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