“Old houses mended,
cost little less before they're ended.”
       —Colley Cibber.

When all is said and done,

you’ll stand there like
ancient wood-rot
and I’ll let you fall in ruin.

“You are so easy to break.
Remember that.”

So can I wash you cold and brittle
with your broken hand until you fade?

Can I touch you?
Answer soon.

Can I keep the cracked pieces of paint
around my neck like
a broken rosary until you believe
in me again?

Can I hope?
Answer soon.

I’ve been ransacked, but you waited after
the fact to tell me…

Was it because my house wasn’t what
you thought it was?

“You robbed me of what I had left!”

Now there’s hate and
wrath in every wall
that houses your life now.

Every insecurity, everything
I know of you…

“I’ve locked you in.”*

So can I approach you?
Answer before I **** you.

The Bell-tower taunts me when I look out my bedroom window.

Saints who sin are loved more than me.
Their audience comes in droves to the sounds of bells!

I hear them ringing.
I go numb with fear.

Then I remember that there's two dead trees in
the backyard. I look at them instead.

I still hear the ringing,

the sharp screams in my head that let me know
God hated me from an early age.

Angels are scavengers; a ****** of crows
staring into my window at night and
I hear silent children crying again.
They began to scream angrily at me,
forcing me outward, feeding me to darkness.
Handing me over to the birds!

I fall asleep on the roof as cries circle me from above.
The dead overtake my room and stare at me from my cold bed.
Little decaying hands banging on the window telling me they
want back inside the womb.

I hang myself Sunday morning. The crows pick
at my unclean body.
I am not missed.
Everything goes on as it did before in heaven.

Held captive in hell by memories of thee,
And every deceit that has befallen me.
I’ll break these chains like damaged bone;
Fractured clean and broken free
Like a corpse flung from the throne,
Cast aside cold and alone.
With this blood from boiling vein,
Your pain I seek in echoed refrain.
I elicit the shadows in ravenous streams;
The unhinged ire of fallen dark dreams!
My abhorred soldiers shall win my new throne
Whilst I extract my new crown and twist swollen bone!
For every torment that has befallen me
Will be ****** upon thee, times three!
With nasty chains formed from the bone,
I’ll restrain haughty might no reparation can atone!
This chanted bane is most fitting for thee,
As your pain will fill me with sadistic glee!
So mote it be!

I. Supernova.

Once, in a raining wasteland of sulfur,
You greeted me where there was sky
And mourned for me where the sun first set.

Your veins in my veins.
Your bones in my bones.
Everything we once were
Nebulous and burning.
Dying and changing.

In your abrupt departure,
Collapsing stars expanded outward
Like the bloated fingers behind my eyes
Trying to crawl out of the graveyard inside of me.

Astronauts have long since forgotten this sojourn satellite.
And you've stop weeping for me eons ago.

Your knees in my sides.
Your lungs on my spine.
Matted and congealed.
Bulky and deformed.

Heat cracks open the splintered ribcages.
Flames lick at your irregular heartbeat,
And a black hole takes form.
Your memory tears me out of orbit.
So I scatter you like ashes across the cosmos.

II. Eulogy.

Somewhere far away,
A moon's glow caresses a frozen planet,
Singing this barren womb to sleep.
Cold blood pulses beneath the dead,
And every silvery melody
Calmed the torments inside.

Suddenly, the melody stopped!
My bones contorted in pain when the secrets
Of a dark universe awoke suddenly and angrily
To the sound of your breathing!

You still live somewhere.
Somewhere inside.

And all the gravity,
And all the gravity of that life!
A fallen lover,
Like a fallen star dislodged from the hole
In your heart.

And I bury everything we were again,
Because you are everything dead inside of me.

Fat and swollen like a pearl;
translucent, and engorged on
blood, you hung there in
my curtains until I pulled them
down. You hit with such force,
like a rock tumbling down a
black mountain, or a comet
falling out of a web of stars!
You looked like varicose veins
throbbing on the surface of an
egg loosely wrapped in molded
tissue paper, or cloth-hairs stuck
to a family heirloom. So I
left you there until you
collapsed in yourself like a
dying star, or the soft spot of
a newborn’s head frosted over
by gossamer silk that dug
its pale-white hands
in the wood-rot.

Cold sunlight fills my
room today. Coffee
from the night before
stains the corners of
my mouth and I
remember to fold the
laundry. I am not
missed when I touch
the same stained
white linen shirt
for an hour. But
someone said they
thought they heard
me crying from the
upstairs window.
Its lunchtime, and all I
have to eat are
complaints about what
someone else did.
I feel as though I
should pass the sugar,
but that may cause alarm.
I only touch what
I am told. I only touch
what I can control. I
think about eating the
dish soap as I show
you the contents
of my stomach
and see the surprise
on your face.
I think its
evening now.
I lose track of
everything now and then.
So forgive me when I say
I don't remember
your name, and which
room of the house
you stay in.
Quit yelling at me
when I'm face down
in the baby's bath
water.
Please quit assaulting
me with IVs
every time we
take unexpected trips
to the ER.
I hate how cold hospitals
feel. They make my
nose runny.
And that doctor needs
to stop telling me
that I should go
away for awhile.
What does he mean anyway?
I'm watched for
several days after.
I think they like
the way I do
the laundry now.
I cleaned out my
drawer and I
fell in love
again with my
station in life.
Its evening again,
and I can't remember
why I was crying
at all.

"Listen for the stream
that tells you one thing."
— Rumi.


How long can the perched Nightingale sing with a slit throat?
An iron taste in each bitter note; hard to swallow, —
Harder to quote!

And it rose because you entertained those thoughts too.

The honeydew rots beside that spill;
Need not these feathers remember the thrill?
Bitter with each taste, the beginnings! This deafening shrill
In false embrace, touching rapture's fiery red with a burning haste!

And it rose because solitude remembers everything I wrote.

The white faded under the scarlet smear of inky Sanskrit; I write about
You as if I'm a Dervish writing about their love walking along the sky; the brink
Of sunrise,— sunset!
And I'm never too far behind without wine.
Its the same I write of you every time!

And it rose because I can't touch a god the same as I can't touch you.

Upon seeing you with your own sweet Halvah,
I no longer prayed for Qais and Laila,
For they shared love, but never touched. Just like the Sufi poet and Allah,
Where one can only see, and one can only dream,
While floating along the stream.

And now I know I'm the fool for letting the feathers touch the wine,
Because it rose; those feathers rose too with time.

Because it rose, —
And rose,
And rose.