the snow falls.

the way the nights go, i think, perhaps it is time for running, shoes and concrete. something about the way the leaves are falling, in my mind, along the hudson. june, june, there is no rain.

shoes and concrete, shoes and concrete. something cut out of me. maybe somebody knows what i mean.

we don't walk this way anymore, they tell me.

the sweetness of night air kills. slow sweet breath. sweet breeze kisses on my cheeks, the way i can't let anything else. sometimes we know the water comes from the heart.

come running with me, i want to say. i can't. my feet are tired. i am tired. dream walking. how many hours until morning?
-not enough. and too many.

somebody must know what i mean, but berryman is dead.

they say, listen to your mother, but i know mothers are often wrong.
what they should say: never give away the heart your mother gives you. you will never get it back, and it will kill you.


-


the time traveler has no idea of anything, except of her own happiness. all photographic ink. blues, and skies, and so much flowing dark hair. but she is not a woman.

may is dying but somewhere, the trudging in february snow. what are you carrying? why are you still cradling the cracked airlessness in your hands?

go to sleep.
i can't.

i can't. shams and shambles. i don't need a new house.
i would never tell my mother. i would never tell anyone. if only it would stop seeping.

when the fence didn't snag my dress

just jumped,
and i'm leanin'
against the fence, breathless
on the other side.

o, how my heart
is a thud thud thud
with the rush
of flight & the deathfear of the leap

but the firm,
dark, ground catches me,
my sidewalking boots
impressing two grateful kisses.

the dusky morning breeze flickers,
cool fire through my chopped hair,
& i throw one last glance

over the young gleaming grass.
the sun's coming up, like sweetness,
like apples, over my summer hills and haunts,
and i turn,
and i run.
the day will never catch me.

Shipwreck

A radiant woodbox of lies:

God knocked twice last night,

wove a gentle net

of gilt thread, to cradle the young

Fool. I am stripping the taste

of stale spirits from my numbing tongue:

Nights of singing

of the blood clock burned from the bone cage.

Charring vapors & smoke dreams,

Downed soot on a decayed stage.

I am aging like a dirtied cloud,

Rain, rain,

Heavy.

Rain on my streaked window pane,

but I am out

-side and empty.

Bright baubles and sylphs,

don't need a'body;

drift in foam and breeze, 

nothing but a splinted thing in light.

It hurts so good;

I could carve it out,

slide a clean serrated blade across its skin

as it grinds against the mottled, wooden board,

steady cut by cut,

its juices, soaking

into the hard perspiring bed.

It grows back

as I cut.

Uglier, and fresher.

I want to flay it,

strip the polyps,

cancer thing. It's all wrong.

how beautiful you are when you're all sorts of fucked up inside,
like the way that damned croissant won't sit right,
but it looked so damn good, all soft and buttery
until it went down, greasy, like a dirty marble stuck in your windpipe,
or
a chunk of old garbaged stormdrain ice, rammed in just right of the heart,
and i go god, it's like a storm, a filthy ocean on my tits and in my lungs
and i never learned how to swim, so i'm puking the bittersweet sea and sol
and sand and i'm going oh

-

but i was a good girl, and god, i tried so hard, i'm always trying so hard,
so damn willful, maybe that's why you slap us, because what
is a woman but a girl with another wet face, and what are tears but salt
when you are only dirt and when men cry all the time when some boot
trods over their dust bodies or when even on days i don't believe in you,
you're still leaving me to die
same girl, face in the splintering floor with the elbows dug into my back
that you forged steel so i could crawl,
and carry my cuts and skin scrapes like a cabochon of your crafting

-

and god, i am lonely, so you made a boy with as many ribs as mine,
and gave him frost's apple trees and a tongue for pears,
and gave me a song of frost & hollow wind in the nights,
and change for a few cups of dark, milkless coffee,
and i threw up

Everyone loves a redemption story.  Or, a fall from grace.

People want light to be drawn from mud.

They want to know that in our murky natures, something holy, something close to god can be wrest from us, from the flesh webbing and bone caging of our little beating organs.

We want to know that if we are black, if we are decaying things, then that we can transmute, defy ourselves, become something beyond the coal destined things we are now.
We want to know that in our desire for what we cannot name, that we still have souls. We want to know that we are not merely evolved, intricate, dirt molds that live transient lies, then die.

Well, we are dust. 
Then, water.

We are the things that've crumbled away from stars, the minuscule fragments that cease to be light.

One day, we will be a caked, dead mass, and the dying glow orb will swallow us, dry spittle of itself. 
Then, we will again become thoughtless and lifeless, become the gleaming movement that we all once were.
 
Until then though, we are only the things that lay in wait.


-
 
"What does the evening star taste like?"

"Like all other stars; a burning wind that hungers for a dark hollow to bury itself."

it eats at me, you know. it's the way i push the glass away,
but it sits by my bed.
i don't want to drink anymore
of bitter love,
nor of sickly sweet poison.

well, flight or shatter

it starts, a bric -
a - brac, a tumbling, - i don't know this
road - or maybe i traveled blind before
and stupored,
or in the soft mulch-covered woods
on moonless nights.

well, these things crumble, you know.
not made of stone,
our feet crack easier;
but what things we contain,
wisps and wists, i want
more than to love
like a ghost, a dead girl, drifter
in my aged, worn shoes

when you flood,
sky shine on summer grass,
like glowing wildflowers trailing the sun's fingers,
and i am moved how the wind must,
in nectared breaths and petals

the heart in flight

Love love love, lovely, c'e la vi',
(non e francese: "c'est la vie").

Madam, I am scrawling, yes,
with charcoal.
These wires become all aglow.
Caged in Bangkok lanterns;
I am as naked and dark as sparrows.
 

some birds eat other birds, or story for the lost artist

A cliff falcon swept her broad wings, and
thefted a newborn chicken-child singing 
pio, pio, pio to a little boy.

Well, throw a rounded stone swiftly,
enough to strike
the hunter. She will
drop the yellow feathered thing.
It will plunge thirty feet, 
lay dead on the grass, dirtied
and damp on the ground,
for the little boy to dash over
in his small feet,
and be afraid to touch it.

You must
pick it up, the little dead body,
and carry it in the cracked cradle
of your labored hands,
and lay it,
in a grounding-stone grave.

You must take the old bronze bowl,
the one where grandmother's young fingers
picked her blessed rice from,
when the young farm chickens chirped for her,
and place
the hollowed metal,
on the silent body of the creature.

Take a tarnished spice spoon, heavy
with the rains and cold,
and strike, the empty eating sphere.
It will ring, a knelling clarity,
& sound, into the dozing mountains,
and the cool, grey haze that cloaks them.

You must hit it again,
& again, and then, again, drumming
faster, your fingers,
become chanting monks
of a dead dharmic religion,
a steady, chiming, prayer-voice
soaring up to the blind burying gods,
and the bird will stir.