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.

no. love, you are porcelain
fragments; pushpins spilt.

these things puncture underfoot. blue.
threads in softness; lines going
across me, you were so tender,
little sinking bites.

ceramic shards,
how my feet bloom
wet, along your mouth
red peonies and claret,
oxidized kisses on a pane.

i would scatter you:
silver tacks and iron pins;
how you dizzy on my splintered floors, how
fearfully sweet my heart races and aches
the way i pierce you into my flesh.

Fraying

There is a way the shirt unravels,
a little stray thread,
that you tuck,
into the fine, sturdy body of the hem,
with a promise,
to snip at a later time.

And forgotten,
between the entwined legs in the mid-mornings,
and soft cradling hands
that cup
cheeks and chins and bright eyes,
left tumbling like dizzy lovers
in the post-coital wash, the machine
catches it.

What a tender tug.
At first, a spinning,
a back and forth unstitching,
then, oh.
The strap has fallen,
the shirt has split,
and all the pieces fall, wet and tearing.

make lemon meringue.

or the breath suppressed, fall
against the silver rounded tins;
caressed in papers, discarded,

breathe.
dizzying citrine; clementines.
nothing quite

like pomelo, crushed
tears in mouth,
all tart
and wounding.

______________________________


When life gives you lemons, you make lemon meringue.

Or you could roll the lemon on a thick wooden cutting board and slice it; pour a shot of sunny, reposado tequila, and break the salt and bitter lime tradition. Or, you could let the lemons sit in the plastic bag in the fridge until you knew what to do with them. They’d smell only of sweet, fresh lemons as they fermented, sweaty with chill and condensation on their bumpy zest. Lemons forgotten, you could go the grocer’s. You could let your stiff back fall lightly against the shelves of silver rounded tins, all caressed with papers, as you inhaled, your legs unsteady in the heady citrine breaths of clementines and tangelos.

Then you buy the fruit, peel the loose skin, tenderly, and eat the sweet flesh.

When life gives you a lover, after things break with your last one, you should make love.

i walked
in black abyss,
dark & blind,

found stars,
radiant salt,
& white.

They say grace now; promise fire in the future,
and warmth and brightness always.