Can you play the violin?

It doesn't have to be well,

it is enough to pull lament

from a loose collection of

notes, or we could just hum.

Can your eyes be blue or grey

or brown, any color of water

that I might hide in.

There never was a shore line

immutable in its desire to erode.

Let there be a wisp of atmosphere,

the thinnest thread of a breath

we can share, me on one end you

on the other pulling until

the stories on our lips meet

.

Counting crows in the silvered

night, unfolding memories rummaging

unsure. Leaving birdland glowing red

hoping the eye lands somewhere soft.

TV shadows flick between teeth.

I tongued the lip's odd reason,

a pledge and a raise to a

flagrant desire. A mouth without

hands, the dog-eyed silence of

light falling through snow. This

contribution of ghosts held

close without rest.

Like a splayed chest that flowers,

opening into scented pleas.

knowing you enter me each time

as molecules held tight in tiny purses.

I will hold the flashlight if you will dance

.

It is The ass end of November when the wind has left the night barren of leaves and branches try to mend the distance between stars.

Cigarette burns edge around the wrecked veneer. Your eyes hide in their scrutiny of the dusty curtains, what is out there beyond the pallid cast of the porch light. How great the distances bodies travel to feel the slightest gravity.

The scrape of the wind shapes the void we drift in. I remember wrapping my hands around you like an apron but the old transistor awakens with a sob of static. It had been forgotten after the trail of a stray broadcast had been lost. A glow that long since burned out. 

 

There is no point polishing the chrome that hasn't rusted off, the slant six still leans into the desert. There were too many mistakes to sift through. The easy lesson is to keep breathing. Even as the rooster tail rises behind dust caked taillights. Something like a comet that will never come back around.

There was too much dust; the accumulated fallout of what i didn't say. The way dreams flicker like fluorescent lights long before they die, the staccato death throes of a pulsar. Somehow we met in spite of the dust of exploded stars in our genome, the inborn weight of distance. These collisions never really altering the momentum of escape

.

I watch your mouth

open, the bud of your tongue

rooted to your hips. There

is no ambiguity in the

ambition of my mouth

seeking salt. With the memory

of stigmata your palms

press into the thorny crown;

you are anxious to pull the blood

from me that will

darken the rose.

I will write my desire

with the stain of my life

on every piece of you.

Under the wide eyed sky I would

break the seals and drink

deep of the violence

of your heart. I will rise

to die again in you

.

The soap soft machine of your hand,

willow lithe and needle strong

would collapse me. The bridges

are already burning and ready to

confess every suicide was pushed.

It is supposedly voluntary, you accept

the light when you walk into a room.

A heave of breast catches a stream

in the flood of fluorescent light,

lustrous through the dark dance

of your hair. I wade in hoping

there is land to be lead to.

Leaves burn, drop into ash, and scatter.

The music of death spiraling, sometimes

a buzz saw grinding far away; sometimes

the pregnant pause of a barometric shift.

But it is always about the creases

worn through and how we tear ourselves

on the failed edges of the past. I will

hold a match outside of this season until

you need a flame to dance around burning

like a wick licking a paraffin heart

.

Took half your head

and all your heart but

no matter what you stole

there was never enough

to sew it onto your sleeve.

Your faith never

questioned all the happy

endings locked into place,

bullets in the loaded chamber

of a gun. 6 chances to hit

something; more if you

kept the change. Anything

is easier to hold onto if it

has holes in it

.

It could be the heart in its dark cave,

desire pulling and pushing and the silence

between, but my hands are the monsters here.

I need the flesh of another set of bones.

The warm blood of another land. A new scent

to follow along the trails of night. Here

is a hollow to fill with the purr of breaths

and the echo of heartbeats. Let's ignore the

hand-drawn barrenness of winter's cold and

press ourselves into the budding sparks

of this animal heat.

If you must, leave me to the feral darkness

and the dream of long limbs, feverish bodies

hellbent to defy physics and occupy the

same space. Wallowing in the musk. Let me sleep

until the orgy of spring has passed and the furnace

of summer burns rich with torpor. I will step into

the flames of the first sunset and dance between the

knife points of stars 

. 

How to sharpen a knife

The desert gleams seamlessly, the invisible

edge of a properly sharpened knife, drag it slow

across your thumbnail and feel the catch.

