The Flame Quickens

Burned, I remember

patterns of rain sinking
and the zen-like
trajectory of things

that catch on fire
and fall.

I will miss the black
stars, the two yellow
planets whose sadness
was this life 

looking out through 
the bodies window.

The smokey ring,
the coal eye narrowing,
a strobe light catching
motion, the click, click

click from birth
to quickening flame;

an orphan striking
matches in a thunder
storm.

Beneath the Robe

Black-white robed women, 
God's wives; you never see
their bodies beneath the cloth-

only eyes.  

Beautiful eyes
whose iris broken

pieces of prayer.

This Place like Cyanide

The unlocked body, my own
dark garment thrown-off curved like
hip bone but sharper. 

Every year the stones thrown 
farther, without aim hits any target
harder like a cruel game.

This shore, its hoary shelf,
lightless room without a bearing wall
calls and calls my name

in a moment like cyanide
infects the vein, disappears in smoke
and still I hear it calling

"Rachel, Rachel".

Human Gems

Always on chain those small lives
gold settings flashing light.  Hooked
together by careful hands.  

A magic show of emotion.

Dazzling.

Hematocrit

Stop making such a big deal about
the color of blood.  On the inside,
the hue is different, raging like 
an oil fire or spurned love.

What you can't see may change you.

These living dead creatures thirsting
for corpuscles.  No image in the mirror,
no sunbathing.  All drapes and coffin.

How pegged are you?

Stinky Little Dove

Wet, matted, leaking
clinging to ledge, your dirty feathers
reeking.  Then that soft

white, purr that cleans
you... my little stinky

dove.

And Shall You Find

Who would pathologically 
fight a father who killed
you first?

Phantom Pain

People who eat sugar don't suffer
hypoglycemia.  My next-door neighbor's son

falling

in a war of dust;  how can you understand
phantom pain if you've never lost
a limb?

Nothing Whatsoever Erases

We don't have the ability to close the door,
lock the keys.  When I say that I don't mean
making decisions, I mean protecting.

Do you hear the sea waves swinging, the sound
of darkness bumping into another darkness
then one of them leaving?  

Some fibers just won't snap, some hinges
don't stop creaking, some lines keep leading
to the same critical point.

I can still remember the heat of your mouth
against my neck.  The sound of cloth rubbing
against cloth, the later clacking of rock crashing

against rock.

Humility

Everyday I climb Mt. Everest
in my soul.  This senseless survival-pride,
misguided goals of conquest
will snuff its-self out.

Relativity offers perspective. 

A miniscule mosquito penetrates
a human hair of jungle with
a laser-thin sword, seconds

before the swat.

The Dead Twin

Alone tonight and restless, pacing
in and out the door, claws marching
across linoleum.  A vacuum of time
where motion keeps the mind from focusing
on what it's missing.  A child scribbling
furiously ineligible, frantic lines and circles.

In a house made red with waiting, walls
shrunk in and beating, a diseased heart
trapped within its desperate symptoms
longing for the long-straight line, the silenced
beeping.  I'm trained to save you;  what have
I saved you for?

You are the prize.  We both have lost
our twin.  

The Shroud

Overcast sky, a fuzzy moon's true edges

obliterated like milk poured in the eye.

If you're not guilty, why do you hide?

Even crossing from great distance,

dead and white finds its mark-

a star, its sleepless dreamer, 
a prayer, its sinner.

How comforting the low, dark valley
where what God made shimmers
in the trees like light moving through

small glass windows, like tiny holes
beneath a blanket.

Bird of Mourning

It could not have come
at a better time, 
tiny, silver trinkets of sound
sewn to wind-

the last bird singing.  

The listening mind 
goes numb, a body
frozen in a blizzard.  

You heard the same
song briefly, memorizing
its delicate rhythm 

as if we would never 
hear its voice again.

From the Safety of Sleep

There are places 
where no one should be

like night and its guardians
who step out of their dark, grey cloaks
searching for vulnerable company.

Or underwater swimming
into murky with no visibility
to a bottomless bed.  

Once you asked me 
the difference between life
and dreams.  

They are the same
to the strong, dangerous
to the weak.

As unfortunate as dying-
the closer we become
to losing what we know 

from what we'll never
be.  

I pray for sleep, thoughtless
sleep.  The kind of sleep
whose eyes remember 
moon and stars

without seeing.

Somethings Are Worth Creating

Creature, you are both in beauty
delightful and feared.

Your eyes aren't blank at all;
filled with times of wisdom
and curiosity.  More importantly

your sharp, marble teeth
stained with blood

remind us of mortality.

