Like A Prayer

I know that I am wicked, the way my
fingers curl into you. The way the
hunger hardens into an edge.  The
way the red flesh parts to the core.

I think of the blood that will slick
my lips, I think of christ in the garden
fingering an apple. The gasp of cyanide.
Waiting for your hands to hold me
under the tide line of your hips. 
My mouth follows the maps of your
femoral arteries. Tell me the words
I am too close to see.
It is a season of ragged extremes
where thoughts are heresy and vulgar desire
trespasses against immaculate flesh.
The golden death rippling.
After a skin grows over the moment
and the air is scrubbed of oxygen.
I am ripe for redemption.  Licked clean
as a razor blade.




.

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

.

It is Saturday morning, so why
not fall in love, letting the grass
blades bend into my back
while the blue gathers in the sky.
It’s a lie. I am in bed
and the sky is probably already white
with heat. It is August and your
eyes are blue until I see them again.

.

Polyester gods smooth 
into crevices.  It is a sin the
way it creeps, the humidity
darkening into desire. 
This atmosphere is picked clean.
I want more than the ache
of continued existence, my hands
are too close to your heart. 
But never crossing.  Already
the air between us is thin. 
Do you feel slighted?   
An indifferent crucifixion
suffocates, eyes averted. 
You linger in dilation, 
will your eyes turn white
when there is no blood? 
There is always blood. 
I lick my fingers clean
because they know
their way home.

.

there is a thinness to the light,
a madness that dreams cling to
silent among the whispers of flowers




.

My knees have graved
deep the upended belly
of the dirt.  There are empty
parts that can not be filled.
You are not a puzzle piece
but I will make it up to you
under the dead sky.

Hold me until I can
see you.  Whet your knives
on these long bones.
I don’t mind your lies as long
as I can taste the blood
of your mouth and parse
the oleander hidden deep
in the velvet of your gown.

If you walk backwards
sweeping a branch you can
erase the drag marks. If you
have access to divine
intervention and a cup
you can raise a toast.

It bothers you that
you can not see yourself
in me; I have turned loose
the fauna of my heart.
Goat-skinned and salt bound
I am rooted in the soft hand
of nightshade.  The ghost’s
still lick the rime from my crown.
The gold will not polish
into mirrors no matter
whose tongue whispers.

This blood we call home,
the thorns impaling, the harrowing
abandonment. The words
ring until hollow or hallowed.
I have tied the veins and worn
the rings but spines harden
and beauty is only a fraudulent
strength. I will forget as fast as I can.

.

Where is the blood the sky holds;
the papery wind that refuses ink.

What angels will the river find when it is lost?

I wear wings now, but I remember
the night of your hair, the moon
color of my fingers.

The gold is deliberate.

.

I want the blue flowers pinched from the root,
the proximity of your fingers to the
honesty of death, press them to my eyes
an offering of sky with the heaviness of water,
a blood to stain your innocence.

I want to know desire is not a false god

.

with a bottle of whiskey
and a rattle snake
I am ready to face
the sun
obliterating the dawn
into another blue sky.
I slide into my coat of crows
and fill my pockets with sand
so the past will always weigh on me.
Since I vacated immortality
or maybe I was evicted
the stigmata doesn’t itch and
the future isn’t so imperative.
But I still walk this land where the clouds
are too distant to even be a promise and the jack
rabbit steals what shade there is.

Night will come bringing dreams
of the memory of rain
of the ocean that was ours
of the salvation I lost.

.

I grip the silence of the knife,
a gasp of iron coercing a whisper
to blood born absent
of small meanings and an edge
too fine lost in your eyes

.

Honeysuckle spills from
the rock walls, the single drop
of nectar waiting. Cicada skins
pause on tree trunks.

I want to implicate you
in my life. If anybody 
checked, they would find
my fingerprints on the
abandoned petals but
your lip prints would be
on the spent stamens.



.

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 your 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.

.

words die with little sparks,
only in the infinite death
will I see you for a bare second

.

You are at any moment what you are thinking at
that moment. Your I is both subject and object;
it predicates things of itself and is the things
predicated. The thinker is the thought, the knower
is what is known, the possessor is the things
possessed. 
              —Jack London, John Barleycorn

I wait beside each breath, there
is a chance I could believe
it later. The small ripple of water
lost is the cruelest kiss.
It is an arid belief wanting flowers
to bloom when the seeds have fled
in the frantic misery of the wind.

To grasp flesh as a breath, a dying
man propped on a pillow of hope.
It is pleasure dug deep in the
wounded red night, scissors well oiled,
a parting death to slip into. Can you
read the number on me?

The egrets rise like flags
of surrender, hands hastily
thrown up and shot. Yet I still
pray to you. The subordination
of the stone to the pond.



.

I’ll take wine if that is the only trick
you know, I was hoping for a shortcut.

I’ll take your bird-like hands, there is a nest
in me, a bramble piercing any sky.

Maybe I’ll turn and run, boundless, a blue god.
Maybe you already did. Maybe the rose petals are clues.

The glint of the sun snags my eye, then
the brick hits me. Another ocean falling out,
another crucifix baited.

I wanna lick your rusty fingers.

I am a gun digging for gold.
I am a bird dreaming of cathedrals.
I am a veil of water tired of living.

I proclaim myself holy.

There was a time when I could hum and
your blood would call me home.




.

