at a shoreline splintered by sunlight
a million flickering
fast so hard it thumbs the heart
tender as old leather

body baptized by sun, body
blue in the waves, body purple
like a twilight setting fleshed in rough skin

the light a sound like wind chimes
the light sensing as a gentle wind

unblinded in a cloudless glow
flashing against the soft cloth of day
compassionate as doves, radiance soft cooing

horizon humming, bowing against the
gradient seas with ships ablaze, bowed just
as a string stretched across fragrant woods
carving into surface as a cello, a deep and
hollowed beauty--luminous impression

hallow of the heart
hoping for kindness
and mercy

you are the moon sowing
beams into the soil, start
a little seed - sprout -
green and growing and
you are a soft ripple humming
just loud enough against the waves
chamomile skin and smoking bones

limbus

like a rope that guides the
lines of night and day, or the
pale stripe of horizon that
lifts the sky from sea is the
limbus of heaven and hell

i live between with one
foot in the fire and the
other in a pool of light
with dual tongue that tastes
of Hades' cinders and Elysium jewels

always dead in the heart but
maybe a diminutive glow in the ventricles
always narrow in the bloodstream but
maybe a tired sun clotting in the flesh

daughter of jarius,
float back to earth
be undead yet unwhole

kyrie eleison

i am peering into the hole
again, and
i am stirring my finger in the
tea-fragranced depths

there is a lake, a
reservoir laid out inside
the body terrain

blue demanding of darkness,
midnight indigo and the
color of gasping blood

the inside a cavern that echoes
and bruises the night, the
inside a wreath of songbirds

a gallery of knives, lift a
sail or two against the winds
watch the nighttime carry
stars in the zephyr

such a vacancy of soul, there
dwells a spirit but yet none--
both holy and deserted

i love yet do not know of its warmth
i feel yet am numb as a sainted corpse

shivering a fever in the forehead
excavation of a fathomless yield
the heart is empty even as it is full,
impossible tides beneath questionable moons

i am both a birthplace and a grave,
marked with dawn and decay, i am
perhaps in motion but in a
backwards blooming--shy bud
opening and closing and withering and
bursting all at once in doomed synchronicity
consumed by paradox, anomaly aching, a
wounded enigma perched in a day-old bouquet

laurel, i wear with beauty and tears
laurier, je porte avec la beauté et les larmes

You were digging holes into
the sky big enough to slip through
while I lay here in an excavated grave
When you fall up and into the air
does the blood still rush to your ears?
What is the impact when you cannot
dissolve into the ground?
Does your blood thin in the atmosphere?
Do your bones crush against the clouds?
When you fall upwards, do your knees
scrape against the sun?
The pale blue of an earthen halo
into which we fell
fighting the physics of
its reign

they don't understand living, the
lot of them, they don't understand
the wound of death. and their
pews are full but their hearts are
uninhabited places. they too are
distant from their own flesh, but
maybe not in way of wound. A strange
damage, peculiar impressions on the skin
that look like a crucifix

where does the fury flee when it
is no longer welcomed in the bones?
to far countrys or highlands, but
even there the hills are scorched and swollen

i am existing unearthed, like i hover
two feet behind the body, like
maybe a coffin follows vertically a
small distance behind the spine

i am feeling a bruise floating, as if
buoyed by breath, or perhaps
sunken and sinking the way of
anchors, shackling at the ankles

perhaps anguish is a journey self made,
perhaps grief is labyrinth to living,
both a forest into which i vanish
tangled, somehow torrid in their shade

Pus in the pupils, it is
here the soul leaves, like
sight is a wound that
goes unbearing, cannot
keep bearing--belligerent

Blood that pricks up in a
nauseous rage, blood that
spills unrested in the veins

Inside the body death is
deadness and the sound of
old ropes twisting, trinity
of blame, blistering cross

God as a widower, God as
crutch, God as dead man
inside the tomb of the chest

I do not want my mother's love or
the way she hangs her secrets 'round my neck
I do not want my mother's love or
her words that sink as stones in the gut
I do not want my mother's love or
the screaming that breaks my ears
I do not want my mother's love or
the scorching of her gaze on my flesh
I do not want my mother's love or
her awful grip on my child sized arms
I do not want my mother's love or
the unfair guilt she tries to drown me in
I do not want my mother's love or
the pain she caused that made me hurt myself

I do not want my mother
I do not need my mother

For when I wanted my mother
and when I needed my mother

She did not want me.

