Wednesday, January 29, 2014

lost cause

it's 3 am, I have crawled
through the belly of the night
to lie here awake. an
insistent beast, it is strong
without the fear of dawn.

I have not found the lyric of
a heart but the scars of a past
life in the cut bank of a damned dream.

I beg indifference from the weight
of the night and the truth holding
fast to the history of my bones



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Sunday, January 26, 2014

respite

the blades bend behind
our backs, we are tangled
in the skies banner.
it is a momentary allegiance.
clouds have breached the
horizon with night bound
behind them. soon we must
return to our dreams




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Wednesday, January 22, 2014

ruined

I go to sleep cold, you left me with a taste for
blood and a belly full of rocks grinding
themselves smooth. the bottom of this river
runs past me, the sand believing it is pushed
by wind, waves on two surfaces. the black veins
of iron leave nothing of the animal.

It isn't the slow exhale of breath but the fine
dust of words tied up in fists, a sediment of silence



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Monday, January 20, 2014

mute

I fail to voice words that have
no sound, they are a subsonic growl
lost in the long waves that pass by you.
the madness of sighs unable to find the
soft flesh of a thigh. babbling lips
speaking in semaphore, waiting for a
glance and a receptive translation to mumble
back the coded messages spoken in tongues
and twisted through a faith in the
arrival of another body's 98.6 



Thursday, January 16, 2014

want

the seismic wiring of fingers
pressing flower petals, scent
smudged along ridges,
a dendrochronology; drought,
shade, years smoothed with rain
and every time I touched you the scars
were consumed eventually. it isn't enough
to know, my faith only works in flesh.
the cover's blown, let the fire burn
round the circumference past the point
of healing, past the point of desire



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Wednesday, January 15, 2014

thirst

the river is heavy with winter,
fallow fields turned toward
spring are not allowed to drink.
Cranes seek what was left behind
in the broken earth. Is there enough
weight to carry the water home or is need
passing too close to allow anything but a ghost



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Tuesday, January 14, 2014

lullaby

a local crow traces the spell of night through
the softening color of the day. winter welcomes
the low incense of breath spilling between curtains
holding their edges against the draft of light. unsteady,
the years fold themselves away and a home is had
in the memory of a clumsy lullaby. the hands of a child
relaxing into sleep and prayers that I used to know
find my lips again



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