love poem #1

Cold as a corpse but
fertile as soil
fresh with bud,
leaves cut yet blooming
as i walk my legs to
this ledge

Trellis of thorns
'round the wounded organ
faltering fawn in the
burning pinewood
still
shoulder to shoulder in
the convulsing sea

Candles in the pit of the throat
atomic number 79
moon gravel grinding
tender palms with untorn rose

Undressed in the stars, us
planetary saints among the
astral rapids --
Your touch the verdant valley

Herald the cadence

- I arrive with holes in my feet


As fog I rise to meet the morning
thick and clinging, in my throat the
delicate dew, in my ribs the roaring ripened
bark. I twist, petrichor wide as a ship,
I crumple, crush against the winds of north.
My mouth, the sepulcher, and I within wrapped
with linens taut against limbs. A non-messiah,
crucified child, baptism of the
bruising, brought into a chapel where words
and glances chafed me, church of knives,
eroding cathedral. A youth laid in soil with a
velvet crown, a halo of birds bare-breasted
and rare, place them here, a bouquet of
swords and opium poppies, rest them here, in
the cave of my bosom, and let ours be doused
with the rays of sun. Halcyon, hyacinth dawn,
new cloud crowing an ancient gloat, let my lips
glow with gamelan bells, tremolo wound.

the vulture's vision

i am not privy to the vulture
and like its own predatory gaze
i am vassal to the mystery of who
lurks beneath its wings
the tall, the gaunt, or the pious--
who hides the carnivorous mandible,
who conceals the strong talon?

meanwhile i, while perched upon a stone
have thrust between my neck a fatal blow
harpooned by thought and a septic soul

impaled upon the smallest thorn,
still festering the prick like a rotten vein

pulp

the heart is a perishing organ
blood papering within the veins like
ripples of pulp i am the curdled stain
ferments in cups of tin and silver, three
rings at the bottom reddening deep like
coagulated gore. fix me a clotted score

bird of prey

the rage sings, raises ear
to sea, signs a nagging era as a
siren snare. age then earn, the
vulture gags, rises to rinse the
gassed rag. the bones rain anger,
snag the gin that sears itself with
sage burning. Rang, keep the
resin near but resign to it unfaithful
ring which reigns within the plotted range
erasing then easing regained sin

funeral pyre

In my room there are earrings unworn, they
are shaped like birds, blue and
unassuming of the skyless plain they
go about unsinging

There are two letters in a pile that
I no longer reach for, more
often than not they are an unopen case,
words i have yet to resurrect

Instead, let them be smothered by the dust of
uncleansing - somehow, engulfed in a fire's
grave. I have burned once and will again and
I will leave the wrath for inertia to break

In this friendship is a funeral pyre and
here I will lay it be.

home is the fiction of an orphan

how to hold a body inept of motion
she of Cyrene carries not a cross but
a corpse
crumbs of a crucifix
covering of rust

a fawn in freshly mowed grass
a wound on an infant

Luke 5:18-25 [Revised]

18 And, behold, brought in a bed, a girl taken with a palsy: and they sought means to bring her in, and to lay her before him.

19 And when they could not find by what way they might bring her in because of the multitude, they went upon the housetop, and let her down through the tiling with her bed into the midst before Jesus.

20 And when he saw their faith, he said, thy sins are forgiven thee.

21 And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, Who is this which speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?

22 But when Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answering said unto them, What reason ye in your hearts?

23 Whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Rise up and walk?

24 But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power upon earth to forgive sins, (he said unto the sick of the palsy,) I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy couch, and go into thine house.

25 But she did not and could not rise, for she was still ill stricken, and Jesus turned himself and left the dwelling.

dream 2

I was walking up a hill at golden hour, and at the top was a white tree blooming wide against a blue and pink sky. it was such a beautiful image that I thought to capture it on camera, so I ran home to my house, and the inside was slightly altered that it was in reality, but the details of it I cannot quite recall. I couldn't find my phone there either until I realized it was in my back pocket the whole time, so I went back out dressed in pajamas and the blue crocs I wear while walking the neighborhood. I wanted to run to the site so that I wouldn't lose the image to the approaching twilight, but when I tried I could only move in slow sprints, as if my legs were weighed down or suddenly foreign to the physics of this earth. But I kept on, extending leg after leg like I was walking through the thickness of water. And I gazed at the hill from afar and the tree was still there but the sky was orange, and I thought to myself that it would still make a beautiful picture, so I pushed onward to the top. But strangely, once I made it onto the hill, the scene had transformed so dramatically that even my dream consciousness was confused and bewildered. I was now standing before some kind of house that was burning, but it wasn't a ravenous flame. There were sparks and smoke and a general glow of fire but no flames. There was a fireworks in the distance that I thought may have ignited the present space, but other than the light of embers the sky was dark and purpled and grey. After a few minutes of gazing and trying to angle out different photographs, I felt something land on my shoulder. I looked at it was a crow. I took out my phone to take a self portrait, but once I turned the camera towards myself and the creature I realized that it was actually a vulture. Right then it tried to pierce my neck with its beak to kill me so that I could devour me, but I held its beak in my hands as it struggled to break me or my grip. Once again it attempted to stab me and once again I restrained it, but this time I took its neck in my hands and started to wring its neck. I threw the vulture on the ground and was about to stomp its head and body but I couldn't, feeling devastated at this act of cruelty I was about to commit. I felt it deeply and innately, a twisting of my insides and my conscience, yet I didn't understand the contradiction of my feelings, trading the vulture's death for my survival. And at that pained, conflicted moment, I woke...


- January 22, 2019

dream 1

I had a dream I was eating butterflies, must have been 2 or 3 of them already. I chewed the legs and the wings and had no thought until the last one, which I suddenly realized that I was eating butterflies. And a pang of shock overcame me, and I was horrified that I had even put such a beautiful thing in my mouth to devour so morbidly, crushing the legs and body into a thick, black and sticky paste between my teeth. I tried to spit it out but its texture was like molasses, sticking to my gums and the roof of my mouth, early glued to my molars that I had to use my tongue to pry it out. I continued to spit and retch to get the entrails out of me, but nonetheless some residue, like a swath of black ink, covered my tongue and a few morsels of its body lay wedged between the gaps of my teeth.


- January 22, 2019

Le Scaphandre et le Papillon

Bauby in bed, one
eye sewn shut like a doll except
no buttons, no hugged scars
A stroke

Mother Mary for my knees
for my hands, for my chest
A lover to breathe for the
tube in my neck

Sunken suit in a dense sea
pulling further down, abyss
Of the mind then the heart
--paralyzed in an automobile

So far from the living,
removed like a lung
The sky is always just
out of reach