Blanketed the body, as
beneath a veil
Exhumed by smoke, the
ashes of ashes, the
hair weighed down with anchors at
the ends of them. Seated an
empty table at the chest, heavy in a
burdened solitude, kiss it in the night time
when the moon turns its back to you. Was
pockets with deep holes, patched at the
knees with a painful thread, kicking
at old dust until it assaults the eyes.
I have not died yet, but live also as
undead, once dead, and now undoing,
fluttering from grave to garden like a
doomed butterfly, weakening but still trying
to bloom

Collapsed in the lungs
--------Again
Was a fuck up, maybe once more
--------Failed

Gaze was a glaring gun

Felt a new hole in the
heart in the brain
practicing my aim but I only pile
words in the corners like a swept mess

And maybe there is a window in the room but
this too is fractured, my hands get splintered
in the sunsets, but I can kick at the glass,
leave like a billowing smoke, slithering
into the sky like a frightened snake
with a body wound

Brushed breaths blinking against
the starlight soft stormed the wide
strokes at midnight dark blue a
bird with wings like clouds sailed the
sea ship into the breast dented like
flesh at the sternum thick and beating
as alive as a city stammering into the dark
night flashing like a candle and the
walls are cantaloupe orange and the
house is a cage where the home tries to live
the body as soft pressed flowers in a book
seep the skin a book spine but dusty old still
fresh with a forest new thought as bright in
the brain as a sun flare photograph in staple
smiles a month in the park leased a stutter
click the bone new shoes shiny as tap dance
sipping the garden in a grass green cup
touching golden in the ribs smelt a loud
happening heard it grow larger larger larger
in the mountain unsung

Rigor mortis

The heart is the tallest in the
body, exceeds the bones and roams
beyond the pasture of the skin and

the throat is a pit with hot coals burning,
steams the tongue while talking and still
tastes familial fume

The hands are the eyes of the arms and
they are sometimes unseeing, sometimes
tensing with a premature demise or
bended at the knuckles like a crashing grave

Part and curtained, to pass through the
ruins of unliving, undoing like a bloomed bud
falling back into the husk of itself,

scabbing like the bare parcels of earth,
scorched as if discomforted by an all-
engulfing flame, the land is scarred and

defected with wounds upon wounds with
blood that even bleeds, with bruise that
continues to blemish in a cursed stirring

Rigor mortis and the eyes that lie behind the
eyes, rigor mortis and the veins that burrow
above and away from the skin, rigor mortis
and the mind that is entombed in a century of dying

Rigor mortis and existing
both alive and deceased

make it stop, the
endless tunnel i
travel within, i can
see the end and it
looks like a noose
hanging, i am forsaken
as i forsake and i cannot
be free, but still i am
terrified of this destiny

silent savior, stained with nail on
hallowed wood but
still as a stagnant pool
here I wait at Bethesda to bathe but am
nonetheless diseased, no stirring wave,
no soundless grace, just the sin of a
stone-hearted god, just the bitter tears
of thwarted beggars

I still write letters for the
words I cannot mumble, as if my mouth were
taped and my tongue cut with paper. A cadaver
in a car, caught myself hung with a
leather belt, seat back and hoarse and
holding a knife in the mind, tracing a
gash in the neck with a crooked finger and I
still tremble in the streetlight, swallowed the
shards of teeth shattered on an asphalt grave
but these affairs cloak the intellect like gauze for a
damaged brain, I am faulty wiring and a
house on fire, boiling wood of humid fever,
white like bloodless death. I still echo in an
ivory tree, face down and clotted and drowned
in a dream, I still fade as if inhaled by the
winds and I am only diminishing

Everyday is a
death of many deaths
Everyday I wake to a
dream of a dream of another life
Every life is a confrontation of value and
I wonder my worth against the granulated
pixels of reality

