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.