47/365

This verbal knot has woven into tangled legend,
words that only theoretically explain another
hypothetical kink, or potential disparate perspective.
Circles of logic twist us into vast distances.
If only the earth would shake us,
force sentences from our bodies,
like sickness seeping from our pores.
If only some feverish vision in the
back of shocked eyelids would reveal
the forked sadism of semantic twisted tongues.
What I say, and say again, you can not hear.
Your eyes are earth-damp eternity.
Despite the weary wearing of skin on bone–
and the crinkle, crease, of taut surfaces–
you see scars as maps of memory.
I see foreshadowed valleys
where roots will take hold to tear apart
your little temple bit by bit. Your body,
like the land, aches and groans in my ear–
head to chest to hear this beautiful tremble,
the sloughing of your cells to dust.
The rooks are flying to the rookery again,
creating a raucous sound with the fight of
beak and feather against the wind.
Crepuscular mountains are blue,
cut paper on a horizon of pink tinged sky.
Color bleeds to silence, washed out and tired.
Your breath is slow, deep. As darkness comes
I save your paltry phrases for the day I forget
how effortless it was to unhook your fingers from my spine.

46/365

You’ve been sweeping it under your feet for so long–
your mother’s vacant eyes, her bony lap.
your sister’s hunger, her ceaseless tears.
your father’s lack.
you are worn and shaking searching for relief–
your body tangled around a lover’s hips
as if she could rebirth you, unmake the past.
as if her room-less body creates a home.
ever you are left alone,
still reaping all the pain your mother sowed.
You keep praying for rain
through the window of your fingers to your face.

45/365

The city is burning again at sunset
I am standing on the water’s edge
looking into reflections–
the water mirrors blood.
There is, as ever,
too much space around.
The fog creeps across the sound
and I feel the approach of that last breath
and no hand to smooth wayward strands of gray
and no wrist from which to unhook
my clinging, bony, fingers.
The city might be glowing, if ever
I had romance in my bones.
instead I’ve a sightless urge to run
quivering relentless in my marrow.
The city might be aflame in my eyes
if I let you press against me on red mornings
if I let you lead me to red skies at night.
The city is burning again–
glass, concrete, and pane.

44/365

Just a blush of red on the tips of these leaves
and underneath the yellow glows
against a blue sky
passing clouds
limbs astir
from breeze.
I could lie here forever
die with this vision blazed in my eyes
knowing life was,
not only too painful to bear,
but truly an experience of aesthetic perfection.

43/365

light is glowing on the edge of his cheek–
it is enough to hold him now,
arched body to body in slumber,
to break in silence from
memory deep tensions–
all that we have left is beauty–
even that is barely kissing
the edges of our faces,
pushed to the last stronghold
by shadows held too long.
it is enough to count breath.
Exhaling–moments are not stolen,
they are everything, and everything passing.
I will wake up, not too suddenly, alone.
Inhaling–hurting to own, but knowing
to live I must let go.