2 glasses of water, a
plastic bag beneath the seat, a
fork I use and then discard and
I am still alone in the eyes, a
dead-weighted hearse heart-
heavy as a tire and diseased as a
rusty car I am a fire in a trash can burning
garbage to ashes and then I am none just
smoke that smothers those I pillar against

Fissure by the breast, snap the
sternum and rented ribs, mausoleum in the
mouth I can only speak of unliving, like I
move in constant backwards motions, ripples
reversing inward until they condense to a
drop and vanish up in the air, and like this too
I am vanishing, dissolving into space like the
crumbs of a once lighted star, except there is
no explosion, no beauty, no rage of flame and
splendor, just a void into which I
recede and become nonexisting

a letter that will never be sent

i must have only been 6 when you
told me you'd strangle me, or
when you slammed the fridge so hard the
kitchen shook and we, silent at the table with
our tiny spoons, could only gaze at our
cold lunches, feeling numb in the body, staring
yours on the floor like a car-crashed hurricane

i must have only been 10 when you called me
nuisance, shouted the soul out the body
only 12 when you said i embarrassed you, pushed
my adolescent frame into a clique of
snickering girls and persuaded me how
stupid they thought me, how
inept and awkward my speech

i must have only been 14 when i wrote
"i deserve to die" 20 times on college ruled
paper, only 14 when i penned the note of my suicide
in a pink notebook covered with photos of kittens,
only 14 when you lamented my inconvenience, punished
my sick, named me terrorist and ruins, said
it was so hard to mother me--my human too much


i was only a
child who felt too large in her body


i was only a
child who felt too old for her age


was i not worthy of compassion?
did i not deserve your protection?
did i not have a right to your love?

i know some parts of you tried but
how much?

Home (i)

Home smelled of
rotten wood, tender but
decaying. And with
life perishing, we
grasped at the sticks
frail and failing

Home felt the
echo of hands reaching for
fragile places. And with a loud
crashing of voices, it
constructed a yoke
for the young


Home, the noose
and the knuckle


Home, the awful
putrid place

And,
Mother dishonest through her teeth

†axidermy

i am laid out on a table, they
are removing the guts
of me like a stretched pig, a
nail in each hoof on a
plank crucified

skinned along the bones, a
map stolen from the body, a
displaced geography of flesh

there is no stench, formaldehyde
painted and bathed, not
allowed to be dead or devout

there are no eyes, the
sockets scooped out, hollowed, replaced with
glass that is cold and non-sensing and

when they are done, i
am displayed like a trophy tabled
and dusty, dully reflecting the glances of
hunters and thieves, i

am a husk and a hole stuffed with
invasive hands, plugged with
foreign substance

i am not my own

iii. redeem

Hallelujah to the holy places, the
cosmos and country. Perch in the
sacred pews of the trees and hear the
glades preach a sermon. Birds bringing
baptism and the ocean a communion; partake of
the portions of living and cleave to sky and sea.

And so near to me was a grace loud and
hovering; struck as lightning to
pierce the blue of all dwellings -
above, below, and within.

So close I could feel it smile, hear it
stare the skin, taste the merry laughter of
its breath. And life appeared to me,
translucent as a wraith, whispering, wise
and whirring both in wind and wave. It
implored me to inhabit every space, swallow
the stretches of a groaning expanse, then
closed its eyes with mine and
prayed for a birth and a bloom.

And I knew that what I knew
was good

And I saw that what I saw
was true

And I felt that what I felt
was new

ii. restore

I sit alone on a shore amongst the
solitude of jagged stones, they
rise like a crown to the earth,
superb in the sunset.

The sun is a fury, shakes its
face at a worn, worried world. And
maybe the light is a kind of bleeding
that stains every place it flows.

Sunlight traces its thumb on the
faces of the willing, marking them
awake and unbroken, tinting the
cheeks with an untold brightness.

And here I feel alive, like an
open vein to the sea, lungs
awash with the scent of brine, skin
shivering with a salted zeal.

