What hunger drives us out and back
and walking, walking, free of men,
unquenched enough to taste the lack
that set us going out and back again?

From Riverside you turn on Spring
to stalk a night that will not end,
leaf-hurt, gray grieving thing
in darkness spent -- out and back again.

Alone, a million miles from dawn,
small wonder guiltless ghosts pretend
that hunger guides all exiles gone
out and back -- out and back, my friend.

Say you want a cat. A dog's too easy,
would wag when wag is inappropriate,
and slobber on the guests. You'll take the cat,
so different and strange, it drives you crazy,

its shiftlessness, its ins-and-outs, its chi.
You call. It does not come. Is this a pet,
this Dharma ***? You say you can't accept
its vacant gaze, its scorn, who yearned to be

at home with feral grace, with all you're not.
But you're a Body safely locked from Mind,
that Problem no Mind solves. This point's defined
for you by ****, who's not the pet you thought

but Otherness, one owned by God, or none.
Cat sleeps for hours, wants out. A job well done.

she is organza and rough, nubbly raw silk
that tears your fingers
and bleeds you purple, sweet.


civilizations rise and fall
in the curve of her mouth.

There is a deeper run of color
More raw scarlet and burgundy hues
  splayed
Eying pitiless
 edgewise mouth spangled with tobbacco
Hindsight plays into the corner
barred tooth
wounded & scrabbling at the wood
Without purchase
Come now
Look at you
So pitiful and gorgeous

She paused for some time at the gate,
failing light passing through her skin.
She felt the plum of her living heart
strain veils of viscera to the unhinged
cup of clavicle, bellied ribs
undone by the wings of a dove:
the breathless little bird whose winds fluttered,
heavier than a feather.

He suckled from her scalp.
She fit his fists in her mouth.
They had not yet untangled
whose body was whose.

The door stood open for several weeks
impossibly
while the web spun between them in the womb
became the slow unraveling of a cocoon.

She hums a ***** tune
From the shadows of the trees
Luring in the wildlife
To do with as she please
As they come in closer
She readies for the pounce
Scanning for the strongest
As her hunger mounts

The difference between me and you
Is that I am red and you are blue

Blue like ice and night and death
Secrets whispered on your breath

For you are made of darker things
and the beauty that it brings

I am red like blood and fire
burning white upon my pyre

Blazing strong, fierce and hot
Look away you can not

For if you mix red and blue
You will get different hues

Arrays of purples you shall see
of bruises, scrapes, and injuries

Pull me close, invade my space
let me drown in your gaze

On my neck, knuckles white
squeezing hard is what I like

Yearning, aching, I beg of you
to turn my red into blue

Under wear
Under there
Hiding your
Derriere

I awake to a hand that's not mine. With each revolution my innocence buried deeper. My universe rips like a piece of paper until it's a storm of confetti secrets raining down on the grave of my hijacked childhood. Dug by the alcohol stained air whispering my name like a scratched record. I play dead.