Shine

Long tall sky rise
Fresh and green
Fine hairs tickle the air
She laughs, crying

Dew falls
Snail rain
Lips, tongue
Slippery

Warm bubbles
Smell smeared soft skin
Deep breaths leave me
Lightly

I bury my face
In your pillow of heat
Drinking memories of my own
Birth

Last rites

He had forgotten his fearlessness of death
Her tears and the beauty stealing his breath
Choked his soul with such sweet grief
He mourned the mortality of time, the thief
Who pulled the petals of love freely
Discarding them so carelessly…

3 minutes

She smells of urine, hot tea, maple syrup
Cool skin slick
Two handfuls of the fat of her thighs
Inflame shivering skin
Force guttural groans from her
Gutter groans
Skin smacks like wet body kisses
Drug-eyes stung with sweat
Breathless lungs ache
Heart pounds, bed frame breaks
Head board dents the wall

Stupor

Hanging off a corner of moon
Spilling bottle, tears
I cursed her
For being asleep and naked
Her beautiful legs spread just enough
To give me cramps

Dreaming drunk, kissing air
Remembering the pounding, ripples of skin
I drooled over last night
Wanting to tie her in a knot around me
Put her in a headlock and through grinding teeth
Threaten that I loved her to death
Before collapsing, spent

She just laughed, washed me away, and stood in the mirror
Taunting me to find a way to break her
But I was still catching my breath
On the verge of a heart attack
And would have fallen off the bed
Had I not passed out

Immature

When a child, I sat in sunshine
In summer, blowing afros off dandelions
Leaning back to warm blue sky
Tracing love in wisps of cloud
Listening to leaves whisper softly
An elbow in preening grass
Smiling at flickering butterflies…

Inhaled knowing someday you in my arms
Would feel just like this

And it did
Venetian night, fireworks in our eyes
Hugging you from behind
Feeling so good, I loved you all over again
A dream
Believing very quietly, you
My wife

Looking at me you masturbated
Rushing to come when you could wait no more
Because I had always wanted you
I let you

Holding back painfully, I gave myself
Both of us in jeopardy
Knowing the enormity of my weight
How that might bear upon you
But you begged me with words of love
Speaking its power
Secretly knowing you did not fully understand your words
I resisted and listened and gave in
Agreeing when I could bear no more waiting
The profundity of which you missed

Happy thoughts
You achieved knowing little about what you asked for
Insisting otherwise, I showed you, discovering so much
You had no context for

You could not listen, ears trained to
Tune to certain frequencies
And I could no longer speak
In that frequency I determined
Long ago was of no use to me

So you never loved my heartbeat, or the rise and fall of my chest
Paid attention to how eye saw you
Knew anything of the words
Mouth strained for you
Never knew how exciting it could be to swim naked in my spirituality
No one told you such a thing was possible
So you looked straight through a brand new world
Seeing nothing right in front of you
How can I give you what you cannot receive?

I often weep angrily
For as much as I want to give to you
You are innocent of its meaning
Cannot miss it
Cannot care
Leaving me
Nowhere

Laughing angrily at the stupidity of your beauty

There was a little fire beneath the moon
And I reached down to play in her hair angrily
Pushing down to break everything

(Cutting my lips on your teeth
And yours on mine)

Crying like a stone
Rocks in the gut of this ache
Ya, ya, ya on fire
Screaming grunting sun

(In your land, I am not seen)

God should have thrown boulders to break my chest open
With a terrible thud
Chucking my heart across the street
Against the curb
A flower so hard of color
And oblivious to everything
Happily.

Legacy

Whatcha gonna be when you grow up, baby?
I’m gonna climb the sky and look down on you.
Whatcha gonna do when you get there, baby?
Gonna cry all night!

I stomp the earth and can’t stand where your footsteps been
Don’t want you next to me
Don’t want your breath on me
I stomp the earth and can’t stand where your footsteps been
Don’t even talk to me
Don’t want your lies on me

Feet just restless like the day when I broke the womb
Arms just scream like a ripple between clock and room
Eyes just begging backwards like the condemned ‘fore his doom
Heart just scraping for the lock to escape this tomb

Whatcha gonna do when you grow up, baby?
Gonna forget you
If it’s all I do
Whatcha wanna go and do that for, baby?
Cuz the world that you left me
Is because of you

Lunatic

Jump the sky, full moon, and my chest is torn
Broken apart like a dog with his jawbone struck
Digging the air for the deep dark water of night
I’m in the shadow of my gleaming claws tonight