And here I am painted, thick and
colored in a setting fire.
Maybe all there is, is mercy in
the midst of this.

i. revive

Float in a tomb to the
watery grave, a
second death within the waves

Wring the wound of the chest,
damp and heavy with the
weight of a whimpering child

Velveteen bruised, unreal as a
cotton rabbit, once hugged and then
discarded in a fever blaze

But resurrect the love you had
once been given, stitch the
remnants deep in the heart's fabric
and fasten the fingers in its warmth

Perhaps this is the second coming, a
miracle for the dead to
rise again and gasp anew

Lower gently the body into the
depths and watch the water
cradle the wrists and calm the arms

As it rises and goes, sense the
scars loosen from the skin, rinsed
away as soil to a newness within

fraught within the ripples of an
unlit room, fever-searching for a
heartbeat beneath the waves, reach
into the empty and pull up
any root you can find just to
know it's real

color the blank spaces with the
remnants of your light, it is
small but enough to break the
thickness of the night

and i will resurrect with the
daughters of dawn, who endure
the starless evening, who
brave the injured breaking

Like a stammering, a
stuttering of the heart, I
am aching for a tenderness, a
warm embrace, hand beneath the
chin that lifts so gently and softly
And i wonder where this love has
been, slips through the fingers of a
bruised palm. Family a phantom limb,
togetherness a flitting sparrow, and
all of these on a tree tall and
bending to the sky

We all stare in the same direction, we are
all blind to the ground, we all have
scars around the neck, we have
all hugged a gun

So sing into the folds of night until it
tears into the sun, until the dawn stirs and
cracks the cold mirror of the dark

Maybe we can find our way home.

1:15am, a wish & a vision & a prayer

I wish I would get hit in the head with a
baseball bat, lie in my own pool of blood and
push my fingers into the crater wound - feel
all the gore like brains and mashed up flesh -
But somehow I'm strangely lucid and
staring at the red staining my fingertips.
I sit up and emerge from the cavern of the
body, hollow as a cave and cracked as an
empty shell. I float upwards and above and
fall, land on my feet with a thud and kick the
dust and stones. And suddenly, the me on the
ground is only bones and the ribs an arch and
hearse. And I see the sockets of my skull
and they are bursting with weeds of all colors,
small and ugly but resilient against the decay.
I begin to walk and the dirt crunches under my
shoes. I am in a barren land, pale dusted path
with quilted patches of faded grass, like the
old earth coughed and the best it could do
was a field half alive with no bloom. But the
soil sounds full and stretched as skin and I still
hear it breathe if only in the saddest sighs. I
also see trees that are teary and worn, lifting
up the most tired of hands to the light that
burns them, basking the midday until parched
and broken in the wasted places.

Gentle god, let me
die and live in between, a
ghost in the land set to wander
for no one's looking for me

in the winded flesh
the feckless drink
the marrow of my bones
as if my wasted gaunt were a
feast for the starving, as
if my scarring skin were a
stable to rest


i am not a martyr for the merciless

dear mom,

i count the candles on my cake and
count the same number of heartbreaks
you made. they flicker inside the chest like
birthday flames but bear no sweetness beneath

in august i will turn 26, and this is the year
i am still unsure but more certain of this:


most of me doesn't
love you anymore

A Prayer to St. Dymphna

To St. Dymphna, patron saint of
suicide:

Subdue the splintered sorrows in
the shatters of the mind

Smite the slaughter of the soul so
to death will death die

Settle the ocean of sad that
swims the depths of this flesh

Soothe the tremors of the body and
the earthquakes in the bones

Sing the skin to heal the
unfading of the 15 year bruise

Stitch the swelling sore with
strings of blazing light

Chain the devil at the feet and
prick his neck with a sword

Chant the gentle cure and
patch the heart with gold

Dear St. Dymphna,
make me well.

Life lessons

1. The world is so big and I am so small. I know so little.

2. When two people speak, they converse with their entire universes behind them. We can only speak from, see from, hear from our own. Empathy and imagination are bridges we build with the resources we have.

3. These universes are always in motion and our own are in flux. All things are variables and all things engage with each other in infinite ways. These variables are acted upon by other variables who will then act upon as they are acted upon.

4. All variables of existence (histories, experiences, beliefs, values, moods, personalities, interactions, and more) are entangled with each other. To only regard one as the sole determinate of existence is a kind of myopia as it is a kind of choice.

