Eyes lock
Two meshing gears
Connecting
Transmitting rotational motion
Wired together
In a brief
metallic moment
The same infinite circuit teeth
Fingers interlacing
Holding on with my knees
We are our own power source
Your smile is crooked
Your bones brittle
But you are
Wrapped in dense
Sinewy
Muscle
There is no slippage
In this inverse relationship
Your blood coats the gears
It would take a heavy
Bolt –
A death blow hammer
To stop our
Rotation.
The sky is bleeding out
Sweet tangerine
Liquid lip licking sugar
Purple patchy pockets carved into
Rusty exoskeleton shells
Shiny beetle backbones
Under our feet.
We cannot catch it
So we let it fall
Our skin absorbing
Each other
From the clouds
You edge your index finger
Around my hunger
Crimson cracks in my eyes
Vibrating at high frequency
Only partially protected
Behind the solar shades
I’m caught in geometric half shapes
I’m caught in old sticky wishes
If I keep struggling, my love
You won’t be able to see me –
I will
disappear.
You check your reflection
In me
And click your tongue
You look dreadfully beautiful through
My lens
The sun dripping orange blood
Hot and delicious
Across your face
We are cut from the same cloth
You and I…
Threadbare olive satin
Pulled thin over jutting collar bones
Hiked up over our hips
At times
Dragging in the dirt.
We see eye to eye
You and I…
Charcoal ash winks
Stolen behind the door jam
Rolling tears under a canopy
Of papery gold flecked trees
Never looking directly –
Only at the periphery
But mostly we lock our lashes
Down.
We are birds of a feather
You and I…
Bandaged wings
Broken onyx feathers
We glide sideways
Through the dusky veil
Clapping like thunder
Under his tongue.
We are sisters of the heart, twins of the soul
You and I…
Flesh pulled from bone
We rely on our teeth.
I hear your light
You smell my electricity
Searching with hooks and twine
You cut me from the cloud cover
With bright sewing scissors
While I lick you from the sea cliffs
With my snow-capped tongue.
I wouldn’t dare love you
Or, keep you.
We exist by making ourselves
Infinitesimally small
We live by skimming the surface
Where the trees have been scraped
Of their faces
We live
By holding still between brick and mortar…
But I know your name
Just as you know mine
We call endlessly to each other
Eating our own echoes
Together,
On the other side
Of a lifetime.
The truth, my dear… is that I’m tired of talking.
I have run my mouth
All over you…
About you.
For you.
Painting you with every shade and detail
Deep primary hues
And heavenly shadows…
Breaking the sky
Then holding my breath
For what?
Your foggy white silence presses back in return
I’m tired.
My words are rolling in on themselves
Spiraling into tight knots
This is no longer
Our intricate conversation…
It can’t only be
Songs about you.
Oh, but it’s not your fault –
Look what I’ve made you.
How I’ve formed you with my lips
My hollow hands
A menagerie, a cacophony…
A bleeding harmony –
How can you live up to that?
You were captive – a prisoner
In my wanting limbs
My hungry thoughts
My words
It’s just as well –
I will take my bell jars, and empty bones
My bottomless lakes
And crystallized seashells
I’ll take them all back to the blue mountains
With the crumbling rocky face,
the red poppy flowers…
It’s where they rightfully belong
I’ll pour them into my chest
Into my hazy drunken third eye
Into my wandering wolf heart
I’ll let all the words resettle like sparkling silt
In the shallows , where they are safe
I’ll leave you be
Alone with your own high thoughts
Flags pulled taut by the offshore breeze
And, baby…
Tonight,
we’ll both wrap ourselves
In
Peaceful
silence.
If I were your mother, sweet soul
I would know immediately
When granite smashed against granite
I would feel you
A hot bulb
Furiously burning in my soil
Thirsty for another chance
To bloom.
I would take you in the early morning glint
To place you on silver shafts of grass
I’d let the sun rise on your rosy face
And I’d whisper the secrets
Of centrifugal force.
I would pad through fields of four leaf clovers
You, on my hip
I’d show you the way my bare feet sink
In the red mud
I’d look into the center of your eyes
Obsidian black
Glassy volcanic stone
And you’d look into mine.