I watch the heat climb against the current,

returning to the refined truth of a purely

empty sky.

With circular motion grind against the clock, an

impossible repetition of lessening. The stone wearing

into an organic curve oily fingers caress. Like reading

the decay of a radio isotope or the meaning of a mountain

to the evening breeze. The long shadows of nighthawks

are miles away and still as hungry. The earth is fickle

and sometimes curves away.

The creases on the note you left are not hinges so

it stays folded in my wallet. A certificate of

authentication; some kind of proof I was wealthy

once. I have faith the gold will not blur or the edges

will not thin into air. There is a curl of steel that

must be broken off. Drag it along the strop until it

is keen. Drag it long, it will be keen

.

Respiration

1

The void of my chest fills witlessly with another poem,

pulverized bones and hammers writ large in the pneumatic

failure. This wild flesh of abandonment, feral and fine

toothed, burning under the weight of water. Faster than my

body can break your absolutes offer no absolution. I find

blood and release it.

2

The stryofoam squelch of snow and a puff of wing beats; a

breath held too long dissipating. The trees click like firing

pins. An empty pistol and a lost map. Is this a change in the

weather, these loose tongues skipping across the frozen sky?.

3

The dirt from your fingers fills my mouth, the small

skeletons of an arid sea swim into the pools of my lungs.

Sweetheart, you never could resist sifting through the

ashes of the dead for a prize of a powdered lead slug or a

trilobite; the mineral strains of a memory. There is no

salvage in the squalor you have graced

.

I put my hands through the ceiling. Stretch

my fingers between rafters cobwebbed

with memories. There have been rivers

finding their way through shingles, tar paper,

and misspent nails. Is it a question of scale or

of truth. Meanderings along joists to drip from

eaves unnoticed. Silverfish do not swim

though they leave a wake. But that is not what

I was looking for; there was a star I could not reach

or the spruce that rattles in the wind. Needles

bright with hidden light.

It does no good to find your name but I remember

your lips, the swirling jewel of darkness catching

at the corners. The bright burst of laughter and the

softly shaded words. The sun was burning hot for you

while the trees dropped their gold at your feet.

I betrayed myself with every glance. The cheap

perfume of memory lingers while the locks close

around a small breath

.

White lunged, the seagulls

swirl riding diazepam currents

and the last fumes of what I

have to offer. A rearview mirror

icecapade and a burned out

plastic soul. why does it have

to be the right kind of death?

. 

beware

Beware those who speak of wolves, their mouth

is a jagged wound, waiting for blood. Their eyes

are not reflections of the moon but are the

bloated bellies of the forgotten dead. You may

hear their cries and feel their claws crawling

on your skin but do not invite them in. Call to them

from your window, hidden behind lamp-lit curtains.

It's alright we are all beaten under the same

meaningless stars. Open the door, walk out

.

The morning mountains are the torn edge of discarded

postcards, destinations of worn through memories. The ache

of new bone growth.

My appetites darken as the sun climbs above your waist. There

is a silhouette to this desire, a hard edge along the knife cutting 

sparks through your hair.

I'll never be closer to your true name than a finger tip on the

surface of a pond. The slightest moment of displacement leaving

no ripple. Fingerprints oscillate, a river begins flowing up my arm.

You can fish with a cormorant garrotted against fulfillment. The

way the gods press their thumbs into our throats to adjust the

frequency of need.

So much of everything is beyond me but I turn to hold the sun's 

unwinding, the flesh of the air tumescent, quickly pink and

writhing. This splendid knot slips into the space of the night

.

mine

I stumbled into faith through the

fine lips of yours lies. I thumb them

between fingers, shuffling the past

looking for an ace or something black

enough to show light. I can't help but

notice the gold flake glittering my hands.

The emptiness of heaven shines like mine

.

In the embrace of thunder's arms

I slept, suckling fury, ignorant

of the lightning's lucent violence.

I write to the wind

my stories, she twists them about

her legs, serpents rising into her darkness.

Falling into the black song of the earth

there is no silence, the churning blood

and bone an embryonic chorus ripe

in the fertility of death. A kiss crawling

into my mouth, a new tongue to taste

this anatomy of debauchery

.