5. A relationship is two people agreeing to exchange their terms and language for the universe. With negotiation and trust. Yet none can ever truly remove themselves from their separate and infinite contexts.

6. All we have is trust. It cannot be demanded or forced. It shouldn't be but is often exploited.

7. We are all aware of the violence we commit. We either justify, excuse, deny, or don't bother with it. And all of these for different reasons.

8. Everything happens at once. Everything exists simultaneously.

9. Everyone chooses and champions their own metrics. We all measure reality differently and at various resolutions.

10. We can either judge or understand. One or the other in our moments. The choice we make is a product of our circumstances.

11. Choice may not even exist given the space between the thought and the synaptic reactions that lead to the physical, emotional, and psychological reactions. Maybe choice is the poetry of the universe.

12. Seek balance in all things.

13. We are all alike and different.

14. We only know what we know. We don't know what we don't know. We can only bring what we have to the table.

15. Change is constant.

16. We all have our own bullshit.

17. We will never not make mistakes, misjudgments, or turn back on our own decisions and choices.

18. "Truth" is a language and a vision. It is not universal or transcendent.

19. Love and grace and beauty and compassion are the only transcendent realities. We all grasp it at different times but will never own it. Be wary of those who claim to.

20. These things you are blessed and cursed to learn, forget, and relearn forever and ever unto all eternity in every life and iteration.

The Bruise and The Baptism

I had a vision of rinsing off a bruise, as
if it was paint dried on the skin, but it is
not a surface stain and it goes deep into the bones.
So everyday, I must wash myself, dip the body in the
waves, coax the wounded colors out from deep
within, wring the purple from the flesh, let the
painful hues sink through the ripples of the
water in which I bathe. And though the skin is
ripe with the terror of these imprints, and
though I am afflicted with these sores, I will
baptize the blasphemy of this trauma and
daily make myself new.

Become,

Cling to heaven's gates, climb
faster, quicker until the
sun surges in streams and
consumes this woven tomb

Form steadfast in the bosom of dusk
I can taste this twilight as a
smolder on the tongue, feel it
pour an infinite sky down the throat

Hope knocks to rattle the
graveyard within the chest,
buries them to their own and
fills the space with new seeds

Unfold the self as paper
Creased but not torn
Untie the soul from sorrow
Bruised but not bound

Half of living is pain and the
other a glory and flame
Half of loving is an ache and the
other a beauty to rewake

Change the metaphor of seeing so you
breathe out of the eyes
Like waves to bathe the body, let
light flood into the lungs, leak the
daytime to the blood bright dawn

God sits at the wayward places
-carves a home out of the dirt
And in my heart I saw the
luminous mountain, growing ever
taller 'gainst the background of the sun

A plea to the saints of the universe

To all the holy places and saints,
hear this my plea:

Lift me as a prayer to the stars and
promise the constellations will carry me

Pluck the petals from my heart and
scatter it to the skies so I may
sit beneath this blooming and
mourn with beauty to heal

Soothe the sword that impales the chest,
breathe to me a voice that I may
shout this golden hope

Level my eyes to the horizon to
see my new birth and sing to me
sprawled among the stars

Scoop the moonless gloom out the ribs
- my flesh not a meal for the starving
I am bent like origami full of creases
but sweep the stains out the blood

Baptize the bruise in the
galaxy's ocean, bestow me brave
like an anchor to the bones

Graze the heavenly flames with tender eyes,
ease the weeping wrists and
scrape my skin of rust

If I were to bury the sun
beneath the soil, will you still
lead me to the celestial city and
its superluminal bright?