We would picnic on the river
Blowing dandelions and eating pickled cucumbers
Counting dragonflies and crisping under the sun
I would love you violently
I would hold you to my heart.
But maybe, eventually
You would find my storms too turbulent
Maybe,
My need for silence
Would create a wedge
A door, between us
With a complicated combination
We would forget
Maybe I would wish
I was better
Maybe you would think
I was selfish…
No matter.
If I were your mother, my dearest one
We would love each other endlessly
In a tangle, in a tapestry
In a delicate spider web.
She calmly climbs
The quaking curve
Of my spine
My backbone – Her ladder
Delicate fingers, adept toes
Clinging to vertebrae…
She finds it –
What she seeks…
Hidden in stone
The rusted latch
Just beneath my breastbone.
With a lonesome creak
She pries it open
The tiny cupboard door
And, oh the clatter
That rushes out…
Electric cries of elation
Melancholy moans of despair
Powdery silver moth wings
Glittering amber bone dust
A dry scattering of skeletal leaves
Birds with hell-bent hooked beaks
And, weapons of mass destruction.
She clambers inside
And presses the door
Back into its secret hinges
With a final dull clank
She takes the key
In her thumb and forefinger
And drops it down her throat
Swallowing it,
For eternity.
Among the tender darkness
She finds my heart…
Embracing its ruby red wetness
Like a long lost love
Found
At sea…
“Pleased to meet you,”
She whispers
“My name is Hunger.”
And gentle as a razor
She swandives inside
Her new forever home.
She is a cavity
In the sticky blackness
Of the devil’s mouth
Hot with whiskey
She puts on her dress
Zipped up tight –
She is coming
For you.
You conjured her
From the trees
A body from the soil
Oh, how she came
With screaming
Howling Hunger…
You gave her but the smallest taste
And dropped her
In the weedy low plains
Muddy and furious
She rose.
Tonight the music
Will unhinge your handiwork
Her bare and dirty feet
On the floor
Red dress soaked in sweat.
Her mouth, will wander
Wet with promises
She will move her hips
And you will beg for it…
She will take you –
The sweet smell of rot
By the wrists
By the throat
With her knotted rope.
She’ll tie you to the bent oak
And have you
Every which way…
Only when she is quite through,
A salty film upon your skin
She will leave you
For dead.
I want to tell you something
I want you
To ebb into me
I want it to be effortless
Like it was your own idea
I want the moment to skip jump
To freeze
To last forever
I want to taste the inside
Of your mouth
While I feel you
Tasting me
It’s true, I’m broken
You’re right, I’m lost
There are pieces of me
Everywhere
And that’s why
You feel me
The holes in me leak
Energy seeping
Into the warm earth
And definitely
In To You
But just for a moment
Just for this life
I want to
Feel you run
Into me.
She comes in with a clatter
And throws herself
In the corner chair
Her hair is wild
A tangle of twigs
And forest muck
Her blouse undone
Breasts caked in mud
She smells of clove
And cigarettes
She is worn
That I can see…
She pulls her skirt
To her thighs
And unhooks her stockings
Bright ivory skin
Down to her ankles
I am breathless
Waiting
On
Her
Every
Every
Every…
“It’s gone.”
She tells me
“The words have left me.”
Today, I will find the light
I will peel back branches and leaves
Scale the slippery shadows
And I will
Find the light.
If it’s not out my front door
If it’s not down the road,
I will seek it inside
My Self
Pulling back cloudy curtains
Shaking out blue black dust
Knocking down the cinder blocks
Until I feel it on my face
Lingering in the glow
Appreciative of the warmth
I will hold it with both hands
And share it with you
Today, I will not ask
But I will give
From my heart
That is just like your heart
And I will give and give and give
Some more.
Today, I will not
Speak sadness or anger or regret
I will speak of love
The love that is one
That belongs to us, and links us
Today,
Let us remember
We are the beautiful light
Gushing through our veins…
Let us not forget
We belong here peacefully
And,
We belong to each other.
sheisfallingup 