Bridge Of Flames

everything seemed a good scream away from a shatter
as we conversed with the dust
a sunless universe in the space between us
the narcotic distance -
a splendid dependency we shared

I watched as her jaw fractured into a long yawn
chainsaws and rainbows
black cavities and bright crowns
tongue like a miniature heart
eyes snapping sudden autumn fires
fallen leaves with their scissor-paper pain
ghost tympani glissandos
I missed her mouth on me -
the way it turned blood into ballet

waited for her whisper
knowing fully well it always conveyed more emotion
than her scream

when vision is sharpened by spleen
blindness becomes the only kindness
with its wild blooming darkness,
its gilt sheets of braille
brilliant as sunlight on snow
some things are better left unknown

feverishly reading our fate
with restless fingers on stone
trying to remember how a true story ends
but these snaking roads are forked, charmless
lack illumination, magnetism
and the storyteller was a silver-tongued conman
with a knack for over-embellishment

she was still right there in front of me
this spoke volumes
as her silence expressed the inexpressible

pawned dreams
a pocket full of one-way tickets
days ruined by ruminations
on world-as-wound sorrow

distracted by her diaphanous dress
a second skin - filament thin
somehow still holding a promise intact
a secret she would some day need to tell me
if we could just get past this
bridge the abyss
hold all that is golden
once more
before it's all stolen away
and our ransacked hearts
are exsanguinated

then it's her voice like a bell
and it's mine like a hammer
two blunt instruments crushing one another
into a common mass
but not without passion

a bridge of flames
a pure communion
so old it seems new
we're born into this once again.




Beneath Her Eyes, a Star Chart

cardinal feather and paraffin wax
another aborted bright flight

so now you see a noose of stars
where you once almost touched the sun

and you study the useless spatter pattern
of your own blood - let it go
relinquish the blooming Rorschach bruise

shifting shapes in a stroboscope
faces like open graves - soft dilating animal shapes
give them names - fiery games to play

carve a crescent shaped scar
into yourself
they'll mistake it for a smile,
make it a shrine,
genuflect to you,
maybe even faint -
your presence their grail
your absence their flame

eyes in a bottle
trying to find the bottom
the wood still wobbles when the moon shines
the tail of comets, a blazed trail

the bold fires of alchemists
promise a molten golden autumn
in exchange for this hand-modeled excrement

so tip your favorite idol
but do not rue these ruins
as they strain to know beauty

wait for winter's frayed hymnal,
the brute choir,
to idle, to decay
beneath marble
white as the brilliant corners
of the fawn's quick eyes
as she's hunted in the dead camouflage
and diamond hardness of the crippled wood
branches scouring the scorned sky pure -
all nests exposed

you can see your breath
a certain cloud of validation before you
and still you want to die?

reflecting your own light,
your own darkness
both a prism and a prison
a vision and a void

but there is a pulse
that sometimes plays dead
drumming in the night
a heart beneath this dark bestial breast -
speaking in savage tongue - saintly rhythm

set to explode
with sun birds and incendiary song -
luculent new light

sometimes it takes a detonation
to get up off the ground,
to stimulate creation

and you're a thaumaturge
with a star chart beneath the white of your eyes,
that could never seem to write the right last words

but your truth still gauzes the leper's wounds
softens the blue beneath each bruised wing,
beneath everything
as it struggles to be free,
to say something true

with a mouth of phoenix ash
spitting up at the sun
the white ignited dream
you coil yourself up in
constellated blankets over cold rolling blackouts
electric seizures and lunar seas -
and now this fever -
shivers and blisters

the sterile blazes of this wounded bird sanctuary
with its malfunctioning mirror-windows
and star charts buried beneath
ancient layers of off-white paint
up on the eggshell ceiling -
where dancing is forbidden

stellar regions remain hidden
as is the treasure
they are waiting to yield
veins trying to outrace this numb erasure

a stupid bleeding savior
on a calendar thumbtacked to a weeping wall -
threatening to fall

accept that all gods are false
except the one collapsing inside of you
and time is a blind conceit
a trembling penny candle
against your humble mendicant breath

so pull a face that doesn't pretend to know
make an infinite wish -
blow a dandelion infant universe

now open your eyes

wide

rise

begin.




In Connection With a Drowning

in legion with this early darkness

a blanket of smallpox

covering the anemic winter skin

crisp as a leper's


this newness you swoon for

and celebrate prematurely

it breeds disquietude

amends lines once improvised


callow hands that never once

handled something frangible

without breaking it


the ice cold crystal shatter

a fault line of blue

on the lake's ceiling

a tragic swirl of swan's eye and frigid star

glittering like errors


a tiny breath still hanging in the air

the message dissipates in drifting surrender

and the child is long gone.