Luminous All Around

Between waking, the fever set in:

cold, damp, crystalline. Overlooking

the worn-out city, I crawled to the edge

of my bed, covers clinging to my flesh -

a post-modern lover without

a name: fewer complications. From my

head I melt down to the toes, forgotten

and left to rot behind the fridge

of my apartment, sixth floor and climbing.

Puddling on the floor, I empty

the innermost bile from every pore

and wander like a believer

through the desert and everything red

and sand. The dark rooms

where you followed me down, to kiss

behind the sheets, the clothesline, now

mutter forbidden stanzas into the black

mirror without reflection. She climbs

to me through haze, unprepared,

in yellow leggings and cheeks

of porcelain: mirror on the wall.

Listening with deaf ears to my crashing

cymbals voice and shattering body

in the tub, water rising slowly to drown.

Boy. I, I, I

Inside, a boy I found. The universe

and a thousand stars painted

on his cheeks. Inside his eyes

a dark sky, unquenchable.

Inside a boy. I found the universe

and a thousand stars. Painted

on his cheeks, inside his eyes,

a dark sky. Unquenchable.

Inside a boy I found the universe,

a thousand stars painted.

On his cheeks inside. His eyes

a dark sky unquenchable.

Provenir

Slipping into the looking glass, honey poured

reverently from a tarnished spoon into warmed tea, I feel

the ripples of glass reverberate against

and across my skin, up mountains, descending

valleys, through bracken. Almost like the wind,

humming through my hair and fingers,

my reflection augments the sound of my voice

as deeper I slip. Toes, thighs, waist. Submerging

the oldest song into an unknown catechism,

words blending with words immemorial. Chest,

neck, mouth. As the glass reaches my lips, I open

and partake, my reflection swirling

into the darkness of my own self, and the words come,

without compulsion from the deep: an echo

in the half-light. A hymn without refrain.

Remorse

I failed to mention how I loved

the color of the sky

the day my neighbor passed

into unambiguous sleep. She went quietly,

they say. Like a muted trumpet or a paper

crane.

Haiku

Insatiably yours,

my canary in winter,

perching mid-sentence.

Again in Spring I Cry

Brick lifted upon brick, forcing together the clay

to force the enemy out. To keep him

out and gone forever.

He speaks the words, the last words,

and my eyes like candles shrink

and diminish under the flame in the pit

of his volcanic sky. And he, my darkness,

sinks and burns with blue sorrow

into the pit beneath my waxen eyes. His serpentine

hands slithering through my hair,

constricting around my throat chest waist. Metallic

against my petalled skin.

I lift clay to mouth, wetting and molding. Brick

drying against mortarless brick eternally. To the end

of the world this building. And the only alternative

is no alternative, an underworld of silver linings,

golden chains wrapped loosely (and growing

tighter) around my neck with promises

of a full gut and a place to lie.

I lie while bruised blossoms melt and mold

into persephonized daughters. Sleeping and wilting

forever reflowering next to the Lord

and Master of the wedding bed, the man

standing next to me, cold and endarkened.

Sunflowers bloom and I turn away from the morning, pulling

the sheets over my bare breasts and eyes, wanting

like another simultaneous death

to slip into the river, wet and cold and unchangeable.

Slowly, the Scaffold

The air said go, so I walked. Slowly at first and stumbling

into the too-brightness of the midnight sky, like

walking out into noon. I walked slowly.

At first I didn't feel the rain crawling gently across my face

and I didn't feel the rain as it turn into screams

of violent machinations of thought and superfluous

solemnity. Solemnity isn't the word. No. And,

as if my life depended upon this one moment, this hanging

from a hundred-foot noose, as if tomorrow

didn't exist without the loose gravel upon

which I stood, I breathed out the pronouncement,

a judge in the lesser courts of life, trivialities

of utmost import. As if my life depended

on something that grew inside of me until its branches

burst from unforetold imaginations, those tiny

dancing bears and painted roses that skate across

the hallways while you sleep. I stopped. I breathed

without ceasing. And when I looked up, I saw

that it was not me, who was hanging from the noose-

She hanged, dripping rain upon my cheeks.