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

.

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

.

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

.

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 

. 

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

.

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

.

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

.