I understand, yet I free
the prey from your mouth,
making you victim,

stealing something visceral,
something that could preserve you;

at least in this world.

Disguised as hunter, I disobey
the law for pity. See how children

string together colorful beads
of sharp-edged glass on wires

with hands as white
and vulnerable as fish

their fingers bleeding?


.

Jagged Jaw

There again, a troublesome trap
buried under leaves, things we said 
hidden meanings.  

Which limb or structure snaps
when captured?

The neck or throat most vulnerable;
ironic, the most destructive.

Whose words will change the course,
the hunt, the heavy silence which brings
awareness to its peak?  A mandatory
waiting.  A type of kidnapping, 

a tight but necessary hold.

The good samaritan who finds us,
turns the key-   releasing.  Screaming
run rabbit, run.

A broken leg is not the soul.
A gaping wound may heal eventually.
Then with distance like a tail,

lie still and free and listening.

Retained Form

The moored waiting of evening,
the patience of an old soul and its afterlife,
the sound of its metered breathing.  

Many sacrifices, mistakes, reprieves;
the familiarity of losing.  The heart
is not dead when its tongue still speaking

sings or weeps.

See how the untied boat floats away
in rhythmic waves, never sinking.
On some foreign shore is found

by a fisherman.

Its purpose equally returned
to carrying its particular burden,
a well-worn saddle,

a spoon for soup, a hat
in a storm, a prayer

in the form of being.

The Tongue Tastes Two Flavors

Gentle, wild soul.  A wolf
or tree.  A childless woman.

A branch of poison berries,
purple and sweet or the kiss

of swarming bees. 

Jealousy of dangerous, 
dark things-

the sting of them.

Then Like Thieves

In the beginning, the earliest sign
without announcement or celebration,

we come here vestigial,

blindfolded, unformed winged
in celibate silence.

There are no white horses
waiting in the distance

just wild sounds

of darkness following
the first small steps

towards fire.

The flame transforms the blossom,
opening, ripening

bursting.  Then like thieves
Death's large birds collect

their seeds.

Traces

Not all are missed when
they disappear.  Like bodiless
shadows, dusty windows or
small, dead birds.  

Why do you think they
make us uncomfortable;
why do they haunt us?

I think it's because they
belong to us and somehow
we left them on a dark hill
or in a locked closet,

covered their faces
before they grew faces,
their skin like rubber
faintly emitting light. 

Once in awhile we open
their doors to look inside,
to remember what we were
before we gave them

a hiding place. 

Land Based

Seen from a distance in a doorway
like a fossilized dragonfly in amber,
a small thorn in the spine, the statue

of a silver magician I gave you
on the nightstand.

Remember I told you to be confident
despite the marks of your father,
his wounds in your skin.

You're going places.  For the rest
of us, this is just some place;
to you this is source.  Where all things
meet to rest or play or kill.

We must believe in transience
if we are to believe in destination, 
in escaping gravity.  Nature's fist

beats her children into submission
catches them in traps then releases
them injured.  On alternate paths

at times with collective vision,
we see faces of our own kind, recognize
the deformities and struggle 

to heal them.

Snow White

The moment has passed
when the word was consent.
What was taken in deadly silence
has been taken again.

This is not time or chance.  This
is something else altogether

like back-lighting against
a mythical creature or
a blind man dreaming

of his death.  Like
poison in the blood

or swirls and twisting
of snow on the shore
of the frozen lake

in perfect circles.

Arrested Light

Some light escapes, the rest
trapped beneath the surface
reserved for shadow-making-

holds the soul to its mask.

There are those who need
explanations but love believes
without understanding

like a parasite lives
with its host
without killing it.

Just as the moon clings
to its night so the heart

to its only window.

World of Contradictions

The coffee is still hot, the glass
melted.  Vibrations of evidence
everywhere.  Are you ever
going to tell me what we are?

I'm having problems
taking this apart.  Why
do these pieces look familiar

like a puzzle in the dark?

Why are our faces emitting
cries of emotional stress even
when we're sleeping?

If anyone needs me
I'll be walking the hill
where you last remembered

the position of each star,
a map where they died.
Time ticking on both sides

like a child shaking
a stone in a jar.

Black Beauty

Again, the good night,
the dark night, the quiet night
has practiced its thievery.

Dark matter, that black
liquid sky feeds all lovely things
then eats them; 

your deletion a hole
from the same space 
from which it grew, deeper. 

After all, we are the uncivilized
watcher of stars. Wildness
its purest form, crouched

in its shadows, sewn
to its side.

But this night, even
with its most heinous of scars,
I miss you.