"first bruise"

Streetlamps flicker,  
echoing their silence.  
The chill—  
not just in the air,  
but between glances  

that once burned.  

Footsteps dissolve  
into memory's fog,  
while love  
learns its first  
bruise.

My heart says yes/ pour into me/the longest night/ within my *****/ becomes a morning glory planted/at the foot of a hill / even when moths descends/ I sit/ fingers touching the grass/ under the sun/ the soul too is radiant/  and in all heavenly bodies/ there is bright/ just as there dim lamps at bed sides/

The tongue is the morning star
Crushed tin
Flailing aluminum stakes
Strapped to the *** with diet cola cans
Sweet and sticky
Sweating in the hot summer sun
A
Sky blue blanket abuzz with gnats
Say it's over
Blasting out
Say it's over
Burning up
Say it's over
Say it's over

of course, looking on
the bright side can
ruin your eyes  ..

Northern Virginia isn't ****
But it's solid, steady, stable
Once I was a teacher there
Now I am disabled

Postcards in the mail
Books upon the table
3 Korean shamans
7 Chinese fables

                 the Way

the new dark age
heart goes out
world goes up
all due to a love of concrete
and iron indignities

buildings grown in the heartland
steel your future
wrap your face in a foreign flag
make it medieval
so fear and superstition
can live on each floor

from above the cityscape
blueprints of a pinball machine
a train to nowhere
like candles on a cake
that will burn someday
when least expected

ladies against the glass
of morning commutes
show too much cleavage
to people on Sunday
gentlemen with their death sticks
conjure the factory smoke
poisoning a life of leisure
these infinite vistas
continue to rise
elevation well in hand
stitched together
but growing apart

the biomechanical soul
a species out of control
mother solitude and her
modern failures
take the stairs to the roof of her mouth
progress leaves an echo
her final words are
empty, foreboding
and full of lead

The way flowers
twist themselves
to face the sun;
I do the same
at the moon,
at you.

At the darkest hour,
my despair has grown
around this fortress:
an indivisible field
of sunflowers.

What does it take to live
in this patch of grace?
To become the dewdrop
freed from quenched lips;
to become the day
that waters an endless
garden of galaxies,

that sprout generously
and rot willfully
inside every cell;

to live in a body
called a nebula
and a graveyard,
knowing in the end
I will inevitably
become soil,

to belong to you
and to the world,
and learn
how to breathe again.

But this fortress
I built around my heart
is the reason
I can’t feel the sun.