents soul free of
This miserable cage

The hymn of my blood sings
To the new moons purity
My heart a bonfire in the
Coal black night
Begging for defilement

another night

the moon's jaundice is
newly born from the rocky jaws
of the horizon,
turning the fullness of my face
to her, I am
grateful for the softness of
the kiss.
opening my fist
I release the last
prayer into the night
the trees almost sound
like an ocean lost in
the desert nights flow.
the traffic a slow erratic breath,
a broken life struggling
with an incomplete mercy
and the hopelessness of empty hands.
the wind steals the warmth
and memories of your touch,
the simple clarity of loneliness
a focus narrowing to desire
a deity of want
a completeness of purpose
lost in the night

visiting the dead

as a pilgrim I come to your god
given mountain, to know the truth of your
paint brushed convocation, its litany of silence answered
with solitude. I come to feel
your earth under a cloud cushioned sky
supported by an architecture of geology, the slippery volcanism
worn by ages of wind. a pallet of fire still spreads along the silhouette.

I wait for your ghost under a clock of stars until nights edge fades
to a palest jimson flower dawn. the innuendo of flowers plays
along the stark stratigraphy of sandstone walls. The music of
a land captured in the beat of your heart and the canvas of your life.

a question

If I come to you, a penitent,
bleeding a prayer of forgiveness,
hymns carved into the pages of my flesh,
my tongue pierced with remorse.
Would you lift from me this leaden crown
of thorns, and place upon me
the mercy of your forgiveness, the
benediction of your fingertips?

church

let me pray in the church of your arms
whisper to me your sermon,
a balm to my profane ears
I will sing the hymn of your hair,
take the sacrament of your lips
and the bread of your body.
I lay myself on your altar
a sacrifice for
what sanctuary you offer

inevitably

the ember of your lips
leave tracers, tail lights
captured in a long exposure,
fingers failing to grasp your leaving
smudge the spectrum lines.
memories shifting frequency,
inevitably moving beyond sight.

the stars are out of focus
having blurred into noise,
the slow static of loneliness.

loose change

with both hands shoved into my throat
I fumble for loose change words.
digging through all the things not said,
waded up thoughts and crumpled
half sentences. missed opportunities to
say anything. second guessed and
choked down, Freudian slips
that weren't. jesus christ!
and fuck! are abundant. but wait

please, I know there is something, just give
me a second to find what
you want to hear.

seeking

sing me a lullaby to steal
my mind, a sirens song
to lure me to the oblivion of sleep.
hold me in the cradle of your arms,
the bough of your breast
a haven to dream in. give me
sanctuary so I might rest.

4

1
a tracery of strokes, the
whispered acceptance of paper,
another heart bleeds out with
the inks persitant need to
entomb emotion.


2
punch drunk scrawl hammered
out on keys that refuse
to open any door.


3
crippled prayers scratched
in an arthritic voice, whispered
words echo longing and plead
for the restoration of peace.


4
desolation pushes out a pain
unrequited by waiting,
cellulytic flesh offers
only a taunting emptiness.

lost at sea

with moistened anticipation
I draw lines of desire
on your skins succulent canvas
connecting points of passion,
an origami of fingers and
bodies folding into one,
mouths sharing a single breath.
tumbled sighs and
a chorus of pleasures
crescendo
in an wild ocean
the color of lust

I would

I would hold you like the ocean
feel your tides between my ribs.
fingers learning to see currants,
and depths to extinguish dreams
like stars

I would hold you as the wind.
catch you in my hair
tangling to knots
binding your passing,
your breath the same as mine
then gone

I would hold you as a mountain
rising to meet you.
my time a flicker,
a whisper to lift
you no higher

after the quake

my bones don't
fit my old skin,
seismic shifts and drifting
fault lines have left hollows
and ridges, cracks in the veneer
of paper skin,
old stories smudged and
wrinkled

after shocks
and tsunamis
seek equilibrium
and a new skin
to let these bones rest

seppuku

I kill myself from the inside out
each poison a different dagger.
they slide so easily, the razor
sharp chemical edge. through
the connective tissue of memory,
the bones of the past, and the
viscera of the future

sleepless

filaments of light drop
from stars crawling across
the ceiling of the night,
tangling into my hair
like your breath
while you sleep.
the music of shadows
plays across the moon
of your face as dreams
dance behind your eyes.
I am free of your self
consciousness to stare,
to memorize you.

