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.

, union,

holding your hand is a
practice of symphony
i form my fingers around
your hollow spaces
point to a measure and
begin the note

still a symphony is a
practice of waiting
each interval and chord
i halt, anticipate, count and feel
my way around the score

what more, observe the timbre
mind the tone and paint musically a color
as if we touch ripple to ripple
climax and resolve

wait for me while i rest
both suspended in a scale until
we fall back into ourselves

loving you is a song
rehearse, repeat, prepare, pursue

and i've lost my heart to you

,

i have settled in a
beyond sunset, soon is
now and i
can see the cloud waking where
the light rides upon it
dust shaking in the sunray dusk
i, unfettered by the motion

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.