Embrace me, stream of stars

Terraform

Hands in the soil of the heart
Rake, grow, heal the earth until it
Resembles home

I am an exile of a thousand words
I am a prisoner of these wounds
I am a fugitive bound to flee
Yet still I fall into this fracture

I still feel the pain of being unloved
I still taste the thorns in my throat
I still hear my mother cast curses
I still glimpse her leave the room

I am still 10 years old in the soul,
bent over a sink with a knife
I am still counting pills in the cabinets,
walking alone on a road at midnight and
writing my last goodbye

I am 15 and trying to overdose on the couch
I am 15 and too young to know how to die
I am 17 with friends who cannot hear me
I am 17 and dream to not survive
I am 22 and planning to drive off a cliff
I am 22 and plead with myself to live

I am alone in a multitude of places and
I am still broken for home

Gaze the body lower its
wreckage like a ship lost at sea
Feel the heart, gaunt as
a graveyard of bones
Sting the teardrops trailing
down the face like dying stars
Spirit bruising and swelling by the ribs

My dear depressed darling,
My dear sad child,
Let your anger save you
Let your rage redeem

Even if I am alone, I will
bring myself back from the brink
I will believe that
broken doesn't have to break

And in the shadow of the
splintering sun, I will
nurse the light, injury gleaming

Death
to whom I shall
succumb or struggle
I am a child, I am a
ghost that visits my own funeral

Run run run the gun
Sleep until the sad is no more
Watch the world without as
much as a word of comfort
I am still alone but maybe
I can still stumble to the sun

Frantic grasping at the skin
try to keep the tears closed, try
to keep the limbs attached
but still I am filled with holes
still I wade into these waves and
sink with a wound I cannot heal

Crusade against the sin of
your mother - alone and
always alone - sometimes it
feels like life is the
chronic disease and I am
cursed to cope with this
terminal illness

Hollow in the eyes and
hunger without treatment
Loose skin worn like
clothes ill-fitting, was
never a child who could
carry the weight of her family
Hell helpless and stained

su·per·lu·mi·nal
[soo-per-loo-muh-nl]

Origin
1950s: from super- ‘above’ + Latin lumen, lumin- ‘a light’ + -al.

adjective Astronomy.

appearing to travel faster than the speed of light

What is the meaning of forever
when the pathways of our lives
no longer intersect
How we feel these fingerprints
upon the heart and how they
stain the mind in colors - it still
moves me

Count the stars of our memories
against the endless expanse and
weep the widening of the
break between us

Do we grieve for time past or
for time lost within the breach?

Bloom upon the bruise, hurting
for an answer, thundering inside but
still the rain makes all things grow

But I still can't let go


(why did i say goodbye?)

Everything happens in reverse
Waterfall back into the eyes and
the blood leaking inward to the veins
The bones unbreak, the teeth unshatter, the
heart continues to enlarge
And as I step forward, a great resurrection of
the mind occurs and I am now undying,
strengthening at every step

Is this what healing feels like?

Rise from the sheets of
your bed, undying even as you
feel the skin sift like sand from the bones

Hold your arms up against your face to
guard against the wind and
grow larger
Hear the brightness of your heart tower as
firm oaks against the veil of night
Kiss the stars, swim amongst the galaxies like
endless lakes of dreaming and
baptize the body in the sun

(you are alive)

Keep moving or
feel the limbs rot
Better a little light than
none. You are
normal and healthy and
you have brave in your bones
Free yourself
And fight.

Run the sorrow past
Flee the wounds of the body
Escape the heaviness of night
Fight the emptiness that threatens
Grasp the living
Immerse the light
Gaze the daybreak and swallow it whole
Bandage the bruise, unparalyze, go

Overcome
Overpower
Overwhelm

and don't ever stop

(everything seems so small)

Me, alone
exposing my wounds to an
audience, healing myself like a
lonely magic trick.
Everyone claps, leaves and
I am left bleeding.
Will none see the scars? Feel
the crater of the cuts or
ridges and dents in the skin?
Canvas of colors, my flesh a
chameleon, blue with the bruise,
red like rage, multi-hued as
foliage, rotting leaves that are
forgotten as soil--to be stepped on,
swept up, and gone

I dreamt a dream and
you were in it

We were fighting, I
yelled, you cried
but they were tears for you
because you didn't
understand my pain.

I dreamt a dream and
you were in it

We were side by side on a bus
traveling to nowhere
your head on my shoulder
and the world was quiet and
we were whole.

I dreamt a dream and
you were in it

It was your wedding and
the only one I could talk to
was you.

Friend, I still dream of you.

Wake up at 6am
Everything hurts.
I have a stomach ache and
I am listening to "Fifty-Four" by Seahaven.