The slow silence passes
in times habitual march.

I morn the nights quiet,
the slackening depth
of color a precursor for
the days glare

spring

call to me as the moon
a tidal pull, a rising of the blood.
lure me into you.

speak to me as a sigh of flowers,
a gentle breeze to cool my fever
a fragrant song to lull my mind.

teach my hands how to hold you,
with the silence of fingertips
draw words only skin may feel.

together we create the pages
to fill with the promises of spring.

mirage

the promise of water
is only a lie rising
from the road.
the memory of your skin,
a dream that fades
with the dawn.

as the mirage
will not quench my thirst
neither will the dream
let me feel the
pearlescent flame of your flesh
or taste the wine of your lips
the miles never bring the past closer

hours of darkness

when the night hangs heavy around your neck
the blackness coiling, an easy tightening of panic.
when sleep has fled and the last drops of peace
have long since evaporated.

each breath an ocean pulled across buried continents and
every memory a past that might have been.

do not lose your prayers to oblivion
give them to one you might touch
only flesh can save you

persistence

the spline of my fingers find
the hollows, a persistent torsion
against loss,
subtle gears winding a delicate intrusion,
a flower's primness out of season.
Small paper dreams
crumple and die in spring's convection.

the empty bones of loneliness
have pinioned my hearts
small bird,
wingtips trapped in the
soft crevices of a life's
shifting tectonics. An aborted
migration, innocent of flight.

host

I will shroud myself in your skin,
recite the blasphemies there
with a zealots mouth,
slipping in a few of my own.
my tongue an impenitent flail
on the livid bud of your flesh,
the softest lash to bind you to pleasure.
I will drink the wine of you, and feast on a banquet of desire,
your body the food my fingers feed upon.
you are parasitic, an inescapable hunger.
together there is oblivion, a carnal singularity,
an abandonment of loss.

emptiness

no atmosphere to house or
gravity to confine,
a freedom never known.

the stars have their own
way, but my breath
isn't slow enough to
know that solitude

careful of the warp and weft
I harvest sorrow in
the time growing in between.
contrails crossing my heart
as they disappear
over the horizon
weary of all the leaving.

holding out

I can hold beauty as I would light
my mouth over flowing with nothing.
a current of photons.
an electrical storm of regret
grounded in the past.
and still I shelter in your limbs,
a decrepit church of desire
that only leaves me
clothed in lightning rods
and emptier than a tomb

remorseless

because I have sinned
enough
there is no soft comfort
only the razor blades slow kiss
and the whispered truth of the leather
on skin that prays with
the devotion of a penitent.
the night comes hard
but contrition is only
a dream
in the naked mirror of loneliness.
safety comes with knowing
I have paid for
the seduction of hope

Jel Ena

fools gold

tears decorate your face,
glitter and sequins
I would lick,
pull off the silver drops
with 100 proof kisses.
a showgirls smile
shines with the sparkle
of a fractured mirror.
I must of broke them all
to be stuck where
neon bleeds
in an incandescent night.


I hate myself enough to
accept your flesh.
A communion of sins and
warmth the desert won't give.
Let the lie be simple,
a story told in animal silence.

chemistry lost

bullets have been scraped
from our hearts,
the paper cuts of poems
have healed.
your skin no longer ignites
with the grinder sparks
my fingers throw,
ozone and heavy water
all we can do is drown.
a love cauterized by
silver nitrate
days

recessive

centrifugal movement is always away from the center,
physics demands leaving.

sundown, the pastel sadness
of a horizon failing.

night.

the moon shows,
a half round
glint in the slick
curvature.
the dream of countless stars reflected.
all pass, anchored elsewhere
arching into memory.

the crows,
small flecks of night,
call a slow atonement for the dreams.
the sun a bruise yellowing to another day,
already my eyes are blue

lost

1
discord held
in feathered fingers,
surface irregularities
lost,
an updraft of tension
embezzles dreams
from sleeps poverty


2
unaccustomed eyes
squint through arrogant light,
glimpses of intersections
lost through faithless
distance