Take a deep breath, nose flaring but my mouth is shut
Fire in my belly, and the bone of my teeth is hot
Steel rod in my neck and the cords are tight
I’m in the shadow of my gleaming claws tonight

Eyes ripped back with the tears of an angry soul
Choking the air with the breath of a hateful cold
I smell the terror of the ghost I’ll set free this night
I’m in the shadow of my gleaming claws tonight

Dead is the song of the dream of the flashing lights
Self crucified for a deed that has set to right
Violence invisible and the devil’s white
I’m in the shadow of my gleaming claws tonight

Entitled

Water stirs with God blue winter
Bones hurt cut with cold
White sky

Freeze dried bitter snowflakes fall
Ghostly petals, all ash settles
Tastes like metal tears I cry

All beneath it dark and thin
She is laughter, I’m her sin
Spring’s undressed and late again
Kisses keep her home in bed

Come instead with me, I said
Sweeter than tomorrow’s dead
And in the talk tomorrow's fire was sacrificed
For love, a lie

And I for love gave nothing more than words
She drank and wanted more
Though sweet they never satisfy
And she would risk her very life to feed the need
She’d been deceived to see as real
And feel so strong about it that she’d give up everything
For me
Though she meant nothing at all to me
Which she found out shortly

She lost herself
And losing me
Had caught my cold
And become me

All about me she becomes
The mud that fills the cracks of earth
The seed that swells the womb to birth
The word that gives a woman worth

New becomes familiar
Resented spent, peculiar
Returned as rented though they were
Desired greatly earlier

In ornate cages life forgotten withers
Purchased for display
From the rising sun I run
Look backwards at the coming day

Forever on the brink of hope
Addicted to its butterflies
But living life while in reverse
Is seeking truth while telling lies

What does this mean
I cannot own what I am given, dare not waste
God deserves all my attention
Lord of all my senses taste

Taken

The snowflakes that fell on her lips didn’t melt
Until my mouth almost covered hers

I thought she inhaled the frost of winter
And one of my tears through the space between our faces
As she slipped away somewhere
From where I could not retrieve her

And the snow fell
And the cars drove past us
And people stood around in their dark coats looking
At my helplessness

The sun, already hiding behind the cold gray sky
Snuck away quietly
Taking time
And echoes

Leaving only me

Confucia

Pillows upon pillows of clouds
Washed of color and hung heavy upon no
Thing, this absence of being
Whose lost life reeks
Of an off-putting, unhygienic religious
Mindlessness

My soul screams for the unbearable violence of pure light
To burn white air through and to
Ashen hearts
Mine especially

Utterly alone before turned eyes
Devastated by the clarity of everything else
Nothing between me
And every sin lying upon me
Smothering

Voyeur

I heard doves on your balcony
And caught a glimpse of skin
From the café across the street
The angle of the sun on you
Rushing to meet my eyes

The aroma of fresh bread
Aroused my senses
Like rose
And morning tea
On the last day of Spring

Sipping from my cup
I imagined you had disappeared to a warm bath
Wet skin silky smooth…
And almost closed my eyes

Glancing at my wristwatch, I smiled
Knowing your bed was still unmade
And with the window wide open

Your white curtains
Dreamed carelessly
Flirting with the air
I breathed

Fallen angel

She fell
Like a knife through a red curtain
Through my soul

And though I screamed
I didn’t bleed

Just hung there
Split in two
Waiting for a breeze to tell me
Who I am

And she sunk below me
In the thick dark pools of my ignorance
At the very last
Reaching for me

But I was slowed by anger
And missed the chance
To save her
From her
Natural consequences

And when she disappeared
My eyes grew accustomed to the dark
And my ears grew accustomed to the silence
And gradually
I discovered varying shades of life
My passion had blinded me to

Peace gave a new color to everything
And I realized that where there is color
There is light

And the light came through the tear in my soul
Caused by her violent cruelty

A horrible pain
I now consider
Thoughtfully…

My beautiful prey

The herd moves
A thousand options the same color
I yawn, full of the remembrance of meat
In my face the breeze brings nothing new

Then a sigh and a moan heard for hundreds of miles
Grabs the testicular root of my heart
And a flash of daydream explodes brilliantly in my head

Adolescent breasts, naïve in the cool air
Rise from an arched back
While a violent erection salivates in the wind-bent rushes
Each breath heated with murderous thoughts

