there's got to be more below the surface
Beneath the bed, I hide
my sack of broken secrets.
They leak into my dreams
like drops of rain sift slowly
through limestone to form
deeper pools, darker caves.
I wake to put them on again
still damp, clinging to my skin.
Through the day, they etch
their strangled blue runes
onto my hollow bones
with a cold acid. I become
a flute to my fears, a crescendo
of trills like dying birds.
(October 8, 2021)
I’m lucky not to drown,
second by second, as I
walk down the street—
what with all the lies
and recriminations
I mouth, then swallow,
like a gluttonous beast
devouring itself wholly.
Perhaps it’s fate not luck
which keeps me afloat? But that
requires some god to blame,
and explain the curses directed
daily over rosary beads, like
mendicants to a self long lost.
(September 5, 2021)
There is no causality, no maze
to transcribe into memory,
simply a chance to breathe
near the bottom of the stairs;
and, like a mouth singing
arias, I crack open the bones
in my chest to find a way
into the warm flesh, to dip
my worn fingers slowly in,
to feel the heart’s contours
define the next last moment,
to map another return into
the ocean’s lost metaphor.
(August 25, 2021)
Where words we would have said
were swallowed, like sailors sacrificed
to the waves, possibility slipped shut.
If only we could have heard the words
we sang in secret to each other;
if only we had not died there,
feeding like fabled monsters
upon our embittered flesh;
if only we had relented
to the siren’s cold seductions,
then the screams in the waves
which smashed upon the sea wall
would not be lost to the blind pulse
of froth and spume across the wreck.
(June 30, 2021)
certainty’s a razor’s edge
pressed lightly across skin
i draw a line along
the length of my arm
tracing a blue vein
a way in a way out
(May 4, 2021)
“lesser christs of dim aspirations”
—Apollinaire
as an early spring front approaches
and dark clouds push across an empty sky
the first line begins the separation
from who I once was to what I’ve become
the slow dissolve from silence
into a momentary resistance
to the callow acquiescences
and the nodding submissions
imbued in these day to day devotions
this moment turns without motion
without thought as though it were
not there as though I was not ever there
as i was not the day before nor after
but only now in a field arms outstretched
the cold rain washing softly over me
(April 25, 2021)
The moon’s still there;
look up. Happiness lies near
the ground where you stand.
(April 22, 2021)
when I wake
into the night
uncertain
of where
I am
I hear your breath
nearby
a surety
you are
still
a part
of me
(April 15, 2021)
within a multitude of soft tongues
a flame whispers accusations
around the kindling at your feet
and with a puff from her lips
it flourishes like angelic trumpets
curling toward a blackening sky
then soon enough
the fire fades
to a boredom
akin to sadness
it’s not there
in its absence
as sadness pervades
each need
with lackadaisical ease
(April 5, 2021)
with a thousand toes to step upon
scattered across the ballroom floor
he negotiates with a nonchalance
reserved for sinister seductions
each phrase she said like a rabbit
testing the air for the slightest sound
to announce the wolf’s ragged debut
yet the wolf is off in some other forest
tracking that red-caped girl and
the wind carries sounds
from some other tale as
everything we once knew
crumbles into sullen ash
(April 2, 2021)