The mind is already bruised and
the heart a cyclone.

The world is blue and
I am blue and we are
all bent out of shape, we are
all haunted. And my mother,
and my mother's mother are
ghosts that live inside themselves.
And my father, and my father's
father are wounds upon their wounds.
And I, impaled on this misery, peer
out the window of a house on a cliff and
desire the abyss.

Perch the heart on the
fingertips like a tiny bird and
let it break the air and move.
Even as the twilight falls, even
as the sun sets, it will soar.

And maybe I am not so swollen anymore,
maybe I am not so lost anymore.

But I am still looking for home.

The Medic

I am doctor I
am nurse
I am ambulance and
stretcher
I am gunshot and gutted and
I must bandage my own

I have felt every swollen eye, rupture,
ridge, and tear, still I
float for the light like a moth
I can rise from the dust, reach
into my rot and
limp to a sunrise

i
still
can

To be born with a
bruise on the heart
--tender but breakable on
every edge--
I swear I was born with a
noose 'round the neck, rope
fitted for a 10-year-old
--it only grows tighter with age.

I wonder how much time I have
here before I die; will I
go out by car crash, cancer
--will I jump off a cliff

But the eyes can only gaze what the
arms and legs cannot do

Feel this sadness so sleepy, weighs
like a tombstone on the chest.
How can one breathe when the
air swims like water

Will I be scared, will I be proud,
will I be unfeeling when I
fall off the edge? Will I
sink quickly enough to escape the
reach of this empty?

5/27/18

Sit the sidewalk empty roadside
naked as the bones without flesh, a
story disembodied as if the
words of my body were
pilfered out my throat
made to float as cigarette smoke in
stagnant air

Curse the prayers made to hurt
damn the faithless faithful, grace as
thin as a page of scripture. I am
not a graveyard for the weary, I
am not a soulless home

5-27-18

I am the cripple of the
severed seas, an ocean
split between the polar ends of sad and
fervent, feast on stale bread and watch with
tired eyes the stars that wear its vision thin,
flicker then fade like dying

Empty empty empty
like the inside of a coffin never slept in, only
dreamt of death but still could
move these limbs

Felt like lead, like anchors low and heavy, like
weights on the foot sinking deeper to drown

Anguish worn like a bandage 'round the head, I
know the color of the broken and they are
blue but golden in the light, laying
still as the ripples wash like waves against the skin

Sewn into the edges of the bones are songs that
cling like fabric, slow moving but
sweet and floating. Mismatched patches hemmed at the
broken spaces, now glimmering, leak
stardust in the streams

Blink once and miss the whales that kiss the sky,
blink twice and miss the burning of the sun that
enlarges and prevails

Lean into the flowers and guide them

Cling to her skirts, a
child, a small thing, frail
fearful, not yet alone

But burdened mother be,
casts the kid against the stones
and she
falls and breaks her teeth

Grasp tight her hand, a
palm, tiny fingers, scared
shaken, not yet collapsed

But haggard mother be,
tosses the child to the wind
and she
snapped her wrists and bled the veins

Silver in the artery, slice into the
injured sky and it weeps like flesh that bleeds

Shipwrecked in the harbor, sink into
unsafe wood and
rupture like a vessel in the
body and the sea

My mother, with
poison tongue and foul word
curses me

My mother, with
stretched scars and bitter blood
loathes me

My mother, with
empty pockets and hushed name
resents me

My mother, with
tearful eyes and a hearse in the heart
disowns me

My mother, with
flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood
- a reflection of me

loves me, hates me
feeds me, afflicts me

My mother.

My mother came at 2am
descended as a ghost
and I lay bare as a stillbirth
My mother's voice is war sirens and I
hide beneath the blankets from the raid

2/27/18

Mother pays for
her sins in silences that
hug the throat like a noose

Eyes downcast and hands
wrung like twisted necks, they
droop into the wilted waist

Gunshot to the hip, I
feel it too as if I were
still in the womb

Wounded with the wounder's whip and
bruising while the bruiser bruised
she, blue on the outside and I
contused within

I'm begging you to leave but
stay here, I
hate you I love you I hate
You you
you