We are hidden in

the missing light,
a dark recess.  Blind,
we are animals
of taste and touch. 
The air is slick with
scent and the whirring
guttural voices of beasts. 
Until the thinnest blade
of light cuts into us,
we are immaculate 
in the suns vivisection. 
The golden truth of
bodies lost in another’s

.

wellspring

I am no longer vacant,
emptiness has fled as I lie
here teeming with more
life than any day before.
Are your hands soft? 
Will you rest them on me? 
Each finger a bullet, a feather’s
breath of lead to pierce my heart. 
You may keep what you find.

Tattooed and painless the story
is writ proudly, my belly is wine dark
and seeping.  Shadows crawl in veins
no longer silent, encompassing hands
that have released their misery.

Scatter seeds amongst
the writhing mass, 
spontaneous generation will
yield a swarm. Flies or flowers,
either will join me as the food of gods.



.

Tell me again
how the water slides
like a snake, tell me how
the bones of your fingers
seethe with thirst,
the emptiness of need
that fills your
milk soft skin.

The embers have
caught in your eyes,
the cup of your mouth
fills with a hungry wild fire.
 
Your heart is throbbing,
your blood is rampant,
capillaries dilating, flushed
with cravings of release.

Make me your first casualty.

.

Have you memorized
the flow of the incidental
music, it is subsonic but
the water gets it like a
cloud bursting. It is the
anticipation of a first touch,
a tongue tasting the distance
across the terminals of a battery,
the frequency response of electrons
jumping between bodies.
The briefest creation of
mythologies, the moment
when gods are born.
There is a hymn
I’ll whisper into the
space of a breath
if you’ll raise your lips.

.

You were right, I only seek your
darkness. The way your collar bone
blocks the light, the red velvet
hole your heart hides in,
the penumbra gathering along
the belly of your fingers when you
make a fist. I want to exist at the
horizon where the day cauterizes
into night. The shadows seeping
across lithe continents of flesh.
A ghost to accompany yours, dragging
around your ramshackle bones.
To hide in the shade of your breath.

.

I have lost my teeth, they were in
a box padded with my tongue.
I’m coming up for air along the
seams of the north Atlantic.
The water is heavy enough to mask
my silence, to hide the cordage
of my hands.  Already barnacled,
already scavenged. The broadside
of an axe slips, it is not blunt
enough to save itself. Swinging
against currents.  Waiting to rest.
A bit never found in my mouth.
My name is percussive,
the air held hitting the air
waiting in you.  Who is wanting,
the wave or the rocks? Let’s let
the remains be soft.

.

A dull passionless ache, blunt lips
bruise on the spines of a flightless
bird’s feathers. Already, the wax puddles
on the asphalt even though the sun
is still long shadows away. The fine
hairs hold nothing, no memory of a shiver,
no trail dissipating.  The distinctions lay
across the water, my hands lay at my side,
my body is hounded, treed. I am a beetle
fucking a magnolia.

.

No single home
could contain all these 
makeshift fires.  Every
fence post a refugee.
I have yet to determine
what I can live with.
What I live without grows.
The match book cover
happiness; strike it
rich before closing. 
Funny how other people
know you don’t see
that much anymore. 
I write love letters
on my cuticles then
shove them into
my fingers.  When you
rip my nails out you’ll
finally know why I am here.

.

Show me all your figure eights
and your pencil drawings and
I’ll write a song that sounds
like rain. Let’s wade in deep
until the current takes us; 
the million hands of the sea, 
the dark tide of trees, or the
loneliest diamond hued desert.
We’ll bury the compass and push
off from the past. There will be stars
without names and rivers
that never go home.

.

Show me all your figure eights
and your pencil drawings and
I’ll write a song that sounds
like rain. Let’s wade in deep
until the current takes us; 
the million hands of the sea, 
the dark tide of trees, or the
loneliest diamond hued desert.
We’ll bury the compass and push
off from the past. There will be stars
without names and rivers
that never go home.

.

Let’s get outta here and raise
a little harm. I’ve got a new tape
deck and a cheap set of speakers. 
It’ll feel good to fly; the highway a
ribbon of possibility. Speed and noise
stepping in for freedom. Crank up the
stereo and slide a little closer.  I only
got one head light racing the evening
into darkness but we’ll beat the
devil to his due. 

Out here there is no one to drag us down.
The busted bottles and spent shells
glitter like a shattered disco ball.

I love the way your jeans move and the
dangerous glint of your hair cutting
the night when the fire is in your eyes. 
This is all I need of heaven.

.

The raindrops fall unhurriedly, almost
evaporating in between.  I want to kiss
your bare shoulder that softly
until an ocean fills.

.

There is a black river gnawing
at its banks, I feel the hunger
threatening to consume me. 
I am anxious to offer it something,
a bridge of fire, a skin canoe with a
bed of moss. These crooked hands
can not pull straight the memories
that slipped into the dark. But my knife
is true as the song of Haros and as sharp
as the first point of the moon. 
There are lovers who wander near
lost in each other’s eyes; what could be
sweeter than the blood of lust spilled
into your churning maw. Now let me
pass to seek what I might find.

.

This gun fits my hand
better than yours
ever did but the heat of this
blued steel don’t keep the cold
night at bay.  The might of retribution
may be just but it sure don’t pay.
Ain’t got a dime to my name
and these shells don’t
jingle in my pocket.
It’s all about the redistribution
of wealth, I got plenty of lead
to share. I give what I can.
Never learned to swing a hammer 
or read too good but I can carve
your name on a bullet.
When I’m done
Let me rest on the side
of the road, I don’t need a
cross to hold up the sky.

.