She sees me in the tall grass
But she is unafraid
A dangerous flash of perfect teeth
Pulling me in by the scruff of my neck

Intoxicated, I dream
Clutching her hips
Crying into the small of her back
Imagining the honey dripping from between her thighs
My Agua de Vida

Eyelashes coy
Nostrils flared
Tender affections spun from her fingertips
Her hot wet tongue burns my nipples

I am smoke from an extinguished flame
A blue whisper
Purring over her beautiful soft flesh

Her scent provokes the beast within me
My raspy tongue longs to tear the innocence away from her bone
Risking death by tasting forbidden fruit
Addicted to my own hunger for her

I am a monster enslaved by her eyes
Drunk with the color of her passion
Ravaged by the fresh breath of her eroticism,
Satisfaction’s repetition, the bitter perspiration of her desire...

I’ve learned to purr with my claws unsheathed
Selfishly protective of my prey
My beautiful prey

Bad words

Bad words, bad breath, what fumes you spread
Accusing life of being dead
That tills your crusty soil to seed
Promoting growth where you have need

Apparent in your tumbleweeds
Your petite flowers quick to bleed
Your dust is mad and lost and free
Your scorched earth called destiny

You’ve named your desert beautiful
Serene because it’s unfruitful
Your peace devoid of life’s murmur
Sun baked, deprived of rain’s whisper

Yet you would tempt my tears with yours
Sucked from your cacti flesh, its store
And trade for my monsoon your dew
So rare it disappears from you

For what – that you might be refreshed
And bathe in what you choose expressed
The nectar you do not perceive
Discarded through your un-bowled sieve

The lost will tolerate the stench
Of what they drink in ignorance
If thirst has bored their holey mind
So shadows fool them desperate, blind

And they will protest, curse aloud
And feign offense until they’re proud
And insist that they have been wronged
And answer none who come along

With bad words, heard words given meaning
Spent and meant for your believing
Bleeding through your faculties
Experience escaping thee

Call it nasty, call it rich
Call it vulgar innocence
Offensive to the shaded eye
Unsophisticated cry

I'm sick because I know desire
And bare myself to sun-pure fire
Absorbing all wavelengths of light
Reflecting truths that tear through night

Obscene because I speak my mind
Piercing hearts deaf, mute and blind
Awakening that consciousness
Which screams out from its dark abyss

The tear pulls soul thoughts scraped through cracks
Contentment’s sediment broke back
Where sentiment has swollen pride
That warps the floor on which you stride

Emotion paints pictures benign
Flashback’s experienced design
And I’m condemned, constrained by rules
To be what you would call a fool

Uncouth because I entertain
Beliefs that make the world insane
A rage consuming common trash
Scorching the earth to reap the ash

Desecrated blasphemy
You judge meant to soil beauty
Bad words ugly to the spoiled
The truth unfortunately coiled

Pupil of the universe

Nothing is ever quiet
Not even the night
Whose irreverent spawn
Mock the weary day
With a cacophony of incessant chatter
An audible static mirroring
The billions of microscopic starbursts
Which give black its color

Still nothing
As compared to each galaxy of thought
Filling the bowl of my soul too small
For such violent moon tides, spilling
In waves of deaf insects
Pouring over the landscape of my sanity
Immune to the wrath of my attention’s vehement protest
A flood of filth
Corrupting my peace with the stain of its undeniable being

And when the moon is absent
I cannot see the forest
Not for the trees
Whose roots hold the earth upon which I stand
But for the shadows of my mind
Whose insatiable hunger often turns on itself
Shadows strengthened by the brilliance of my insanity
Attempting to comprehend the incomprehensible
For what is man at most
But what he is at least

In this time of darkness
I desperately climb through the soil of history
Starving for the virgin air my spirit would breathe
Never-minding the stench of defecation which clings to me
Or the blood I spend to make my sky a new ground
Ever seeking love’s light
A pupil of the universe

At an inconvenient hour

At an inconvenient hour
I am awakened by thoughts
Knocking at the door of my mind

And rush, grumbling
Down the stairs of my dreams
Struggling with the robe of my senses
To answer

I am met with eye scalding flashlights of inquiry
Which force their way, armed with the machine guns of urgency
Invading my peace
I am afraid

The police of my fears sit me at the kitchen table
Interrogating me with restlessness
Stuffing my head with shoutings
And implied accusations of impotence:

What can I do to make the world a better place
If I tolerate less than I desire at home?