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.

.

I strike matches until
my thumb is sulfur flare
black, rubbing until the fire
blows against the wall, a
projection of warmth, a wisp
of a film strip shown, the
flicker of souls susceptible
to whispers.  It is the hollowest
of sounds, the sea hiding
in a shell, the prayer mouthed
to the mouth of a glass. 
Snails under salt, salt for saints
until the book is empty.

.

In the dark we are gods,
corporeal only along the
edges where we lose
ourselves in the infinite
expanse of each other.
It is no accident this
primordial dance
aligning in consumption.
Born again and again
we are the fires of creation.

.

Stricken, how am I gonna die
with these clotted fingers
that nothing slips between.
No bone meal or
watered wine. My eyes
are not sure but your
memory comes faster
than the howl of the world.
Let’s call it a day.

.

What do you need when
the quick moon dashes
between trees?  The bottle
still rattles and there are
smokes to smoke.
This is the low life, the shelter
is thin, and there is more
blood than red.