With a warm glow
around my tired bones,
I feel the chemicals
slowly take effect.

It's ok with me, precious,
if you think I'm ugly.
I'll love you just the same.

My hands knew your skin
before we ever touched lips
because you are missing from me.

It's ok my dear,
if we never live
I'll love you just the same.
It's the honey on your lips
that keeps me on my knees.

Shadows taste like unanswered crickets and last years leaves.
This question crawls in your skin
as you try to wring the answers out of *******.
There is no right or wrong
in the realm of exo-skeletons
so the crickets sing as
I part the earth and
come on your sacred soil.

I know what I am.

You are my sugar,
white and heaping.

There is only this.
There is only now.

You are here
and I am there
and I will choke on these
shadows the way you choke me
behind your lovely lashes.
Don’t die so soon,precious;
I have many flowers to
spread on your skin.

Today I killed
the last piece
of love
inside me.

I fed it poison
and watched it
convulse and die
as the cicadas rotated
shifts in my ears.

Yesterday a blind woman
touched my face
as I carried her through
the desert to
the Holy Lake in the mountains.
She touched my face
and asked me to put her down;
she no longer wanted my help
because she knew my
nothing was greater than hers.

Tonight I drink the shadows
of your name, heavy with
time.

Blood.
So much blood.
Bright red against her pale skin,
and his wood floors.

Crumpled, a heap on the floor,
she bleeds and moans, ruined.

Mechanisms years in the wanting, seconds to bloom,
he gave her the love she thought was dead.

Even the ones that know how to
take a big **** sometimes
bleed, just not this much.

So much blood.

42 since I started to breathe rotting leaves under a November blizzard.
34 since I entered this body that day on the porch.
32 since I understood violence to be an accepted
part of life.

So many years I have carried this burden and I am tired, so tired.

So many sad Novembers.

But it's April now and 29 since I tasted a woman's mouth. 26 since I discovered how it felt to be inside another human, while completely inside myself.

It's April now and I crave the pale round goblets of milky skin these young flowers offer.
New rituals indeed smolder as centuries unfold.

It's only been 12 since I knew I was part of God
and 7 since I started hating us for being so close.

It was last March since I lost faith in you and I haven't stopped breathing shadows.
I am so tired, dearest.
What must I do?
It's April now, the walnut tree is black against the streetlight; the sycamores line the empty boulevard and I can smell the ghosts in the park.

These milky skies and milky thighs burn in
my skull.  January has lost her way
again as everyone forgets about the poets.
It's the poets that get them through a grey December.
We all share the same air, we all breathe
each other.
There is a lone willow tree, in the cradle of the park, bearing your divine name, which can be heard whispered by the ghosts who wander
on this lonely reservoir.

I am pining for dried tea bags and empty dresses as long summer nights bring insects and revelations.
I am your stone gargoyle.

and *****, slimy and rotten
to the core.
The Id rules here
so ******* and fighting
at playtime now means
****** and killing
for breakfast.
I had feelings once
when the world was bright
and what the fists didn't beat out of me,
the women devoured.
I would give anything
to just be the mighty
sycamore guarding
the park.
Anything to not be this, now.
No lilies in my eyes
since you left me,
like they all do.
No amber
or candles
or soft kisses on
wet thighs.
Nothing but filth
and the familiar stench of
being alone and unwanted
here.
Filth and refuse,
remnants of earlier tortures,
limbs and guts,
decaying art of us
stinking up the place.
It's a sunny day here but
the shadow of our rot
weighs heavy.

My cherry blossoms.
Gather slowly, my precious,
the day is long, here.