3
loose change lips
mannered words,
purse strings
easily lost
in the couch with
any real change

afternoon

blue thread
tangles of cigarettes,
a scrim of smoke,
the incense of loss.
Hymns written on 80 proof
labels become emptier
as time refuses to pass.

lost amongst the stained
glass I would pray
if I had the money

crumbs

1
the blood flows
threads pulled from a heart
tangling into oblivion

like bird songs in a forest
not a path to remember
but crumbs of a wave
lost on the shore



2
the empty branches
an unsteady metronome
as the wind shakes
a few crumbs of snow
from the blanket of clouds

pastoral

my words are the hands
of empty arroyos,
fingers where
kindness slipped through,
not even the dampness
of a kiss to remember

my words know the
washboard stutter of a dirt road
getting closer to nowhere
but the thinness of the horizon

my words are the nail that strings the wire
between cedar posts, the wire
that cuts out the past, the wire that sections the future

my words carry
purple aster, fleas bane,
lambs tail, and tumble weed
the soft and the sharp
a crazy dust devil ripping
up sand, spreading seeds

my words whiten
in the silent glare of the sun
becoming less
but more obviously so

again

I would eat the last of the bread
to taste your fingertips again
to remember when you placed
their petals on my eyes
gentle as prayers
silent as the sun
I can't say anything
with a mouth full of crumbs
as your ghost keeps
walking out the door

your lips are remembered
in red smudges on crushed
cigarettes
a plastic reliquary
full of ash.
with a flare of recollection
I try to bring life back with your paper kiss
and feel you in my lungs
wrapped around my heart
poisoning my blood again

a language of prayers

golden pages scattered from a choir of trees
the whispered ghosts of a January morning
bright ribbons of promise on a recently green day
an answer of rain after the skies unyielding blue

fire of autumn

1

a home burns memories like calories
avaricious flames dance
timber bones become a charcoal skeleton
smoke rises like grief



2

a dopamine blaze rages
chemically consuming lives
while ash piles up behind eyes
and love fights for life
with smoke filled lungs



3

leaves smolder in yards
a smudge to fight off summer
and a prayer for winter to bring
his blanket and smother
the fires that consume us

put your hand on my neck

put your hand on my neck
feel the seismology
of muscle and tendon
the fragile tectonics
of whispers
and the metronomic
flow of blood

the coolness of your fingers
temper the inherent desert heat
as they record the tremors
of hidden prayers,
an archaelogy of desire.

I offer up my hands

If I offer up my hands
will you return them to me empty,
will you give me the smallest pebble of hope
so that when I curl my fingers
they close on more than emptiness?
will you give me a feather
or an empty robins egg,
dreams of sky to fill my hands?
if my hands tremble
will you still them with a song
sung into my palms
so that I might hear
through the movement of your lips?
will you give me driftwood
when my hands overflow with need,
a new tide to carry away
discarded desire?
if I offer up my hands
will you accept them?

the pious shuffle

the pious shuffle
through doors that offer
no access to sanctuary or
righteousness
whispered prayers and
mumbled hymns
hang in the air
the dieing breath of hope.
as a bribe for forgiveness
they take the coins from their eyes
and drop them in the basket
for the priest's wine
and bread

forest

sliding into the deep end of the forest
the air sighs like a lover
and parts to accepts me.
life barley blinks,
silence threatens
but the explosion doesn't fall.

they do not know it, but
the birds are the choir
to my baptism
with the dew gathered
from amorous clouds
kissing the trees

I am dappled and spectacular
a silver fish slipping
through the staccato sunlight
of a blue sky morning

time is the dance of shadows
around trees until the darkness
of starlight heralds
the nocturnal guard

wearing a robe of spider silk
and moss my footsteps learn
to whisper the prayers
hidden under the breath
of the forest.
And my heart an
ancient rhythm

desire

whispers of footsteps
and posionous preoccupations
tremble through bones
becoming more limestone
than living.
A growing desperation
sulks in the dark.
desire for destruction
takes root, thriving in the
abbreviation of time
in the blankness of empty bottles.

hands of the ocean

I want to wake up in the hands of the ocean
a child of a new medium,
salty kisses to wash away the sand
that has settled into my windward corners.
the sharpness of cactus
and tumbleweeds
replaced with the slippery green
of seaweed

let me feel the pull and release of the moon
as she plays with the water.

