A chair in the middle of a

Large room. I sit at the center and

Call to an echo. I, Disfigured of heart,

A tendon torn and masticated, become 

A cripple yet again. Exiting the womb with a

Wound, a baby’s barren ribs. She took both legs and

Broke them. Yet still I learned to walk, and still she snapped the bone at the ankle. 

Crawling then, I dug my own exit through the 

Family flesh, singed it closed with a rage full flame, and washed my hands of it with the midnight mourning. 

Alone in the middle of the room, swallowed by the sadness of a black hole. 

Phantom limb

i am 10 sitting on the carpeted floor 

fiddling a loose string while i 

calculated the burdened economy of childhood 

i am 14 years old in a soccer field 

hair like burnt grass, twilight a glimmer on the 

twisted goal post with wrists warm as blood

i am 15 in the kitchen with an

overturned bottle of pills spilled on the

counter, decision heavy as a cadaver 

i am 22 on the top floor of a

concrete institution, throat tight as i

peer over the railing’s edge

i am 23 in a movie theater 

shivering in an empty evening showing,

silent as asphalt on the drive home 

i am 30 speeding down a highway

steering nowhere while my insides careen;

gravel corners sharpened by a car crash

 i am 32 safe in my bed 

the memory of it all an ache in my body 

while i forget to sleep

Twice I watched the world crumble
Three times I have died
And now beneath the blushing
Of the sun, I bleed a new dawn


I could still be immortal

,

My mother has a
Hole in her heart. It
Is the size of a small
Rock. I think that
Life is more sad than
Happy. The seed of a
Fruit is also bitter. So maybe
The core of things is ungood.
But perhaps I am wrong, for
Inside the seed deeper still is
Life, inside is a map, inside is alive
And inside always searches for the
Means to grow, inside is a
Blueprint for building. Root, then stem then
Leaf then trunk then branch than fruit.
Life for death and death for life.
Like my mother, I too have a
hole in my heart. And like a seed I

Die before I 
Grow.

arrow

I wrestle with god as Jacob wrestled
And I shout with the pain of the unknown
I am but a new cripple bearing scars
And the savior only nods as he hangs from a cross

I see angels ascending the golden steps
And I sleep here on this rock and toss restless earth
I see heaven quake like a fist in the stars
And the world was wounded, sky contused as a storm

I see not who I grapple but I tangle the clamor
And the agony rests in my throat like a sleeping snake
I feel a wet sorrow rise from my gaze
And the eyes of Christ do not return it

There is a hole in my heart and gold in my heart
And the glimmer falls constant to the pit
I coil every thread through the damp of my flesh
And reform, repair what is breaking and broken

silva

i mark the entrance of the water
where the foliage sweeps the stream
deep hum, siren, and a thousand hovering breaths
keep this time with me, rouse the
growth of the green
no black eye dares the light, a
wooded fever glistens like fire
against the deep void
i pressed my thumb into the bark and
felt a spill
grazed my knuckles to the grain and
swarmed electric to the touch

resurrection avenue

the body floats
hollow and hallowed
in the brassy sun.
a sidewalk drifter, a
velveteen casket emptied
and wrung. where is death?
the body would not know.
the insides are plucked of light and they
move like strings. i can play my bones like
a lumbering chord, i sing the
blood that moves me. and looking as a
bungled blemish, i lower the bow and
pull to the ache. o' stumbled breath, o'
silence i singe, lay no flowers on my grave.
witness only the shaking of trees and the
kindness of leaves. and after the mountain's mirage,
i, injured of thomas' remorse, resurrect within a shipwreck,
calling on the prophet and the pain.