where is anything

we sharpen sticks into dousing rods.
finding more than water among the
coarse rocks and broken edges,
questioning surface tension and its
curve against gravity. is the
potential for integrity in such
small bloodless lies redeemable?
where is heaven when you have
amended your body to the fallen sky?


soundless allegories dissipate
into the secondhand knots
of everyday hell



.

always somewhere else

always somewhere else
until it wasn't. the wolf came
on padded paws, the echoed cry
no longer lost in newspaper walls.
now the ghost of a breath hangs
like a false season among the winter
cold sheets and the empty limbs
ready for any warmth.


the musk of a new moon's hunt
burns colorless in the blood. unsheathed
canines eloquently spell fever on barren flesh,
drawing out the stagnant streams. hunger
grows with consumption, gorging famine
will not leave bones to flesh. Is it love
to bleed so easily



.

no home

I cut my tongue on the
salt fringe growing along
your edges, the empty cups
of your hands question the fiction
of this exiled land heaved high
beyond where water can rest.
we steal from mouths words
wrapped in small prayers of
moisture, lips always surrendering
in hope. this desert is no home
no tears are shed or tithes given



.

bargain

I appreciate the cutlery drawn
sacrifices, I have sought
that river but we cannot
be rid of our truest possessions.
all the demons that writhe under
your skin are not enough to turn
my hands aside, you are softer
than my loneliness



.

If There is a Bigger Picture

If there is a bigger picture
I cannot see it beyond the
crease of days. The darkness
folding between the lights
of morning into a single
skin and the spectral
embrace of lunacy 



 . 

assassinations

the bone shock of high carbon 
steel,art nouveau staining of life’s finality.
only love takes more.


a hand curling through the weave of cartilage
and blood, hard against the thin skin of life,
crushing into oblivion

a bullet is a period, full stop





.