instead of the dirt devils driving
me to shelter with their shrieking
curses through windows and bones
give me the siren's song and its reasons
to seek a new destruction

death in translation

my voice is the knife that cuts
nights viscous surface
a brightness that reveberates
in the red shift of stars
and slides along the livid belly of the moon.

a breath of syllables.
whispers in the hallway of
dreams waiting
from the White Sea, a dead
language to haunt you

a subsonic heartbeat
of someone too far
away

the death of silence

the friction of dreams
treacherous touch paints
a slow dark fire along neurons
overgrown pathways
initiating the itch of desire

peeled lips plead for the
wine of a single kiss,
intoxication,
dialating the lust
in a million capillaries.

the death of silence is
palpable and slickly luscious
when hunger is echoed
in the flesh of another
ocean of want

lull

I'll pray the somnabulist's prayer
through green clay
fingers melting into a dream
that refuses release.
I seek the confinement of sleep,
the flattening of spectrums
with too many paths
decadent with promise
rusting on the vine
and the whitewash of hope
peeling to truth.

If you could offer
a small comfort
steal the stories from my eyes
with a quiet shh
of a kiss.
And sing me the song of your breath.

autonomic

at the slightest touch
I will flay the skin from my chest
and split open like some morbid flower
my fetid heart laid bare.
what kind of evolutionary response is this?

Oh, and here's a stick to poke at it

electron drift

words fall like tempered glass,
a busted chandelier insinuating
the refraction of gravity
as two masses combine

the strerility
of loneliness is rent,
a collision of desire,
flesh seeking flesh

silver nitrate kisses on skins
emulsion evokes a distended physics
of proximity and fire

passion zooms in on
a pin hole view of infinity,
a singularity

eventually entropy evolves
again

let go

pull all the paths
until attachments break
a thousand tiny spiders
flowing away
on the faintest prayers
of love and laughter,
a million raindrops
rising to the clouds,
an ocean of hope
evaporating into song,
a mustard seed
in the sun

Jel Ena

salt

how could I have not sown salt
with my slow tides and
saline promises.
grace gave way to a curse
and the garden withered.

give me a small piece of shade
and I will wash the road
from your feet
my kindness might sting,
there are no saccharine kisses for
your weariness
but there is a boyancy
in the ocean of my blood

If you can protect me from the sun
I can offer coolness
a brief respite from the
currents of life

together we might make it
to another night to
shelter in the embrace of the moon

bones

give me your bones,
I will hollow them and
stuff them with clouds
heavy with implications of light
and colors of a sunrise.
I will redeem
the weight of dreams
that the night imposses,
and the humanness of always
wanting more
with the sparseness of the
winds whisper.
give me your bones,
and I will give you a feather
to fly

the desert is no place to forget

1

the desert is no place to forget,
memories bleach in the sun
and the jet blue sky only laughs.
A fervored wind
born of rocks
bears dirt devils.
Thunderheads rise up like gods
but they are only empty promises
to even emptier arroyos.


2

alcohol keeps the past lubricated
so it slides off my back,
a past lost among photographs of clouds
a past locked into boxes
but never put away
a past trapped on barbed wire
like so many tumble weeds


3

memories are dead bones bleaching
ever more brilliantly
under a relentless sky.
nothing ever goes away

can you

can you put your hand
the true one,
the one without the knife,
on my violet heart?
will you feel the sea
remember the storms
the bodies tossed
the souls lost?
green waves are
only sighs now
and a slow fog obscures
sea birds who morn the wind.
the tide doesn't care
since the moon lost her way.
what's left is a past
and a make believe future.

can you carve
a whisper of life into me?
you have the knife.
but is it subtle
enough to give something back
and keen enough to to take the blue?

I carry my prayers with me

I carry my prayers with me,
keep them under my tongue
in case I come across some god
that might listen.
I'm not looking for a hand out
but I am hungry for the fat
of my years to be gone,
for a sparseness where the
sun is no harpy.
A promise of snow that
is more than a lie the wind tells.
I need to be closer
to anyplace
a little further along this highway.

Lara Dann - A Promise of Snow